More Jump Grids and an Obedience Update

Well last night was our usual club obedience night - Ness gets put through the ring and usually I try and do something with Kenzie. Since I had dragged Tash out to train I used the opportunity to work a figure 8 with Kenzie using Tash as a post. She was a bit distracted but got it together in the end. She did some lovely prancy heelwork. I got Tash to hold her while I did a few restrained recalls with her. I am trying to avoid doing to many recalls from stays if I have the opportunity of somebody to hold her. Need to work on her fronts though as they aren't particularly good without a lure.

I attempted a SFE with Tash and Kenzie wasn't to bad. I am able to back off the constant feeding and she will still stay standing.

Have asked about putting her in the ring at training and apparently I just need to put my name down so we will give it a go soon as I am keen to see how she is travelling.

The breakthrough for the night was with her circle work for agility. She finally decided she was capable of giving me inside circles - yee har. Her outside circles are nice. My only concern is she tends to be a bit opinionated and want to have the last word.

Ok on to today/tonight. I have been setting up a jump in the yard and building value for her jumping by throwing the jolly ball as a reward as well as doing some set point type exercises. She seems to love this game and was offering quite happily taking the jump.

Tonight we had agility training so I took the opportunity to take out her jump hump and play some set point and straightline jump grids as well as do a bit of tunnel practice.

Her tunnels were great however she spooked with Julie B walking past the end and then went and ran and hid in the tunnel. Bugger. Was able to get her back out and engaged though and she was happily running through without too many hassles. No spinning back and coming out :).

Her set point work was great. She was a fraction too driven so I need to place some emphasis on control. I was working her on a 300/400 height jump. She will do both sending to the toy as well as me leading out and then releasing her to the toy.

I then set up a straightline grid. Each of the jumps was spaced at approximately 2 medium paces or the length of a jump bar and a third roughly. She was great. Really driving nicely over the 5 jumps as though she had been doing it her entire life. Nice even action. I only had the jumps set at 200. She would drive to the stationary toy with me on either side as well as confidently driving to the toy with me out by the toy. Her understanding of her release command seems to have improved but as I said I still need to do some more control type work as she is likely to break if left to wait for to long. I did 4 of those - 1 each sending with me on either side and then 1 each of sending her to the toy with me on either side.

I then thought I would spice things up a bit and try varying the height of jump 2 and 4 with me sending her to the target. I only attempted that twice and both times she crashed jump 4 but had good rhythm over the first 3 jumps. Will have to attempt that one again later but I figured possibly I had asked for to much so decided against trying to get it done correctly on this attempt.

Finished off the evening with a bit of a walk at the race course. Very pleased with her progress and all of a sudden it appears to have clicked. She is really driving quite hard to the toy and her future agility career is looking really quite promising :).