Tuesday's class

Today's class started out horribly. It was mostly about rear crosses again, but we learned to differentiate between rear crosses where the handler uses lots of forward motion to cue the dog to keep going in a straight line (basically)(I think of these as extension rear crosses ) and a rear cross where the handler wants the dog to turn after the jump kind of tightly in one direction or another (I think of them as collection rear crosses).

So first thing we did was (out of the blue by itself) a rear cross at the aframe. I had to run (more like walk) to the aframe and mom was supporting me with forward motion until I committed to the aframe and then as I was going up it, mom snuck behind me to the other side (rear cross in a straight line). Well my commitment point for the aframe was so late that this didn't work very well for us. If you do rear an aframe (or dogwalk or teeter or weaves or straight tunnel), you have to make sure to indicate forward motion to the dog until commitment or you risk pulling your dog off the obstacle.

Then we tried a rear cross of the teeter with a few jumps before it - I got all sniffy and pokey slow and then I didn't want to do the teeter. Jenn had mom put me on the teeter a couple times without rear crossing to make sure I wasn't developing some teeter phobia. After that we were supposed to run a sequence and mom said "Ready, go!" and I veered off and sniffed something I was sure was food on the floor and that was it for mom. She was NOT happy. She picked me up and then tossed me over a jump and said to get going.

Things got better when there was about 20 minutes of class left and we did a couple longer sequences. Mom asked Jenn if she could start out running the outside and then get into position for the skill we were supposed to practice. And that worked. I rear crossed (at jumps and on the flat) like nobody's business. We even got a couple "beautifuls" from Jenn!

Before I forget - here are a couple things to remember when you are trying to do a rear cross with a tighter turn. If you want the turn, you use lateral motion in the direction opposite the one you want the dog to go - like if the dog is on your right, you move to the left before the jump and decel and the dog goes ahead, takes the jump and will turn to the right (putting him on your left). It's ok for the handler to start her lateral motion even if she is ahead of her dog. Another thing is consider how you use tunnels ( all the time, not just with rear crosses). But if you send your dog into a tunnel and want to rear cross the following jump with extension (like a straight line rear cross) stay back and meet your dog coming out of the tunnel so you can drive forward to the jump together. But if you need to turn your dog at the jump after the tunnel, run ahead of your dog and when he comes out of the tunnel show lateral motion and then deceleration to get him to rear and turn.

We tried to make a video to show a little bit of what we did in class (the general idea any way). Mom used just all regular jumps because she was too lazy to get anything else out. In the video we tried to describe what we were doing. Hope it all makes sense!

So even though class started off very poorly, we felt good at the end. Mom is hoping that there is a way to run the outside of the first few obstacles at our next trial - she wants to see if that will speed me up from the beginning. Only problem is that not all courses are set up to make that possible at the beginning. Guess we'll wait and see!

Gotta zoom!

Ricky