Radical Canines

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve written on a few occassions about my struggle with Rugby in agility and my attempts to address it. In classes I’d seen some progress, but we’ve had so many cancelled classes due to weather, it’s been hard to really determine how much difference there was. Last weekend we attended another agility seminar and I was blown away.

Rugby was focused and worked great! Management was better, like asking participants to wait until his turn was done to walk through the training space, or to go in and out with their dogs. It’s not realistic that these things can be avoided all the time (at trials for example), but it was nice to be able to practice better engagement with me and not allow him to practice being reactive. Only once did he loose his brain when the person after us came and stood in an open doorway to wait their turn. I think it surprised him more than anything and he goes a bit overboard when he’s surprised.

He wasn’t inappropriate with the instructor either which was big, because the previous seminar he was a mega jerk. There was a lot more management on my part between actually running when he didn’t have a job and just had to chill while I listened to instruction. He was either tugging, on leash, or getting an endless supplies of cookies which worked out well. His job was to stay engaged with me. When he disengages is when he gets in trouble.

Even the instructor was impressed with his progress, going so far as to say she wouldn’t have believed he had issues with focus and behavior if she hadn’t previously seen it. I definitely had a big sense of accomplishment before she said anything, but her comments were definitely appreciated. We’re not done by any stretch, and likely it will always been something we have to work on but all in all I’m thrilled with our progress so far.

Now to keep on progressing!