She's The Tops

I SO wish I had a video to share with you!  We had a fun adventure tonight.  Tibby was amazing and awesome. 

We are taking a beg. agility class on Tuesday nights.  It's not my first choice for taking a class, but it's the only place that (1) Would let us take a class with them.  Seriously.  (2) Had classes on a night when I don't work.  (3)  Don't use methods I'm not comfortable with.   The building has asphalt as a flooring, sooo that's not good, but Tibby is doing low jumps - not full height and she isn't doing weaves or any contacts.  So basically, tunnels and low jumps.  The class includes all the weaves, contacts and everything, I just told the instructor that I didn't want Tibby to do those right now.  She was fine with that.  She lets us do whatever we want, which is what I was looking for!  I figure that Tibby runs on more asphalt at home when we go for walks (full speed for more than an hour) at certain places.  She also has a penchant for jumping off of the stairs at home.  Still working on stopping that......or at least slowing it down.

Tibby did such a good job.  Like wow! I was shocked.  Ok she wasn't quiet.  Yes, she was the class barker yipper.  When she gets excited, she can't help it and a few yips fly out.  BUT she was able to focus on me and WORK.  Did I mention FOCUS.  Playing endless It's Yer Choice games and the focus games from When Pigs Fly helped Tibby offer behaviors while a very large lab sat (trying to sniff Tibby) a foot away.  She was a star!

Yup she was the  star of the class!  OK, yeah, none of the other dogs had ever been through a tunnel or over a jump, but still......we've worked really hard to be where we are now.  So I am still proud of her.

The instructor set up little courses for us to do.  Tibby was wicked fast.  You've seen her zoomies?  She was that fast, but she was doing a course.  Focused and Fast?  Be still my heart!  The other dogs were within easy reach for her and she was off leash!  Only once did she go to a dog instead of to me.  That was a tough situation though, because she was coming out of the tire and the other dog was directly in front of her and only a few feet away.  It was the end of the course we were running too, so not a big deal.  In my opinion.  She did come to me after a quick sniff hello to the other dog.  She was the only dog that got to go off leash, so that helped. 

The last course was straight tunnel-jump-jump-jump-Aframe(we skipped)-jump-curved long tunnel-short tunnel-tire.  Tibby did the whole thing!  I rewarded in a couple spots, but she was really running fast and happy, happy, happy!  AND the other dogs were standing right in amongst the equipment.  It's not a very big building, so there isn't really any where for them to go.  Also, the next class was starting to come in, so there were extra dogs too. 

She wasn't scared of anything.  Even when, at the start of class, she had her leash on and she pulled down a bunch of jumps behind her as she ran the course.  She was able to keep going and not get scared!

There were 5 other dogs in the class: French Bulldog, BC mix, lab, lab, aussie.  The BC mix was reactive and had to wear an ace wrap (thundershirt?).

So we had fun.  The ride home went by fast!