Yesterday was the last class of Milou's second agility course. Unlike her obedience classes, she doesn't graduate and begin a new class learning a new set of skills. Instead, she remains with the same group of dogs until she becomes sufficiently skilled enough in the basic tasks to move up to the next level. This means basic mastery of the weave poles, dog walk, A frame, tire, chute, and tunnel. As of yet, we haven't started the teeter or the pause table.
Below is a beginning agility course for a little dog. It has a very low dog walk and A frame, 8 inch jumps, and what looks like beginning weave poles. Milou is jumping 8 inch jumps right now too but she'll have to jump higher ones soon. She also has to run the dog walk and A frame at full height which probably scares me more than it scares her. It's all very complex and people take it waaaay more seriously than we do.
Now Milou's favorite obstacle, hands down, is the tunnel. She would run back and forth through that thing all day long if you let her, and a few weeks ago she completely blew me off mid class to run in and out of it over and over while everyone had a good laugh. Apparently as dogs get better at agility, all the work you put into making them work an obstacle when they didn't want to is put into preventing them from running those obstacles when they're not supposed to.
In a lot of ways, the class is actually incredibly inconvenient. It's smack in the middle of my Saturday so I can't plan anything else and the park has possibly the world's worst parking. All summer long it's been filled with people having massive family reunions with what has to be every family member and unsupervised child in existence. They triple park in the fire lane, leave trash all over and let their kids run into our agility courses and right up to our working dogs.
Last class a little girl, probably not even 4, literally ran up to two tethered barking dogs and started yelling at them and waving her arms in their faces. I'm not sure how her parents didn't freak the fuck out with their baby's arms that close to gnashing teeth but they
were watching and didn't appear to be too concerned. I probably had a small heart attack trying to get her away from two otherwise friendly aussies without turning around and killing her parents. Our course is roped off with cones and clearly off limits so I'm baffled as to what would make them think it's okay to come in. Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to the
family reunions summer ending. Plus, while the class is reasonably priced, it's starting to add up in a major way after three obedience classes and now three agility classes.
Even after all this work and money, I don't think Milou and I would ever compete in professional agility. People take this sport very seriously and devote their lives and money to it. But she seems
to have such a good time that I keep signing her up for more sessions.
She tackles each run with a massive grin on her face and literally
bounces in between obstacles in what has got to be the most excited run
ever. Even her classmates comment on how much fun she is to watch. Plus, a tired dog is a good dog and she definitely comes home tired :)
