Our first agility trial,& need more speed

oh so fun to watch, welcome to the Forums!

Congrats on your first trial!!
I would agree with time=confidence... That cute little Cosmo will do fine, you can tell he wants to please his Dad for sure! lol

Also agree with Stacey, I wouldn't try and over correct and I think you were having your feet pointed directly at the weaves, instead of forward? Maybe that was why the wrong entry... but I am a novice who has NEVER trialed, yet, LOL.. so take it with grain of salt. As for speed, I ask myself: Have I built enough value for each obstacle, so that he is running towards the obstacles and gets his reward from there instead of checking in with me that much? I TRY not to help him out and babysit with hand signals as much... it's you see a jump, you take a jump.. or that is what I am aiming for lol

I LOVED how Cosmo worked out the chute, and then did it in the end!

Wasn't half as bad as you promised in your intro, lol
 
Welcome to the forum.

I thought your runs were great for your first time out and with only 6 months training. Just great.

Cosmo reminds me of Ember and trust me she did not look this good after 6 months training. I have been working really hard on speeding her up. Things I have done
1. run faster myself and don't wait for her as much.
2.I clapped my hands and cheer if she needs motivation.
3. If she is running and not trotting I really praised her.
4. I stopped telling her she was wrong and that is is any way. If she took the wrong turn or jump, I just ignored it and circled her around and started again. 5. I also stopped telling myself I did something wrong. I use to get upset with myself if I made an error not anything bad mind you but if I even acted like something was wrong, Ember would think it was her and start worrying and slow down.
6. I started working on distance control and that has help her become confident that she knows what to do even if I'm not there.

In the end, just getting out there and getting experience helped her as much as anything.

Keep working and have fun.:smile2:
 
Thanks Everyone
I will try some of the suggested techniques, I kinda figured that he would probably speed up some with time. Its just that I have very little to compare with... The Club that I am in is just restarting up after an internal dispute and at this point there are only 4 or 5 members and as far as I can tell
I am the only one practicing currently or active so I have had very little support or feedback in our training, most of what I have figured out as far as
obstical training & such has been taken from web video's and the occasional
chat with our obedience trainer. There is another more active club in the area that I am looking at that has 100 plus members, it is actually where this trail took place that I might look into joining so that I have access to some more knowledgable people.

Thanks Again
 
If you are training on your own, you may consider purchasing two books- Agility Right From The Start, and Developing Jumping Skills. Those two books combined should be able to help you with obstacle training, and handling skills. Linda's DJS books is wonderful.
 
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