Bonus Line Practice

I set up a Jumpers course that we ran last year.

In analyzing the video from today's practice, I found:

I did a pretty good job of remaining in motion.  And for the most part, my body signals were timely.   On the other hand, my verbals were almost always late.

The first two times I ran with Belle, I was falling behind by the time she got to #4.  Because of this, she is looking back at me, and this draws her attention to the #9/#15 jump.  The first time, I was clueless and my late "out" was useless.  The second time, I knew it might happen (although I didn't know why) and I was a little more timely in my effort to keep her on course.  I also was inadvertently a little less behind her the second time.  I was even less far behind on the third effort.

When I was running with Belle, I really liked the slingshot start I used the second and third times much better.  However, in looking at the video, I found Belle curled back toward me both times.  I also noticed that by the time she enters the tunnel I am no longer moving so I will have room to drive forward when Belle exits the tunnel.  I'll try the slingshot start again and try to keep moving and see if she will drive straight to the first jump.

I ran Dusty from behind the red line on the course map.   Any run with Dusty that is silent and without spins is a huge success, so I was really pleased with him and with myself.  The only spot where I was late signaling was for the turn from #11 to #12.  And apparently, I was within Dusty's guidelines since he neither barked nor spun.  However, as with Belle, my verbals were uniformly late.

I decided my late signals would be more of an issue if the dogs were actually jumping, so we went out and tried the course again with the bars up.  Dusty and I did nearly as well with the bars in place, but Belle and I still had some bobbles.  I look forward to running this course in reverse tomorrow.