This Weekend

Belle and I traveled to the Quad Cities for the American Belgian Tervuren Club's AKC trial.  I had hoped to practice on at least one AKC course last week, but I had a miserable cold and couldn't work up the energy to set one up in the yard or drive to Davenport for Thursday night's run thru.

 The judge was Karl Blakely of Minnesota and three of his four Excellent courses were refreshingly straightforward.  The fourth offered a variety of opportunities for going off-course.

Saturday's JWW course was the only course I managed to run as I planned.  I even managed to do a fairly nice blind cross between 16 and 17.

By the time we ran Standard, I was fading and knew running along the dogwalk would pretty much exhaust me for the rest of the run.  I opted to layer the teeter and push in toward #5.  I practically tripped over my own feet turning around for the run to the teeter.  Then I ran from the teeter to #9 pulling Belle off #8.  The video demonstrates quite clearly the effect of turning your shoulders too soon.  I made virtually the same mistake a second time by cutting the corner from the chute to the triple (#14 was actually set more perpendicular to the chute and the triple than the course map shows).

 




















My handling plan for Sunday's JWW course was to lead out between 2 and 3 and run with Belle on my right to #12, executing a front cross on the landing side of #13 and finishing the course with Belle on my left.  However, after watching a few teams run, it was quite apparent that the fastest way to get from the #9 to the tunnel was to run with dog on left.  Almost every handler did so by doing a take off side front cross at #9.  However, by doing it on the landing side, the right wing of #9 was no longer a possible obstacle that the handler might have to avoid before taking off for the tunnel.  The vast majority of the large dog handlers opted for the take off side front cross; about half of them placed it really well; the other half finished their cross only to discover they still had to get around the right wing.

And now for the last Excellent course of the weekend.  It looks so innocent on paper, but it proved to offer many opportunities to go off course.  Since I had been practicing with hoops for drive and distance for the last couple of weeks, I was leery of opening with Belle on my left, and was favoring a lead out to (-55,-25) and turning Belle into the chute off my right.  However, after watching team after team go awry somewhere on this course, I decided what the heck and took a small lead ahead and to the right of Belle and went for a front cross between #3 and the chute.  We earned a Q and a second place!

AKC Trial

Friday and Saturday, Belle and I went to Davenport, IA, for Scott County Kennel Club’s agility trial.  The judge was Scott Chamberlain, and he set up some interesting courses.  Friday we managed a double Q despite a rather large bobble on the JWW course.  Saturday, I failed to be clear in the opening run and Belle by-passed the second jump.  I only do a limited number of AKC trials each year since I’m unwilling to travel more than 70 miles or so for only two runs.  At several points, I vowed I would no longer pay to play on such hard courses, but Belle runs so nicely, that now I look forward to them as puzzles to be solved. 

Three of the four courses this weekend were full of subtle challenges, and a few that were very obvious.  An interesting feature of Friday’s JWW and today’s Standard course was a jump that required a tight wrap.  That’s were Belle and I had a major bobble on Friday.  I rehearsed decelerating and bringing up my off-side arm to cue the wrap, but it never occurred to me that Belle would fail to heed the deceleration cue.  When I realized she had kept going after the jump she was well on her way to an off-course jump.  Luckily, she responded to her name and I side-stepped away from the jump so she returned to me without back-jumping and on we went.

Interestingly, when I came home, Clean Run was waiting for me with an article by Daisy Peel, “Balance in Training,” that contained a similar example—a dog that didn’t understand the body cues for a front cross unless the handler first got its attention by calling his name.  Needless to say, until Belle and I have had an opportunity to work through this in training, I will be trying to remember to use her name.

Saturday’s wrap in Standard was more challenging, but I felt like we nailed it.  Unfortunately, the second jump in the two-jump, teeter opening was sufficient off-set that Belle ran past it.  She needed just a little more of an indication than I gave her to realize she was supposed to take that jump.  On the plus side, it gives me hope that some day we can really nail a snooker course at speed.