Tip needs another Grand Prix Q to qualify for Nationals so I decided to work on Grand Prix courses. Here is a course that was inspired by a Frank Holik course. Frank will be the judge at the Rocky Mountain Regionals so why not study up?
The start of the course was actually fairly fun, I started with Tip by standing in between #1 and #3 and then front crossing (FC) #2. The sequence 3-4-5-6 was fairly straight forward. However once the dog comes out of the tunnel you have to make a decision which side of #8 to pick them up. I tried both sides, but ended up liking the inside closest to the tunnel. It was much clearer to cue Tip that she was turning. This does make it a rear cross (RC) over a triple, but Tip handled it great.
The next trouble spot was 15-16-17. This is because the spacing of 16 to 17 was a bounce jump for Tip. Typically I don't set up something that is a bounce jump, but once in a while it is really good to practice different jumping skills. That is, scope out what is coming and what adjustments in the jump style does she have to make in order to not knock the bar.
On the Tangle front, we had a great lesson today. We worked on his teeter. We were working on his speed across the teeter. The suggestion was to do restrained recalls over the teeter. Also, have the toy low to the teeter, about in the middle when released, and run to the end. By the end of his teeter session he was driving faster.
Interesting little factoid was that Tangle had about a 100 percent failure rate during the lesson on the dog walk. Since we are about 100 percent success rate at home it tells me that we need to go on a dog walk tour. That is, visit a lot of dog walks around town and show him that his performance should be the same on all of them.
P.S. I will still probably move his dog walk to a 2o2o
