Thursday, April 14, 2011

Discriminations

We had fun this week designing this course. Again, we started with discussion and exercises from Developing Handling Skills and organically developed this course.

We ended up running several variations, but here are a couple that were most notable.



(First course) These days I am running these with Tip since Split is injured. The first discrimination (AFrame, Tunnel, or jump) was actually a little challenging. Your timing and your cues have to be very precise. We practiced getting all three and studying the differences in how to cue them. My next challenge on this course since Tip has a running AFrame was to get ahead so that I could use lateral motion cueing 5-6. If you are behind, your forward motion cues the off course pin wheel. Very hard to cue the AFrame and then get the heck out of there to be ahead. Fun challenge for sure!!

(second course) This course introduced layering (yes, it is in DHS). Not too hard to get with Tip from the table. I could be ahead cue extension and use forward motion (and stay in the inside of the serp). The hard part was 15-16-17. These compressed and elongated pin wheels are getting popular with the judges, they are harder to cue and harder to get tight turns. I used a send to 16, and backward motion to the tunnel to bring her over 17 (I try not to do classic post turns). She fancied the DW, but was a good girl and followed my motion.


Love to know how people handle these...

Sunday, April 10, 2011

The first full teeter

This was kind of a fun day for us. We have been working on many differrent skills that lead up to performing a teeter and today we got to put it all together.

The journey begins with wobble boards, running planks, sit/stay, the "bang it" game, progressed to learning just the 2o2o behavior on planks and then contact trainers. Then Tangle got to learn the 2o2 on the actual teeter. First barely moving, and then we gradually raised it. Today, we put ALL the skills together into one behavior.

I was so proud of my boy. His stays at the end of the plank were fabulous (even throwing chicken on the ground). He did have a few issues, but really first time out of the gate, I am very happy!