As I eluded to in my "I'm Back" post Cookie Munster and I had a fairly busy January agility wise. Back on the January 14th weekend we headed up to Calgary for our very first Training Troop Trial. We had a blast! What a fun group of agility enthusiasts.
Cookie didn't come home with any new Q's (were still stuck at one) but he had a great weekend. Before heading up I learned that I have to be more fun... that's right no more NFJ. I really focused on being fun at the start line and getting him excited to run with me. What a HUGE improvement over his runs in the December trial! He stuck with me the whole time and I actually felt like I had a dog that WANTED to play agility. No sniffing, no running away, no stopping, and best of all I didn't have to beg him to go through the whole course. He did take a poop in Steeplechase... but other then that it was awesome!
This is the third trial in three months and just like the other ones I came home with a list of things that I wanted to work on. We struggled in the gambles because he isn't confident going out to the obstacles yet. The table was a big issue all weekend. For some reason he would not lay down on it.... no way, no deal wasn't gonna happen! Driving home I figured out I was using the same command I would use at home when I was mad at him and wanted him to lay down. We've since switched our command and it has been going much better.
All in all we had a fun weekend, made some improvements, and set some goals for the March trial. I decided that I would skip the February trial. This will allow us to have 8 solid weeks of practice. I know we are going to go to the March trial and ROCK IT!!! That Munster will get himself some Q's and ribbons that weekend!
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