Ronda Roby

Thanks for your replys. What they are doing is starting 2 new events a week. We started the weave poles and down jumps this week. This seemed to help haveing a little more variety for Anya. I think the problem is Anya is very hyper and very driven, and like you said JEL she is probably a dog that could get hurt easily. She is not afraid of anything and if I don't watch her very close she is always climbing something and jumping off from the top. At agility she will get under the ladder and try to jump to the top instead of climbing it. We are allowed to go to the agility course on our own time and practice with our dogs so I took Anya out this week and it went pretty good, it was just hard keeping her off the things she shouldn't be on yet. Thanks again, Ronda

I just started agility with my 18 month old border collie last week. She was the only bc in this group so of course she had the tunnel and shoot down with one try. It took the other dogs the whole evening and they wouldn't let us advance on to other things this week. Anya got terribly bored and begin pacing and when I would just let her run loose in the fenced in yard she would try to do the ladder and see saw on her own so I had to put her back on a leash. Anya is very hyper but I believe will be very successful in agility, but how do I keep us both from going nuts until we can advance on? If anyone has any suggestions it would be appreciated. Thanks, Ronda

I did some research when Anya was young and found that especially when you have to leave a pup alone for long periods of time they need something that smells like their owner to console them. They said not to give them a pair of shoes, but we did end up giving Anya an old pair of our shoes. I was leary at first because of what I've read, (the bc is so smart) so we told Anya that was the only pair she could have and we had no trouble after that. When she was little and she was tempted to stray we told her to go get her shoe and she would. Her shoe is still in her toy box, even though she doesn't chew on it much anymore. When she does get frustrated over something she will still get it out and chew on it. I've always wondered what this meant about the owner?