Well, I finally started Sir Bounce-alot at agility this week. I had no idea how he'd be as he's not the brightest button and also tends to spend life with his nose glued to the ground. There had been rabbits in the field during Bella's class, and also Bella's scent was all over everything as we'd been the last to go in the previous class.
Anyway, round one - as predicted, it's nose to the ground so that even if I'd asked him to watch me just before going over a jump (I was going over with him and he was onlead), by the time I was mid-air over the jump, he was back with his nose on the ground heading underneath, resulting in the poles going flying and whacking into me (I have huge bruises on my left knee
). This happened over several jumps but eventually he did manage to hop over a couple, but kept jumping ONTO the pole then launching himself off it
. He managed the dogwalk no problem (despite it being hard to see as it was dark and we were lit by floodlights - lots of scary shadows for him but he wasn't phased).
Round two was slightly better and then by round three he was into his "hey man, COOL!!!" zone and was LOVING it. Doing amazing leaps over the jumps (and we started him on full height - he's medium so the next size up to Bella), clearing them with several inches to spare. He did the A-frame like a pro, through the tyre, got a bit scared of the tunnel but managed it in the end, and was even quite good on the weaves.
Am I impressed or wot?
So Mister Noodle-Noddle CAN focus after all - hurray!!! In fact I think he's gonna love it once he really gets going, he was definitely very excited and managed to co-erce a collie-staffie cross into a game of leaping around on their leads as fast as possible.
He's a very fast runner (easily kept up with an Italian Spinone in the park the other day) so I think it'll be a challenge roping him in once he's offlead and getting him to do the contacts, but we'll see.
It's great taking both of them as they're so different to work with.
And to put a word in for Bella - she was whipping through the weaves like nobody's business this week, I could hardly believe it as she's normally a bit ploddy but that bum was moving at a fair old pace!
