Training

The field was mowed on Monday and I set up new drills for this week. I have several jump boxes set up to work on convergence. One of my bad handling habits is to use an opposite arm to cue convergence. So I am working on just using Summit's name and moving in the right direction. Jump boxes make me claustrophobic and I tend to want to overhandle them, thus that opposite arm tends to come up.

A lot of the jump sequences came from the APHS May article (convergence) and June (discriminations). I put a tunnel under the a-frame and worked both sides. I also practiced rear crossing the a-frame with Summit (something I wouldn't normally choose to do but doesn't hurt to practice it once in awhile).

I usually train Summit first with jump bars at 24". Then he waits on the table while I work Sage. I lower the bars to 16" for her and work the identical sequences I did with Summit. Sage is the final test on how good my cues are. I really enjoy working both my dogs without verbal cues as I can see what affect my motion has on their performance of the drills.

Here are two pictures I took this morning just because I thought the field was so pretty with all the green grass.

Jump drills

Tunnel/A-frame discrimination (red jump, blue jump, to either tunnel or a-frame)