Lady Teaches Kasper to walk on a leash.

Lady has taken her cue from Shaping Behaviors training and is working with her friend Kasper to try and teach him to walk on a leash. In her training plan, Lady is starting with a string to work Kasper up to leash status. Next she adds the actual leash. Kasper loves this training.

Serpentines and Weaves

Lady and I have been working our tails off to get Serpentines and Lady's jumps are pretty tight. I've also added a small clip on her weaves. I am going to take Kama's advice to go to four poles to work on speed. When Lady goes into twelve weave poles, she just moseys through them. Speed Lady speed!

Lady is also taking a class on Desensitization class and we had our first one on Friday night. It was pretty fun and I think it will be ever so helpful to keep Lady from madly running off course, looking for a way out.

On the positive side, I am getting lots of experience on handling a frightened dog and creating a model citizen. Well that's the goal anyway!

Lady's First Competition

Diane is trying to convince Lady that the second run will be easier.

Lady had her first Agility Competition It was just a Club Doggie Sponsored event, but run like a normal Trial.  I understand now why they call it a "Trial". Let me back-track and say that since we moved into the new 11,000 square feet indoor facility, Lady has been terrified to be there. God and only God knows why. My suspicion is that the echoes and reverberations of the place scare her. Or we can just go with the fact that the dog is a 25 cent cab ride from the edge. I think I will stick with that one.

Our first run was an unmitigated disaster. Lady broke ranks and started madly running around the course to find a way out. We managed to get three jumps out of her before removing her from the situation.

The second run was better. She broke ranks, but I was able to get her back on track and we actually finished. 

To be honest, I expected that she would do exactly what she did, but hoped for the best. Everyone was very nice and kept telling me to stick with it. Oh yes I will. The whole point to all this dog training that I have been conducting for the last 11 months, is to get Lady to a point where she is not scared anymore. Some people might think that putting the dog in these situations might be too much for her, but I disagree. No physical harm can come out of these trials, and if anything, Lady will learn confidence and that nothing will try to kill her if she goes over a few jumps indoors or out. It takes time, and I've got it. We are not trying to groom Lady for any trials this year, that would be perfectly silly on our part. 

We have three more "Games" to attend. Next one June 9th. I have a month to work on Lady and her fear of the indoor gym and judging where she was last year and how far she has come, I think that we will be ready on June 9th. Will we have a perfect run? Ha! I'm not crazy enough to think that, but if we can just stay on the course, I will be satisfied. 

I will say this; that dog can jump. And she is getting faster and faster. I see such potential in her that giving up is not an option (plus I am no quitter). We have some fun classes coming up this summer and it will aid in the Agility training as well as the confidence training. 

The Club Doggie fellowship that we have was wonderful. Agility people are just very nice and supportive and everyone feels your pain as well as your triumphs. Special thanks to Brenda, who really went out of her way to help Lady and I out, our first time in the ring.