Now that we’ve got our own little set of contact equipment we’ve got everything we need to create propper agility courses. Several months ago Chief the Beagle’s owner, Luisa, sent me some of her course plans (she teaches and judges agility). At last we have the space and equipment to try them out!

We only have 5 jumps (although I’ve ordered another 6 and a tyre jump) so we had to adapt Luisa’s plan a little. Here’s the course that we came up with for yesterday’s practice:

And here’s the video of Beanie and Biggles running the course for the very first time. I was very impressed!

Today I decided to design my own course. I wanted to give them a nice long straight at the start and finish so they could really stretch out and pick up speed, but a little bit of complexity in the middle. Here’s the plan.

And the video of their first attempt at the course.

For the first time since we started doing agility I know what we can and can’t do and what we need to work on!

We’ve found that Beanie and Biggles do best if training sessions are very short (5 – 10 minutes max) and agility practice is very sporadic (perhaps once every three weeks). In between practice sessions we’ll occasionally pop out to work on a little drill for a minute or two. Any more than that seems to be couner-productive (although that might change in future). Yet they always amaze me with their progress from one practice session to the next. I guess a lot of skills from other activities are transferring to agility (and vise-versa).

So, that’s the equipment packed away for two or three weeks – after doing so well I think they deserve a bit of lure-coursing next!

Butterfly stroke over the long jump!

Today our new dog walk and a-frame arrived. It’s not full size, but a better fit for our garden and our Beaglets!

Beanie and Biggles gave it a quick try out when the rain stopped and gave it a big thumbs up.

The dog walk.

And the A-frame. Having looked at these pictures all I can say is it’s a good thing my dogs don’t go in the direction I point!!!

Biggles has never seen an a-frame before and it looked quite high….

But our intrepid little biglet was soon scrambling over the top.

Finally, the double act.

Ooeew – smelly!

Inspired by Luisa and Chief the Beagle’s great performance at the Eglington Agility show at the weekend we decided to get some contact equipment for Beanie and Biggles – a dog walk, A-frame and a seesaw. The seesaw arrived this morning.

Beanie and Biggles were very excited and kindly helped us unpack all the pieces.

It all went together very quickly and we soon had it assembled and located at the bottom of the garden. I went indoors to get some training treats and my clicker and had a think about how to go about teaching Beanie and Biggles. I figured the first step would be to build up their confidence – it’s bound to be scary for a little Beaglet when that seesaw starts to tip….

Then I looked down the garden and saw Beanie and Biggles taking it in turns to sprint over the seesaw at top speed – they didn’t even seem to notice the thing tipping!

That left me at a bit of a loss as to what to do. The dogs I’d seen at competitions all seemed to stop/slow half way along the seesaw so that it tipped slowly. How to get my two dare devils to do that? We played with the seesaw for a couple of minutes then decided to call it a day until I’d found out more about it.

I’m beginning to think that the pups were doing it right without me!

Beanie and Biggles were keen to do more so we did a little bit of weaving. The method I used to teach Beanie to weave doesn’t work with Biggles but I think we’ve now found an approach that will suit him. I break the weave poles into three sets of two poles and stagger them. This allows him to go through a full set of weaves quite easily – he only has to learn to walk between two poles and keep repeating. Gradually we’ll move them closer and closer together until he’s doing it properly.

Beanie is starting to get very good. She’s getting quite fast and reliably enters the weaves correctly from pretty much any angle no matter where I am standing.