Tuesday night agility

Tuesday night I went back to agility class after taking a couple of weeks off.  It was rather crazy around the holidays and there was just too much going on.  So at class last night we were working short sequences that involved rear crosses and to some extent pulling and pushing our dogs.  I also raised the jump heights on Steeler.  He hasn't been measure in a while and I am pretty sure that if I do any USDAA that he is going to have to jump 26 inches (unless I put him in Performance to jump 22 inches - which is an option).  For USDAA a dog over 21 inches at the withers must jump 26, for AKC if the dog is under 22 inches they can jump 20 inches, over 22 inches they jump 24.  NADAC has a class for those that measure over 20 inches, but they only have to jump 20 inches.  So the last time I had Steeler measured he was under 22 inches, but over 21.  So I think he can jump 20 inches for AKC but for USDAA he will either have to jump 26" or 22" in performance.

Ok - I got a bit distracted.  On Tuesday we tried raising the jumps to a mix of 24 and 26".  Up until we moved to the barn he had been jumping 24 in quite well.  I don't know if the courses were a bit more difficult for him than I thought, and raising the jump heights made him a bit anxious, or he was cold.  He seemed a bit distracted(sniffing and just wandering off as opposed to racing off to investigate) and didn't really seem to want to work.  I thought maybe he had to poop.  But I had him out before we went into the barn, and I took him out after we ran for 5 minutes and he didn't do anything!  His second run was better.  He had a great 2 on 2 off on the a frame!  And he actually started to go into an automatic down on the table!  And on the third run I ran him at 20 inches and that was probably his best run.  So we ended on a successfull note which is very important to me.  We do need to work on taking the first jump when I release him.  For the sequences we were working on we were setting the dogs up at an angle at the first jump, and Steeler went around it several times.  I thought at first that it was the higher height, but he did it again on the last run.  So it was probably my fault.  :-)  And that we haven't practiced that much.