Sorry Kids, No Snow Day Yet

Our school is always one of the lasts ones to close and the kids hate it. It's 12 degrees and the snow is REALLY coming down but sure enough, they had school today. There are tons of schools closing too. Oh well, I just keep telling them they will be off for two weeks after this week!

I forgot to mention the fun thing Miranda and I did with Maddie on Saturday. I enrolled her in a Agility Trial Class to see if she had ANY interest in doing the cool courses. The class was only for an hour and we only worked on four areas but it was enough to get a feel for the dogs. There were three other dogs in the class, a Yorkie, a Golden and a Australian Shepperd. The Australian Shepperd did everything like she had been doing it for years....show off LOL The Yorkie was so flippin high strung it was flying through the course too. The golden and Maddie weren't so sure of alot of the things but they were also the youngest. The golden was only a year and Maddie is only 8 months. I found these pictures online so you could have an idea of what they were like.

The first thing we worked on was the pause table. All we wanted them to do was to jump up on the table. Simple enough....put a treat on it and we were good to go!

The second thing we added was the jump pole. We only used the bottom level. So we had to lead the dogs over the jump then onto the pause table.

Then we added in the tunnel. It wasn't exactly like this picture, there wasn't a barrel part to it. Basically it was just one of those play tunnels that kids can crawl through. None of the dogs would go through the entire tunnel so Miranda helped to hold it and make it smaller.The last thing to add was the tire jump.
So by the end the class the goals was to go through the tire jump, into and through the tunnel, over the pole jump and up onto the pause table.

It was a fun class, Maddie was still pretty skiddish like she is around strangers and especially men. There was one man in the class so I wonder if there hadn't been, would she have done better? I may wait a month or so and do this class with her again to see if things change. The instructor said the other location she teaches at is outside so I might try that. Maddie seemed to get scared when the pole would fall and make a loud noise. I was proud of her though and the instructor said she did well, she didn't run away (we let go of their leashes when they were to do something) and she looked interested in everything so that was a positive sign!!