Little Raven went to her first day of school yesterday!

After a slightly nauseous hour ride there, she came out of the car, tail up, ready to take on her new adventure. She was delighted to see that this adventure involved OTHER DOGS and greeted her classmates very nicely, play bowing at most of them. She should be so polite to her housemates – hah!

First, let me say that the Comfort King matting is wonderful! I’m kind of a connoisseur of indoor agility matting (OK – I’m downright picky!) but this is good stuff. Plenty of traction and very well cushioned besides.

Class focused on straight tunnels, the chute, tires, and bars on the ground. Raven is already somewhat of a “pro” at pipe tunnels, so she happily bounced through the straight tunnels. The chute (even held steady and wide open) was a little scarier at first, but after the first one or two times she was bouncing through that too. The bars on the ground were cake – she may be the smallest dog in the class, but she has great body-awareness and hopping over a little bar without stepping on it was a no-brainer for her.

I was happy to see her doing everything with speed and gusto – small as she is, I actually had to RUN to beat her to the end of those straight tunnels! !

The one thing I didn’t like was the way the instructor started to go about “desensitizing” the dogs to the teeter sound. Raven can be a little “funny” about strange sounds – not BAD by any means, but those are things that make her stop and think. I thought the instructor pushed the issue WAY too far and too fast, going quickly from just standing there moving the board (the dogs were all some distance away and we were feeding them) to letting the end hit the ground, over and over. Even though I kept Raven far away from it and she didn’t have a “meltdown”, she got a little fidgety and I could tell she wasn’t happy with the repetitive sound, food notwithstanding. Being Raven, she didn’t hesitate to approach the Freaky Thing on her own later (when it wasn’t moving) to see what it was all about, but a more timid dog???!!! Sorry, but if I’m desensitizing to something, I want to always work BELOW threshold and don’t want to see ANY reaction(s). Did NOT agree with the way that was handled – we may take a lo-o-o-ng potty break during that part of class next time …

No carsickness on the ride home – she was so tired she slept like a furry, little rock!

Meanwhile, I thought it might be a good idea to be proactive and introduce her to boards my way and at home. Here’s Raven, meeting the board… as you can see, she didn’t find her first board meeting in any way traumatic – she didn’t even notice the little noises it made when the slightly-warped board bounced on the uneven ground. But when we start tippy-board we’ll definitely be starting out with it making as little noise as possible – until she’s crazy enough about it not to care!