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Comment by Cheri on September 24, 2013 at 12:52pm

Welcome Carolyn! Agility is super fun, I'm glad you are enjoying it. Since you have one of the fast little bunny butts, my recommendation is, once you achieve some consistancy is to start distance work. Think "guided missile". :D

Comment by carolyn matassa on September 24, 2013 at 12:46pm

Comment by carolyn matassa just nowDelete Comment

Hello agility people/dogs. We started agility about 4 months ago. WHAT FUN!  We can now do about 10 obstacles in a row without a leash, but still working on consistancy.  Also, my corgi is FAST and hard to keep up with.  It seems there's more for me to work on sometimes than him :)

Comment by Beth on November 15, 2012 at 6:08pm

Ok, after reading these posts and thinking, I realized that from Jack's point of view, we have not been going to hour-long agility classes.  We have been going to hour-long classes in practicing "leave it" where he never gets the distractors removed and is always corrected for going after the dropped treats. Ugh!  Now I feel horrible for what I've done to my dog and have a whole new perspective on how frustrating this must have been for him.   I was reading some blogs online of people who TRIAL who say their dog would stop any time they came across food in the ring (specifically, people were discussing why food/toys should never be allowed in competition rings.), with others saying it takes a lot of work for them to get their dog to not stop and sniff spots on the floor, even ones that are not food.  And we are just learning.

Problem is the surface is grass or dirt so it's very hard to clean it up.   

Nonetheless, I can't put him back in that situation and now I have to see if I can track down another place and/or get more equipment for the house.  Sigh.  Live and learn.   A long break is still in order for the little guy.  

Comment by Marcie on November 14, 2012 at 7:33pm

I guess I am lucky. I have to drive up to an hour for classes, but I have several trainers/facilities to pick from. Becca and I are going to have to take the winter off though I think. Driving that far at night in the winter isn't appealing. There is a drop in class we may be able to attend occasionally.

There are more classes to pick from in the summer here. Would you be able to take the winter off then find an outdoor class?

Comment by CorgiLove on November 14, 2012 at 1:20am

Beth, that really sucks, and honestly it just sounds like a very poorly structured class. Maybe your instructor has good well trained dogs, but that doesn't mean she is cut out to teach, she is obviously missing the point. Telling you "no" to go to the advanced class is just outright wrong, she can tell you that she won't give you extra time there, but you should still be able to join if you want. She doesn't have to understand your breed, but you know your dog and she should listen to you rather than tell you he's blowing you off. Not cleaning up treats (or keeping them confined to a separate area) from the previous class is terrible too, just so many red flags all over the place.

If I were you I would have left that place a while back, so I think it's great you are stopping training there. It's unfortunate that you don't have many options, but if you ever do Agility again (whether with Jack or another dog in the future), I really hope you can find a different place to go to. A good class should be structure with more breaks, and dog shouldn't stand so close that running out of tunnel makes them run into each other. Actually, the best thing to do is find a local trial, go there, and ask people where they train. There might be a place that just doesn't advertise much!

Comment by Beca and Mishka on November 13, 2012 at 10:29pm

Er, in the format that's best for Jack (within the general class format)

Comment by Beca and Mishka on November 13, 2012 at 10:28pm

We have a couple people in class who routinely drop their entire bag of zukes, which roll EVERYWHERE.  Getting Mishka through a course covered in food is impossible.

After a break from class, do you think your instructor would be willing to let you work with Jack in the format (within the general class format)?  You wouldn't get as much time on the course working with him, but more of it might be quality time.  If you could figure out a way to do it that didn't disrupt everyone else, who could complain?  The school/instructor get paid either way, and even if you only end up doing 15 minutes of actual work with Jack, on and off, at least they'd be quality minutes, until the other students catch up.......

Comment by Beth on November 13, 2012 at 10:09pm

I forgot one very important piece of the puzzle!  There is a puppy focus class immediately before ours, and they leave dropped treats EVERYWHERE so Jack gets self-rewarded for nosing about.  It does not seem to impact the other dogs as much, but it is very frustrating to try to discourage a dog from sniffing when he routinely finds treats when he does sniff.

Comment by Beth on November 13, 2012 at 8:37pm

Ran out of room so final thoughts:

I really need a fence.  Our yard is very hilly and so we've not fenced it, but it's hard to practice at home without a safe enclosed area.  Sometimes we go to the park across the street but that means lugging stuff over....  There is a small level part of our yard and I hope to fence that but it's not in the budget for this year.

Anyway, I'll give him a total break for a few weeks from anything related to agility, then start working on some things in very short bursts at home and see if I can get him to enjoy it again.  And if not, we don't do it.  Dog sports should be for the dog as much as the person, and I don't want to force him to obey something that is really just a game. 

Comment by Beth on November 13, 2012 at 8:37pm

Thanks everyone for your kind words and support.  Just to give some background, we started agility in spring 2010, and have taken off winters and missed a full month one summer when Jack had hookworms.  

He knows all the equipment, does weaves, does front crosses, rear crosses, goes ahead, hangs back, has a great start-line stay.   He's fast and no longer has many bars since we did some grid work a few times.  

He's always been a bit of a sniffer, as I've mentioned, but we were up to quite lengthy courses and he was doing good.   A couple things happened:  one is that we lost various dogs in our classes and so Jack was the only "advanced beginner".  We were not advanced enough for the next class up and had to start joining in a class down below ours.  They were still learning contacts and that involved a lot of repetition.  

When WE were first learning contacts, he didn't mind the repetition too much.  But already knowing them, even though we always had extra obstacles added compared to the beginner dogs, he got bored.  I went into the more advanced class one week due to scheduling issues and felt we fit better there.  I asked if I could join that group instead and was told not yet.  I'll leave it at that.

The other thing was we had the crash where the tire landed on top of me. I was pretty banged up and that spooked Jack.  After that, he was afraid of the tire and the tunnel (which was the obstacle that he came racing out of before flattening the tire).   For some reason my trainer (who is usually very positive) didn't really seem to believe my interpretation that he was afraid and said he was just blowing me off.  What would happen is he would work other obstacles, but as soon as he knew the tire or the tunnel would later become part of the sequence, he'd shut down.  This is when we first had issues with him wanting to leave the field.  Just as he was getting over the tunnel thing, he came out of one fast and ran up into the back of a slightly reactive dog who had a big snark at him.  He snarked right back (he's usually tolerant but she annoyed him) and no one was hurt but I don't think that helped.  Jack is a bold and bossy dog, not a fearful one, so when he's worried the signs are very subtle and I can see why someone else might not see it but I know my dog.  I may be new to agility, but not to dogs and I think I should have been more forceful in my defense of my dog.

I worked on this a bit on my own, where at the end or beginning of class I'd put out target plates at the end of a straight tunnel.   That seemed to help and then he was ok with tunnels.  

But between the repetition of short lines (when we'd been doing longer courses) and the thing with the crash, he no longer seems to like it.  He works grudgingly or not at all.   Jack has always greeted every training session with a big smile and shiny eyes, but in the past 4 months or so I've not seen much joy in him at all.  He seems to like the table and I sometimes even get nub-wags when he's doing table, but otherwise it just seems forced.  

Options are very limited around here.  There is one facility that does "fun" agility but I've heard bad things about unsafe equipment and would not risk it.  My trainer is actually pretty good but she has sporting dogs and I'm not sure that she's used to the sharpness of the Corgi mind and the way they respond to pressure.  What he should have is five minutes of work, then some time where he can wander around and do his own thing and relax and then some more work, but that's just not how the class is structured.

There is lecture time, we do walk-throughs, but we do drill more than my dog likes.   

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