Training - Tuesday 20/5/08

I'm surprised I found any energy to train on Tuesday night but I did, from somewhere. We decided to have a slightly easier course this week as we've been doing lots of really tricky courses. We used the G6 agility course from BATS at the weekend. It wasn't quite as it should as we had to reuse the start as the finish as we couldn't fit the extra row in for the finish but apart from that it was pretty accurate.

I really enjoyed the course when I ran it at BATS. Niamh ran it really well and we layered #2 - #3 which ran well. Niamh is good at layering as long as I keep focused on where we're going she never glances at the obstacles between her and me. We found this worked best for everyone at training. Some dogs seem to take to it naturally others we had to work harder with but once they got the idea it was good.

On the day my mistake came at #15 which Niamh took from the back instead of pulling in. I think this was due to me being complacent about an offset pull in which was pretty tight and also the fact that I've been training so many "go rounds".

Kizzy was promoted from the puppy class to the last class which has lots of G7 dogs. Andy really enjoyed the class and was inspired by some of the really good partnerships that run in this class. Andy has lots of work to do with Kizzy to get the kind of performances she produces at training into the competitive environment. Like lots of young dogs she is taking a while to settle into running at shows and often doesn't focus as we know she can. Andy has to work harder (ha!)


Pauline Barr was the judge of this course and it was a really good test and one that I thoroughly enjoyed despite my error so near the end of the course.