Well Bud, I can idenify with Hazard's nervousness. You may remember my Maltese Presley wouldn't move very fast when you were here for a seminar last year. When we began training at home he was a bullet. He dove into the weaves and was always ahead of me. After training with some over the top dogs that barked incessantly while we were trying to run he began glancing over his shoulder. Now he runs slow and stops to look around and over his shoulder.  We are trying to overcome but it is a slow process.

I was interested in the course you laid out; I also think that a course can have challenge and flow without tunnels under every contact and sharp angles that jerk the dog off it's path. I will experiment with the 60x90 field as I usually design for a 70x70 space for TDAA. I'd like to see what I come up with with the longer length.

 

Michelle

Grants Pass OR

I'm sorry to hear about Hazard. My Lilly has some of the same problems. Although she is happy at Yorkie specialties and TDAA trials, she is not happy at other places. So we look at doing just TDAA and AKC at specialties. It is a good thing that we have TDAA.

Judy and the Yorkie Girls in Knife river, MN 

Bud since your little one is having this problem I thought I would update you on our girl. We were at one of the camps last year with a herd of English Cockers. Cassie was the one that was so shy and afraid. I debated several times stopping with her as it seemed to put so much stress on her it wasn't any fun for her or me. In Jan our chiropractor gave us some herbs for stress. I didn't hold out much hope as we had tried about 6 other stress reducers. This was the one that worked though. It was like we had our old dog back. Now she still runs preferred, and isn't setting any time records, but since Feb she has 13 double Q's including 8 DQ's in a row in 4 weeks. It may all change back tomorrow but we are enjoying it while it lasts.

Also the two puppies are getting ready to start trailing next month

Poor Hazard! Of course, it doesn't have to be a small dog to become fearful of some agility trials! The hounds are not particularly fond of the hysterical and predatory dog behavior so common to agility venues, and they pretty much quit the indoor venues, because then they also feel claustrophobic and contained with it. Since most of our trials are indoor at one place now, we have had to pretty much quit trialing. This has given us a lot of time for the coonhound events, and Jagger and Josie have a lot of points now toward their championships! Interestingly, some of the large events have 5-6,000 dogs attending, but because the dogs are outside (except maybe for the conformation classes which often are in, but no dogs are crated inside) and have plenty of space, and handlers typically teach the dogs HOW to relax or be quiet, and folks moving dogs have space to not get right up in other dogs' spaces and faces, there is little hysteria! Even most horse venues include stabling and warm up areas out of the main drag, and the competing animals are not directly performing within the hysteria of other animals who are not performing at that time. Gating areas are free of 'traffic' and with plenty of space for animals to avoid problems in the first place. The main 'problem' with many agility venues, is there is little way to just GET to the rings safely for runs without HAVING to get by problem dogs whose handlers fail to see the problem, or pretty much don't care how their dog behaves, or are not attending their dog AS he lunges and facebarks or snaps etc. Barbara and The Symphony of Hounds