Go Go Agility Rangers!

Cedar and I had agility this morning for the first time in a few weeks. As always, it's like she never took time off. She was fabulous! The weather was gorgeous, too.

The first thing we worked on was a short jump-weave-jump sequence. I've really been working hard on getting Cedar to be able to find her weave pole entries from any location. She tends to go so fast that she just blows by the weaves and doesn't even see them. So I worked on getting my body position just right to set her up for success. By the end we were doing pretty dang well! We still have a long ways to go before our weave entries are solid, though.

Next, Mary helped us work on a figure 8 jump exercise. The goal of the exercise was to work on distance/obstacle commitment, as well as working on front and rear crosses. We managed to do pretty well with it, successfully completing it twice, but I really need to make sure to work on the "turn" command this week as she's not quite sure what to do.

After that, I went over to the dog walk to work on contacts. She did pretty well, but I need to work on getting her to do it more independently. I tried to stay out of heel position to make her find the right 2on/2off "spot" and for the most part she could do it, but her body was crooked most of the time (pointed at me). I need to figure out how to fix that.... hmmm.... Hopefully my dad can get my contact trainer built soon so we can have an actual obstacle-like thing to work with. The mini teeter is too small, narrow, and low to the ground to be of much use.

Finally, we all did some sequence work. The course was a bit challenging today, consisting of a single jump, then a three-jump serpentine/threadle, two more jumps, a chute and tight left turn to another jump, then a broad jump, weaves, and a triple jump. It was all in a curly "triangle"-like shape. Cedar did awesome on the first part of the course, and totally rocked the threadle (we've been practicing those at home :D) but we ran into problems after the chute. She came out of that obstacle facing/running the wrong way, so we lost some momentum trying to redirect. As a result, I was too far behind her and pulled her out of the weaves. We practiced on that part a bit and got it better, even though she still was having trouble with the entries. I need to practice the jump-weave-jump exercise more to get her thinking and driving forward with control. Oh well, just more to work on I guess!

Since I didn't get any pictures today, here's a cute one of Cedar the day I brought her home at 8 weeks. You can already see the attitude, eh? :D