Ok, first off, thanks to everyone who helped me with the skid boots for Raine... I ended up ordering them and they are helping tremendously!

I am so clueless when it comes to agility I have been doing obedience for DECADES and Schutzhund for DECADES and I have to say to do agility well is vey difficult! I am a beginner, but have an idea of what excellence is so my standards are set very high.

I finally got Ed to go to class with me and video this week, so I could see how much progress Raine and I have made in a few months. She does fine, but I am a disaster. LOL

It has been drilled into me for years NO BODY LANGUAGE for obedience and SchH competition. Agility is the opposite and there is no such thing as training a pattern. It's very humbling and I have the utmost respect for those who really train it well. It's really fun, much better than I could have imagined and at this point in my life, that's what I want training to be about!!

Here's a video from this weeks lesson , I hope to look back at it in the future and see much improvement.

Agility Video

Thanks for sharing Cindy
That was great video and nicely done. You are making it look easy....

Great team!
Was the weave hard to teach? I always wondered about that.
What in your opinion was the hardest exercise to accomplish?

Wow, that's really good! My dog Arf and I did agility for over a year and were not even close to that. To be fair, though, it had a lot to do with me being a klutz.

Wow...your dog is sooo focused. I love it!! You are making it look easy Cindy!!

Raine is a very cool dog!!

Linda

 Quote: Angelique Cadogan

Great team!
Was the weave hard to teach? I always wondered about that.
What in your opinion was the hardest exercise to accomplish?

Thanks, I do feel we are a team so that makes it fun. ALL the mistakes are me, not the dog.

The weaves were easy for Raine, we used the channel weaves and she loves them. I haven't taught everything yet, so I don't know what's hardest but to be fair we have worked contacts on stairs, a plank in the yard and on a block in the training centere (every day at home) before we ever did the dog walk or teeter. We haven't even done the A frame yet! For me, being patient and working contacts has been the hardest thing. Now that we are adding in the equipment, it's much more fun for me and my dog.

I have found that the foundation stuff is the key, and if you do it right then when you add the equipment, you progress much faster.

Lindsey, you aren't the only klutz! LOL I need a coordination make over.

 Quote: Linda Walsh

Raine is a very cool dog!!

Linda

Thanks! She is so much fun to train, she tries harder than any dog I have ever worked with and I have worked with lots of really talented dogs.

I feel lucky to have her.

Amazing accomplishment so far, I wish you lots of success!

Cindy,
Please keep us updated on your progress with the Agility! I hope to someday have a dog with half the drive and focus of Raine. It looks like a blast to work with a dog like that!

With my own dog, I've found that the agility training has helped me understand and recognize how my dogs reactions, understanding or lack there of, is really a reflection of how well I am guiding her with my body language. She definitely mirrors me!!

Linda

Great video and I love the looks of Raine, a nice solid looking bitch! I give you props for doing agility. I have a little blue ACD that Chris Zink loved and called the "silver bullet" - a bullet is a tad too fast for me :-p I finally decided that agility might be in his stars but all I seemed to be able to do was land flat on my ass when running the course ;-) Good luck and have fun!