Shame About the Handler

I haven't actually watched Greg Derrett's DVD of this name, but the quote came to mind when I watched my videos from practice this weekend.

In terms of finding her way around the course (with a few exceptions), my dog is leap years ahead of me. Marisa says I am outright spoiled with Marge and am going to be in for a wake-up call when I get my next agility dog. She has saved me countless times on course. And I mean countless.

Here's what I set up for yesterday's practice. I've been itching to do box work for a while, knew I needed to work on the A-Frame contact, and threw in the discrimination because we haven't done much of that, either.

The box part of the sequence was actually inspired by a sequence I did way back in Beginner Agility.. a sequence I previously aced. When I ran it back then, I front crossed between 5 and 6, and, since my front crosses currently leave much to be desired, I wanted to try my hand at in again.

Not so lucky, this time. Looking at the video, I think a rear cross would have worked ten times better. But, I was so bent on the front cross that I kept doing it anyway. It most likely made it harder for my dog and I.



The double pinwheel at the beginning was also trickier than I previously imagined. Because I needed to race Marge to get into front cross position, I pulled away before she committed to the fourth jump and she, as a result, didn't take it. It was fixed with a "go" (and/or lots of encouragement once she started to tire -- as you'll hear in the video) but I kind of feel like using a go-out in that scenario is like lying to her since she has to come in to me immediately after.

Marge was flying around this course. She came out of the tunnel, took the double and was suddenly a million light years ahead of me. I fell prey to my usual error and tried to beat her, rather than decelerating to cue her to slow down. Then, I made matters worse by getting in her path over and over again -- which led to either a bar down or a really tight turn by Marge. I could just smack myself! I also probably put the double too close to the wall, making the angle really hard for her to get over the next jump.

These video clips are from the end of the session, which explains all of the praising and rewarding - I finally realized at this point that we weren't really feeling this course, so I broke it down and made it more fun. After this, I went as far as to stop every 2-3 obstacles and just feed, feed, feed. Marge wasn't really stressed, but I felt like maybe I'd confused her or made things more difficult for her; since my first priority with agility is having fun, that's exactly what I did.

She tired out really quickly, probably since she was going so fast in the beginning. I wouldn't say it was a wasted day, but I feel like we spent ourselves early on and didn't really get to work on much. I think I tried so hard to incorporate front crosses that I used them when something else would have worked better. Way to be counterproductive!

The A-Frame contact -- it's coming along. The nose touch with the post-it as a target has helped tremendously. She's still slamming into it more than I like and creeps down it when she starts to get tired, but I'm still trying to find the perfect distance to put the target from the frame so that she gets into 2o2o position on preferably the last board. She's doing great with hopping up on the side and getting into position.

For the next rental, I think I'm going to take a break from the A-Frame and just do some simple stuff.. teeter work, table work, and maybe some novice-type front crosses. For my next lesson with my instructor, I'd like to work on tunnel sends (hers were god-awful yesterday) and some general handling things - AKA, training me.

Once again, I have to thank my boyfriend for coming along - I can't even move the A-Frame an inch without him. And, I would have never had the time to set all of that stuff up and run the course without his help.

In other news, we are now the proud owners of an obedience dumbbell - though Marge won't be competing in obedience any time soon (very possibly never), I'm having fun learning the exercises and training something that's a little less impact during our down time. Stay tuned for video later in the week.