We are fortunate enought to have access to a beautiful, (semi)fenced training area with agility obstacles.

In case someone's missed out on agility: Agility is a sporting event in which one dog and one human work together so that the dog successfully navigates a series of obstacles arranged in a random course.

Although Mita finds agility relatively pointless (she prefers chasing things), she does enjoy the treats, so we regularly train.

Last week we brought Nemi. She is of course way too young to start agility training, but we're bringing Nemi everywhere we go to introduce her to as many new environments and situations as we can - and dog training meetings are ideal.

Nemi watched Mita get praise and treats for climbing the obstacles. Next time over the Dogwalk, Mita had a shadow. I of course rewarded Nemi for her initiative (remembering all to clearly the amount of treats it took to get my last dog over the dogwalk the first time!).

I trained on with Mita. Tommy distracted Nemi. Halfway throught the training session I called on Tommy to assist me with the seesaw, as Mita finds this to be a very unrealiable obstacle which she regards with much distrust. We got Mita over the seesaw safe an sound only to find that Nemi was gone!

Scanning the ground as far as I could see, and no sight of her! I looked around in despair - and there she was! Standing on top of the Dogwalk, balancing on a 25cm wide plank, 1.3 meters off the ground -wagging her tail happily - looking around to see if there would be more treats! We managed to lure her down without to much fuss.

Thinking that if Nemi so enjoyed obstacles, we could at least introduce her to the safer ones. We dragged out the tunnels. Nemi instantly took to this game, running back and forth, back and forth throught the tunnels.

After a few rounds through the tunnels, out she came like a streak of lightning (black lightning, is there such a thing?) - and headed straight for the seesaw. Being so light and fast she sped over the seesaw without it ever knowing what hit it. She ran swiftly to the end of the plank, without any hesitation at the pivot point, and to my horror leapt off the end before the plank just as it was starting to move.

Fortunately a not so light but for the occasion equally fast Tommy was standing there to grab her mid-air. Nemi was ecstatic!

For competitions dogs have to touch the contact fields (the yellow sections of the obstacle). Failure to do so means disqualification. I do wonder what the judge would say to a dog running over the seesaw and leaping off the far end without the seesaw moving (let alone touching the ground) - yet touching the contact fields perfectly...? Well, at least competitions are at least a year away for us!