Training

I've been asked to post more about my training sessions. Originally, I started this blog just to keep up with all the competition and title updates without having to edit my website.

I have a 75 x 110 foot field behind my house and pretty much all the agility equipment minus the chute. However, I never set up full courses to run. I tend to set up short drills to work on specific skill sets. Some of these skills are natural progressions of foundation work and some are weak areas that show up while running full courses in competition.

This is what I set up this weekend.



Saturday I worked tunnel - teeter with Summit (teeter is weighted). Then we worked just the tunnel to jumps. Extension and collection, send out to the pinwheel, turn, and then cue extension over the jumps to the tunnel. Then back down the line of jumps, deceleration and lateral motion for a 180 vs. pinwheel. Summit did very well and did not drop any bars while jumping extended down the line of jumps towards the tunnel as well as collecting nicely out of the tunnel for a tight wrap around the first jump, back into the tunnel and down the line to the pinwheel/180.
I did not work the teeter with Sage but did practice the four-on-the-floor at the bottom of the dogwalk as well as the deceleration cue for her stride collection on the downramp. Then I dropped the bars down to 16" for her (she jumps 16" in training) and we had fun running down the line of jumps into the tunnel and then deceleration to cue collection for a FC or post turn at the jump before the tunnel. Because she is hearing impaired (she can only hear out of her right ear), I find it is often best if I run her without verbal directional cues (not even her name). This way I focus much more on what my motion (forward, lateral, decel.) is telling her.
This morning we worked on convergence with motion - something that I need to work on more with Summit. We've done a lot of RTH work but I have only lately added more motion.
Sage got another session on the dogwalk and more extension/collection drills using the tunnel to jumps.