Yesterday marked the 10th weekly session of foundation work in agility with Morrow.  This is our first serious venture into agility and so we are taking lots of time to build proper foundations, since I am learning the handling as well (caveat: I have horrible coordination..).  It looks so easy on other people's videos!!  Hopefully eventually we will graduate to novice coursework.  It's much different than recreational/non-competition 'agility' fun classes where you just get the dog to go onto and jump over things.  That part is really fun but also the really easy part! 

Our instructor/trainer is the amazing and practical Ms. Noriko Aso with Aso Agility.  I remember going to class on Session 1 right before the 2016 new year, and all we did was practice sit-stays, and some wobble-board work.  I felt then that we would never get anywhere but I had my mind up that we were going to stick with it and go as far as Morrow was willing to cooperate.  We mess up a lot, have a lot of stupid handler errors, but in all I think Morrow enjoys class and agility so we'll continue to go.  Noriko is great about addressing our individual problematic spots (of which we have many) and she has a lot of different, useful techniques and patience in excess.  More than once, Morrow has used the agility field just for zoomies..

So far we have had introduction to jumps, winged jumps, A-frame, teeter-totter, dog-walk, tunnel, pause-table, and tire-jump.  We haven't had introduction to weaves yet or a few of the long/broad jumps.  A lot of it is building foundations in correct entry and exit and contacts, and communicating with your dog on how to maneuver the obstacles in correct order and strategies in handling like leading out (considering the dog is always faster than a human, running along side for all obstacles is not feasible). 

We haven't been able to practice much outside of class as I don't own an agility equipment set outside of the single simple jump I brought to practice the pivots on.  So I'm really happy with Morrow, so far we keep up in class.  Our two previous obedience levels really set a good foundation.  The class is very limited in size, normally only about 3 teams, so we get a lot of time to practice new skills and reinforce older training.

Recently, I found that Morrow's nosework facility rents out their agility yard for practice, so we will be able to start going to some practices outside of class soon.  We also started with raised jump bars recently.  Up till then the jump bars were placed on the lowest slot, since foundation work isn't so much focused on the actual jumping but the handling and taking to the course and obstacles.  Now the jump bars are sometimes set to the AKC regulation height for the dog's height, so I feel reassured about having taken Morrow in for her PennHIP scoring and OFA hip preliminary evaluation at the beginning of January.  Everything looks great, so I don't worry about her jumping and potentially exacerbating any hip joint issues. 

This week's class was also the first while it was still daylight, thanks to daylight-savings, so hopefully we will be able to get some better photos than what I currently have..  Looking forward to session 11 and beyond!