Back to agility class

Faith and I were back at agility training last night after a 2 week break and had a fairly fruitful evening. She seems to have lost some of her gusto over the last month or so and I'm slightly at a loss as to why. I think it could be a combination of things...firstly she has had her second season, she has also been competing regularly at flyball comps which she's really enjoying and I am now asking her to think about what she's doing much more in her agility which has probably taken some of the fun out of it for her. I'm sure she will come back good once she starts to get the hang of the new things and builds in confidence.

We started last night going down a straight line of 3 jumps to the channel weaves which were closed up to about 4", about where we last left them; but she couldn't get to grips with it at all and kept coming out half way which immediately got me frustrated and knocked her confidence...I could have kicked myself for being so stupid to expect she would remember and not to have started with them more open for a few goes through and then closed them up again once she remembered which was, of course, what I ended up doing (BAD NAT!). We did some stars/box jumping exercises to start reinforcing her directional commands and she did some nice work, a few bits on the contacts as Joy had pointed out to me last week that I was training Fi to stop next to my leg (oops!) so we did some recalls over with me in different positions and she seems to be grasping the idea that she has to do her two on-two off regardless of where I am but this will need reinforcing more. I was pleased as she also did a few independant seesaws so she seems to be gaining confidence with this now. We all did an exercise over a line of 8 jumps set close together at various different heights so the dog had to think about what it was jumping and bounce between each one. Fi was one of only a few dogs that managed to do this straight off and I think it's probably because of her flyball training, she is already very comfortable with bouncing/hurdling. This should be a useful exercise in moving her up to full height as it teaches her to jump the pole at whatever height it's set rather than just jumping the height she jumps (if you know what I mean). At the end we set up a course of 20 obstacles, a grade 1-4 agility course; normally when we do the course I just pick out a section I think Fi will be able to do and we do that bit but this time we actually did 1-17 (18 and 19 were weaves and seesaw and as she's not doing uprights yet and I'm not happy she has a good independant seesaw, decided not to do these)...there were a couple of sticky moments, firstly I realised I was going too fast for her as she wasn't running with her usual 'oomph' (as I mentioned earlier) but once I got that sorted I was pleased overall; she was great but there were a couple of handling bits I got wrong...crossing behind the A-frame I got away with but the dog walk was def a step too far as she just stopped dead on the up plank so once the class had finished I tried that section a few times a few different ways...everything is a learning exercise for the both of us so all in all I was pleased with what we'd got out of the evening. I really love training at Hest Bank, the set up is superb and the atmosphere laid back and everyone is so friendly and helpful; I'm really glad we found this group of people to train with. I really need to start doing more work at home though if me and Fi are going to move on more...time is our biggest restraint at the moment especially with all the flyball we've been doing but I WILL try harder!! lol