i had a ring rental for berlin to work on agility stuff - hard weave entrances off sides and sticking the table and ignoring the tunnel. she still has a LOT of trouble sticking the table. she doesn't avoid it, but she's not staying on!!!!! worked some exercises to get her to rock back the minute she gets on and collect herself.. .we shall see.
then lydia and i took bunny and berlin over to a new training facility to check it out to see if we want to take classes there for agility, since we still have no agility trainer.
berlin did pretty well - considering she was in a brand new facility (that reeked of variety of smells from vomit to rats), did half the class outside (we don't train outside, ha!) on slippery grass, and new people both tried to touch her and talk to her... not bad at all! im still not sure we will train there for a variety of reasons because i really want to be picked apart as a trainer, not just encouraged - tell me exactly what is wrong! but...
first course was inside - they split the dogs up small to tall and berlin was the biggest there (ha ha ha).
we ran the closing from the excellent standard class this past weekend... main issue was getting the aframe and how we did it. experimented with front crosses, rear crosses, and pulling onto the frame.
of course the ever present block of wrong end of tunnel was fine - she popped off her contacts twice (once teeter, once frame)- i was actually able to pull her (which i didn't think she would) and the front cross worked great. the rear worked, but she slowed down considerably and watched me as i crossed behind her. jeff didn't think the front cross would be really feasible unless you got out of the way- there was a jump past 5 in line with it that i wanted to block though. jeff doesn't like blocking. :)
the next part of class, big dogs went outside and little ones in.
the course outside:
worked some start line issues - did a lead out to 3 - and then the tunnel suck-age came. it took four tries for berlin to come to hand (and here is where i wasnt so happy with the training) - she's a fast dog and she's not picking up the cues (that im not giving?? ha ha) AND she's a tunnel suck. but the trainers weren't helping me work things out, just having me do the same thing over and over and over again until she got it - but what i ended up with was a stressed berlin not understanding why she had to do the same thing repeatedly because she just WANTED TO DO THE TUNNEL. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
i walked the course with a front cross right before the triple (landing side of 8) but instead i chose to run out and do a landing side front cross after 7 - worked much better IMO and berlin nailed her weave entry EVERY SINGLE TIME even though i didnt babysit the line of jumps, i sent her on a "go".
all in all its a nice facility because its full size, it has outdoor training, and full equipment (multiple sets). essentially we could become members for a nice deal - but i wasnt impressed and im not sure how driven i will be there. they liked berlin and commented that she was a VERY fast dog - and her jumping style. which is another problem - all those dogs were VERY bad jumpers.
i dont want to become a worse handler - i want to become better. im so picky. just want my old agility class :(
No comments:
Post a Comment