Round 2, Class 5

So I had this theory that if I wore Jake out before agility class, he would be less likely to suffer from an attack of the zoomies when off his lead. (Actually, he enjoys the zoomies -- I'm the one suffering). My husband got off early from work and we headed to Harbison State Forest. The forest has a walking trail that we use to exhaust Jake. One of us will run ahead and the other holds Jake, who is shrieking some crazy noise he reserves for "Hey, wait for me! I want to run, too!" Whoever runs ahead yells, "Come, Jake!" and Jake takes off flying. He runs legs stretched completely out, low to ground, and ears laid back for better aerodynamics. He can really run fast! He runs quietly until he reaches the person at the other end and then starts making holy hell. There's always big piles of pine needles from where he tried to apply the brakes to stop. Then Jake gets sent back to the other person which he doesn't do quite as enthusiastically since he didn't see any running on the human's part. We repeat this often along the trail and normally by the end he's so tired he just lays down. We headed home and I kept Jake busy for the next two hours -- no napping for Jake.

My theory was just that -- a theory. Our first set of jumps at class resulted in Jake hurtling himself around the yard and drive-by taunting the other dogs, especially his gal pal German Shepherd who wants to join in the chase so badly. I was mortified. I think my embarrassment is growing each time he zooms. It's so unfair to the other dogs and their owners. I kept Jake in an enforced down-stay until he was his turn at the dogwalk. When we headed for the dogwalk, I suggested we leave Jake on his lead and I would just do my best to sprint quickly. I didn't have to worry because the motion of the dogwalk scared him enough that he didn't have the confidence of the jump sequence he had done so well. Jake would run next to the walk so we'd have to coax him to jump onto the middle and run the rest of the way. We were able to get him to run the full length the last go and rewarded him well. Then there was the A-frame with two jumps preceding it. For good measure and to make sure Jake knew what was expected of him, we did one jump first. No problem so we added the second jump and the only problem was me keeping up with him! I like that problem. The chute and the weave poles went very smoothly and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. One of our new gameplans for the evening worked very well. We decided that telling Jake that it was his turn next always whipped him into a frenzy so they called my name, cattle dog, J-dog, anything, to not say his name directly. Believe it or not, it does work! I had brought his favorite fleece tug along in hopes that it would help in recapturing him during the zoomies so I did take Jake over to a far corner of the yard and played some tug with him to try to help release some of the inner play demons of his. The only thing that totally captured his attention all night was my chocolate chip cookie that a classmate brought to share and, of course, he couldn't have it! When the instructors asked if everyone would be signing up for Round 3, I was delighted to hear that everyone would be returning and that we hadn't been kicked out of the class yet!