It was Beanie’s second class in her Introduction to Agility course today and what a performance!

Because of the bad weather it was held in an indoor arena in East Kilbride, so we had about half an hour after completing the 5k to bundle Beanie into the car and get from Bellahouston to East Kilbride. Only Beanie and Islay the Springer Spaniel turned up so they had plenty of individual attention. The class was more demanding this week and they worked on jumps, the open tunnel and the flat tunnel, and even some little combinations of jumps and tunnels. Both dogs did superbly – it was the owners that were struggling to remember all the commands, signals and body language….not to mention the problem of keeping up with our fit, fast young dogs as they hurtle along the course. Agility really is hard work for the handler!

We didn’t expect Beanie to take to agility but after this morning’s performance we can’t help but feel that she’s going to be a little superstar! I have never seen her so excited or so fast! She flew over jumps clearing them by miles, hurtled through tunnels and after each run would sprint a couple of victory laps of the arena and then do the whole course again in reverse on her way back to me! (OK, so the victory laps and reverse run of the course weren’t strictly what she was supposed to do, but Carol informed us that she didn’t view it as naughtiness – just enthusiasm :) ). Beanie has no problem with any of the equipment and handles each new piece of apparatus like a pro first time. In fact, instructor Carol gave her the nickname of “Beanie No Fear”. She gets a little excitable on the wait commands, and often took off down the course before she was told to. And a couple of times she got bored in her ‘wait’ position and took off in search of treats. But Carol says that’s fairly common in young, high energy dogs.

Beanie’s homework is to practice her ‘down wait’.

Mum’s homework is to try not to talk so much – just the commands and nothing else. Apparently my words of encouragement are confusing Beanie. Carol made Paul’s day with that one!