Tigger’s now 16 months old and has just finished his Beginner’s course for Agility and now the fun begins!  We had a training day at the barn on Saturday and Tigger participated in the morning at elementary height which he’s quite capable at but knocked a couple down as he’s rushing a bit, so I’m trying to slow him down a tiny bit; my jogging must be working as my speed’s built up a bit too!  We learnt quite a lot during the morning, especially me being told I’m trying to run before I can walk with him so I’m not going to get worked up when he doesn’t do it right – he is still only a little ‘un.  I must remember he is not Holly!!  We did a lot of specific training exercises such as things like general recalls on leads to motivate the dogs – not that Tigger needs “geeing” up when we go to agility but it’s good for him as he’s not good at bringing toys back!  We then went on to send on’s over a couple of jumps and cross overs and then built this up to four jumps, practising tight turns on one jump and then send aways, weave poles – which he is slowly catching onto but I am still training him with me running backwards with cheese in my hand just to get him confident in going through (offside weaves are a different matter as he goes for my right hand that he thinks the cheese is in and the catches my leg so I acquire quite a few bruises and cuts which is not funny).  He is better now on the dog walk and will go all the way along it instead of careering off the slope the other end looking for me!  Contacts are being trained with a target at the moment and when he does manage a “stop” I must admit they are very good ones – I’m still trying to acquire a scaffolding plank so I can do some bits at home; my neighbours have got one in their back garden but we can’t get to it as it’s under a load of rubble from their extension!  At the moment though, Tigger is coming out of his waits all of a sudden so we are doing a lot of this on the lead with loads of praise and treats but not introducing the jumps yet – keeping the two things completely separate for a while.  I have booked him in for some one to one training in April as well and am looking forward to that.

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