Kathy Keats agility seminar

Spryte and I attended the Kathy Keats seminar last Friday.  I realised this is the 5th year in a row I have been at her workshops.  Kathy always sets up international courses with many challenges we wouldn't normally see in Canadian competition.  The first few times I went to one of her workshops I felt completely lost.  Strider always tried his best, but I just wasn't used to handling those type of challenges. Each time we attended a workshop we learnt more and were better able to handle the difficult elements on course. The last few years it has "clicked" for Strider and I, and we would often do very well.  We became a team and it was a great feeling. 

Well this year it was time to bring Spryte out.  She is young and still learning about self control and agility in general.  I was very pleased with her accuracy on many of the challenges like backsides of jumps and pull throughs.  When we broke exercises down into smaller pieces of 6 or so obstacles, Spryte could perform them perfectly.  However as soon as we did a full course her excitement level rose drastically and the errors began to occur.  What we mostly struggled with was holding our contacts and hitting weavepole entries with speed.  She just gets so excited that she doesn't want to slow down and stop on contacts or collect for those difficult weave poles. For her it is much more fun to blast past them and continue on.  These are the mistakes typical of a green dog and once she learns to control her excitement she will be a phenomenal agility dog.  But for now we will continue to work on the basics.

Kathy had many tips for us and offered lots of positive encouragement.  The biggest piece of advice she gave me was to stop all motion when Spryte makes a mistake.  Up until this point when practising if she misses her contacts or misses her weave poles I just turn her around and we do it again.  The problem with this is Spryte doesn't necessarily know that a mistake was made, it just becomes one continuous loop of agility.  She gets more and more excited by all the motion and then accuracy goes out the window.  So I need to consciously stop myself from continuing on.  It has become such a habit that I find myself forgetting to stop and instead winding her up even more.

When Kathy pointed this mistake out to me, it became so obvious, and now that I am aware of it, I can make the necessary changes.  That is the nice thing about having a coach.   They notice things that you can't because you are too busy being "in the game".  It is the reason I attend so many agility seminars.  When you train by yourself you tend to develop bad habits.  Seminars fix my mistakes and set us on the right path again.  So I look forward to our next agility seminar with Terry Simons in May and in the meantime Spryte and I will continue to train and work on improving self control and teamwork.