Monday, November 16, 2015

A beautiful weekend to train

If you read my last post then you have an idea how thankful I am right now EVERYTIME I get to play with my dogs.  It is stress relief, fun, takes me away from "real life".

This is a course that I ran this weekend with Tangle and Hoot (and Split but I didn't video him).  Very fun because there was lots of running involved.  Good exercise for me and the dogs enjoy courses where they can give me full on speed.

Fun to reflect on this course, since it really reflected some of the skills that we have been working on lately.  Also, I am a bit in awe of Hoot.  She is only 20 months!   She is talented, but really we have just worked hard on foundation.  We don't drill or put in a ton of time, we just really focus on doing it right.

A couple of things that I loved about this course with Tangle and Hoot.  The first two obstacles, start jump to backside.  I was able to give the backside cue when he/she landed from #1 and take off.  I didn't have to hang out to see if he/she was going to come to the backside, I just KNEW they would.  Trust in your dog, how wonderful is that?

The other element of the course was figuring out how to get the dog turned so that when they landed, the only thing they saw was the weave entry.  I had to manage the turn which meant they had to respond only to a verbal weave cue.  So proud of both of them doing that!

Hooty was a bit of a flyer (wide) on some of her turns but we have since worked that a bit.  All of them were my fault.  I was late in her cue, I thinking my timing was more for Tangle.  Even though she responds very fast, she really needs her cues very early.