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Marqi's First Agility Class
 
Marqi went to her very first, official agility class tonight. A class I paid to put her in, not a catch as catch can session between some of my other dog's classes . She was in a class with puppies her own age, but they were a Golden, a Boxer, and a Belgian Terv. who have been in another class since they were tiny babies. One would think that Marqi might have been at a disadvantage. Not so!

Marqi standing 350First on the agenda, target practice. Nope, no guns. Just a dog food lid with treats and the command "touch" while moving the target away from the puppy. No sweat for Marqi! Where the food goes so does her nose and then mouth.

Then we worked on the A frame. Well, Marqi is a saluki and they all love A frame so that went very well. She even stopped nicely in the yellow to catch her bottoms.

Next it was table time. First we worked on sending them to the table and just having them get on the table (some of the pups had not worked with a raised table before tonight so that was new to them). Next we wanted them to "table" and then "down" on the table. I thought about it and decided I'd never taught down to Marqi. No time like the present so I sent her to the table and then "downed" her. I had to help her down but with praise and food treats she got that hang of that right quick. By the next send she was starting to drop on her own and by the last send she was nearly down and even tho she had a bit of help from me once she was there she stayed until I gave her the release to get off. We worked on driving through two jumps to the table and I did that off lead with her and she focused forward beautifully and "jumped" the two jumps (bar on the ground right now) and drove ahead of me to the table.

Marqi standing 150Next were weave poles. Marqi WAS at a disadvantage from her class mates as she'd never seen weave poles before. We thought she'd work better if Annette held her leash and she was encouraged to drive towards me with the praise and food treat. Not so! She did not want Annette handling her. So Annette and I traded places and we did get her to drive through 3/4 of the poles without jumping out of them. I was VERY pleased with her first attempt at weave poles.

Last was tunnel work. She loves tunnels like Chopin loves tunnels. Need I say more? I had no problems getting her to drive towards and through them. In fact, she was doing flips while I held her back until I gave her the tunnel command.

All in all, tho Marqi had the least amount of training of all the pups in the class, she held her own with them quite well. She enjoyed herself and learned some new stuff tonight. She was eager and excited about everything and surprise, surprise SHE wants to play with the other puppies, unlike Miss Me who thinks those other breeds are totally uncouth and unclean!


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