This is an unedited video. My apologies. It starts with a couple of turns without me doing anything - so just her natural teeter, and then with me trying to get her to lie down on it.
This was a smaller-than-normal teeter. She's normally a bit more out-of-control on the taller one.
I'm kind of thinking I might just leave it alone as long as it is a safe performance. I don't own a teeter and am limited in my teeter practice/number of props or adjustments I can do on the teeter.
Also, I called her a stinker because she likes to put her ball under things, like the ring gate, making it harder for me to pick it up and throw it. :)
20" jumps
12 poles away from home
Daddy came to class
She knocked down as many poles at 20" as she does at 16", so that's something. She's not yet ready to do straight poles at speed. She's not yet ready to do most things at the speed she'd like to do them :) My only real concern, though, is her teeter, which is still not up to par. We'll get it eventually!
Also, if the camera puts on 10 pounds, why does it put them all in my butt?
Tessa is doing 12 in-line weaves! It's a miracle! Border Collies are amazing. (I have a history of muffing up weave poles with other dogs, hence my disbelief.)
My phone camera kept crapping out and nothing is in focus. However, today, Tessa did her first straight weaves AND her first layer. So I am not complaining!
I had so many really great things happen that I didn't get on video. BOO on that! At least you can kind of see the weaves.
In other news, I apparently talk to myself a lot while training.
Today I spent about an hour training Tessa out at Courteous Canine. The weather was finally warm and sunny!
I tried to edit this together into one training video but I couldn't figure out how to edit out all the down time. So I made lots of short little videos and cut the downtime off the ends. It took forever. You're welcome.
The channel weaves were set 2.5 inches apart, which is a half-an-inch narrower than the stick-in-the-grounds I worked her on yesterday. (There's some downtime in this video because I didn't think of breaking it down into smaller pieces and editing. My apologies.)
Then we went and worked the Jumpers course that we tried in class on Thursday. I really liked the pinwheel without the front cross, even though I know the front cross should be better. All jumps were at 16 inches.
We worked the dogwalk. At first, we did it without a target.
The second try, I put a target down because she stopped with all four on and wouldn't go all the way down.
Then I put targets on each end and worked it. It went much better with the targets. Clearly, I need to work to fade them.
We are working on having her gain confidence on the teeter. I hope this technique is working. I don't feel super comfortable with it because I know she isn't either, but she seems to be handling it well so far.
Then we did some A-frame practice. She didn't stop on the contact without the targets. She kind of skipped off and downed way at the end. With the targets, she did much better.
Then we worked on the standard course. We broke it into parts. Here are the center two sections.
After this, we went and played on the Jumpers course again, but the camera ran out of charge! I kind of did too, but Tessa was still plenty charged up :)
My plan for the contacts is to fade them by putting more and more dirt and leaves on them to slowly cover them up. I did that a little bit today.
This is our first time through a channel that is about 3 inches wide. She had some trouble completing the set at first because she was distracted by her ball near the end of the poles. You would think she would drive to the ball but if a ball is stationary, Tessa often has to run a bit away from it so she can, you know, watch it with great intensity. Border Collies are weird.
The loud mouth in the background is Payton the Wonder Whippet. She was protesting having to stay outside in less-than-pleasant weather while Tessa trained. When we did let her inside while I continued to work with Tessa oudoors, Payton ransacked my purse and various bags in an attempt to find all potential snacks. This is why I was making her stay outside in the first place, of course.
My camera had some issues but here's some of the standard course, which was our second run this morning. We skipped the teeter and the weaves so we did the course in three sections. The first one is not on video.
This was our first run of the day. We had a little wait and she got really high. I'm slightly concerned with all the bar knocking... that's not happening at home so I hope it's just excitement. I'm only jumping her at 16" during courses because she really just can't coordinate the handling AND the jumping high yet. This was part of our actual lesson so again, fast forward through the parts where Angelica's coaching me and I'm huffing and puffing. (I can't seem to "uncenter" this and I'm tired of trying. My apologies.)
I've been taking a slow approach to Tessa's training. I think, for 16 months old, she's doing pretty great! Even though I'm concerned about some parts (BARS! TEETER!) and she's still got a ways to go on some things (PERFECT STOPPED CONTACTS! WEAVES!), I'm really just having so much fun it doesn't matter!
