CKC Debut

Today was Kili's CKC agility debut.

Actually, that's not 100% true. You'll remember that last spring she went to a CKC trial where they were trying out the new game Points And Distance (PAD) and offering a fun run. We did the fun run and she did well enough that I decided to enter her in one run. But I'm not going to count that!

Kili's Qualifying ribbon. She earned 2 of these... but who needs all these ribbons lying around?

We did 4 runs today, 2 Standard and 2 Jumpers With Weaves (JWW). Generally speaking Kili's first run in a trial tends to be her worst, but she decided to throw me for a loop and make her second run the worst! You just never know with this girl. She had a terrible second Standard run, but all in all we had a pretty great day. 

She qualified in both of her JWW runs, which means she needs one more to move up to Intermediate. And she almost qualified in her first Standard run, but unfortunately, she pulled the bar on the last jump. My trainer thinks it was because the jump was so close to a table and the wall and she probably didn't think she had enough space, so we're going to work on that in class by having some jumps set so that she is jumping directly towards the wall. She also surprised herself on the teeter I think, which explains what happened in her second run. First she refused the dog walk for no real reason, except that I think she may have thought it was the teeter. And then she really did not want to take the teeter. My trainer says not to worry about it, that she'll figure it out with time and experience. I did manage to get her onto it after a couple of tries which was really good, but she just wasn't really with me for the rest of the run. She blew me off on the jump before the frame... and again my trainer wonders if it was because it was a jump towards the wall at the edge of the ring. Then when she blew me off at the A-frame I decided that she had used up all of her strikes. She's a young dog so I am okay with some errors and some distraction, but she's getting to a point now where I expect a little more. I don't have a hard and fast rule, but if I get the feeling that she's really not paying attention to me I do what I did in this run. I tell her (you can't hear it on the video because of the barking) "We're done" and either catch her, or just walk off. She gets no reward except an escort immediately back to her crate. This actually tends to work really well with her to smarten her up. We can have fun, but we play by the rules or we don't play at all!

Her two JWW runs were awesome. Her weave poles are rusty since we can't practice at home, and we only get to class once every few weeks due to my work schedule. My favourite part was the very end of the second course which was just a straight away. There was no chance I was keeping up to her! So I just gave her her send command "GO!" and hoped she'd listen! She's pretty amazing to watch.

Not too shabby! Definitely better than her AAC debut! Unfortunately, right after her last run we noticed that her right hind leg was looking a little swollen. She's not limping on it, but it does seem a little tender. For now I've got her hock wrap on it (though it's really a little lower than her hock) and I'm hoping it'll resolve on its own.