SHIMMER LOVES AGILITY
Last weekend Shimmer and I decided to get back into agility training! We spent the afternoon practising Jumps, running through the tunnel amd walk over the plank. The A frame would be Shimmers favorite obsticle, she gets very excited when she approaches it.
When I first joined my agility club I was told I had a lot of hard work ahead of me; as the instructors had never seen a Samoyed compete and they are such a hard dog to train. I personally don't attend obedience classes, so this did scare me a little, as they are off lead and sit stay in training is required. I quickly lost motivation to go, only attending a few class and was always very nervous Shimmer would run off and play with the other dogs. Shimmer didn't see the point in running through the tunnel when I was on the outside. But membership time ticked around this year and after watch a couple of Samoyed agility video's on Facebook I decided to re-join.....
First training back last week and I had a new dog, Shimmer did everything I asked of her, we worked as a team and had loads of fun. She raced through the tunnel, walked the plank and the last activity was sit stay and when I called she had to jump over the jumps and the reward was one of her toys and loads of praise from me. I think it came down to confidence. This time I had faith that Shimmeroo would do what I asked! Over the year there have been times Shimmer has been off lead and her recall has been wonderful, we have built up a fabulous relationship, so I wasn't concerned about her running off and just focused on what we needed to do.
We had so much fun we spent the next afternoon at an agility park...
People have a perception of what Samoyed's can and can't achieve, but at the end of the day they are extremely start dogs, they do get bored with repetition but making it fun and exciting and having confidence in them you can achieve many things.
