My original goal with Belle was to get to the point where we were able to do NADAC courses from the bonus line. We almost got there, but not quite. With Willie, I can tell that I'm going to need all the distance I can get in order to get through any course with him since he is considerably faster than Belle. My job will be to navigate and stay out of his way.
I'm having trouble with my right knee, so I decided to find out how well Willie could
do this Masters Jumpers course with distance handling. Here's a frame shot from this morning
video. Note that I misread the map (again) and we took 10 from the wrong direction.
It was quite the learning experience. I plan to go out and
"run" it again tonight or tomorrow morning. I'll finish the video then and post it here and on YouTube.
#1 is a continuing problem with Willie. He doesn't
quite get it that if the jump is between him and me and I don't
indicate otherwise, he is to take it.
#2 Can you say LATE!
#3 & #4 I missed seeing the threadle at 10, so I cued Willie to jump 10 in the wrong direction and then tried to do a threadle at 11. My initial plan was to handle it from what was our landing side, and getting there pulled Willie off of 9. It also made for a crunchy threadle. It handles much better when I remain on the take off side of 10 and I can also support 9 better. However, now that I see my mistake, I look forward to seeing if we can get 9-11 correct.
#5
I wanted to stay around (52,8), but soon discovered neither Willie nor
Belle could get to 15 consistently if I did that. Moving 1/3 to
1/2 way down the tunnel supported that jump just fine. Actually, it's not surprising that Willie didn't carry out to 15 since we've done a lot of work in the last two weeks on tunnel exits. If I'm not moving when he goes in, then he should be checking for me and prepared to turn when he exits.
#6 I had to make
sure I supported the double or Willie ran by it. (Perhaps that's
because I didn't put a pair of wings on it, but still....) Must remember that Willie is a young, unexperienced dog and what Belle takes for granted, he very well may not.
I was looking for a sequence with a minimal amount of setup work since it is always windy out in the field this time of year. Brrrr. I chose this simple exercise from Linda Mecklenberg's Feb., 2013 column in Clean Run. Never in my wildest dreams did I realize it would give us so many different things to work on with Willie.
First, there is the backside of #4. We've done a little bit of backside work, but not a whole lot because I don't want him to default to the backside of a jump too easily. The object of this sequence is to handle #4 in at least three different ways. I tried pushing Willie to the back of #4 around the wing closer to the tunnel and then pushing into the gap between 4/5. This proved to be somewhat difficult for Willie because he still doesn't understand collection.
Then I tried pushing him to the backside of #4 around the wing closer to #5. Much to my surprise, this was made getting to #5 easier for him since he was forced to slow down (collect) for the wrap. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a third way to handle 4/5 yesterday. But I think it might be possible for the handler to get to the take of side of #4 and handle from that side.
Because of his speed and size, Willie defaulted to the correct side of #2. So I was really shocked when this turned into a major sticking point for Belle--she defaulted to my side of the jump. Hmm. I spent several minutes showing Belle the difference in my signals when I wanted her to take the jump going away from me and when I wanted her to take it coming toward me. Then I brought Willie out and worked on showing him what it looked like when I wanted him to take #2 from my side of the jump. There's that hard to grasp concept again, collection. Once he got the idea of coming to my side of the jump, I started asking him to wrap it and go back into the tunnel. Surprise! He took the jump first, which gave us another skill to work on.
We quit for the day at this point, but in addition to wrapping to the tunnel, there are several other choices:
- the other end of the tunnel
- either side of #4
- either side of #5
- the gap between 4/5
Just a few random thoughts for today's Dog Agility Bloggers Event, "The Mental Game."
First and foremost, it is a GAME. Games are supposed to be FUN. Fun for you and fun for your dog. Nothing brings me down so much as watching a handler blame his dog for mistakes on course. The mistakes are almost always the handler's--either she messed up her handling or she hasn't proofed her dog sufficiently, or Dog forbid, she did a crappy job of teaching some aspect(s) of her dog's performance.
In the same vein, don't beat yourself up over handling mistakes. Jot it down and come up with some ideas to work on your skills so that you can handle the sequence, trap, whatever better the next time you see it on a course.
Use the course maps to memorize the sequence of the courses before you walk if at all possible. If you can, watch while the course is being built to mentally test how well you've memorized the course. Then you can spend your walk through time on analyzing what your dog sees and planning your handling. Even after all these years, I'm not terribly good at estimating where my dog and I will be relative to each other, so I usually try to have a Plan B. One thing that I used to overlook frequently was where to set Belle at the start line so she would be able to see me and the obstacles between us. Duh!
Unlike many handlers, I usually don't use all the walk through time allotted. Sometimes, that bites me in the butt, but usually it works for me. Once I've decided on a plan and know where the control points are and how I'm going to get there, I try to get to them once or twice and then I get out of Dodge. If I'm running early in the order, I want to spend the time with my dog. If I'm running later, then I have plenty of runs to watch to see if I missed something.
Plan your run, and run your plan. Well, usually, but sometimes I see another handler do something that is much more logical, efficient, elegant, whatever, than what I had planned. I'm not above giving it a go without having walked it. However, I will rehearse the move mentally. If subsequent handlers do the same move, I have an additional chance to mentally work on my timing.
Above all, have fun and make sure your dog is having fun, too!
I set up this modified Novice JWW course (the weaves were at #10) for Willie today. I realized the distances between obstacles was pretty big just looking at the course map, but once the course was set, the distances looked really huge.
I didn't think Willie had enough distance skill for me to send him out to 3 and 4 while I moved into position for a FC between 5 and 6, so I tried a blind cross which Willie didn't understand. Then I tried sending him out on his own so I could do a FC, and he did just fine!
Our next problem was the #11 jump. When Willie exited the tunnel, he drifted toward me and missed the jump. I would have preferred placing my FC between 13/14, but the only solution for this problem was for me to move in closer and do my FC between 12/13.
Our final problem was getting from 15 to 16. (I added the red dummy jump to make a box when I set up the course. Not one of my better ideas.) Willie repeatedly hit the bar at #15, and just didn't understand he was to go straight through the box. Later I had Belle try it, and much to my dismay I discovered that adding the dummy jump was a really poor idea since even she had trouble getting from 15 to 16. I removed the dummy jump and found Belle could complete the course when I used either handler path shown at the left. Willie still had trouble driving through in a straight line, so obviously we will have to work on this some more.
Well, at least I have some training ideas for this week:
- Work on getting RC and blind cross at 5/6.
- Work on increasing lateral distance so I can do a FC between 13/14.
- Work on driving from 15 to 16 in a straight line.
- It would be a good idea to not use bars when introducing Willie to a full course. There's enough new stuff going on that we shouldn't have to stress over knocked bars.
- Keep working on obstacle focus!!!
