Every Day is a Little Bit Better

Today, I had my third session rehab session with my chiropractor, and I can't believe how far we've come.  I worked almost all day long and the swelling this evening is much less than it was yesterday.

After I mowed the field this afternoon, I put up this jumpers course.

Everything in black is from the original Elite Jumpers course, including the 20 point bonus line.  I added the obstacles in red and the red handler's box around jump #5.

By the time I finally had the course set up, I was too tired to try the distance challenge with Belle.  So I used the sequences on the course map below to practice the dogwalk and weaves at a distance.  I worked first with Belle, and had one heck of a time getting her to take the opening three jumps--she wanted to turn left after the second one.  Once we ironed that out (instead of facing toward the third jump, I had to face slightly to the right of it), doing the dogwalk and the tunnel to the weaves was a piece of cake.  Unlike Monday, Belle had no problem staying in the weaves.  However, Belle had a hard time understanding when I wanted her to go directly from the dogwalk to the weaves.  She was convinced I wanted the red jump.  I finally had to cut my distance almost in half to put enough pressure on her line to get her to the weaves.

I also tried these exercises with Dusty and Libby, although with them, I lead out between the second and third jumps.  However, I managed to not go any closer to the dogwalk than the 70 feet line.  Dusty did much better today than he did yesterday.  He seemed to accept that I wasn't running.  The big shock came when I brought out Libby.  Libby is not a distance dog--I think she only has Elite Chance Q to her credit.  Much to my surprise she was able to handle the exercises at the same distance Dusty did.

I rested for an hour or so and then took Dusty and my video camera outside to see if we could do the jumpers course with me staying near the #5 jump as shown in the red box on the first course diagram.  My first choice was to try handling the course by using the entire box, but I'm just not quite quick enough to do that.  My second choice was to remain on the landing side of #5, and that worked pretty well.