Well after getting over my migraine and waking up Tuesday morning to find a sick Basil and a mess all over the place - I took the day off to recoup.

After a nap and keeping an eye on Basil throughout the day I felt good enough to go to agility that evening. A new 8 week course was beginning and it has been 2-3 months since Bernie and I have done anything.

There were a few new dogs in my class and a few old friends. An aussie in the class was particularly enamored with Bernie. I chose to try Bernie off-lead and see how she would do on the first 10 obstacles.

She did fine for jumps 1-4, ran off a bit but came back to me. I made the mistake of letting her charge up the teeter as a warm-up and I think she scared herself (she must have thought it was the dog walk despite me saying "teeter"). So the second time she froze like she used to do and we had to coax her up it. We worked through it though.

The second half of the course had a few front-crosses in it. We did ok once I got her off the table. She LOVES the table. Anytime she sees the table she runs towards it and gets on. I have to really watch her in the ring and try to keep her eye contact on me otherwise she disconnects and starts doing her own thing.

We worked on weaves. Before I left she was doing six weaves in a line and now we're back to channel weaves because she doesn't want to do them in a line. She did slightly spaced channel weaves pretty good before we left through.

The last part of a course we did was a jumpers course, it was very twisty with a few traps and several front crosses in it. I managed to be the only person to get the two jump lead-out correct without my dog going over the wrong jump after the third one. This may have been due to the fact she found something that smelled particularly interesting between jump 3 and tunnel 4 so she stopped to inspect it. I was able to get her attention back and on course. We did pretty good after that - despite my really weird handling. This tunnel opening was super crazy sharp after a jump so I had to look behind me, keep an eye on my dog in front of me and back up to guide her into it without falling on my face.

Both of us remembered more than we thought. I think it'll be a fun eight (well now seven) weeks. I'll be doing 30 minute private sessions before Basic Obedience on Sundays to get us a little more practice. I'll probably alternate between Basil and Bernie going with me. I want to start introducing Basil to some of the low obstacles like the tunnel, jumps with poles on the ground, table so he has more confidence when we start Intro in a few months. I can tell he is going to be a little skiddish and will need work on a few things without scaring him.

Before class I met with the owner to get clarification on a behavior Kay Laurence described in her second clicker book that I'm reading. The way she described teaching side-stepping didn't make sense in my head. Angelica explained that she used the "anti-matter" stick (the opposite end of a target stick) teaching the dog to move away from that end. Bernie started doing it within about 20 seconds. I think I'll use that method instead. We also started working on "back up". Its funny to watch Bernie think about things as she's learning it.

Angelica and I also played the GenAbacab Game. This is described in the Kay Laurence book to help trainers understand what dogs have to go through to figure out what behaviors we are asking for. It also helps us develop our click timing for complicated behaviors. If you are a trainer you should totally play this game with your other trainer friends or anyone else interested in clicker training.

Angelica used objects to teach me to touch "red" colored ones. Then it was my turn. I decided to train her to touch the object placed further away from her. It took about four or five clicks for her to get it by exchanging different objects and placing them on the table. She said no one had ever thought to do that before and then thought for a moment about how she could apply that to dog training. We both agreed that if she could learn it in four or five clicks a dog could grasp the same concept pretty easily too and then learn to generalize it as we moved to different environments. Once someone learns the behavior you'd eventually put it on "cue" with a playing card. Then you'd have to repeat the cue when asked with the playing card and remember it.

Apparently a bunch of clicker trainers get together and play this game along with others a few nights a month. It is really interesting.