Duncan graduated into the next level of Agility! I was nervous about our first class. It is a bit different than Intro. You have drop-in cards and come when you can. This is nice for scheduling issues. Last night, there were five dogs present.

First: jump work!
          We did wraps first. I had done something similar with Duncan before, so this was fine. After we got bored of that, we moved to Start Line Stays (or in our case, Waits). I'd say we have about 85% good waits. The issue is that Duncan is slow to Sit for me. I have to say it pretty sternly for him to listen. This is something we should work on at home. After that we worked on Sends. As long as I gesture nicely, Duncan is fine. He is so much more visual than auditory. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Second: individual obstacles
          I was determined to do the 2o2o for the A-frame. We've been working on an inclined plank at home, so I thought we could generalize that easily. Nope. Duncan kept turning his shoulders and spinning off the bottom of the frame to look for his treat. When I dropped the treat at the end, he seemed to be able to do it. Definitely need to get more work on this. I think next class, I'll see if we can lower the frame at first to really key that in.
          Switching to weaves, I was happy to note that Duncan was doing great. He even got his small-dog-hop going! I like the Weave-O-Matic poles they have. The channel poles at home seem harder to me. Only thing to do for this is practice!
          The dogwalk was a cakewalk. Hahaha. Sorry. Anyway, Duncan was fine with it set to the height of my elbow. He went as fast as I went. Sometimes I had to race him to the end to get the treat set up at the end. I will work on getting further out from the dogwalk.
          Duncan took a bit of his own weight with the teeter. I let him start to tip it before I slowed the descent. The only thing he is grumpy about on it is not being able to fly across. I am going to have to force myself to take the teeter slowly.
          There was a small set-up of jump, jump, jump curved tunnel. I let Duncan do the tunnel once to make sure that he could succeed on such a curved tunnel. Yay! He did it! Then we ran it with great success. Then we were told to do it backward. Duncan was held (sweetly) at the end of the curved tunnel and I was to run and call him through it. The instructor gave Duncan a little push and he was off, chasing me down the way and missing all the jump. The next time, I smacked the second jump with my hand right before Duncan was going over it. As he landed, he started barking at me and I didn't even grump about him missing the last jump (my fault!!!). Then, the instructor held him back as I ran the original direction and I got a small crowd as Duncan FLEW over the jumps to get near me. I swear he went up on the side of the tunnel as he barreled through.

Last: a course - jump, jump, jump, curved tunnel, teeter, tire, dogwalk, broad jump, A-frame, weaves
          Jump, jump, jump, tunnel - fine! We even got a good and solid lead out from the start. Teeter - decent. I didn't readily have a treat, and Duncan gave me the most pitiful look. It was like he said, "I'll do it just for you, mom, but I really think I deserve some yummy." I dug one out of my pouch and popped it into his mouth. Tire - After the teeter, I should have made him wait to better get set-up for the tire. He rear crossed ME and passed it entirely. I called him back and made a much bigger signal (remember, visual!). Problem solved. We rounded the bend for the dogwalk, which he liked. The broadjump confused him. I ended up putting him in a sit-wait (sit took a bit to calm him down enough for it) and called him over it. He sniffed it before he jumped and that was that. A-frame, fine if you consider he hit the contact. Not fine if you were expecting a 2o2o (which I wasn't). He popped out of the last weave, and we were so exhausted we didn't go back and fix it.