Not on the agility course, dude!

Fran on Friday

I’ve written about Booker’s training. My frustrations and successes, the endless hours of training and classes (well, it seems like endless hours!). Yet I know that no matter how many hours I put into training, something will happen that I don’t expect. It’s inevitable. You can’t plan for everything. You can think about any contingency, but something will happen out of the clear blue sky.

Case in point: Booker playing keep-away at the end of a run. Really? He’s 3 years old. I know he loves me and likes to be with me. Yet at the end of a run, Booker won’t let me grab him and put his leash on. We’ve trained so that he knows he’s not going to get treats until his leash is on, so I don’t understand it. Does he want to run more agility? Does he like the attention?

I tried to train him to play with his leash, but then he won’t leave it alone when I take it off of him. (You can’t run agility with the dog on a leash.) So I’m trying to train him to jump up on me on command. It works for my Tango – but he’s much lighter than Booker is. Hopefully we’ll figure it out. It’s a work in progress.