It was a lovely weekend for an outdoor trial. The early Fall weather was crisp and cool. Not too warm. In fact, maybe the weather was too perfect....
Saturday Mr. Summit was POSESSED! Or else he's been drinking my coffee in the morning. We had jumpers first thing in the morning (never good to have jumpers first). I think we had a wrong course and I know there were several dropped bars. Hmmm... then followed his debut in Excellent A Standard. More craziness but the second half of the course was very nice.
Sunday I had my dog back. He had a lovely standard run in the morning (one dropped bar and one refusal) but nailed a particularly difficult wp entrance that many Excellent B dogs failed. You had to send your dog into a box at a diagonal and turn them into the wp while layering a jump. I do not like to layer but going into the box pushed your dog over the wrong jump. I was very happy with Summit's performance. At the end, I pulled him off a jump as he came out of the chute. I was in such a hurry to get ahead of him for a turn after a straight line of jumps. It turned out that I didn't need the distance after all and he had a nice turn to the finish jump.
His Jumpers run that afternoon was very nice. I love watching videos of the runs afterwards. I really thought I had decelerated and moved laterally to cue relative collection and the turn. Watching the video, I was very late with my lateral motion and there was no deceleration at all. Combined with my location and inside arm, I cued my dog to take the red jump. After the weavepoles, the run went very well. Summit collected and had some really nice turns.
Sage and I did not have as good a weekend as we usually do. First Sage's handler gets LOST on Saturday's Jumpers run. It was a lovely course with very nice flow! How the heck could one get lost on a course like that? Anyway, standard went better that afternoon... however Sage blew both her contacts. Not surprising since her 20/20 has been disintegrating quite rapidly over the past 6 months. I have been going back and forth debating whether to retrain her for running or modified running over both obstacles. Meanwhile, I've just been managing them in trials. She often strides through the yellow on the AF but will miss the DW contact about 60 percent of the time. More on that later when I've figured out what I want to do.
Sunday's standard run she blew the a-frame contact. She had a nice jumpers run that afternoon. She missed her wp entry but her time would have put her in second place in the Ex. B class. I didn't think she was running that fast but she had some very nice tight turns. I have to say, I am very pleased with how we are working together as a team on the course. She is reading my motion, position, and hand cues extremely well and I've been able to limit the verbal commands I use with her!
Agility Challenge Tip #20 – Practice Alone
6 months ago
