Back From Vacation

Alright, back from a short vacation visiting family with the hubby. Now it's time for the real fun, agility! Gidget didn't have class last Thur. because of our trip but she did get to do some jumping in open jumping on Wed. A jump box was set up for us to practice all sorts of crosses and avoiding wrong courses. In Gracie's jumping class we got all the way to a perfectly straight serpentine! We also talked about leadouts, both lateral and... shoot, don't remember what the instructor called the other leadout, probably a forward leadout. Oh, there was a pivot and... oo, can't think of it so I'll describe them. The pivot involves changing the direction of your lead foot as you turn your dog from the first obstacle to the next. The one I can't remember serves the same purpose but you change your lead hand too, so you end up facing a completely different direction from where you started. A lateral lead out lets you step off to the side of the first obstacle to set up for the second. We also talked about setting the dog up so that they have one stride over their first obstacle. That way they always know what to expect and you can always set them up for success. For Gracie, this means about 2 of my strides away from a jump and for Gidget closer to 1.5 strides.

Ok, enough of that, on to the above courses from about a week and a half ago. The instructor emphasized that the handler needs to be behind their dog in order to rear cross 2-3. A few of my classmates with slower dogs did do front crosses there. 5-6-7-8 was a bit of a struggle for Gidget and I. I tried to front cross after 6 but Gidget ran right past me to the tunnel. The instructor had me try to layer the pole and send Gidget out to 5 and 6 so I could front cross on the landing side of 7. Unfortunately, Gidget's "out" command isn't quite strong enough and I couldn't get my path straight enough to not pull her away from the jumps. I might have been able to straighten my path if Gidget had more independent contacts, but I feel I still need to babysit them. I ended up staying with Gidget and post turning to 7 then I did a rear cross/flip on the landing side of 7 to send her over 8.

The start of the second course looked like a good spot to try something new. I sent Gidget to the tunnel and then positioned myself on the landing side of 3 with my left hand up. Then I could handle 4-5 with Gidget on my left. It took me a few tries to get my timing right, mostly when I should move from the first jump to the 3rd. For 8-9, Gidget's too fast through the tunnel for me to get a front cross in, but if I just started running after flipping Gidget to the tunnel it was easy to get into position to run a straight line from 9-11. Everyone needed to remember to decelerate before 14 to get a nice tight turn. Ok, back to a regular schedule this week. Happy agility!