Thursday, July 29, 2010

Agility Class = Happy Ike

Ike and I had agility class on Tuesday after missing last week for DJ’s vet appointment. Both boys are sick to death of hearing about the bird. They do not understand why she is so special or what is going on that is making her the center of attention.

Anyway, Ike was VERY happy to have class. He enjoys class so much he doesn’t care about the heat. For Ike that is significant. After all he is a dog that takes comfort over companionship most days!

Highlights of the class included Ike taking the weave poles at full speed and continuing through them at a much faster pace than normal. HUGE deal. He continued to do the weave poles at a much faster pace throughout the night. Yay!

A very nice 180 with minimal-to-no ground lost in execution because I stopped my forward movement and got my FX in soon enough to cue Ike correctly. Of course I immediately followed that sweet 180 by lying to my dog because I forgot where I was going and almost called him off a jump. D’oh. :)

Best of all, when we walked the second course there was a 180 immediately following the dog walk, and you wrapped the 2nd jump to head up the A-frame. I walked the course and KNEW I would need to do a rear cross. I also thought it was quite possibly set up beautifully for us because Ike really extends on the dogwalk now. First attempt = FAIL. I rushed it. It was happening and I rushed it causing Ike to say, “what?!”

We went back to the beginning of the dogwalk for a second attempt and NAILED it. I was (am) so excited! A lot of times when I cross behind Ike it slows him down for the rest of the run (because I execute it in a stilted manner, I suspect). Not with this run. Wooo-hoo Ike! And to top it off the 2nd attempt really was seamless – it was very nice.

I did draw the course map and asked Kathleen to send it to me. Hopefully I will get that posted in the next day or two so you can really see what I am talking about.

On a very humorous note, Ike has been VERY amorous in class lately. There is a toy poodle in the class before us. Her owner has a BC in our class too so we often see her poodle Crumpet after class. Ike has a big crush on her and has tried to show his affection in the past. Tuesday night he met Charla who used to be in the 6pm class. She is an adorable shitzu-poodle mix (I think) and whoa-boy does Ike like her.

Ike is not an indiscriminate player – he just isn’t, but lately there have been more and more dogs he wants to play with. Just as there are more and more people he digs. It just proves that change never stops happening (Ike will be 8 in October).

7 comments:

Sam said...

From your words alone, it sounds like the both of you really had a great time at class. We've had SO many classes cancelled this month - I think we've trained exactly once so far all of July. So I'm jealous. :)

Sara said...

Another happy Ike post! Yay happy Ike!

Katrin said...

yeah!!! sounds like it was an awesome class!!!

Kathy Mocharnuk said...

How cute with Ike and his social nature with everyone, LOL, what a character.
Sounds like a fantastic class, we are sure missing having out classes about now.

Nancy and Stewie JRT said...

Yeah for Ike, and yeah for you for working on your rear cross. Woo-hoo

Natasha said...

Happy classes are the best! Great!!

Diana said...

Sounds like you all had a wonderful time! Diana