Sequence from this Tuesday's class

I am finally getting around to posting a video of a sequence from class this week. It is not earth-shattering or anything, but something mom wanted to think about, practice, and hopefully remember. Ok, first of all, imagine that the tire is a teeter and the jump/weaves in the background is the dogwalk (that's how it was set up in class). When everybody ran this, lots of dogs were turning wide after jump #2 (the teeter/tire is #1) and looking at the dogwalk. Most of the handlers were moving laterally after the teeter/tire and sending their dog to #2 and then front crossing close to #3 on the landing side. This was causing the dogs to turn wide and possibly even think that #3 was to be layered. So Jenn said for the handler to send the dog to #2 and move laterally and run close to the take-off side of #4 and do the front cross there (downstream). And Bingo! All of us dogs turned nice and tight and not one of us came through the gap between #2 and 3! I think this is a good skill to have and one that could be easily forgotten or overlooked by relative newbies like mom!

Did you all see me coming over the last jump and kind of swerving and aiming for the side of the jump to go over every time? Why do you think I am doing that?

Gotta zoom!

Ricky

Tuesday's class

I did GREAT in today's class! We started off with a deceleration dogwalk drill - Jenn had our treat and acted as a target and each dog ran the DW to her when it was their turn. We did it about four times, and each time the handler was supposed to stop running farther back from the end of the DW (you know so that eventually the handler can decel and move into position for the next obstacle and the dog would continue and finish the DW on their own). Well, I could've cared less what mom was doing once I knew that my treat was waiting at the end of the DW! I love my targets! I could hardly wait for my turn and kept wanting to take off when the dog before me in line was told to "Walk it!" Mom had to laugh!

After that we practiced some 270 recalls to heel with one jump because the theme of the class was 270s. We were once again glad we had been reviewing recalls to heel - mom knew what to do and how to set me up, etc.

Then we started doing sequences with 270s. First we did the 270 with a pull (no side change). This does not use the recall to heel position. There are 3 parts to the handling of a 270 - first is a forward send to the first jump. The handler should decelerate to indicate a turn but should not move laterally and should not move past the plane of the jumps (see the photo below - the jump bars on the ground indicate the plane the handler should not cross). Dog sends over the first jump then second the handler turns and runs (walks) towards the second jump and this motion pushes the dog around to the back of the second jump, and third - the handler pulls the dog over. Make sense?

The other way to do a 270 is with a front cross (when a side change is necessary) and with a front cross, the handler does use the recall to heel. Everything is the same as above but as the dog comes around the back of the second jump, the handler gets her outside arm up and begins rotating for the FC. When doing a 270 with FC, the handler should not move past the middle of the second jump when she sends her dog to the first jump or she will be out of position for the FC.

Ok, we tried to show you with this video. First we do a couple 270 recalls to heel with one jump. Mom does not like her footwork and wishes she were making her inside leg more obvious to me and making sure she was at a 90 degree angle to the jump. After that, 2 tries at the 270 with a pull - I am such a good demo dog - I do things slowly enough so that you all can see! LOL! And finally we do a couple tries of the 270 with a front cross. Hope we did well enough for you to get and idea. We should've put a jump in at the beginning to possibly increase my speed though.

Mom wasn't sure I would be able to do the 270s with the jumps so far apart but I surprised her and did them all! I got every 270 today and did great dogwalks and aframes and weaves! I jumped 12" and I did the double a few times just for practice and had no trouble with it. Mom is keeping her fingers crossed that I am feeling better finally!!

Gotta zoom!

Ricky

Class!

Well, we decided to definitely not go to the trial on Saturday, but over the weekend mom tested my leg a little bit with a few easy jumps and weaves. I knocked a bar with my back legs on Saturday and hit the tire with my back legs on Sunday. Everything else we tried looked good. And I ran and ran in my backyard and never showed any signs of limping. Mom thinks I still put more weight on my right front leg than my left, but maybe I always do that?

Any way, today was our first class back with Jenn! She now has her own building to train in and this was our first time going there and seeing it. Very cool! We haven't had class Feb. 22 so it was awesome to be there! Today's class focused on rear crosses on the flat and at a jump and front crosses on the flat and at a jump. The first thing we had to do was jump, jump, rear cross on the flat, turn to left, jump, aframe. Mom took off way too fast and got to the cross position ahead of me so, of course, I couldn't do a nice rear cross! I needed to be out front! So we tried again and mom did a little better with her timing and we managed a slightly uncomfortable rear on the flat. But then I flew up and over the aframe (while mom held her breath and hoped that I wouldn't struggle or show signs of limping or anything)! Then we tried the same thing but with a rear cross before the second jump and that was much easier and felt much better. We also practiced the rear crosses on a couple other jumps with me being on mom's right side.

After that we practiced a recall to rear cross on the flat which was confusing for mom but she finally figured it out (I think).

Then we tried some exercises with front crosses on the flat - which we thought were a lot easier - and front crosses at the jump. We had to do aframe and then a jump off to the right and then mom had to move far enough ahead and out to do a front on the flat and line me up for two more jumps. This went pretty well - mom has done these before and didn't realize that's what they are called. Next we did it where I did the aframe and mom did a parallel send to the jump on the right and then ran down and front crossed before the third jump. Well, I was so fast that mom didn't have time to get the cross in! WooHoo for me!!!!!! She had to try again and trust my send more and get into position faster. It worked the second time.

Finally we ran a little longer sequence that included the dogwalk (no problem) and weaves. Overall, class went really well and no one saw anything weird about the way I was moving or anything. And I was very happy to be doing agility!

Some things to think about - crosses on the flat are used only between obstacles (they don't involve any obstacles), they can be very helpful for young dogs who don't know how to "send" yet or who require more motion from the handler to keep up their momentum, the front on the flat we did today was used with extension, front at the jump cued collection (don't know if this is a rule but we want to remember this point and think more about it), motion cues the rear at a jump, and mom should trust my sends more. That's all we can remember right now!

Here is a really quick video we made mostly to show the recall rear cross. The actual rear crosses aren't very good - mom didn't think it through enough to be able to really show the difference between rear at the jump (she should've moved laterally behind the first jump) and the rear on the flat.

(As always we are writing all of this down so we can have a chance of remembering it all and we know these long descriptions can be boring so please don't feel bad if you don't want to read it all!)

Gotta zoom!

Ricky

Front cross drills

So on Wednesday we practiced the front cross drill from our Tuesday handling class. It was fun and went well (although I was not as fast as mom would have wanted)! I had a major barking fit between the 3rd and 4th exercise, so mom had to spend some time editing this video. Sorry mom but something was out front of the house and I wanted you to know!

We're going to try this again some time and see if we can speed it up a little!

Gotta zoom!

Ricky

Still practicing

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!