Monday, July 25, 2011

Hoping for a Connection

Oscar and I have agility tonight and I am hoping and praying that we have a good night at class and have a real connection.  At our last class, which was 4 weeks ago (!) because of the hot weather and some travel I had to do for work, we did really well together and had a great first run, but then I could tell Oscar was starting to get stressed.  His paws started to sweat and he was getting barked at by another dog in class as we were doing some start line jumps into the weave poles.  Unfortunately, the dog that was barking at Oscar got out of his owners hands and ran over to us and bark-bark-barked in Oscar's face.  Oscar did OK at first, but I couldn't react fast enough to get inbetween the dogs and Oscar gave the dog a good bark-bark back.  He didn't growl, snap or bite or do anything nasty, but gave the other dog a piece of his mind ("HEY! That was RUDE!"). 

I'll be as vigilant as possible tonight and reward him for making good choices and presenting calm behavior.  Perhaps I'll do some very brief TTouch before class and do some nice, relaxing mat work?  Yeah, that sounds relaxing. 

He's my little man and I've been doing much better the past week really listening to him and letting him show me what he is/is not ready for.

My goal for tonight: guide Oscar through class and show him that I'm not going to let anything "bad" (which is defined by him) happen to him.

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