life, the universe, and donna

Justice & I had our very first agility class tonight. I am so happy with her.

So, we got there a bit early, which was good — gave her a chance to wander around for a good ten minutes sniffing before anybody else showed up. In total, there are 6 dogs in the class… a miniature dachshund, a maltese, a boston terrier, an australian shepherd (aptly named “Happy”), a golden retriever… and, uh, “black”. Yeah, that last one is Justice, of course.

It’s kind of funny — it’s like all of my childhood dogs (miniature dachshund, golden retreiver, funny black mutt) being brought together…

Justice was definitely one of the top two on obedience, and had excellent focus, which made up for her occasional reactivity & barkyness. She wasn’t the only one barking, and she didn’t have any of her snarly “I’d like to kill you” freak-outs, just definite anxious “oh sweet jesus, there are OTHER DOGS here…”

So we started off by getting our dogs to heel on the wrong side. That feels SO WEIRD. Justice kind of impressed me by wanting to swap over to the “right” side (which is actually the left, but still — that’s her heel spot.) Funny girl.

Then they setup a series of jumps. The first set were inches off the ground, and unsurprisingly, Justice just boinged over them without thinking. Then they got raised a bit so that by the end, they were about a foot and a half for the bigger kids, and … yeah, that’s childs play for my bouncy girl. Some of the other dogs had trouble, but not my pup. Awesome! Not surprising — I tend to get her to bounce over anything and everything I see when I walk her. She kind of already has an “up” command, although I’d never formalized it. Awesome nevertheless.

They also had a tire to jump through, which Justice figured out super-fast. I actually had more trouble with that one, just with coordinating the leash — since we’re still working on leash, trying to pass the leash through and keeping her fast excited energy up to go over the last jump.

After the last jump, we’d have an excited jumpy “yay” tussle as a reward, which she prefers to treats — and I’m SO happy to see she can have that sort of happy play time with 5 other dogs nearby.

The biggest problem we had was, as usual, with other dog owners. They actually have a “five-foot” rule, where none of the dogs are allowed within five feet of the others. I find it funny that you can tell which dogs are … less focused based on how their owners work with them. It’s sort of like watching any of the standard dog training shows where yeah, the dogs behave better with the trainers because… well, they know how to handle dogs. Honestly, they all seem like really nice people, but seriously: My dog obviously has an issue when you let your dog run up to her willy nilly, maybe after the third or fourth round of “sweet jesus, it’s coming right at me!” barking, you’d keep your dog on a tighter leash… like the instructor keeps reminding you to do? Oh well.

I chatted with the instructor afterward, and feel even better about it. She said it’s obvious that I’ve got Justice under total control, I can get her back from reactiveness really fast, so she’s not concerned about having her in the class at all. I had talked to them about this before, but it’s one thing to talk on the phone, and another to see her.

The other thing I came up with is a leash thing. So, we start off on leash, but they don’t want you to use any correction during it. Makes sense, except Justice settles down MUCH faster from her reactions (like, immediately) with the pinch collar.

I ran through the first couple of runs with it on, but yeah, she gets far enough away from me at a couple of moments (ie, when trying to pass the leash through the tire as fast as possible) where she hits the end of the leash just for a second, which will tighten the pinch collar with a mild correction. Hmm. Don’t want that, I WANT hyper high speed. So, I switched her collar over to her flat collar (she always wears both) but of course, now I’ve got the problem of getting her attention back when she starts to react.

So, I stopped at Tisol on the way home from class and picked up a traffic lead. It’s basically just the handle of a leash, so only half a foot long or so. I’ll let that dangle from the pinch collar, keep her regular leash on the flat, and that way when she reacts I’ve got something else to grab that won’t cause corrections while she’s actually learning the agility part. I mentioned it to the instructor, who thought that was a fantastic idea. Excellent. We have a plan!

So, she might have been the most reactive dog (although not the ONLY reactive dog) there, but she was definitely (along with the aussie) the best at the course, and the most well trained in obediance. That’s just so, so great to see. Being with her all the time, it’s sometimes hard to see that she really is a brilliant little dog who learns SO quickly and who has improved SO much in the last year and a half… but wow, watching her with other dogs trying to learn something new, and I am just blown away by her. It’s easy to be distracted by her behavioural issues and not see how eager she is to work for me … when she’s not concerned about that dog over there.

So, so proud. Good job, puppy!