I need to preface this post by saying that I have more or less found the trick to exorcising Kessel's inner Agility demons....
...1-2 hours of Chuckit! ball chasing at the dog park prior to class.
Think I'm exaggerating? I'm not. If neither of her boyfriends (Buck and Rebel, both 100 lb. + GSDs...) are there, then we spend 2 hours. Usually the boys can wear her out in 1 hour, which is nice. This plan of attack has actually worked with exceptional success. We haven't had a zoomies episode since. The worst thing she's done has been taking off mid-course to get a drink of water.
Oh, and also she tried to run through a tunnel while another dog was in it. That wasn't so great. We were warming up, and I had just sent her over a jump. Well, at the same exact time, right in her flight path, another handler was sending his Rottweiler through the tunnel. Before I could call Kessel off, she flew forward and entered the tunnel.
Somehow, she exited the tunnel before the Rottweiler did. Malinois superiority, of course. The only problem was that the Rottweiler was an intact bitch. An intact bitch who does not care for other bitches, and also does not like having her space invaded. What Kessel thought would be a fun game suddenly turned into a nightmare. She sprinted forward several strides, clearly thinking the Rottweiler would chase her, as that's her favourite game. However, as soon as the Rottweiler tried to get a mouthful of her spine, Kessel seemed to realise she made a bad decision. Her stupid, toothy grin morphed into an expression of sheer panic. She was outmaneuvering the Rottweiler (naturally!), but the problem was that if she stopped running she'd be up Shit Creek. Long story short, I took a chance and as soon as the Rottweiler's owner got close, I gave Kessel the down command (from a good 20 feet away, too), and she dropped down fast. I was proud of her for listening, but felt like an ass for letting my dog get away from me. Ironically, Kessel was a superstar for the rest of that class.
It's humorous to read my last post where our "course" was simply a sequence of 3 obstacles. Let's see...our first course, last night, was: jump, tunnel, same jump, table, dogwalk, jump, a-frame, jump-front cross-jump. Whew! Kessel did very well. She understands the command "easy!" in relation to the contact obstacles, and she's getting better at slowing down when I say that. Contacts are getting more consistent - not perfect, by any means, but she's doing them. The only reason she broke course last night was to run to the water bowl....not sure why she was so water-obsessed, last night, but she was.
Overall, she's a different dog than a month ago. Her off-leash heeling is coming along beautifully, as we're now able to work on it under heavy distraction at class, and in public. "Watch" is getting better and better, and she's holding that under heavy distraction, too. Still need to work on engagement, as it's easy to lose her on small exercises that she doesn't think are all that exciting.
She's doing the teeter, now, although not at competition height. None of the contact obstacles are at competition height, actually. I think she could handle the A-Frame at regulation height, but I don't want her on the dogwalk yet. She still gets a little too speedy and I worry that she'll go flying off of it. The teeter - same thing. She's a little too spastic and I could see her losing her balance.
Another thing she has no trouble with is the chute/closed tunnel. I REALLY expected that to be a gigantic problem, but it hasn't been. She has no problem with it, although she does like to run at an angle, through it. Still, that's better than being scared of it.
