Saturday, March 16, 2013

Nothing Middle Of The Road About Pan

Agility on Thursday was the same set up as last week with one change, the teeter was in the opposite direction. The first half of our course was jump, dogwalk, down to the evil jump that made Pan fall apart last week. if she was going to repeat last weeks performance it was going to happen early, but she was a total rockstar! From there we did the teeter to the near side of the tunnel under the dog walk, jump to the tunnel, jump, weaves, a-frame.

I wanted to do a front cross on the landing side of the jump after the second tunnel. i was able to get some distance on Pan and really send her from the first tunnel over the jump and to the second tunnel, but when she stuttered before taking the second tunnel i pulled up in anticipation of having to get closer and redirect her and then she took the tunnel anyway and while she still took the jump after the tunnel i was not in the right position to complete the cross and we almost collided.

It was so beautiful and fun! Oh i wish we had been able to pull it off! I tried again, but once she got the pattern she was waay faster than me even as i was cutting through the course and pushing her around the outside!

Trophy did well, although he was slower than usual. i couldnt watch most of his run because if we accidently make eyecontact he loses his connection with Tasha (but that wont be a problem next week as i'm running all the dogs by myself). Trophy had, in a very unusual act, counter surfed the night before, and truly horriffic diarrhea before class. I took him out after his slow run and three poo bags worth of diarrhea later, he was a bit faster. (He also threw up a thick rubberband, the kind that comes on raw broccoli, early Friday morning and was truly miserable all day. He layed around and moped all day long. He was perkier this morning).

In Demo's class things got hairy. We split the class up and half of us worked on sequences with the dog walk, and the other half sequences with the a-frame.

We worked the a-frame first. It was a disaster. Mainly, i think, because Demo (really most of the dogs) couldn't see our helper who was in position to reward our dogs when they hit their contacts in time to really stop and understand the exercise. We did a sequence of tunnel - jump - a-frame. The first time i just did it, Demo totally blew off his contact as he was moving so damn fast over the a-frame. Didnt even blink at her. So the second time i did a Reverse flow pivioty move to collect him before the A-frame, and i tried to lure him over more and stop him in the 2o2o... but apparently that wasnt the point of the exercise (? That's how i taught Trophy and he's doing awesome?). We didnt get to try again and i didnt get to clarify why we are doing it differently.

When we switched to the dog walk, we did one rep of just the dog walk in either direction with the dogs still on leash (to keep them slower and controlled) then we did dogwalk to a jump and lastly jump dogwalk. I was terrified of Demo killing himself. Our instructor was again in position to "catch" him in the 2o2o at the end of the dogwalk, it worked much better (IMHO) because the dogs could see her before stopping. I almost fainted, especially on the second rep of jump to the dogwalk as Demo totally RAN the dog walk, but he got the contact thanks to our instructor being there.

There's so much that is different between Trophy/Pan's beginner class and this class, it's hard for me to figure some things out. I feel like i'm not in control of Demo at all... i feel like even though we've done sequencing and some handling, i'm not really feeling like I'm HANDLING him. The team work isnt there yet.

We have much to learn.

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