Agility Foundations 2 Graduation Day

Today marks six weeks for Jackie in Foundations for Agility 2, with a total of 12 weeks of Foundations for Agility 1 and 2.  She will now progress to Agility 1 at Cowtown Dog Sports.

We learned about giving directions for handling, specifically pertaining to hoops. It seems Jackie, like many Border collies, has a good knack for working at a distance from her handler, which is a good thing.

Today we did a simple course of three hoops. "Go go go!" means run straight ahead on the line being pointed at by the handler, while the dog does whichever obstacle presents itself on the straight line. "Here!" means turn toward the handler and do the obstacle on the line pointed at by the handler.

Where D = Dog, H = Handler, the red line = the dog being handled on the handler's left and the blue line  = the dog being handled on the handler's right.  "Go" means go straight ahead on the line. "Here" means turn toward the handler.

Pearls:

• Early signs point to Jackie having an aptitude for working at distances
• "Go go go" means run straight ahead along the path pointed by the handler
• "Here" means turn toward the handler and run the path pointed by the handler, just say "Here!" once
• Jackie loves to run, and opened up while running through the hoops