Bark Night

A friend of mine has an agility class in a dirt arena on Wed. nights. They call it "Dirt Night." The arena is sprayed with some oil to keep the dust down and the dirt sticks to everything, hense the name. When I read her blog, she makes dirt night sound like so much fun, but in reality, I know it is just dirty.

On Thurs. nights I go to Robs in Salinas. His agility field is made up of bark. Tazz really hates Robs agility field and rarely gets out of 2nd gear there. Since he doesn't enjoy it, I've started leaving him at home and I run "Havoc" (Lauras dog).

Last night Fin started at Bark night. I'm still running Havoc and I'm letting Laura run Fin. My strategy is to get Fin to love agility that she'll run for anyone. This takes me out of the equation since for Tazz I am the equation (and I have the added luxery that Fin has an additional trainer - Laura is one fine agility dog trainer!).

Fin DID GREAT! Even though I was standing not 10 feet away she listened to Laura, ran fast, and had a fabulous time. Unlike Tazz, the bark doesn't bother her at all. Laura ran her the first 3 times and I ran her the last run of the class.

There is still some maturity that needs to come, but she hit her contacts and had no issues on weave pole entrances. Her jumping for the most part was good, but I noticed that she was so excited she wasn't really paying attention for those threadles. She came in to me, just after jumping out 10 feet :). So more work on if the handler is not moving forward that we don't launch out into space.

Havoc was all I could ever ask for and is the bomb to run. Lauras dog Wynn was quite excited because the sheep were eating next to the agility ring. He felt that agility is for dogs! Those sheep have no business being anywhere near agility equipment. He was a little distracted with communicating his thoughts on the matter, but once going had some beautiful runs.

That's the bark night summary.