Parcours des Monats - Mai

Belle and I have been working on Bonus Lines for a couple of weeks, and I was looking for a change of pace.  Tanja Bauer emailed me the  agility courses of the month that her group is doing for May.  This month's were designed by Dorothee Reinalter.  (To see how various European handlers tackled the sequences, click here.)  

Here is the first exercise, which posed several challenges for me.

1.  Belle and I needed a refresher course in coming to hand when I chose to lead out just past the right standard of #2 and call her to me before sending her over the jump.

2. I discovered that if I went with Belle to the entrance of the #6 tunnel, I get to the exit in time to direct her to the #7 jump.  I found I could either go half way or stay by the tunnel exit.  Neither solution really felt "right," but they did work.

3.  I also discovered I couldn't beat Belle to the exit of the #9 tunnel in order to direct her to the correct side of #10.  I could not come up with anything more creative than calling her to me as she exited the tunnel and then turning her to #10, and even this did not work until I remembered to show deceleration on my way to the tunnel.

4.  Lastly, I found that if I were at all ambivalent in keeping pressure on the line from the #4 tunnel to the weaves, Belle ended up taking the #9 tunnel.

For those that are interested here's some video of the rough spots:




 
The second exercise was much easier for us.  (Which isn't to say we sailed through it every time ;-)  However, for some reason after nailing the weave entry the first three or four times, Belle began going around the first pole and entering from the wrong side.  I finally had to resort to using a barrier in order to prevent her from rounding the first pole and entering on the wrong side.