Finally a real post!
I've been crazy busy at work recently due to a high number of board and trains going on at the same time. Thankfully, they've all gone home now and life is returning to normal. Flyball has a new twice a month schedule that started last weekend, Demo is starting Agility in a few weeks, the flyball tournaments are already lining up, Qwill will be restarting Rally eventually, Trophy and Qwill will hopefully start volunteering as Therapy dogs (that deserves it's own post), and I some how need to reschedule Trophy's Agility Debut in the rest of the mess.
It's going to be a crazy year, that's for sure!
I want to start by talking about last week's flyball practice. We joined up with another Ohio team, F^2 (F squared, formally known as Frenzied Flyers). They have an amazing practice space with two full lanes with plenty of runback and lights. It was great fun. Since my dogs are the only young dogs on the team that won't be double running at our tournament in Euclid in 3 weeks I'm starting all 3 teams. I haven't started U-Fli in a long time, so it's going to be interesting and I was VERY glad for the practice with U-FLI timed lights.
Trophy is becoming a mystery for me in flyball. He's continuing to speed up (he was running 4.7's with nothing higher than a 5.0) yet his butt is not up on the box at all. I'm worried that he's going to injure his shoulders, but we're already signed up to run in Jan and again in Feb with a busy schedule ahead (tournaments already scheduled in March, April, June, and July we are considering). I know the only way to fix this is to pull him and practice good turns EVERY DAY until we have 3 million GOOD repetitions then return him to a tournament and pull him again if everything goes south, but we're so close to our next NAFA title that I'm being selfish and I don't want to pull him..
Trophy's got such a high sense of self preservation (if her hurts in agility, he stops performing for me) that I'm torn between thinking everything must be ok if he's continuing to run faster on his own (he's not a super fast dog to begin with, he's not hitting the box with that much force) and worrying that his turn is hurting him regardless of what else i think and somehow i'm just blind to it.
So I don't know what to do about him.
Demo's turn started out messy, but he settled down into it with the prop in. I'm worried about losing his turn since he *IS* a faster dog (although he was running mid-high 4's at practice, but he was sick for 3 weeks and he's probably out of top condition).
Pan, well, Pan just kicks butt at flyball. She's consistent has a good 3 footed turn, and I'm really proud of the job i did training her. :)
Well, back to real life, more updates coming soon!
Maybe try doing wall turns every day, a few times per day, with Trophy. It might be enough of a reminder to get the rear up that you don't have to pull him. It depends on how bad the turn is getting and on how worried you are about it, though. If it were Koira, I would pull her immediately and stay away from tournaments until her turn improved again. If it was Pallo, I probably wouldn't worry too much about it, just make sure to use a prop at practice to keep his rear up and do wall turns at home.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I could get Trophy motivated enough to turn off the wall. And I don't really have a place in my house that is safe to have him do wall turns.
DeleteBefore Demo got sick back in December and I slacked off on practicing, we were doing turns on the practice jump board taking a ball with no props in. He was doing well and my goal is to send him to the board with no props and have him maintain the turn with no props.
If you watch the first clip (shown in full speed then in slowmo) in this video it show you the problem. This was taken in 8/2011, now he will always use his hind end with a prop, but loses it with no prop.
http://youtu.be/GciW3uccI_k
I think he is so worried about catching the ball that he forgets to use his butt if he doesn't have a reminder since I've been able to send him down for no ball without a prop in and he will turn nicely. Part of the goal of having him take a stationary ball off the board with no prop is to reteach him to snag the ball better from the box.
I don't know. It's majorly frustrating. :(
Hey, thanks for joining me for the photo breed challenge. I'm hoping to get started with my version of it (I plan to do every AKC breed, and every sport- not sure if I want to combine the two or not!) this week. We have a big show cluster that started today and runs through the weekend, so I hope to get up there and get a chance to take some pictures.
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