Saturday, February 18, 2012

All-In-One Course Setup

After our recent trials I have collected several things that have made it on the training list.  It seems, particularly in USDAA that the course designs are changing and beginning to include some new elements.  USDAA has announced that this was going to happen, but in general regardless of the venue we tend to see trends in course design.

This setup came about in a very organic way.  I just set up "work stations" to practice a particular skill or obstacle.  As I have practiced this week this design kept growing on me because it was so versatile.

I have setup several numbered exercises, but there are so much more to be discovered.

Skills this design has allowed us to freshen up:

  • Sending to backsides of tunnels (turns out of tunnels)
  • Discriminations
  • Tunnel / Weave - short collection distances, rear crosses, opposite ends of the tunnel, front crosses, and if you move the tunnels out a little you can do blind crosses out of the weaves, "not" the tunnel after the weaves
  • Off set line of jumps. Irregular distances between jumps (scoping skills for the dog)
  • Serps with obstacles other than jumps.  For example, dogwalk-jump-weaves, backside of tunnel-jump-dogwalk**
  • AFrame in a fast line, backside of tunnel-Aframe
  • Triple-turns, and at the end of a fast line, or alone 
  • Very fast long lines of jumps
  • Turns across the broad jump
  • Slight angles onto contacts and manged (safety) dog walk entrances
  • Send to weaves from the opposite end of the dog walk through the tunnel (yes, I saw this (actually AFrame) on a USDAA Starters course with Tangle)

I am sure there is so much more that I have not seen!  I think that this setup will be around for a couple of weeks since I have not explored all of the possibilities yet.

**I have seen several courses setup lately that have less than friendly contact entrances (several on novice courses).  In general I try to assist the dog by managing/shaping their entrance.  However sometimes either you don't see the bad entrance or it happens accidentally so I train my dogs to straighten themselves before entering a contact.  Post from Amanda Shyne seminar

No comments: