Dreaming about agility…
Not one to pass up a good deal, especially when the only cost is time.
One of our favourite Agility gurus is Susan Garrett. We’ve been following her for a little while, and I do rave a bit about her 2×2 weaves.
Does this count as a stretch, Mum?
With all the Agility we’ve done over Summer, I’ve come to realise just how fit you really need to be to get the speed up with your pup. Especially if you’re doing the One Mind Dogs method, you’ll need some good stamina and speed out of obstacles for a quick run.
More importantly, there has been a lot of conversation around warm-ups for agility. Both for Humans and for Puppy dogs.
My husband is a personal trainer & running specialist (convenient), so I asked him to put together a quick warm up routine for us humans to do before an agility run.
Going through the tyre! Photo courtesy of Le Hammer.
It’s been a busy Summer, and we capped it off with one last day training with the great team at Canine Fun Sports. Le & Keith worked hard to challenge us, teach us new tricks and keep us having fun.
This week we’ve been nothing but Agility nerds. From new courses, to new methods, to new books. It’s been an agility crazy lead up to the year’s first agility trial.
Look at those ears! Photo courtesy of Pinnicle Photography.
We’re very new to Agility (6 months), so we are at the bottom of the rung. Even though I grew up with lots of dogs, Jaxon is my first dog. The first dog I’ve had to train myself.
Ready!
One of the mainstays for all dog activity is the position of heel. Very often you will first learn this position in your Obedience class, and while the dog is on the lead. It’s great, however, to mix up your training and practice the heel on both lead and off lead – in a controlled environment like your home, garden, enclosed dog park etc.
As with all our training, short bursts work wonders to keep your pup interested, having fun, and thinking! I recommend 10 minutes a day – 5 minutes at morning and evening meals – to get a new behaviour in place & start reinforcement.
Along with our One Mind Dogs trend this week, here is a video of us trying out some OneMind Dogs method – the Jaacko.
No where near great yet, but you will notice a couple of things if you’ve watched some of our videos before.
We are getting speed with motion!
I’m not tripping over Jaxon.
Some work yet on flapping arms and flying arms, yet it’s a good start.
Every Monday we’re going to share some discoveries we’ve come across, what-ever they may be.
Sometimes it’ll be silly content, other times we hope it’s as interesting to you as it is to us.
This week I’ve been studying the European agility method that is sweeping the world – One Mind dogs. It’s amazing everything I’ve learnt about dogs in the last 6 months through agility & obedience, but I really started to get how Jaxon is connecting with me through OMD. It’s been an awesome discovery and built on where we were in such a short time.
Every Friday, we’ll post some of the cool Agility links, articles, blogs etc that we think are worth sharing.
Lately, Jaxon & I have become agility nerds. Meaning we spend a lot of time thinking, reading about, doing agility related activities.
I know Jaxon is sad every day I go to work, as it means he can’t do any training. His dad is home with him, but dad doesn’t do agility. He just throws a ball. Boring!
Do you really have to go and leave me with Dad all day?
Will Billie play with me?
When Jaxon was a wee puppy, we took him along to puppy school, as you do. Jaxon was a very quick learner, and always seeking attention, so one of the early tricks we were able to teach him was bowing.
Jan 14
Jaxon was the cutest puppy I’d ever seen. I couldn’t walk past that cute fluff ball another day without bringing him home! And what a great decision it was!
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