Progress

One of the things I struggle with is Revel's style and rate of learning as compared to Emma's. I'm not intentionally comparing the two all the time, but since Emma is the first and only agility dog I've trained from the ground up, it's natural that I'd compare her development to Revel's. (Griffin came to me at a year and a half with a lot of puppy foundation for agility.)

Revel takes a lot longer to catch on to new things than Emma does/did. There was a time, and I think I mentioned it in an earlier post, where I would actually avoid training new skills because I dreaded getting through that "first time's a disaster" phase with him. For example, he didn't want to go near the Manners Minder when I introduced it to him as a puppy. He refused to have anything to do with it! He didn't want to touch my hand when I tried to introduce nose touches. He didn't want to step in water as a puppy--even tiny puddles. His first reaction to anything new is, "I don't like it." I guess new things, no matter what they are, take him too far outside his comfort zone! It's actually kind of funny when you think about it, even though it's been frustrating to me. He does eventually come around, but he needs time to work through things at his own pace (which is S L O W). Baby dogs are so funny.

Yesterday we trained on dirt. I asked him to do the chute, which is the chute he originally learned on as a little puppy several months ago. And, he just had a session with two people and the chute last Saturday at a different location. He looked at the chute and went around it ("Oh, no! I don't want to go near that thing!"). I brought him back to try again and he did go through....VERY slowly. It made me chuckle. After a few repetitions I was able to practice turns on the flat using a straight tunnel with a 90 degree angle to the chute several times. His speed improved, but it will be a while until he's shooting through the chute! The one good thing is that his form is very good--he goes straight through with his head down in anticipation of a reward. He doesn't jump, flip his head, or do anything strange.

Revel also got to try a new set of weaves in the dirt arena. I didn't measure, but I think these poles are even closer together than my own. It took him several tries to get his body into the weaves and then to weave all the poles correctly, but I was patient and just let him keep trying. I'm looking forward to getting him on 24" poles tomorrow.

We also started work on the A-frame. He's striding through the box, not jumping through it, and I did have  reps like that on the obstacle. When he got tired (this was the last thing we worked on during our rental) he started jumping the box, though, so I had to close by having him hop up and do only the downramp. I felt bad that the session got worse, not better, before it ended, which may mean I need to do even shorter sessions in our training. Something to think about...