This could quite possibly be the world's very first lightning in background agility photo.
Date: October 28th 2006
Time: Approx 3.30pm
Place: Canine Association Grounds of Western Australia (Suburb of Gosnells)
Course: Novice Strategic Pairs
Handler & Dog: P Connor with Coolaney Nuala AD JD (Irish Terrier)
If you can't see the photo (even after I followed Eric's steps on how to insert pictures) here is the link

Finally got round to finishing my Day Two notes of Stacy here in Perth. Enjoy and feel free to comment.

Today Stacy indicated that she wanted us to work on various handling skills such as our shoulder movements, front crosses and rear crosses. First up though, she talked about an exercise that someone had enquired about the previous day to do with teaching dogs to flex from the middle of their spine leading to greater and more efficient turning capability over jumps and on the flat. We organised a witches hat or cone that was around knee height and we tried a couple of dogs on the exercise however Stacy needed a dog that wouldn’t care about where mum was and was a high toy drive, in particular willing to tug with her. I was asked to bring Cypher out (he apparently has a reputation for his somewhat insane addiction to playing tug, he’s not even 2 yet!) and although at the start he was watching me closely as soon as Stacy brought the tug out the game was on, she had him in the palm of her hand. Stacy would hold him by his collar (as an extra note here she spoke about making sure our dogs were completely unconcerned about being held by the collar, that we should be able to reach out and hold the dog by the collar without the dog feeling like it was being corrected or feeling uncomfortable). So she held him by his collar in her left hand, had the tug toy in her right hand (this was a half meter length ropey tug toy – I think this exercise would be better with a longer tuggy rather than a short one). She held Cy so that he was facing just to the left of the cone, then she brought her right hand and the tuggy round the other side of the cone (she herself was obviously positioned fairly close to the cone). When Cy could see the end of the toy on the left side of the cone and was raring to get at she let him go telling him to “Get it” in an urgent excited voice. As soon as he leapt for it she dragged it quickly round, nice and close to the cone, Cy chased it turning really tightly round the cone and he grabbed it and played when they were clear of the cone heading off at a 90 degree angle to the cone.

On the Saturday we set up a fairly Masters level agility course containing all the contacts, the weavers and around 20 obstacles. At 8.30am Stacy asked us all to walk it and then run it how we would in a competition – no treats, no toys first run of the trial type scenario. This was used as an evaluating exercise really on her behalf so that she could see what level we were running at. After each run Stacy usually had a few questions for each of the handlers regarding their contact cues but other than that she waited till we had all run and then gave us her honest and frank assessment.

Hi All
Haven't posted for a while but was wondering what people thought of the sequence I encountered below on the weekend. Often we try to choose the shortest path for the dog when getting round a course. In this case we couldn't - after asking for clarification from the judge prior to the start of judging we were told that any dog that touched the chute part of the tunnel after jump 10 on their way to jump 11 was DQ'd. There is nothing in the rule book regarding this so most of us accepted this ruling. I think most of us figured well as long as everyone has to do the same thing (ie handle so their dog did not touch the chute) then so be it - it would just use up time that's all. I think there were 10 clear rounds and 2 DQ's when dogs put their paws on the chute. It occured to me - how often do we train for something like that? I know I haven't .... it didn't matter which side you handled jump ten on you still needed to ensure your dog stayed off the chute.
Any thoughts or suggestions about how one could train for this ? (as in proof their dog to recognise that it doesn't matter where we're going or from where you are coming towards me on the course you go around the chute lying on the ground).
By the way it wasn't tricky to handle it - my BC Raven did it fine - I just bloopered somewhere else on that course LOL!! It certainly did start a debate though - should judges through course design force dogs to take the line that is not the shortest after all?

Hi All

Just thought I'd post a hello and ask if anyone else is on here from Australia...the land of current rule change upheaval in ANKC Agility. Got my very first trial this morning for my young boy and Western Australia's very first trial under the new rules. If you'd like to check out my dogs you can see them at my agility blog http://ravencypher.blogspot.com