Contact Practice and a Little More

Because contact equipment is so heavy, I absolutely hate setting up standard courses.  However, I did want to spend some training time this year on improving Willie's A frame and dog walk performances.  The other day, we ran a course that had two challenges we couldn't meet with my limited mobility.  The first challenge was AF to the tire, and the second was table to the weaves.  Here's a photo of the section of course in question.





















The approach to the AF is from the left, and it is a fast approach from a chute.  I layered the jump and table and stopped between the table and the tire before releasing Will to the tire.  Despite out-stretched arm and foot, Will took the table.  The only way I could get him to take the tire was to actually take a step toward it as I released him, but I'd really like him to also be able to take it with a verbal and my static body cues.

The second problem was the weave poles after the table.  I wanted to layer the tire so I could get a head start on the DW which is off-screen to the right.  What I got was a lot of barking and spinning. I was really, really surprised by this, since I thought Willie's weave entrances were pretty much rock solid.  Apparently, this is a little varation we will have to work on.

I designed this course for working on these two issues, plus our contact performances.

























I ended up adding a couple of jumps so that we could go from AF to DW.  The teeter is rather a dead end, but since its not really as big a problem for us as the DW and AF, I'm okay with that.  I suppose if the teeter were a bigger issue, I could put it where the AF is on this course.  Here's one sequence we ran this morning.

Video of Yesterday's Course

It is absolutely beautiful outside today, so I decided to set up the camera and video a little bit of work using the course I shared yesterday.  Since the dogwalk was already there, I added it to my course as you will see in the video.



A word about my red merle, Dusty.  He is a rescue that I adopted almost six years ago.  He has always had a difficult time with head-checking.  Possibly because I lacked the skill and timing to get my commands out fast enough.  In the early days, this was noticeable even when he was jumping; now it shows up mostly when I send him to a tunnel.  He has collided with the occasional sandbag when continuing to run at full speed while looking over his shoulder at me.

It took Dusty and me three calendar years to earn our EAC, and to date, he has only one Elite Chances Q.  Partly this is because I no longer run him in trials very often.  However, I will be running him this Saturday, so wish us luck.  Sunday, he will run with his new best friend, David.  Unlike me, David can actually run fast enough to keep up with Dusty, and Dusty really, really likes it.  In fact, he was quite miffed the first time he heard David running his own dog at a trial.  (He's gotten over that.)