Agility begins to pay off

So some of you may know, but most probably don’t.  Luna and I have officially had 3 (I think) agility lessons to date, and maybe one tomorrow if I can work it in.  I wish I had not waited so long to start this with her as I feel it really is going to benefit us both.  I recently checked out a new spot to walk/run the dogs.

Trying to get the most out of what most likely would be a short outing I put a little backpack on Luna.

It in no way hindered her, she even took it in the creek with her to hunt for minnows.  But back to my point… she really is beginning to get the whole jump idea.

We came upon this log on the trail, it was about up to my hip and I’m 5’7″ so it was way tall enough for Luna to go under.

But over she went, pack and all, with room to spare.

And again…

And again… she went over it quite a few times without even thinking about going under, and by then I don’t blame her.  I highly doubt she would have done this had we not been working on agility, she now recognized this log as a jump all on her own.  It was wonderful to see.

Sadly I have no real agility photos of her, as I am too busy trying to to get in her way and be a clutz.  She is a natural athlete, and always has been very aware of where her body is.  Once she began to recognize the jumps as jumps and not just poles to go around she began to really enjoy the jumps.  She even started to jump while in the air over them, actually she likes to bark about most of what I am teaching her.  She had no problem with the teeter and I am actually trying to slow her down on it to work on her contact.  And the tunnel as I figured was no big deal either, and at one point we were using her as bait for another dog who did not want to go through it.  The chute was not a problem either for little miss smarty pants, she went through it closed with her second introduction and then even stopped in the middle of the sock to make sure there were no bugs to hunt out.  Bottom line she seems to have a lot of fun, and I think she could become very good at it. I have yet to run into anything she is afraid of on the course, it will come down to gaining her focus (so far the training has been outside, NOT easy to gain a hunting dog’s focus even with cheese) and making it fun for her.

Training lessons have been put on hold for now as it just was too busy this summer for our Vizsla gang.  On our second outing to this location Luna managed to rip half of her toenail off (getting out of the car no less), so we have been trying to keep things on the quieter end for her.  But if we can find time today I hopefully can get out to the course to work her on a couple things today. Another thing I noticed is her focus was a little better the other night when i was doing some tricks with her.  She was more willing to please than usual.  But she shot that to crap when I was doing the same tricks at grandma’s Saturday.  But anyway I am seeing progress, and it’s always nice to have a dog who wants to work with you more.  So off to get things squared away here so we can get over to some training.

SO I will leave you with that, more on our adventures to come.  If you have been missing us check out the photo blog.