[Dougal&Little]

I'm so proud of my Dougal monster! All the training has been paying off! Woo hoo! My agility club runs something called "link" which is an agility course that every club in the country runs (it's a different one each month but we all do the same one - hope that makes sense). We finally passed Beginners 1 and Dougal got to compete in Link! Hooray! It doesn't matter what level you are at everyone runs the same course - just different heights.

And boy it was a hard course - even the experienced people said it was hard. I've attached a wee map of the course. I've numbered each of the obstacles in the order we had to do them - and I've added a wee pink line to show how we tried to run it. (the blue lines are the hurdles - everything else is labelled).

I have to say that first turn into the tunnel was KILLER! It's so hard when they can't easily see the next obstacle. Dougal ran off twice! But eventually went in. YAY for Dougal! Then he struggled over the full height (6 foot) A frame. We had two goes at the weave and failed but I didn't want to push it cos getting Dougal focussed was quite hard. (So that's when we got disqualified - but I pushed on!)

Then, once we went over the hurdle and through the chute, all bets were back on! Dougal really powered throught that, then the set of jumps then the dog walk - all SPOT ON!!

then the jumps and tyre, I had no problems stopping him from going back through the tyre (that was the trick there). then back up the dog walk - this is where it all went wrong! I tried to do a "front cross" - cross in front of Dougal as he came down the ramp of the dog walk but I accidently pushed him off and he missed the contact (COMPLETELY!) and decided that was all he was going to do for the afternoon! I should have done a back cross - IE cross behind DOugal once he was on the Dog walk. I'm thinking I could have held his focus to the end if I'd done that.

But I'm so pleased with that result. because this course was outside on grass with lots of dogs and distractions and the last time there was a ribbon trial in the same place Dougal took off twice without even doing the first hurdle! So really a tenfold improvement really!

I'm a bit annoyed by the weave cos Dougal can do them but they had all the really hard stuff where it was easy for Dougal to lose focus first - I think that's why it was such a hard course. But I thought it was worth it - I learnt lots about me and Dougal.

Unfortunately they don't do link in Micro size - I'm not willing to let Dixie do 38cm (15inch) hurdles - she can do everything else fine but it's a long way for her to come down the other side of the hurdle - I don't want her to jar anything.

Phew! Thanks for reading my big blurt! I am really excited about dougal's performance - that's the best he's ever done and the longest I've EVER held his focus!