Flying Poodles

I Love My Dogs

I realized today, as I was driving home from my agility lesson, that the dogs have done a lot to help my recovery from the surgery to remove the chondrosarcoma. Cheryl had put out a nasty little jumpers course–all jumps and tunnels–that required an all-out sprint the length of the arena, not once, not twice, but three times. And I did it–twice for each dog, as a full course–and a bunch of times working specific sections of the course. I doubt if I’d even be trying to sprint right now without the dogs and the lure of agility competition.

As for the training itself, Dancer is now enthusiastic about the rocker board, and we’re thinking teeter training in mid-January. She only missed one set of weaves, and that was my fault for charging the entry. (Elly made the same entry; it was an experience issue.) We were working on tunnel entry discrimination… now there’s a challenge!

I should mention that today we set up only 12 weave poles, but both dogs had great weaving rhythms, way better than at the start of last week’s practice. The 16-pole lesson last week really seems to have had a lasting effect.