Weekend Agility

Well yesterday Harley started another set of Agility classes. We are working on finding our golden nugget toy and working on calm and quiet in his little house. We started by giving him a piece of lamb tripe to chew on, this kept him quiet and settled in his crate while we started the exercises.

We did some circle work and front crosses on the flat. I was very pleased with how Harley did on this. He's improving a lot with his circle work, practice makes perfect.

We did some restrained recall/race to reward work, and also worked on some bounces. He did pretty good overall. He did start to get impatient and tired towards the end. I think when he gets full (from eating the treats in his house to keep him calm) he starts to loose motivation. We're still working on what exactly we're going to do to help with that.

Today was such a beautiful day outside, I couldn't pass it up. I debated on what to do with Harley and finally I decided to suck it up and work with Harley in the backyard. We usually avoid the backyard because our neighbors have two dogs which Harley doesn't like very much. They also are allowed off lead in the backyard (which is essentially thier toilet), which doesn't allow me any warning or ability to prepare to gather Harley, plus it also becomes a sniffing spree for Harley to check his pee-mail. Essentially it's usually a recipe for disaster.

So I checked out the backyard to see if any dogs were there, none were out. I grabbed a few pieces of equipment (I didn't bother bringing too much out because I didn't want to set high expectations) and out we went.

I started with some on-lead circle work around a big tree. I definitely over-rewarded Harley, but I praised him everytime he looked at me while we were on the cirlce so that he wouldn't take off on a distracted sniffing spree. I think this definitely set us up for a good start. Then we saw one of our other neighbors and she came over and said hi. I took that opportunity to recruit her help and got her to hold his leash while I made him lay on his mat. I set up a chute and a jump and then while her and I talked started working on the chute. She offered to hold him while I opened the chute and after a few tries and lots of treats he was excited to go through. By the end of the session he was going through the full chute on his own. I'll have to keep working on that so that he keeps the drive up for the chute. I practiced a few little sequences with Harley taking a jump and then front crossing into the chute. Those went well.

After that we worked on some grids and pinwheels and then called it a day. I was very pleased with his ability to keep his focus despite the loads of pee-mail all over the ground. I decided to stop shortly after seeing a few nervous shakes and some sniffing so that we ended on a good note. Overall I'm very proud. I think we may be able to use the backyard afterall.