Woohoo

Last night was our first week at agility for far too long - I think we have missed 3 weeks and in that time the nights have drawn in rapidly so much that it was dark when I headed over there and we did the full session under the club floodlights.

I was expecting Molly to have taken a bit if a step backwards with the missed weeks but she was great, paying attention, listening to me and only ran off once when there was another dog running wild and she went and did a couple of quick zooms with him before coming back to me (long before the other dog returned to his owner) so I could even have a smug moment about that.

The second course we had a go on seemed quite complex but once I had understood how I needed to move and the commands I needed to give we actually ran it perfectly twice - five fences and a tyre arranged in a way which meant lots of tight turns!!  I was really pleased with Molly - and she was quite pleased too since I had remembered the liver cake to reward her with!

Poorly

Not had a great week or so since my last entry as Molly must have picked up some sort of bug and has had a poorly stomach.  She seemed fine at one point I started food again and after a couple of days she was ill again so reintroduced food even more slowly the second time.  The good news is now she seems fine and has been eating everything and anything.

As she has been off colour we have not been to agility or other training and tonight was our first attempt to return to the park.  I decided I would give her lots of treats when we got near the corner she had previously been nervous about - unfortunately she decided to pre-empt me and stopped long before we got to the corner!!

Molly has been delighted to see her lovely Auntie H a few times recently.  She gets very excited when she sees her and then cuddles up to tell her all about how poorly she has been - never sympathise with a poodle cross!

.... and a new problem!

As Molly was still limping now and then we stayed away from the park until Tuesday when we went back to training class.  She was happy and bouncy as we started our pre-training class walk - right up until the point we went into the field before the one she was stung in.  At this point she ran back to the entrance and stood look back towards the cars.  Even when another dog came through for her to play with she had a quick play and then returned to the entrance.  Took me a few seconds to realise she had decided not to go this way as last time she had been hurt.  Clever reasoning I guess even if slightly flawed but as those fields really are the best and safest it is something we are going to have to try to resolve.

Training class on a very windy night after almost no run at all was ....... interesting!!  She was somewhat like Tigger on speed as she bounced and jumped around, at least I can confirm she is not unhappy in the classes.  As she was so distracted I stayed close to her on the stays and was pleased that she did those perfectly. 

She is also making progress on her bird obsession and although does still get excited and screech at times will usually now transfer attention back to me pretty quickly and has started to check in with me more. 

Ouch!

On Tuesday evening I took Molly for her usual off lead run before training class and as she was running she suddenly yelped and sat down chewing the back of one of her back legs.  It looked like she had been stung in the muscle of her leg and it clearly hurt a great deal as she was limping quite badly.  I let the trainers know we were going home and went and gave her a piriton which hopefully helped a little.

Several days on she is still occasionally not putting full weight on the leg so either poodley dogs are very wimpy indeed or it was a bad sting.

Despite that though I came out of the back door yesterday to find this:

.... and yes that position is every bit as precarious as it looks.  She is balancing with her back legs on the side of a paving slab and one of her front feet on the garden bench - and she is eating grass - despite there being a garden full of grass she has had to somehow climb there to eat that particular bit of grass!!

Getting it wrong

Things started promisingly with a visit to the KC agility festival to see some proper agility dogs and also meet up with Sian, Rhomi and Rocket.  We had a go on the small agility course for non-agility dogs to have a go at and Molly did really well, mostly listening and having a great time.

It was our KC good citizen test on Tuesday and despite lots of practice I was not totally confident Molly would do a minute stay.  She was very bouncy - but worked nicely and did everything else I asked of her so I was pretty pleased as it is just four months since I got her and they have been a pretty difficult few months without too much focus for dog training.  Slight extra difficulty for the stay exercise was us being placed next to a large mastiff type dog we had not met before and Molly was not sure of.  Anyway....



.. I asked her to lay down and stay - walked the required five paces and she stayed there - but sat up to have a scratch which means she failed the test.  Oh well!!  I was pleased with her anyway and it just means we need to stay in the class for a while longer until the next test.

Wednesday evening I decided to take her for a nice relaxing walk in the fields by Old Milverton.  I seriously understimated her desire to hunt and when she heard some rustling she vanished into the crop totally and I had to call on Marianne and Andrew to help me find her.  Lesson learned and we are back to working on the long line in areas which may be tempting.

Our final training experience of the week was Thursday and agililty.  I guess I should have predicted really - but after the fun she had on Wednesday she had no wish to listen to me at all and spent her evening doing what she wanted - which was more than a tiny bit embarrasing!!

Stubborn - or maybe not!

Last week at training, at one point I asked Molly to sit and she ignored me, even to the extent that she looked away and did her best to avoid looking at me.  After another couple of asks and moving her off the spot to ask again she did eventually sit and I did not think much more of it.  Until this week at exactly the same point in the class and the penny dropped – not bright these humans sometimes!!

We were about to do a recall so I had taken her lead off and was asking her to sit at my side.  She has no objection to the recall part of this exercise but dislikes me moving away from her a great deal so was obviously using her brain and realising that the only time I took her lead off and asked her to sit was when I was about to move away from her.  Not sitting was as good a way as any of voicing her protest – as was her lovely heelwork when I then tried to walk away from her.

Next week our good citizen bronze test with a one minute stay – hmmmm – I have a feeling we may not pass!!

On a brighter note at agility we were actually promoted into a group who show "potential" - I suspect in our case that may well be potential to create mayhem and chaos - but as long as we have a good time sounds good to me!

Andrex puppy?

Maybe it was a mistake allowing Molly to watch tv as I think she must have got ideas from watching Andrex adverts.  It was really warm at the weekend so I had all the doors and windows open to try and get a draught through the house.  An unsupervised Molly is not always a good thing - although she was rather enjoying herself.