Workin' Those Issues

Rather frustrating agility drill in Los Lunas today.  Good, but frustrating, both for Weasel and me.  I accidentally picked the hardest course.  Also, I am spoiled in that usually I camp out in a course by myself while the rest of the group does another course with the instructor.  This time, soon after I hit the course, the rest of the group came over, so I was dealing with Weasel loosing her brain because there are other border collies.  However, it is something we need to work on.  I'm kinda of glad they did come over.  It's just frustrating to actually work on this issue with Weasel.  And Weasel, being the very sensitive and soft dog that she is, picks up on my frustration and shuts down (her version of shutting down is to tune me out completely and loop around the course or go sniff on the sidelines and steal things out of other people's bags.) 

Sigh.

However, we persevered, and I got to see her have bits of success with the other dogs around.

Unfortunately, the course I picked to start on was the most difficult.  As the instructor told me "this isn't even an AKC course"  It was a real course, but USDAA masters level.  The first part of the sequence was through the tire, straight over the A-Frame, over a jump, right and over a jump (not taking the jump in front of her or the dog walk that were soooo tempting) around and a bit of a run to the next jump, turn to the right again for another jump in a loose 270 degree turn (not taking the teeter, which was right there) then back through, by (but not over) the jump she just took to the teeter.

We were kinda doing tire, A-frame, jump, right dogwalk at first, then switched to tire, A-frame, jump, right, jump vrrroooooom past the next jump and me pointing at a jump, straight to the teeter.  It was very, very frustrating, but it was good to work on my skills (or lack there of - I kept catching myself signaling the turn with the wrong hand, facing the wrong direction).  And, we eventually succeeded in that bit of the course.  Then I played frisbee and looked for something easier.  It was somewhat consoling that everyone else had problems with it as well. 

I think oodles of boxwork with jumps will help me, and remembering that Weasel needs a high level of reward and and patience.  And so do I.