Back to agility, yay!

Whoops, looks like I've been bad about updating and have gone nearly a week without a post!

Secret was a very good girl at the TDAA trial this past weekend and got in lots of good socializing time. In addition to that, we went up to my parent's house for my grandma's 81st birthday on Sunday and she was SO MUCH better than the last time. Several people commented on how much friendlier she was than the last time we got together, which I believe was at Christmas?

My agility class started up again last night, so we were finally able to get some play time in the arena at the end of the night. I started Secret with the wobble board, as we haven't seen it for quite a while. She didn't need a "warm up" period with it at all -- She was comfortable with it from the start and readily offered to go back & forth and turn around on it. We removed the peg that makes it steadily plop from side to side, making the board more "wobbly" and unsteady under her feet. I thought this might be an issue, but Secret didn't seem to really even notice the change.

While I had the treats & clicker out, I decided to go do a little bit of work on Secret's 2 on/2 off behavior on the a-frame (the only contact set up last night). She's really getting the end behavior down well. I will have to decide fairly soon this spring if I'm going to go for 2o/2o on the a-frame or if I want to train her to run it from the start....

My course last night only had one tunnel, so we were fairly limited in what we could do for handling skills. We worked on sending to the tunnel, rear crossing the tunnel (which didn't go so well last night....) and going through a pinwheel with bars on the ground. I also started to work her start line stay and was able to lead all the way out past the second jump without a problem. Yay!

Another piece of great news from last night was Secret's toy drive. My friend, Holly, made us a tuggy with a squeaker ball attached and Secret thinks this thing is AWESOME. We alternated between tugging as the reward and throwing it for her, but she was really into the tugging last night! The squeaker eventually died on the tuggy for whatever reason, so I did end up switching to her squeaky chicken at the end of the night to get her going again -- But this is nothing like how I previously had to change out toys every two minutes to keep her attention.

Secret was happy to see Ailie last night, so it was good to see that she remembers the "friend" she made a few weeks ago. She also readily approached another student's dog and rolled straight over on her belly for him, so that was good to see as well. She's been so snarky with new dogs that I'm happy to see her approach anyone willingly.

My cousin brought her young male BC, Rascal, by the office again yesterday and Secret seems to really like him, too. I see many play dates for them in the future, as we hope to be able to start Rascal on agility equipment this summer. They can learn together! :o)

We have a NADAC trial here in La Crosse this weekend, so Secret will get lots of socializing again -- and hopefully a chance to play on the Tunnelers course after the trial is done on Sunday!