Continuing from Yesterday...

See the links in yesterdays post to see the courses I'm talking about.

Course 6 was large dog (jumping 24") JWW.  Part of the course looked very similar the the small/medium dog course but they had a different path.  I'm not sure why they changed the course at all.  Just about all the handlers led out so that they were on the take off side of jump 2 with their left arm up so that the dog wouldn't take the wrong side of the jump.  Once the dog was moving, the handler would do a front cross to send the dog over the correct side of the jump and continue with the dog on the right for the next couple of obstacles.  A front cross between jumps 6 and 7 seemed to work a lot better than front crosses after 7.  I saw a lot of handlers come very close to tripping over jump 8, landmarks may have been very useful here!  The weave entry seemed kinda tricky here.  A few dogs took the jump to the left of the weaves and some were just going too fast to get the weave entry.  Some deceleration and collection before the weaves can be a big help for that problem.  I noticed a couple of generalities during this course too.  A lot of handlers were using blind crosses, especially at tunnels.  I've been taught to stay away from blind crosses which I think is smart.  It's much better to keep your eyes on your dog at all times.  If I were to use a blind cross ever, it would only be at a tunnel since you can't see your dog anyways and turning with a tunnel can get extra dizzying.  As long as you can turn and see your dog exit the tunnel, it would work just fine.  A large number of the dogs finished the course and ran straight for their leash, grabbing it and bringing it to their owners.  This seems like a smart training idea since it keeps your dog in the ring and focused even when they're done with the course.  It'd be great for Gracie to keep her from thinking about other dogs she may see near the ring exit.

The last course I actually took notes on was the medium dog STD course.  Very few of the dogs actually qualified on this run.  It was really exciting when the first dog succeeded!  A few dogs fail the tunnel/contact discrimination, more at the dog walk than the A-frame.  It was fun to see some handling stand out, few people used the method but it worked well for them.  This happened at jumps 8 and 10/11.  Most people handled the A-frame on the side closer to the course start, wrapping the jump back towards the A-frame and pushing out to the tunnel.  A few front crossed jump 6 so they could be on the other side of the A-frame, wrap jump 8 away from the A-frame and have no issue sending the dog into the tunnel and being ready for easy handling over 10-11-12.  Those that had to make a cross around 10/11 mostly rear crossed jump 11 to send the dog to 12 but I did see one front cross after 10 that worked nicely.  Let's see, a few other neat things I noticed... 12-13-14 made a nice serpentine with the weaves as the last obstacle.  Sending the dogs away from the course on jump 16 made for a very nice line to the tunnel to the dog walk to help with discrimination issues.  Most of the medium dogs had a running contact which doomed most of them to take the off course jump.  The few with a decent stopped contact behavior or with really good handler focus managed the correct jump.  It was a tricky course that really made the talented handler/dog teams stand out!

I forgot my notebook on Sun. so I didn't take notes on the small dog STD course.  It was intense though.  If I remember correctly there were a lot of clean runs.  Looking at the course map now I can't think of any places that had frequent mistakes.  Not everyone qualified but I'm pretty sure a lot did.  The 12-16 sequence was definitely the trickiest part of the course and it all came down to proper handling.  Those that succeeded had pretty similar methods, one case where standing out wasn't a good thing.  So over all it came down to speed and boy was there some competition.  The last dog to run was the only Papillon in the group.  He was fast and his handlers moves were smooth.  It was oh so fun to watch and he beat the next fastest dog by nearly 1.5 seconds!  This pair definitely made it on the team!

I can't wait for next year's tryouts, I hope they're nearby again!  Maybe, just maybe I'll be able to try out with one of my dogs (likely a future dog).  I'll just have to keep working on getting better!  Happy agility!