Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Devon’s agility schedule: where are we going from here?

Over the last week to 10 days I’ve learned a lot about Devon and agility. She is farther in sequencing and handling than I expected. However, she needs more confidence on the teeter and the weaves.

As far as the teeter, I think we’ll just keep working on it in various places. I really believe that after she gets on 3-4 new teeters in new places, she’ll “get” that this is what you do on a teeter everywhere. I think she’ll generalize fairly quickly.

For the weaves, I’m going to open the channels up to ½ inch again and get her running at home. I’m not going to ask her for straight up poles at another location until she’s confidently running the straight up poles at home. I’m also going to do a lot of entrance and turn to pole 2 work with her. That seems to be her struggle in class.

I have Devon entered in a CPE trial in mid-December.  I think this will tell me a lot. I’ll also enter her in an AKC trial in mid-January. Both are at Pawsitive Partners where we train. There are other local AKC trials in January and February, but I’m going to use the December CPE trial as my benchmark. As much as I want to trial her and get her AKC titles started, I also know Devon needs to be very confident going to the line. We are successful in tracking and field because we have been absolutely ready for the tests when we got there. The only sport where we haven’t been has been ready and confident is agility. I can wait until summer to trial Devon in agility (after she gets her SH). Even if we do trial this winter, I will leave her in Novice through March. After that she will be doing field and possibly obedience through the summer anyway.

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