Spur was a little nervous the first day, so I avoided the teeter. It is REALLY loud at this place, but he was trained there as a youngster, so I thought it would be a good place for his second trial. We just haven't been there in a year, so I didn't want to get a pattern going by making him do the teeter the first day. I could avoid it the first day since they didn't have Standard until Sunday. And that was our last class on Sunday (we only did two classes), so that was good. He got better and better all weekend about the sound of it when other dogs did it - BANG - he got tons of cookies. It makes a REALLY loud bang and this is a loud room, very crowded and quite a bit of stuff for him to take in. I was very proud of him. He did great! Not super fast crazy man, but GREAT and he showed that he wanted to go out and run! He is just learning to recover from his worries better and better. And I may have a new start line behavior. In this video we are barking at each other before we get started! He thought that was great fun!!! BARK, BARK, BARK!!!!! Great stress release, I think!! Plus, it's cute and he enjoys it. Well, his bark isn't cute, sometimes he barks in my ears at home and YIKES it hurts those ear drums!! :O But, at a trial, at the start line, FUN, FUN!!
I am not sure what I was thinking, planning a back cross before the second tunnel, but he loves his tunnels and back crossing tunnels is good for him, so I wanted to take the opportunity. But, I should have front crossed. I was standing there waiting for him. It worked OK, though and he recovered from the scary teeter. Trotted some on his dog walk, but it looks like he ran the up part, so that's good! Didn't worry about the recoil from the teeter, which is a pretty loud bang and can really bother him. Good little monkey pants was only 2 seconds behind the MinPins, so that's respectable, really! He won his class. There were only 5 other dogs, but he was WAY faster than those dogs, so that was nice. CPE is a good place to start a worried dog and maybe I will do some more with him this winter. The courses are short and easy.
**Now, I am almost over the bitchy lady with the other mini-aussie, puppymill dog. Almost.........I am starting to settle about it and just say that one other reason I was so worked up about it is that I really, REALLY wanted to say Hi to her dog. I mean, he was one of my charges while I was working there all those difficult days I volunteered. Seriously, I invested a lot of time, energy and emotional output with those dogs. I feel a bond with them. A connection and I was SO thrilled to see one so close to Spur's age doing agility and out and about. But, it wasn't to be. She just shuffled him off to his crate, protecting him from whatever it is she thought she was protecting him from. She really wasn't doing him any favors. I know, Spur was like that and I have worked REALLY hard getting him to come out of his shell and learn that life as a real dog is pretty cool and that life outside a puppymill is A-OK. You all know Spur has had/has his issues! Oh well, at least he is well loved and "protected". I'll give her that, she does love him. I just wish she would get him out and let him learn some more about life in general and not coddle and protect him so much. She might find he does a lot better if she stops doing that. Who knows..........
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