Elton got to play agility last night :-) I pay for my agility classes in 4 week blocks, because you get a slight discount - however, you pay for 4 consequetive weeks whether you attend or not - if you miss a week, you lose it.

After last week Solei wasn't allowed (so says me and his chiro!) as he's on rest, so this left me with rather a problem...I didn't want to lose the money, especially as it wasn't my fault. So I rang to find out if I could carry the week over, given the circumstances (no), so I asked whether I could swap dogs. Maybe - bring him along and see. So given I had nothing to lose, off Elton and I went! The instructor agreed I could participate with Elton, and I must say; I was impressed.

I took him along to one of Solei's lessons once when he was about 4 months old and showed him the tunnel. Then when he was 15 months old he did some 3 jumps and a tunnel on a have a go course. That is Elton's total agility experience lol

So the class starts off doing contacts on the end of the dog walk....Elton has never seen a dog walk before in his life. He was such a good boy! Lovely contacts, and after we'd done a few he seemed to have a pretty good idea of what I wanted him to do :-) Then we attempted the full dog walk. The first time he kinda commando crawled over it :lol: (but the instructor (= she) was holding his collar which may have contributed), though his end contact was lovely ;-) The second time he went over it much more confidently, again with a good contact :-)

Next was the chute...again not an obstacle Elton has ever seen. The first time she held him at one end, I went to the other and called him with someone holding the chute open - fine. The second time was hilarious...I was walking towards the chute as she said to me "give it a go, don't worry if he won't". I stopped about 3 metres before the entrance, took him off lead and before I could react he'd run off, through the chute and was waiting for me at the other end LOL So yeah....no problems there then! Third time he tried to go around it, but I redirected him through and he was fine :-)

Then came the aframe - guess what, never seen one of those before either! We were only putting them on the contact, but it was at full height (a more advanced group had been using it "properly") so rather steep and Elton had some trouble - rather than a 2o2o method he eventually settled for flattening himself on the contact an inch or two up! <3

We did a jump a couple of times, then came some sequencing - jump, tunnel, jump. Yay, obstacles he'd seen before! Although his initial reaction was to go around the tunnel and jump #2 when I showed him what I wanted he did the whole thing :-)

Finally we did a sequence of four jumps in a square/circle/thing. I think his concentration span had gone by that point, as when I released him to start he wandered off to do his own thing! One dog retrieved, and he did then do it.

So yes, overall I was really impressed with him :-) I didn't want to start agility with him yet, but if Solei can't then I may reconsider....we'll see. We both had a great time, anyway!