On Thursday the 15th of March Chico and I went to Run Throughs at White Mountain Agility in preparation for an upcoming trial (also because it’s fun and a good socializing opportunity).

Here’s a video of our first of three runs through the course (ya wondered why they are called Run Throughs, didn’t ya?).

The run throughs went fine, the second and third runs were better than the first, as is to be expected (Too bad that at a trial you don’t get to practice the course with the dog, you just get to walk it and [in my case try] to visualize where the dog will go).

For me, the real highlight of the evening was Chico interacting with Khloe.

Khloe. I'm crazy about those little spots on her muzzle - to me they look like drops of ink flicked from an old fashioned dip-it-in-the-inkwell pen.

Khloe is a Dalmation who is also in agility to help her with behavior issues. It seemed like she comes on kinda strong to other dogs. Chico and Khloe were able to sit about 5 feet from each other and even to take exploratory sniffs at each other. Her person, T, was super vigilant, as was I. We rewarded them *while their tails were wagging* for sniffing each other politely and while they were still “soft” in body and face. Amusingly, after we had been playing the “be nice to that dog” game for a while, Julie noticed us close together and warned us to be cautious with the two of them. “Well,” T said, “they’ve been doing pretty well so far.”

Chico and Khloe. Chico is a tad bit nervous, my guess is that it's because I had to step a few feet away from him to take the picture. That left him close to Khloe without me right at his side. Or maybe I flatter myself and he doesn't yet fully believe that I have control over all situations. But if he does, it makes sense that he is concerned when I step away.

At run throughs, after three times through the course, we play one of the agility games (there are some games that make use of agility obstacles – among them Time to Beat, Fifteen and Send Time- FAST, and Pairs Relay).  The game this session was pairs relay and Khloe and Chico and T and I were a team. The dogs have to be near each other at the start, the end and when the baton is passed from one handler to the other and both of Khloe and Chico were so interested in the agility work that they ignored each other when in close proximity. Yea Chico! Yea Khloe!