While walking it, I got the brilliant brainstorm to do the last half first, and to my amazement, Belle nailed it. Then we tried the first half, which involves sending Belle away from me over the A-frame.
Unfortunately, Belle has a tendency to creep into the yellow on both the A-frame and the dogwalk unless I'm running a path parallel to hers. I don't have to be close, but I have to be moving or calling her toward me.
I was very pleased when Belle managed to do the A-frame with a minimum of creeping. When I released her from the A-frame though she made straight for the tunnel. I decreased my distance and tried again, showing Belle that I wanted her to turn to the jump. (Actually, from the bonus line, it would either be a "come over" or a "left over.")
Interestingly, when I ran this course in a trial earlier this year, I failed to Q with either Dusty or Belle. I messed up by trying to do a front cross between #6 and #7 and ended up pulling both dogs off the #8 jump. I managed to redirect Dusty to #8, but then he dropped the bar. With Belle, I just kept going.
This morning (Wednesday) I went out with Belle and we ran the course in full. Everything went great until she exited the weaves and took an off-course jump. Once I analyzed the video, it was quite easy to see why. By the time I issued my "go over" command she had turned out of the weaves and was facing the off-course jump. The proper cue would have been "out over."
In order to practice getting Belle to take the correct jump upon exiting the weaves, I sent her into them several more times. There was no weave issue involved originally, but after being sent to do the weaves several more times, Belle became confused about what I wanted and her weave pole performance suffered. Moral: Think carefully about how to work with you dog when trying to fix a handling problem, or you may end up creating a different problem.
Excellent reminder...I have to watch how often I resend Holly thru weaves to get to something else we are working on, otherwise she gets confused and stops weaving correctly. She reminds me when I forget that she has a tendency to stress over whether she's doing weaves correctly.
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