Last night I brought Shasta to our first class. She was --- awesome. It was an agility class, level 4. It was in our winter horse arena which has horses in it during the day. Shasta is a floor "snarfer" at times and I expected it to be a tough process to work through in the barn. But she didn't care about the dirt at all. No snarfing. I was surprised. Pleasantly surprised.
To her it was all new, the obstacles, the place, the other dogs, the waiting around . She handled it all brilliantly. She had no issues generalizing the obstacles, had no issues being distracted by the other dogs and had total focus on working with me and the sequences. Thrilling!
We did jumps at zero, didn't weave and didn't do the dog walk (we haven't done a tall one yet). Much like I recall doing with Roxy at this age. I can make up a lot of sequences while skipping those obstacles.
We did do two a-frames which I introduced to her last week in our back yard (did three of them in our back yard). She is doing the downside slowly but right now I like that because it is being really easy on her body. I now won't do any a-frames until we start jumping except for the one or two I do in class every once in a while. And if she speeds up too much I'll bypass them as well.
The school has an all-aluminum teeter which can vibrate differently and I expected her to struggle with it a few times. But she had no issues with that either. No issues with the doghouse chute. No issues with the level four sequences.
She ran about 75-80% of the time. Every so often she would slow down, seemingly a little tentative. Like I've said in this blog before, she more than most dogs, will be fast only when she is confident. Something about my cues made her question the path which slowed her down. Which does not bother me a bit, my cues will get better and better with time.
It was a great first class. Both exciting and a relief.
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