Agility and Crates

No more limping this week! Hooray! Iris also seemed a lot happier, probably because she wasn't hurting. I do have a chiro appointment scheduled for her anyway, but I couldn't get a late enough in the day appointment until the 22nd.

When class started, I left Iris in the car until after I finished walking the course. Normally, I park the car over to the side of the arena and Iris' view is blocked by the car next to ours. Unfortunately (or maybe it turned out not-so-unfortunate), the car next to us was in the previous class, so Iris ended up with a lovely view of the other dogs. I don't think she stopped barking the whole time. Great. I decided to keep her outside for a bit because she was so fired up. I ended up standing with her in the empty parking spot and had her do a some tricks and rewarded her for looking at the other dogs calmly. She really settled down. Despite her having a bit of a meltdown in the car before class, I think it turned out well because she was so good outside.

It did get me thinking about leaving her in the car. I don't have a very big car. I bought it pre-dog and it doesn't accommodate a crate very well (my previous car was a station wagon! I had the right car when I didn't have a dog!) I can fit Iris' soft crate in the back of my car if I pull the front seats all the way forward. So basically, I can crate her in the car if I need to, but I can't do so when I'm driving. I think Iris' crate is a pretty good fit for her - when she lies down on her side, she's exactly the size of the bottom of the crate. I'm wondering if I get a crate one size smaller, could Iris fit comfortably in it and would it fit better in my car?

Katrin posted the course diagram from last Tues over on Monty's blog. :) The first obstacle in the course was the tire, and Iris did it correctly on the first try. Good girl! She really had trouble with it last week. We had some trouble with wait on the a-frame (Iris didn't mind, it just meant she got to do the a-frame more times). I need to remember just how much Iris relies on my body language for things like this. We also did the last four obstacles (tunnel then three jumps) a half dozen times or so. Iris was on my left and the jumps curved toward the left. She would come out of the tunnel, take the first jump, then come in toward me and miss the last two jumps. Part of it was me forgetting to keep my arm up, but even with my arm up, she was still missing the jumps. Katrin noticed that Iris wasn't switching leads, so she was curving to the right (toward me) instead of the left (toward the jumps). Katrin suggested doing a back cross after the tunnel. I think it was the first time I've done a back cross with Iris, and the look on her face was priceless - "How'd you get over there???" Iris did take the last two jumps! Good girl! It was really interesting just how much lead changes affect her performance.