Remember last week when Katie shut down half way through the morning Rally class and about 20 minutes into the evening Agility class?  How I was trying to figure out what happened…was it too much school in one day?  The wrong food, or amount of food eaten prior to the second class?  The heat?  Me???

Today I didn’t take her to the morning Rally class, something I felt a bit sad about.  I really want to try to get our second and third Novice Rally leg, and I need the classes (Katie doesn’t) to keep all those directional signs straight!  I scheduled a mammogram during that time instead this morning, so I guess I was somewhat productive!

Then this afternoon, in between planning and planting trees, I fried up six boneless, skinless chicken thighs, with the intention of cutting one of them up as tonight’s “value” food to be used during agility class.  Katie was very interested in the frying process, her little nose just wriggling.  Plus, since she was so interested in the chicken she totally left her normal  afternoon dinner alone, and eventually I just picked up the bowl and put it aside.  She never really ate much at all prior to class.

We got to school early and walked around the building a bunch.  Got all her business done, got her re-acclimated to the building.  Initially she was a bit hesitant to go inside, but once there she seemed pretty OK.

And the best thing?  We didn’t do any teeter tonight!!!!  WHAHOOO!!!  We started out with a series of  jumps!  Katie loves to jump.  We did the broad jump and a bunch of regular jumps in a pattern.  On our first time up I kept Katie on her leash and was telling the instructor that I wasn’t sure how Katie was going to do tonight, given last week, when all of the sudden I felt a tug from the leash and realized Katie was RUNNING toward the broad jump, the first in the series.  I called over my should as I ran to catch up, “Well I guess she’s going to do just fine!”  And she did.

The other half of the class, those with bigger dogs, was across the ring doing tunnels, weaves and the tire.  It all looked complicated and when we got over there Katie and I went first, so we didn’t get to see anyone else attempt it.  It was a curved red tunnel, then jump, then a double jump, then tire, then another curved (but blue) tunnel, then weaves then jump,  then back through the red tunnel the other way.

Right.

I set Katie up in a sit in front of the entrance to the curving red tunnel and as soon as I got her leash off she was racing for that tunnel.  She has a tunnel at home that seems to be permanently set up in the living room and we play all the time “chase the lambie” (her favorite squeeky toy) through the tunnel, so I guess that’s working!   She burst out of the red tunnel, took the next two jumps and the tire at full speed and then totally balked at the blue tunnel in the corner.  It was a dark corner without much light, and the tunnel was dark too.  NO WAY, NOT GOING IN THERE!  She actually turned away and jumped back through the tire, and back over two jumps to get away from me! LOL!  We tried a few times,  but no go, so we skipped the scary blue tunnel and did weaves and jumps and the fun red tunnel no problem!

The second time we got to run the course I ran on the other side (the outside edge of the curve) and we were going so fast she just sailed into the scary blue tunnel and I had to RUN really fast to beat her out the other side to get her into the weaves.  She did the whole course no problem!  WHOOO HOOOO!!!!!!!

Then the whole class got together and we put the two pieces together.  We did the tunnels, tire stuff, then went back through the red tunnel and over to all the jumps.  She even ran through the blue tunnel with me on the inside and I did a front cross after that to get her into the weaves.  KATIE WAS PERFECT!!!!!!!!   And grinning the entire time.  She got a jackpot of chicken and cheese after that last run!  Such a girl!!

So….was it the fact she hadn’t had school in a week?  And no school that morning?  Or was it the chicken thighs?  Or was it that I tried to keep her excited and engaged the whole class and didn’t worry about much?  Or was she just having a bad day last week?

Only the Sheltie knows.