This year I have been invited to teach at two agility camps - this was the second one. It was planned to be 4 days in all - and I was lucky to be lent a caravan where my dogs & I could stay onsite with all the students.
It was a hard programme for several reasons. First of all - it started directly after the World Dog Show where we had worked nonstop the week before ( more about that in an another post ). On top of that it is hard work to teach 6 different groups of students 1,5 hours at a time in the scorching sun :o)
My co-instructors where Tina Mette ( Tina Chester ) & Jenny Damm.
On the first day I hadn't put enough sunblock on and burnt my neck pretty badly which meant that I walked around like a scarecrow the remaining 3 days. There was a good variety of students & the time flew faster than you would imagine - and believe it or not - I had a hard time staying withing the 1,5 hour limit. I needed to modify my plans for day 2 :o) The rest of the week flew by - the evenings were spent grooming shelties, doing a freestyle workshop, a puppy lesson - and going to bed early !!!!!! ´
One of the interesting things was that there must have been some sort of curse on the courses - on my section of the grass the dogs were having difficulty understanding/hearing the cues: SIT/STAY & HERE/COME. And strangely those same cues worked on the other courses....hmmmmm..... Also we had some interesting discussions on agility behaviours ex. sit/stays, contact behaviour & knocking the first bar down. One handler ( if the dog knocked the first bar ) would lie the dog down, demonstratively go and put up the bar - then re-start the dog. I asked how many times this had happened - the answer was "MANY times ". Well obviously whatever the handler was doing wasn't working ;o)
A great group of people - and an amazing week of coaching & agility - ahhhhh Life Is Good !!!!!
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