Ella
is a busy girl - chasing her ball, tormenting Stanford & learning lots of
new things. We are focused on agility for now - I love the sport & all that
I'm learning about myself & my dogs & our relationships.
The trainer I work with teaches mainly the Awesome Paws system of handling (I didn't even know there were agility systems for a long time.). APHS puts a big emphasis on jumping form - for the dog's durability & also for speed. And this is where the box comes in.
Ella just started jumping recently as we were waiting for her growth plates to close. When she did jump she was all over the place. Helene (our trainer) quickly realized she needed to work on her hind end awareness so she assigned us box work for homework.
Ella had done "101 Things with a box" in her puppy class so she was all in to playing with the paper box lids I brought home from work. It became obvious quickly how much she needed this exercise as she was very willing to put her front feet in the box but took almost a week to realize she had back feet that I wanted to go into the box. Once she got that concept she moved quickly & can now turn circles in both directions in the box, move from one box to another & is even getting all four feet in our new smaller box which is great also for her core & balance.
Attached are a front & side view of a very proud Ella in a paper box lid with Stanford looking on.
The trainer I work with teaches mainly the Awesome Paws system of handling (I didn't even know there were agility systems for a long time.). APHS puts a big emphasis on jumping form - for the dog's durability & also for speed. And this is where the box comes in.
Ella just started jumping recently as we were waiting for her growth plates to close. When she did jump she was all over the place. Helene (our trainer) quickly realized she needed to work on her hind end awareness so she assigned us box work for homework.
Ella had done "101 Things with a box" in her puppy class so she was all in to playing with the paper box lids I brought home from work. It became obvious quickly how much she needed this exercise as she was very willing to put her front feet in the box but took almost a week to realize she had back feet that I wanted to go into the box. Once she got that concept she moved quickly & can now turn circles in both directions in the box, move from one box to another & is even getting all four feet in our new smaller box which is great also for her core & balance.
Attached are a front & side view of a very proud Ella in a paper box lid with Stanford looking on.
She does seem to be quite proud of her box work! For anyone that is interested, you can read more about Awesome Paws and the various methods Linda uses at http://www.awesomepaws.us/.
Thank you for the wonderful update Ann. Looking forward to future happenings in Ella's world!
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