Look, ma, no tunnel rolling!

Here are two videos from last weekend's agility trial.

For the last few months, we've been having a problem where Polly would go into a tunnel and ... not come out. What was she doing in there? Well, see, tunnels are nice and ridgy and those ridges feel really good to scratch your back against. So, Polly thought rolling in tunnels was great fun.

The judges thought it was great fun too, and with an amused smile NQed us for it. After a while I got tired of standing in the middle of an agility course, uselessly calling my dog, as she was having fun in a tunnel. We worked tunnels in practice, rewarded heavily every time she came out of the tunnel, and there was no rolling in tunnels last weekend. Not even one!

There was, however, tunnel sucking, where she would run through any off course tunnel she could, and expect a cookie on the way out. If it's not one thing, it's another.

Who was a good little agility labrador

Miss P and I went for a two day agility trial in Livermore. Thankfully it was indoors, because outside it was 105 degrees. Polly Q'ed in 6 out of 8 runs, with a quadruple Q on Sunday. Many ribbons were had.



Kip did well too, and only minimally barked in the crate when Polly was running. 

Doing "tricky math puzzles"

Being all educational and stuff this morning.



This lasted about 5 minutes. Then he went back to watching cartoons. 

Nick swimming

Two and a half years of swim lessons did not go to waste

Agility

Miss P and I looking all agile at the Palo Alto trial.  Photo by Andrew.

Nick judging

Taught Nick to play the judge for Directed Jumping. The main trouble teaching him the difference between "Finish" and "Exercise Finished." For now, we decided to leave "Exercise Finished" out.

Please note that he has paper (a premium list, no less) and pen. He says we got a good score.

More dog torture

Kipling got assigned more exercises. Now he has to walk over stuff. As any good dog sport home, we always have lots of 3/4 inch PVC pipe and connectors around for making training equipment (added bonus: the child loves building stuff out of them too), so I built him some wide-spaced cavalettis.

Since I had the camera out, I took some videos of Polly working. Sound effects courtesy of Kip.

Directed jumping is going really well, except for the periodic no-sits at the post. Sometimes the no-sits become downs instead (especially in new locations). We are working on it.

Here's some signals. Lookit! I drift into my dog on the about turn. No wonder she heels wide.