2nd Session of Agility Classes

First I'd like to apologize to my one fan Ashley for not updating Bailey's blog.

We started our second session of 8 week classes last Tuesday. Bailey was great. I was so worried about her because of "the incident." At the end of August, Bailey was spooked by something in class. She fell off the table and got a little scared of the teeter. After that, she completely shut down. She refused to do any of the equipment. My trainer wanted to do a sequence with a jump and tire. Bailey ran off the agility field and into the parking lot. We tried again with the same result. I felt so bad for my little girl :( Thankfully, Bailey had a two week break. The trainer said this happens every once in a while and hopefully in 2 weeks she'll forget everything. Well, she was wrong. When we returned in September, Bailey was terrified as soon as we got out of the car. There is an advanced class before ours. We usually get there early while they are still doing runs. Normally, Bailey is barking and wants to run with them. This time her tail was between her legs and she only wanted to go back to the car. We decided to just go back to the basics and reintroduce the equipment to her. She was doing good and was slowly building up some confidence. Ironically, the one thing she wasn't afraid of was the table.

By last Tuesday's class (10/5), Bailey was a much more confident dog. It was drizzling that day, so we only had jumps and weaves out. Bailey was once again happy to be practicing agility. She was jumping all the jumps and zooming through the weaves. We did an off leash 4 jump sequence. She was great! She totally exceeded my expectations. She listened to me, didn't try to run off the field and I even preformed a successful front cross. During the last two weeks, I've had her follow my hand with a treat in it and practiced "touch." This has really paid off for us. I've also been practicing "target" by placing the lid at the bottom of my stair case and sending her to. She's been doing great with that too.

We have yet to train on the teeter and A-Frame since "the incident." I think it will take more than one class to get her comfortable with those again.

The next two weeks, I need to focus on rally. We have a trial on Saturday and I may sign up for another trial on Oct 30th. If I don't do that one, we will have to wait till January...