Feed Polly: Field Trip!

There is a relatively new agility field about 5 minutes from my house. It's been there for maybe a year now and I've always thought about renting it, but never got around to inquiring the owner about it (although I do know her pretty well!). I finally got around to asking her and decided to go with a monthly membership so I can go anytime. Because I go early it's important to keep the noise down so I will only take 2 dogs at a time (probably not Icon and Rampage together for a loooooooong time).

Since Icon has a big practice this afternoon, I took Apollo and Rampage for our first trip to Swiss Park this morning. Apollo isn't in a class anymore, so all of our running contact training occurs in my back yard on the plank. With a trial coming up this weekend I thought it would be good to get him on real equipment and try to get some sequencing in. Putting him on an A-frame would probably help too!

I started both dogs on just the plank set on a 16" table. It's amazing how easy it is to go lower! Both dogs found it ridiculously easy. When I moved it up Apollo went back to his trotting dogwalk performance. Hopefully that will improve as he gets more training on the full dw.

I also tried Rampage on the full sized dogwalk for the first time. I don't think he is ready to move to the full dw in general, but I thought I might as well see what he does with it. The first time he was pretty unsure, the 2nd and 3rd time it looked like he wanted to stop in 2o/2o (maybe the dw reminded him of the travel plan I'm doing foundation work with?). I thought the rest of them looked great though.

And then I put Apollo on the a-frame to see what he would do and he was awesome! He went really deep into the yellow for all repetitions. Will this hold up in competition this weekend? I'm excited to see (but realistic enought to know it probably won't). I haven't done any work on turns at all with him yet, so my fingers are crossed for courses that go straight after all contacts! If not I might make up my own course for him.

The videos... When I say "run!" (my new contact word) I sound like a little yappy dog, especially when I'm working with Rampage. Weird.