Friday, February 18, 2011

First class back of 2011

Finally had our first class of 2011. WOW is all I can say. Lori had been to a sylvia trckman (sp?) seminar and she had some really tough sequences for us to do. I broke them down for baby-D but even I as a handler was struggling with what to do when. We had a very tough weave entry in one of the runs where you basically ran perpendicular to pole 1 and then they had to wrap back to get pole 2 etc. You were coming from a tunnel at a dead run so you had to get their brain, slow them down a bit and help them with the entry. We just couldn't get it for love nor money so had to just let him hit them straight on and chalk it up to train this at home. One of the things I learned last night was deuce could do some pretty hard level stuff if he chose to. He is choosing to not use his body in a way that we know he can. Part of that is lack of training and part is lack of conditioning. Let's just say after one night of class, I have a huge list of skills we need to improve on. I will be dragging a jump into the bed room this weekend to work some one jump skills! I also need to aquaint deuce to wires or gates to help him learn muscle memory for that particular entry. That is one of the hardest weave pole entries and I know with time and practice, we can get it. I am excited to have open practice this week so I can go and practice some of the sequences we worked last night. My only fear is that we aren't really practicing what we are seeing in trials right now. Right now, in open, we are seeing huge courses with huge amounts of yardage between obstacles. It is a totally different skill than what we are working in class, and I fear that is part of the reason I have troubles. Give me a tight twisty course any day over an open run your ass off course any day. I prefer very technical hard courses but that just isn't what you see in open. I can set this up at home for sure but need to practice letting him run full out and still listen. He seems to listen when it is super tight and I can keep his head the whole time.

I do still feel like weaves are a stress issue for him in trials. He was hitting the entries with much collection in class last night, even sent him way out off of the dog walk to some poles that were set up on the far side of the field and he was hitting them. Not sure how to handle this in a show, will have to just try some things and see what happens. I know he knows what to do and now everyone in class has seen he knows what he is doing so maybe they can help me come up with ideas as to what to do in the show ring. He also did some 10th pole pop-out which indicates to me that he isnt' fully understanding that all 12 poles are his responsibility, so going to do some channel work with targets and me doing various positions to reward staying in them. Looking forward to some nice weather so i can work on some issues, just hoping i can shake this nasty cold i have had for the past two weeks. Running when you can't breathe SUCKS!

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