Monday Progress Note?

Autumn is my favorite, favorite time of year.   Molly and I had over an hour of time to kill before agility class tonight, so we went for a walk on the newish trail near the training center. (and, found a geocache!)

Her behavior was absolutely terrible.  Leash pulling and reactive, my favorite!  I have Molly to the point where she will focus on me if I ask her to, or will stop leash pulling when I stop walking, but her manners leave much to be desired.   Ah well.  She's a work in progress.

We still had a very nice walk together!

Big Leaf.

Agility class was fun.  I think that I am starting to relax a little bit and trust Molly (in classes at least.)  We did some long lead outs and she held her start line stay really well.   She handled some tricky-ish jump sequences really well.  She did not blow contacts.   I totally forgot to do a cross when I was supposed to and messed us up.  She forgave me.

And really cool moment, Molly did a 12-weave sequence fast and without popping out.  CUE THE PROUD.  I paced with her and kept an eye on her out of the corner in my eye.  Tried to stay a little ahead of her but not race away and she stuck in.   That didn't work the second time but oh well.   Once again, we are learning to dance with one another.  Molly has a hard pace to learn.

We had a good time!  And we are back to trialing this weekend and I am very excited about that!

At home Perri and I worked on her weave poles and retrieve shaping.   I let Ein hang out with us while we did so and it seemed to bolster her confidence.   Perri did very nice weave poles tonight, but she still seems to think the dumbbell might electrocute her if she bites it.   We will get there.  My good friend told me that animals learn at their own pace and are oblivious to my goals.  True.  Perri can only work at her own speed and I may as well learn to have fun along the way.  Confidence building is our friend.

We also played around with some single jump exercises since Perri was a bit nervous about jumps again in last week's class and she did well with that also.  Poodle was in a good mood tonight, and so was I!

And Ein got rewarded for being a buddy to Perri, I have started playing 101 Things to do with a Box with him because he just loves to work.   He thinks its great!   I'm having a tough time finding a large enough box that he can step into with those stubby legs but we are just playing around and having fun.  Oh how his tail nubby wags!  I love this guy.  I am as ever amazed at how his confidence has grown during the last year.