This morning I opened the first window of my chocolate advent calendar and then opened door number 1 of Guinness’ Wainwrights calendar.

I was surprised to see not just one treat but a little handful of small salmon treats. Perfect for doing a few little exercises with.

The first trick of the series is… drumroll please…

Give paw!

I love this trick and it’s one of the first things I taught to Guinness.

In other news, this weekend I attended an agility workshop at Dig It run by Lou Cadman. We were specifically looking at course running skills and making handling decisions, as well as improving our overall agility training skills.

It was interesting to break down a small section and try it two different ways. There were three of us in the class and we all found that our first choice was the quickest for our dogs, despite one person doing it a different way to the other two. It was fascinating to see that there wasn’t one route that was quicker than the other and instead it varied for each specific dog and handler.

Lou is a fantastic instructor and I always take something really useful from her sessions (and I’m not just saying that because she’s a friend of mine).

This video shows our final run of the day. Despite the ducked jump and missed jump I’m really pleased. Our weave entries were especially awesome! Good job Guinness.

“The moral of today is connect with him and trust him.” – Lou Cadman