Back to agility!

After a month long break from agility class, Chimera and I were ready to run again! Cai did great; it was like there was no break at all. He was completely quiet in his crate between turns and was frequently offering the behavior of lying down with his head down - something I reward because it is self-soothing for him. The only silly mistake he made during his runs was that when I took my eyes off him to look ahead at the next jump, he cut behind my back to run up the teeter.

We've been working on the teeter here and there during private lessons with Sandy, and he was doing well, but I was still so nervous about letting him do the full teeter without any support (ie, changing the speed, reducing the bang, or delaying the drop). I was scared that he wasn't ready, would get frightened, and then we'd have to backtrack the training. I'm sure that this fear was because Dragon had trouble with the teeter that we didn't resolve before he died, so the issue still hangs over me. Plus, I always err on the side of caution when pushing a dog to do something. Clearly, in this case I was too cautious, as Cai had no problem with the full teeter experience and kept trying to go toward it again. The history of reinforcement was winning out and he was getting sucked toward the teeter like other dogs go for tunnels. Wow!

With that obstacle behind us (pun intended), I decided that Cai is ready to trial. We still need to attend fun matches as often as we can to work on focus in new places and among many dogs. However there is a small club holding TDAA trials about an hour away, a few times per year. That easy-going, less crowded atmosphere will be perfect for our debut.