Motivation - Building Lucky's Drive

In my previous post I showed Lucky highly motivated by Lure Coursing -- giving chase to a white plastic bag!

Here I compare that video to this one of Lucky 1st agility run this past weekend in Kiln, typical of most of her runs where she exceeds course time but otherwise runs clean, it is becoming glaringly obvious to me that motivation is a major missing ingredient of her performance.

To watch video, click arrow:

Maxie is a whole different story.  He is usually very enthusiastic, most often exceeding course time by 5-20 seconds and often placing, unless I make a mistake.  Here's Maxie, running the same course as Lucky's video above, with a Q and 1st place, and 20 MACH points (meaning he ran the course 20 seconds faster than allowable course time).  His course time this run 54 seconds, compared to Lucky's 79 seconds. 
To watch video, click arrow:

With those long legs, Lucky could outrun Maxie any time.  It's all about M-O-T-I-V-A-T-I-O-N!  Building Drive has to become my most serious focus for her agility training.

No doubt in my mind, Lucky is a natural athelete.  She loves to run, fetch, tug, kill armadillos, chase goats, and now, run after lures. Whenever I have her tug toy in my hand in practice, she runs fast, weaves fast, races across the dogwalk, and stays focused. She's an enthusiastic jumper, too, when something she wants is on the other side.

So my challenge now is unlocking the secret to motivating her on the agility course like she's motivated at home. The scuttlebutt is that all this mental gymnastics is great for delaying the onset of alzheimers, which certainly motivates me to keep at it!

My writeup on the Kiln Trial will be my next post.  Some things worth mentioning happened there.  Then I'll post a video on Lucky's enthusuastic jumping exercises at home.

Upwards and onward!