Cory's agility class first night (alphabet drills)

First night of Cory's winter agility class, novice alphabet drills.  Tonight we had a five jump set up and worked on front and rear crosses.  I think these short sequences working on skills will be great for him.  He did ok;  we had a few issues with the rear cross that need working on.  Also he was quite revved and could not seem to hold his stays while we reset bars.  After class we went back over to the obedience ring and I set him up in the corner and did out of sight stays.  His back was to the adjacent ring with the first night of a basic class going on, and there were two other classes across the aisle so it was fairly chaotic.  Luckily with the solid fiberglass ring barriers I could sit across the aisle and see his shadow through the barrier, but he couldn't see me.  Once again he went down just under 3 minutes into the sit;  I went back in and resat him and let him sit for another 3 minutes, then praised when we went back and did a six minute down.  He held the down nicely and did not appear to sniff, but he was angled a little when I came back.  Released and got cookies;  then did a little heeling;  worked on doing slow about turns so he doesn't end up forging/cutting in front of me as we come out of them.  Did signals from about half distance;  he "appeared" to do them well but was anticipating quite a bit and once I released him, set him back up to retry he did walk in on the stand a couple of times.  Worked on lengthening the time between signals, reminding him to wait, and praising.  Once done worked on him walking back WITH me to get his cookies;  as soon as he forged/looked away from me I stopped.  This is going to take some work but we really need to work on him staying engaged between exercises.

Also this afternoon while I was downstairs cleaning the litterboxes we did a couple of broad jumps;  for some reason he came straight to me a couple of times which he hasn't done in forever (I think mostly because I was at the same time making Robbie hold a down stay less than successfully).  Hit good straight fronts the first time each time though.  Used the yardstick to push him out.