Thursday Agility Practice

The barn was plowed last weekend while we had the equipment out for the demo (Mutt Masters) and tonight made me realize what a difference the softer ground makes. It's probably a lot easier for the dogs but not so much for the handlers. My legs feel like I ran in sand all evening!

As per usual, we had another good night. Vegas is always feeling ready to go by Thursday night when we've had a busy week and she hasn't gotten out and exercised. Today was no exception. Jim had us do things a bit differently tonight though. The first course was purple and he had us do just obstacles 1-8 to warm up. The first course was a jumpers course with a set of 12 weaves thrown in for good measure. It was really nice although Vegas struggled a bit heading into the weaves after a triple. She wasn't missing her entry most of the time but she was jut heading straight through it. Nothing suggested helped much as it wasn't something I was doing, I don't think. Instead she just wasn't watching me. I'm going to have to start working her on the weaves more at home and making them super fun. She does them really well when she does them but she's so persnickety about it!

So after we had our chance at doing our warm up twice, then we all walked the full course of 17 and ran it twice. Vegas did really well! It was an interesting course that wound around the arena and included a threadle, a serpentine, and a pinwheel. The funny thing is, we usually avoid tunnels in practice as much as we can and they were like a vacuum sucking at Vegas tonight during that first course. She must have attempted to go off course three times in two runs and always for the tunnels. Silly girl!

The second course was a lot of fun. Like Jim's usual courses, we had some complex maneuvers but Vegas handled things really well and even though I had some bloopers, I managed to send her the right way anyway most of the time. And boy was that girl going through tunnels like a possessed BC tonight!

We had a lot of fun then stopped at our favorite local Petsmart and visited with some of Vegas' fan club there. Hi Vanessa and Stephanie! Now of course she's sawing logs which is exactly how it should be after an agility night.

Completely unrelated, but I wanted to share her St. Patrick's Day photo that we used for week 10 of our 52 weeks for dogs photo this week.