The dog walk of terror

Last week at agility, Mawson finally came over his fear of the dog walk. He had been quite terrified of going on top of it so far, even though he is going on look alike structures when we go for walks. Even not a problem on a very similar track of the bike park, so I think that was really the wobbliness which was a problem for him.
This time it was on the low setting and after a lot of encouragements, a few loads of treats from fellows agility trainee (thanks and sorry for using all the treats!!), he finally made it. And then proceeded to redo the walk again and again as if nothing had happened!

That's quite a step, because it is the last of the agility elements that he was unable to complete (except the fact we never passed through a chute... ah well we'll see...).

So we were wondering if he would remember that he didn't mind the dog walk this time or if all progress would have been forgotten.

Martin started running the course and arrived at the next item of "dog walk" and bam... Mawson started and freaked out mid ramp jumping off and continuing as if nothing had happened... Ah well... So at the break Martin and Cyril went to try and get him back on, and got him going very quickly.
The next few runs were close to perfect (well for us at least...) and he did the dog walk without any issue so yayyy!!!

Now however, we need to slow him down, as he jumped too quickly off the A frame and nearly missed the contact, and he arrived so quickly at the weaves that he slammed onto them while trying to get in (it wasn't pretty...). I guess there will always be something to work on. But overall a very successful agility training.

I even got to play with and run Monty on the course (Monty is Cyril's dog, our instructor). Monty is a funny working dog, he has a high energy drive and the most amazing eyes. In french we call that "vairon" but I don't know the english translation, basically one blue eye and one brown eye. It is always a bit funny when people run Monty as he tends to come back to see Cyril or goes a bit AWOL... I got a tad of coaching for the course and started (a bit of a false start). So restarted and yay, it went pretty well, I was real proud of myself and how Monty and I got around, yayyy!
I love running Monty as he keeps me on my toes, if he goes wrong, I know it's because I did something wrong, shoulders pointing the wrong way, bad indication, tripped over my own feet....

Hope I'll get to run him again in the future :)

Now, we'll see how the dog wok goes net week.

Mawson would say don't be fooled by the happy face on that dog from the website of that company selling agility equipment, this is actually a piece of doggy torture!!