Sunday 4 December 2011

Where do I start

That was the question I asked myself. After doing some obedience training I started watching some agility on the side. I found myself very interested in the sport but at the time did not have a dog that I could start training. I then rescued 2 dogs ( my aussie type and jack russell cross ) and decided thats it I want to start agility. So the question I asked..where do I start? Well in PE we have some training clubs but none that particulaly train agility. I went down to the 1 club for a few nights where most competitors train ( unfortunately none are trainers ) so I jumped in and started doing a few jumps. Gee I thought my dog can actually go over a jump..little did I know that most dogs could do that and there was alot of foundation work that I had missed out on. I continued going down every week getting my dog over a jump, running between jumps, trying to do the bendies ( with food ) and coaxing my dog over equipment. I really thought my dogs were getting somewhere. I then started chatting to some trainers and I realised that there was actually ways of training certain obstacles, and not the way I was doing it. I then met a trainer who had a small training group, they met once a week and trained together, she gave them advice, helped with problems and guided them with "how" to teach certain things. By then I was really keen to be competitive. I wanted to join this group however there was a limit to the number of people, but luckily for me someone stopped going. I was asked if I wanted to join. and THATS where it all started. I was given some homework to do, focus exercises and foundation work...guys if you want to get somewhere you need to put in the effort at home. I have been training / competing with my terrier for about a year now and we have had some trying times, but have had great support and encouragement from my training group / instructor. So back to my question Where do I start? This is my first dog being trained in agility, my first blog and I have a 10 week old border collie that I am starting out - we all have to start somewhere!

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