Practice 3/31/14

SO PROUD of the distance work into the weaves! She's the best girl :)

Pratice 3/30/14

Today's practice was our best ever! Even though she was a bit tired getting into the car to go to train, she was pumped up, fast, and focused at practice (in other words, her usual self). Her teeter still needs work, but she learned the NADAC hoop in a very short period of time. She had some issues with handling the weaves at speed so we'll continue to work on that. The A-frame was shorter than regulation height and I didn't change it, but her contact was perfect. And her dogwalk is getting so fast with a fantastic stop at the end. She also handled at a distance really well. The best distance send didn't get recorded, of course.

I learned that I'm far from with-it handling her. I kept forgetting how I wanted to do one portion of the unnumbered course and there is no time for forgetting at warp speed.

I'm so proud of Tess! We are having such fun together!

These videos are pretty awful. My videographer had to pee and pretty much didn't want to be my videographer at all, so there you go. Hope you can spot the brilliance in the mess!

Practice 3/26/14

Today Tessa and I were working on collecting and wrapping around a jump on a verbal cue versus extending and running forward on cue. Also, we were working on marking dropped bars and trying to get her to jump cleanly.

My videographer pretty much did a terrible job, but she's so intensely involved with the whole exercise that I'm posting the videos anyway :)

Yard Practice 3/25/14

I learned a few things from today's practice.

1. My hard is really crowded full of stuff, which might make it a challenge for my dog to know what I'm pointing to. I suppose this might have an advantage when we get to trials where things aren't a mess.

2. Trees can cause you to set up things that your dog can't really do.

3. Stick in the ground weave poles can mess up a good weaver.

4. I need to work on my weave pole sends again. She needs to be able to finish the set while I go elsewhere.

I rearranged the course as I went along to make it more doable. I thought she kept the bars up pretty well and did OK considering the conditions. I was trying to prepare a bit for NADAC weavers but for the future, this is just too much stuff for my little yard. It wasn't conducive to a good practice.

I reset the weaves so they'd be straighter. During that time, The Girl/videographer did a course walk.

Here's the reset weaves.

All in all, not too bad, but I wasn't too happy with it. My faults, not hers.