Yesterday was such fun, for us and everyone else, it seems. This is the third week of our new foundation group and they all worked so hard, helping their dogs and each other. The dogs are beginning to relax and enjoy themselves - some of them that were initially quieter are being quite cheeky and doing laps of honour instead of going back to their owners, and some of them that were never quiet (a particular lurcher springs to mind!) seemed to have less laps of honour now that she has discovered how much fun it is to play tug with her handler. I couldn't say which dog and handler stood out the most as they all were little stars in their own way, from the little Jack Russel Dottie, who is very driven to her ball, to the Dandie Dinmont Bracken, who only 2 weeks ago would lay down in the tunnel and now is pulling on her lead to get through it, to the lurcher Flossie who can now put several obstacles together without zooming off round the field, and the very excitable and fit retrievers, which is lovely to see, plus the little cockerpoo who is also coming out of herself this week and is developing lovely 2o2o contacts.
We were doing two sequences - one a sendaway over a jump then through a very long straight tunnel and over two more jumps, and the other sequence - a curved tunnel with 3 jumps to make a circle.
I took the sendaway sequence and to see dogs come charging through that tunnel and over two jumps to a toy was brilliant - considering most of them had never done a tunnel up to two weeks ago and I know Julie said on the curved tunnel sequence they were going through the tunnel over the 3 jumps and back through the tunnel again.
Well done all of you.
Then in our beginners class, as there was only 2 handlers, we set up quite a hard course but broke it down into sections and again we can't believe how hard Ruth and Maureen worked. Both Morse and Merlin did a round the back of a jump, which they'd never done before, sending to the wrong end of the tunnel, swapping behind at tunnels and covering quite large distances between jumps, whilst getting into place, for the next few obstacles. Ruth and Maureen did their dogs proud and we know there is a lot more to come from these two. In fact Julie and I were worried that we made things a bit too hard, but everyone wants more, so ... roll on next week.
And then, as the light was fading fast we had a quick blast round with ours, and I don't know where we are getting our energy from but we must be doing something right as our dogs seemed super happy and focused, followed by coffee and homemade lemon cheesecake (thank you Julie!). And then of course we can't seem to end the day without a bit of drama. No vehicles got stuck in the mud this time, but after finally giving all our dogs a walk in the dark (all securely fenced off), two seemed to be missing. We found Stan, who is in a world of his own these days at 14, still happily plodding round the agility field, and Glen, my dog who looks the spitting image of Ruth's dog Morse, happily settled down in Ruth's house and really couldn't see what the fuss was about!
We were doing two sequences - one a sendaway over a jump then through a very long straight tunnel and over two more jumps, and the other sequence - a curved tunnel with 3 jumps to make a circle.
I took the sendaway sequence and to see dogs come charging through that tunnel and over two jumps to a toy was brilliant - considering most of them had never done a tunnel up to two weeks ago and I know Julie said on the curved tunnel sequence they were going through the tunnel over the 3 jumps and back through the tunnel again.
Well done all of you.
Then in our beginners class, as there was only 2 handlers, we set up quite a hard course but broke it down into sections and again we can't believe how hard Ruth and Maureen worked. Both Morse and Merlin did a round the back of a jump, which they'd never done before, sending to the wrong end of the tunnel, swapping behind at tunnels and covering quite large distances between jumps, whilst getting into place, for the next few obstacles. Ruth and Maureen did their dogs proud and we know there is a lot more to come from these two. In fact Julie and I were worried that we made things a bit too hard, but everyone wants more, so ... roll on next week.
And then, as the light was fading fast we had a quick blast round with ours, and I don't know where we are getting our energy from but we must be doing something right as our dogs seemed super happy and focused, followed by coffee and homemade lemon cheesecake (thank you Julie!). And then of course we can't seem to end the day without a bit of drama. No vehicles got stuck in the mud this time, but after finally giving all our dogs a walk in the dark (all securely fenced off), two seemed to be missing. We found Stan, who is in a world of his own these days at 14, still happily plodding round the agility field, and Glen, my dog who looks the spitting image of Ruth's dog Morse, happily settled down in Ruth's house and really couldn't see what the fuss was about!