Water baby

Sonic following "puppy vs hose"...

We're drawing to the eight months of age mark and as the one year mark gets closer the prospect of starting real agility training is a very exciting thought. I can't wait to see if my screaming, overzealous puppy loves agility as much as he loves everything else in life.

Training is still progressing slowly but surely. I've begun work on proofing his stays in different locations with new distractions. I have to be a little careful when I practice them at trials as if he does decide to break then he'll be off in the blink of an eye and I don't want him running through an agility ring. Thankfully he is 99% of the time totally focused on the job at hand. I'm also very pleased that I can take him out off lead by himself and feel pretty certain that he'll come back when he's called. If we had another dog come running past chasing a ball it might be a different story, but we're working on it!

Probably our weakest area that we need to work on right now is our circle work. He's great when I'm walking or jogging, but as soon as I try to run fast he tends to go all over the place. So that exercise will take priority for the next few weeks. If he's as fast as I think he'll be, having great circle work will be very important to his training. We're also still doing the jump bump grids every one or two weeks. We generally do a progressive grid one week and a balance grid the next. I'm not going to do the other grids until he is over 12 months and jumping normal height.

I've added the puppy chute tunnel to his training list and he's really enjoying it along with the flexi tunnel. We try and work on the bang game each week as well as lots of two on two off on a perch. I've been neglecting our target work though so one thing I want to focus on over the next few weeks is building his nose touch to the target.

Sonic is a working dog to the bone. When I take all the dogs out for a run and a puddle of water is in the vicinity you can guarantee that young Sonic will give himself a soak. It's strange as none of my other dogs would dream of lying in a puddle of water (might mess up their coats...) so it's a game he's learnt all by himself. Very clever idea I think!