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!