Yesterday we set up our "dogwalk" - it's the up plank and middle part to a very mini-dogwalk and then our 8' teeter board with a hoop-type thing at the end to make me stay on the plank instead of jumping off. First we ran the DW with a target about 3' from the end. Then we did it without a target. Then we added a jump before and after the DW but keeping a straight line off the DW. We took video (9 minutes of it) and mom tried to edit it in WMM. The WMM froze and she lost all the editing work she had done so NO VIDEO!! Here are some snapshots we took from the video so you can see the set up. Does anyone think this "dogwalk" bares enough resemblance to the real thing to be helpful to us? I ran it quite fast.
Today we went to our 5th handling class. I haven't been posting much about this class. It is good and mom learns something every time we go, but for me the sequences or drills are mostly too short and I don't get going enough. However today we worked on front crosses (always good at motivating me) so the jumping part of class went well. Below is a photo of the set up for the drill:
I wish you could see the colors of the jumps so that I could explain the drill more easily to you. (maybe if you bigify?) I'll try any way. Start with the orange jump in the bottom left-hand corner of the photo then do the yellow jump right above it then take the 180 to the right and front cross in front of the red jump between the two people and then back to the orange (first jump). All of the drills start with the same three jumps - orange, yellow, 180 to red and then always front cross after red but then second time take the purple jump (to the right of the orange) and third time take the blue jump (closest to the right side of the photo) and last time take the teal jump (farthest away in the photo to the right of the instructor). So the point is to place your front crosses where it is best to get the tightest turn to lead your dog to the next jump. It was pretty fun and we set it up in our backyard to try tomorrow. If we can we'll post a video.The rest of the class wasn't too great. My DW was still so slow (even with the work we have been doing), and much to mom's dismay, I wouldn't go through the chute at all. There was no wind blowing it open today and I just didn't want to run through that shiny, hot nylon material. Now mom is saying she may have to buy me a real chute. Has anyone bought one?
Gotta zoom!
Ricky
PS. Ok, that's good - at least you can bigify these photos and kind of make out the jump colors. I wasn't sure how it would work because we used Flip video and made snapshots from the video. Seems to work pretty well!
7 comments:
I like your little dog walk!
I'm going to try and get to class early tomorrow, so I can do a couple tries on the dogwalk with a target.
That jump sequence looks like fun.
Your dogwalk might be a little small. I do think its good to be low to the ground. The dog feels safer that way. My first dogwalk, I just went to Lowes and bought 8 foot or 12 foot long planks. I think they were 1 x 12 x12 (or 8) and connected them with regular hinges. It was pretty cheap to make. Then you can put them up on saw horses. I know that the slant of the ramps wont be right but its a start. You can even start with them on the ground and just run them. Diana
Tank woo fur sharing!
It is always nice to see what I'm missing!
Sorry about being the vikhtim of tekhhnology!
Hugz&Khysses,
Khyra
you are one busy little guy. Your dog walk looks just great for practicing. Mom started me off with it being on the floor and then just kept raising it until I didn't even think about what height it was. It all about that practice practice practice
At home we just use our teeter board to practice the down plank of the dog walk.
That handling class sounds great! I understood the exercises perfectly the way you explained them.
Actually, my dad just built us a chute last week because our field doesn't have one right now and Wall-e's chute isn't fully trained yet. It's great, and was a lot less expensive then buying one! He used a plastic barrel that he got somewhere and cut it so that it was the right length. Then he bought fabric (haha, that's probably one of the few times you'll see a man at a fabric store...) and a friend of my mom's, who loves sewing, sewed it for us and also put a strap inside the folds of the fabric so the fabric could be attached to the barrel. All that's left to do is put some anti-slip grip on the bottom of the inside of the barrel, and then it'll be all done.
~Nat
Great little dog walk!
Cool practice jump set up, may have to save that one for us to do in the backyard!
We found that if you alter the length (and sometimes even the weight) of the practice boards for the dogwalk that the practice doesn't always transfer to the real thing. We had to lower our dogwalk set up, when we added in a full plank in the middle :( So hopefully that info will help you not have to do what we did :)
Also we started with the plank full on the ground, charging through. The speed with that has translated as we've raised it, which is nice.
I think running dogwalk training is so tedious, it takes months, arrrggghhh :)
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