Ree Arena (3)

This is boring, and so I will remember what I was doing.

I joined an agility club. I did, it's too cute.

Ignoring, certain internal distresses at the practices. (Reef. Not politics. Although I can't say she isn't polarizing. Lovely.)

The other day she broke her start line, and on a whim I said "switch", which means Caper up, Reef away. I thought she'd lose the lesson on the next "switch", but she is smarter than I give, I suppose. She wouldn't get up out of her switch, attempting to illustrate how good she was at staying. She hasn't broken it since, and I honestly cannot decide if she perhaps, grew up (unlikely), or if it really had that much of an effect. There have been times when I've had Caper on standby since, and set her up to fail out of curiosity, and she refused. It's the oddest thing. Her legs are splayed all which ways, but her mind is telling herself, no. I am steel.

If I ever did that to Caper, he'd run agility at the speed of molasses in remorse.

Either way, last Saturday we ran a Starters Jumpers course. That was fun. She was on her forehand and I'm sure she'll learn something latently. She used to do this at 16", and she did it at 22". Using my vast knowledge base, I fixed it.

Not really. One day she started just jumping more comfortably, despite the best efforts of my vast knowledge base to likely completely and utterly confuse her.

She was trying to go a little faster too, and I did let her. If I didn't, then she won't figure out how to run faster, and keep up bars. She definitely isn't knocking them to be lackadaisical. Just mis-judged. (I would say it was me, but there wasn't much handling required.)

The next day was arena time, and I was short my friends. I dragged out a few jumps, and let her read lines, and then I had a half hour, and no idea what to do. I also worked on her collecting on her deceleration cue, because we are not very good at that at 26", and likely not 22", anymore. I'm sure it slid about with something else. She had some very pretty ones. I say again, I'm not sure how she can pick up ideas in agility on the second try, but when I tried to get her to stick all four feet on a balance disc, it takes me four days and I end up with a dog barking in my face, thinking the point is to chuck the balance disc backwards between her legs, and I quit because I am about to explode from retrieving it.

I just wanted to pretend I was doing canine rehab.

Caper did the same thing, too. Whomever goes first, the other one just copies. There is nothing more brainless than an excited Caper chucking balance discs around a room. And you can't even ask him to stop, because then he is sad and truly crushed, his confidence broken.

I stood on the balance disc, instead. It was surprisingly harder than it looks.

Anyway, I doubt the collection work will manifest at any recent point, but I'm sure it will eventually.

Then I took all the bars down, and I think I may have a nice threadle, now. I started to say 'in', honestly, why not. I didn't feel like I was trying to reel in an elephant, so that is a general improvement. I can threadle just fine if I limit myself, but I really want to be able to move away, forward. Caper lets me, this is my argument.

So until this Sunday, then, where I think we are setting up international courses, which should be very fun as I've never, ever run Reef on one. Caper, once.

(Edit: now that I'm awake - ok once on a squished, fun practice course - and once in a USDAA class, if that counts. Where she started running around everything because she had to go to the bathroom.)