Another thursday agility class and AWESOME news!
Today was a great day! Lance had agility practice and only 3 other dogs showed up. This meant that when we divided up it was just Lance and one other dog, and his partner was from the "big" dog side of class (a little cockapoo) and was somewhat decent! Lance got a lot more practice time in today, and actually got to do activities that challenged him :)
Today was the first time that we worked on a serpentine. We started with the jumps not fully parallel so the dogs could easier see what they were supposed to do, but since Lance did so great we closed them! Unfortunately he did the first closed set great, but then got too excited and failed so we had to make it easier for him again. Next we did a rear cross sequence that Lance actually got PERFECT. Normally we have some problems when I have to cross behind him to change sides, but not today :) By the end of class though he was pretty tired, not used to actually having to work!, and wasn't thinking very much. He still had great drive, but his attention wasn't as solid so he failed to read some of my cues on the first attempts that he normally wouldn't have a problem with. But overall it was a really good class!
I've decided that I'm going to stick with this club for Lance's agility class, but I am going to talk to the instructors and insist that either they divide the class by skill and not height, make the groups random, or just put Lance in with the "big" dogs and lower the jumps for him.
And in really really great news, I decided to try Vito locked up in the kitchen while Lance was at class. I dragged a doggy bed in, set up the portable cloth crate with door open, and threw in a whole bunch of bones. When I came back nothing was destroyed and there were no accidents! But in even better news, while reviewing the videotape I noticed that Vito didn't cry once!!!!!!!! He paced a bit, did a bit of panting, but actually ate his bones while we were gone and didn't have a heart attack! I didn't have the greatest angle on the camera since I was worried about Vito going on a rampage and destroying stuff, so I couldn't really see what he was doing most of the time. But I can't get over the fact that he was a relatively calm puppy! I am so so happy :) I'm still going to work on Vito being in the kennel and locked up, but hopefully I'll be able to use the kitchen again when I have to leave him alone for real and not worry about any setbacks in our training. YAY!
