At the last Committee meeting I discussed my ideas for training for this summer in particular reinstating the social agility class on a Saturday. Saturday morning used to be a time when any club member could come and do agility, we usually put up an old NALA course or bits of it, we took turns to set up, i.e. get there half an hour earlier and put the course together with another mad enthusiast and then people just ran it however. They either copied those of us who sort of knew what we were doing or they made it up as they went along. The very newcomers were seconded onto the more experienced for course setting and all in all it was a learning experience. But most of all it was a bonding experience because handlers and dogs who had previously been in classes as students were now full members of the working agility group.

There is no instruction in this group unless you are mentoring someone in particular. New handlers are able to criticise or question why things happen and the next step along the way is NALA participation and competition. Because it is often a large group, it is one dog one handler stuff, so that all of us with a whole bunch of dogs don't hog the session. This event will now happen at 11a.m. on Saturdays and new handlers from my 2p.m. agility class will graduate to this event when they know all the equipment and are almost weaving. Handlers do not have to do any particular jump height. If you are working your Great Dane on hurdle level one then you are an honorary micro. The main talent necessary is the ability to laugh at yourself and others - be prepared to make a fool of yourself, experiment and make mistakes and learn to correct yourself. This new group will belong to Rosslyn Prichard our Club Captain who is merely the convener not the coach and not the total organisor. The work in the group belongs to the group.

I have suggested that it is from this group that Judy Casey recruit people to her two Competition Classes. That way she can work alongside new handlers and find out how serious they are about Agility or maybe not. Some people will be very happy in this group for a long time, maybe forever. It was from this group that we started a new type of Agility Competition involving levels that were way pre-elementary by Kennel Club standards and I produced the hurdle bar graduation from Grade 5 to Grade 4. This could easily be re-instituted if the group wants to go there eventually. In any case this takes care of the situation which is developing where we have a number of club members who have been training for 18 months and are really very capable of running quite complex courses. They are stuck in my 'pay for' classes when they should be in a free use class and using me as an instructor to sort weaves and jump heights in pay for class if they wish, not because they have to.

Good news is that it starts next Saturday 18th August...