Teachable Moments

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

Linda Mecklenburg

I thought I more or less followed Linda Mecklenburg's system of handling, so when her book, Developing Handling Skills, came out, I quickly ordered a copy.  I must confess I found myself glazing over while trying to read it.  I had more or less set the book aside when an agility friend told me how great she thought the book was and what an asset it was in developing her handling skills.  So much so that she had ordered some of Linda's DVD's.

I found that Clean Run had posted a lengthy video clip from Linda's 8-disc series, Balancing Cues in Agility.  I was intrigued by what I saw and ordered the series.  The videos are from a two-day seminar and include Linda's explanations and actual seminar attendees running the sequences.  Even if I don't follow Linda's system to the letter, watching the effect relatively minor changes in handling make on the dog's path is proving to be very illuminating.  I plan to set each of  the exercises and try them out to see if it Linda's method will enhance my ability to communicate with the Aussies.  If her cues don't work for us, then at least I will have given some thought to what cues I actually do use to communicate.

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The first exercise consists of three different sequences and emphasizes the proper application of lateral motion and forward motion cues.  I was very surprised that we only had one miscommunication out of all our runs.  (However, I did have to have a start line stay discussion with each of the dogs.  I left those out of the video in the interests of brevity.)

The hardest thing for me to remember was to keep my shoulders facing forward as I moved laterally.  All three of my dogs understood what I wanted despite that short-coming on my part.  However, in Exercise 1B (Drill 2 on Linda's DVD), it complicates the execution of my front cross.  The more I turn toward jump #3 before executing the front cross, the more degrees of rotation I add to the move.  Some of the front crosses in the video were pretty icky.