12 May 2008

Went to do some agility at mums this morning. I am concentrating on getting the dogs playing much more strongly so did quite a lot of this with both Saffy and Ruby.

I then practiced the weaves with Ruby. I got her playing wildly with her football then sent her to the weaves and for the first time got her really driving through them to get the ball. She has been doing the weaves for a while but only steadily not with the enthusiasm needed. For the last few weeks I have been trying to get her to go faster and running slightly ahead of her to get her to push a bit harder which has improved her weaves a bit. Today though there was a real shift in her speed and she was moving her feet to power through. I will take her ball to agility tomorrow to see if I can get her to do it there. We did it 2-3 times and then stopped as I didn't want to bore her.

Saffy had several goes at the tunnel. She is really starting to understand the verbal cue for it now. I can send her to it from 12-12 feet away. Tonight at training we went outside to train and Ann had the agility equipment up. Charlotte was there training Ellie an sent her to the tunnel. Saffy was standing by me and when she heard Charlotte say tunnel she dashed for the tunnel taking me by surprise and pulling the lead out of my hand. Ellie and Saffy had a bit of a struggle to get into the tunnel together but managed it. A bit later I sent her through the tunnel and she carried on running afterwards and went straight over the long jump which was set next. I was very impressed as she has never seen a long jump before, but I will not encourage her to do it again as she is too young to do much jumping yet.

Saffy also had a go at the dog walk which was set up. At first she was a little unsure as it was set up higher than ours at home but she did go over it a few times. Again I don't ant her to do too much until she gets older.