Tagging Along

The last two weeks I've been helping a friend at her agility classes. She has a tiny but very reactive yorkie. Though small he tends to lunge and aggressively bark at all dogs and people whenever they move. So she asked me to help her out, mostly by hanging on to the leash to free up her hands and for me to occasionally walk away with him if he really started throwing a tantrum. I've been happy to help since walking a 4lb yorkie doesn't hurt my arm and it gets me out of the house.

 Also where I'm interested in eventually getting involved in agility to build up some confidence with Kobi, I'm learning lots of very valuable tidbits. Today they were working on serpentines and introduced the balance board. Some advise given to the students was to really do a lot of rear end awareness work with their dogs so that when introduced to equipment like the teeter totter they would have a much simpler time positioning themselves on it. The instructor also mentioned the importance of building a strong foundation. That by teaching you dog lots of tricks they build confidence and are more willing to experiment when presented with new situations. I've recently started working on a hand touch command with Kobi, getting him to solidly plant his nose in my hand and follow me around and this morning I started working on getting him to put a paw on a box. Hearing these tidbits from the instructor was very reassuring, that I'm not wasting any time by doing lots of trick training with Kobi. Working on tricks is also something I can do comfortably inside right now and it helps to tire him out just as much if not sometimes more than a walk. I've got a long way to go and tons of stuff to work on, but I'm happy to know that all the foundation work I'm doing with be highly beneficial in the long run.

And a silly picture of Kobi just for fun.