So that’s a wrap on our agility sessions for 2024!
And I gotta say, these AMAZING teams from Friday saved some of their best runs for their last session of the year.
Kate and Franklin, Justine and Inky, Gillian and Sydney and Lynn and Burty all ran their socks off at this course. Some excellent handling and team work from all of them. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Then Pico ran the course beautifully with his owner Eleanor, with the jump poles at competition height for a standard poodle (the highest they can go!) 🤩🤩🤩 Followed by his brother Trebah, who isn’t as experienced as Pico, but ran the same course confidently and it was definitely his best/longest run to date! 😍
What a better way to finish the year! Well done everyone and I can’t wait to see everyone again in 2025 for more agility fun!
It’s been another rollercoaster week with the weather, ending in another stormy weekend which meant that we unfortunately had to cancel a few of our agility sessions which I was gutted about. 😢🤦🏼♀️
But luckily we still managed to run a few classes and here are just a few of the brilliant moments from them with our fantastic agility teams! Huge well done to everyone!
(Part two coming later!) 👏🏻🐶😍⭐️
⭐️ Agility Dog Of The Week ⭐️
goes to…. Dexter! 🎉
He did this perfect course run earlier last week in his agility class which blew me away. What a superstar he is! Well done Dexter and Yvonne! 👏🏻🤩❤️
I couldn’t help but share this video that Dogs Trust created - for all those Friends fans out there! I’m sure everyone with puppies can relate to these emotions! 😂
I thought I’d share this lovely video of Casper, one of our current Perfect Puppy class attendees practicing some of his homework with his amazing owners! What a clever boy you are Casper! 👏🏻🥰🤩🐶
This weeks Agility Dog Of The Week is….
⭐️ Willow! ⭐️
Willow has had a bit of a break in her agility training recently but the last month she’s come back with a bang!
In todays class we worked on some tricky sequences with blind tunnel entrances and blind crosses and Willow and her owner did soooo well!
We also worked on her weaves, which again she hasn’t done for a very long time but she picked it back up straight away and I was very pleased with her progress even in just a few reps.
Huge well done Willow and Jenny! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Here is lovely Harry, the Clumber Spaniel practicing his lead skills during our recent one to one session.
Being a spaniel, his most favourite thing is getting his nose down to the floor and he can pull like a train trying to sniff his way around his world.
Rather than trying to get him to 'stop' sniffing (it's who he is!) the key to success is teaching him that walking by his human means he can then go and sniff.
He has also started to become quite environmentally sensitive. He is an adolescent and a common characteristic of this stage of development is being worried about things that they previously seemed ok with. With Harry, when he is feeling overwhelmed he defaults into something he's good at and that makes him feel better....sniffing. This can then seem like he isn't listening but he's actually trying to make himself feel a bit better.
By giving him some 'easy wins' - taking a couple of steps then giving a release word that means he can go and sniff, as well as stopping and letting him watch and process the world around him at his own pace, he was in a much better brain space to be able to think more clearly. And interestingly he then became more interested in the food his human had, rather than constantly trying to get to the grass to sniff. And he loves it when his human talks to him along the way 🥰
Using a variety of reinforcements (sniffing opportunities, food, scent work games), taking into account the emotional state of the dog and taking the pressure off ourselves to go out for 'walks' with our dogs can all help our training goals.
I'm really looking forward to our next session 🥰🐾
Who just did 9 weaves for the first time today???
Nala did!!!! 🎉🎉🎉
(excuse my excited squeal at the end - very proud trainer moment!)
⭐️Agility Dog Of The Week - Monty⭐️
We’ve luckily been able to avoid the heat this week for our agility classes and we’ve had some amazing runs from our dogs and handlers and we’ve welcomed some new faces to our agility family in our new level 1 course.
This weeks Agility Dog Of The Week is Monty! 🐶🎉
Monty is a super sniffer and can get easily distracted by the scent in the agility field so we’ve been working on building up his focus and making his courses longer each time. In our last session he did this lovely run. Well done to Monty and his lovely owners. 😊👏🏻
It’s been so nice to start our agility sessions again after such a long break and it’s been amazing to see all the dogs getting back into the swing of it!
I’m going to start doing a weekly “spotlight” post on one of our agility dogs and this week it’s….
⭐️🐶 Otis 🐶⭐️
Otis is a little pocket rocket and he’s fondly known for running “laps of honour” of the field when he first gets into the training field. But his focus has improved massively as well as hitting those contacts on the equipment. I look forward to seeing how he progresses in his agility!
