Well despite the fact we didn't get Oddjob to do agility it goes without saying that any dog of ours will learn to do some agility.
As we are moving away and have passed UpAndover to a committee of club members I thought I would take the opportunity to train Oddjob in a foundation group.
The first week we only stayed 10 minutes as I wanted to keep his attention and so he would not to learn to eat off the floor as can sometimes happen :)
His attention was great although I didn't persuade him that it would be a great place to play. He was very happy to do loads of other things for treats though.
We will build play into it at home once we get set up again.
Last week we went again and without realising it stayed the whole hour.
I chose to pick him up a couple of times to prevent habit forming of discovering the tasty horse droppings when I wasn't able to keep him doing things. I will probably train him to sit on a fold down chair or something if I mind a need to have to train in an equestrian school.
Enthusiastic is not the word - he was so bubbly about doing stuff. He ran over poles on the ground, in and out of boxes, along a dog walk plank and was just so happy :)
On Sunday it was the first Agility 1st Conference and they included doing some assessments for people that had just completed their modules. I had been asked if I would mind volunteering a dog and happily said yes thinking of Rhyme. What I didn't realise was that 2 of the students were doing assessments on dogs new to the equipment so they needed Oddjob.
A bit of a conflict as I haven't done anywhere near the prep work and haven't even decided on whether to train a run or a stop so not at all ready for equipment. However the instructors had worked hard in order to do the assessments so quickly and I did not want to let them down so Oddjob joined in.
Well I found it much harder to join in with a group with a small dog as it was harder to look up from him to the instructor. It was more difficult for me to give rewards at the right time and place as I had to bend down. It was even more difficult to see where he was LOL.
All that said I'm a quick learner and will get that mastered in order to train him as he was great.
Karen White who runs Pugilty was one of the instructors so it was a bit nerved racking. She said that often people don't expect Pug's to be so athletic so are always pleased with their first performance.
Well that may be true but he was good and I was pleased. He just loved having a go.
What I was even more pleased about was when I sat on the floor with him in between goes he played with my fleece scarf for a while.
We won't do any more equipment based training for a while now and when we go back to it he will remember the experience as great fun.
As an instructor of a club we often find that with dogs and people new to agility it is better if they come every week to keep up with each other and don't miss out on anything new. Conversely over the years we often have to dip in and out of training with our young dogs due to time constraints and have found that it has worked in our favour with the youngsters coming back more eager and confident about the last stage. It is often said that dogs are latent learners which is why that works. Hopefully it will work with Oddjob too.
Oddjob also attended his first Wag and Tone class which he thoroughly enjoyed.
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