Thursday, June 24, 2010

last night was class - unfortunately the power went out and we couldnt do obedience- they had the first two obedience classes (attention and novice) and i had planned on putting berlin in novice, but i went to get dinner and we were late so then i was going to put her in open, but open and utility were cancelled. which rah says is ok since he couldnt train anway!

so all we did was agility - and berlin found her groove again and kicked some butt. though i REALLY need to work on her offside weaves - a lot of the akc nov JWW courses ive been seeing have offside weaves and she's not putting 2 and 2 together - she is so methodical while onside she's just flying through.

i was most proud of her for two things:

1) holding a down stay each and every time i walked the course!!!! even when i had my arms up to practice cuing crosses, etc (she often would come to me for those)

2) in one of the courses, the "out tunnel" she nailed!!!

the map:


first sequence (blue i think?)
started on the table, and just worked a huge serpentine - i chose to stay on the far side of the teeter and not put any crosses into it. the hard part was calling them to you from the table and then sending them into the tire - the dog had to square up to the face of the jump on their own - berlin handled it well. the other issue was jump 4, which was recessed so you really needed to be close where they landed on 3 to push out, and it was a very tight sequence since the jumps were only 4-5 feet apart.

second (black?) - able to lead out to just past the tire, send to the teeter and she nailed her contacts every time and held them - i then did a landing side front cross on 3 (she did SUCH a nice tight wrap!) rather than trying to serpentine all from one side because i needed to be at the weaves for her entrances (OFF SIDE UGH) - then we had to flip them off the entrance of the tunnel at the end of the weaves in front of them but to the entrance to their right. berlin at first needed ... shall we say, a little physical help :)

last sequence (red) - we had two choices, and we had to choose before we ran - we could let our dogs do either end of the tunnel, but still had to get to the weaves. one led to onside weaves (but bitch of a tunnel entry since they had to run past the open end!), one to off side (but easier tunnel entry). but picking my poison, i knew my dog would rock the onside weaves so i had to go for the difficult tunnel entry. i led out to just past the tire, called her through with a lead out pivot, and then pushed her through 3/4 - they really were that close and she bumped those jumps, no stride in between- and did another landing side front cross at 5 so i could block the incorrect entrance - and gave a very firm "OUT TUNNEL" she looked for a split second as she ran by the other entrance but saw immediately where i was sending her, and then i backed up, told her to weave and she flewwwwwwwwwwwwww single striding it, and then soared over the triple (lydia said it looked like she was about 36 inches on that one minimum, and she had her legs so high and tucked.

so she nailed that one. so happy.
now if she only had some heat tolerance for outside :)

1 comment:

Aragon greyhounds said...

Off side weavepoles are a bear until the dog gets it. It took me the longest time to trust Whisper and now I find them easier then the left side. In class the other nite though with Echo I remember why I was so worried about them. She totally was clueless.