Flying Poodles

It’s 2 AM

It’s 2 AM and I am exhausted after four days of agility seminar–the C-Spot-Win Camp–but the curly girlies had to go out–I think Dancer had too many treats over the four days of camp–and so I’m up. Dancer did very well indeed, never losing her desire to play with me, never failing to make it look easy. And always talking to strangers about how they should spend some time petting her.

What did I learn? Well, the drill I found most interesting was two parallel lines of jumps, which you could use to train serpentines (slalom) OR 180s. It required precision handling and reminded me of the race-car driving  skill exercises I did years ago, where going to fast on the early turns meant you couldn’t handle the last turn without ending up in the grass. That’s definitely one to practice.

An exercise that I found more challenging than Dancer did was discrimination training, with the necessity to take only a single step and use a single cue to send the dog to either a tunnel or a jump (about 5 feet apart, from about five feet away).  Definitely another one to practice.

Contacts are an issue all the way around for Dancer. She initially refused the dogwalk, the a-frame, and I didn’t even try the teeter. By the end of the camp, she was fine with the a-frame (and jumping over the contact zone, so I guess I’ll work to train a 1-RTO contact) but still had issues with the dogwalk. Time for a contact-training tour.