Oh bless! Poor Yogi... he must have been really scared. Merlin does tend to make his point in a more defensive way, but no matter, it would have been wrong to push further.

I think there are some books about building your own equipment - or perhaps try Agilitynet? If you have the room then why not! I wish I did but we have only a small courtyard garden here.

There's room for a set of weaves and that's what I'd like to get as they are hard to teach, and he will never get the hang of them with just one lesson a week. So I have been looking about at there are a few groups on a popular social networking site that advertise dog stuff for sale (not just agility).

I've been offered a set of second hand stand-up weave poles for £50 which are a bargain as they are made by the top manufacturers, and the beauty of stand-up weaves (as opposed to poke-in-the-ground ones) is they can also be used indoors. Trouble is I am spending so much on the 1:1 lessons plus £7 return bus fare each time, I have nothing left over for the poles

Yogi is a very sensitive lad at the best of times It is his one down side really. It is a shame though, as he enjoyed the tunnels and jumps a lot. He hated the see saw and the dog walk though, but I seem to recall he was fine on the A frame.

I have been given some instructions about building equipment for working trials, and so will probably just incorporate bits of agility equipment into that, as it will only be used for fun at home it doesn't really matter that much which pieces I do or don't have.

I also considered buying in some equipment, but was shocked at the prices! Just need to motivate my OH to crack on and do it now - as well as another list of jobs as long as your arm that I have for him

I hope you and Merlin continue to enjoy your lessons. How much is a 1:1 if you don't mind me asking?

Don't mind you asking at all - it's £12 for half an hour. I have no idea how that compares with anywhere else.

The urban agility is coming on really well. Today we passed an open green space with a sculpture in the middle surrounded by four low concrete benches. I put him in a sit/wait, dropped the lead and used my arm to guide him over the first one, then directed him to the second, which he also jumped, then the third, and the fourth! I had no treats with me, either.

I was so pleased, I thought we'd try it again.... but halfway through he decided to bog off and water a nearby tree, and then wouldn't come til he'd done some very important sniffing. I just hoped nobody in the nearby flats was watching! Need to work on his focus, I think

Glad to hear he's enjoying himself - we've been doing agility for almost a year and Angus has got so much out of it. He's much better at focussing on me, and concentrating, and although he's still easily excited he doesn't get over-excited the way he used to and he can control himself a lot better.

I agree that weaves are something you really need to work on at home, I made myself some simple stick in the ground type (they had individual bases with 4"nails to hold them in place then bits of pvc piping slipped over the top) but we only got so far using them as Angus discovered that he could just barge them out of the way if he wanted. We're currently using a set of weave bases borrowed from our club (old spacing which weren't being used) and we're getting on much better with them, and being able to leave them up means that everytime we go in or out of the garden we can do some weaves on the way past.

We don't have much else in the way of training equipment at home (I'm planning on buying some jumps next payday as I've found someone selling them cheaper than I can make them) we tend more to use what we find out for walks but I've got a home made tyre (swimming noodles from poundland) which we're using in the doorway at the moment to reteach it as going through not under the tyre.

I've seen some useful videos on youtube showing how to make some equipment and there's a website called agilitybits? or something like that that has a few tutorials but I'm a bit limited by space.

Dogs always like to show us up

£12 for half an hour sounds very reasonable to me.

Sounds like you are having great fun. I'm sure his attention span will build up, when I first started one to ones with mav he would shut down after a short while, fast forward a year and he would work all day of I asked him to!

That's about the going rate

Glad you guys are having so much fun
£12 30 min one to one is fab!! everything is so overpriced here - Beginner agility in a class of 6 dogs was £18 each!!!

I go to a fun agility class and its 2 pounds for the first dog and then 1 pound for any dog after that. Plus a 5 pounds membership fee, which last a year.

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So glad to hear that Merlin in enjoying himself.

How much???!! Per lesson?! I go to private lessons with two trainers one of which is one of the top competitors in the country and only pay £20 or £25 per hour, also go to a group lesson which is £48 per 6week block...

Yup that was per dog per week
Thankfully I have my own club now mind you when we get local trainers in they still know how to charge - the last one said minimum 6 dogs and £10 per dog per hour