Tuesday July 11th 2006 - Advanced II, class #2

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

A good class, but not the best since I have a feeling Walter had to go but refused to, so he was slightly distracted. The class started with four stations. (1) jump to weave-o-matics - goal was not to get the weaves high, but rather to do it with some speed. Walter did well. (2) Tunnel - goal was to be able to send from a distance. Walter did this alright, but we should practice it some more. (3) Weave-o-matics - this time the goal was to push the limits and raise it higher. Did alright but need more work on this (obvioulsy). (4) A-frame on very low - goal is to get the dog into bow position at the contact. Ultimately once the dog knows bow properly on their own and doesn't need to be lured into it, then at the contact you shouldn't have to lure the dog into the bow, and only after they go into bow do you treat. You want the dog to get into the border collie crouch. At this point Walter only bows with hand lure, so I'll work on that some more this week. After the station work, we did the following straight-line sequence: tire, jump, jump, jump, table. You want to be a bit behind the dog and have them going fast over the jumps, but you don't want them to fly over/across the table. So to collect the dog to prevent them from flying off the table, you collect your own pace and it acts like invisible reins on the dog. I need to work on getting the table a fun place to be again for Walter since he's pokey around it (he used to love it, but it's worn off of late). Then we did part of that sequence in reverse: table, jump, jump, jump, turn left to a-frame. You want to veer your path gradually away from the jumps while extending your hand further and further toward the jumps. Walter being such a keener went to the tire instead of turning left with me the first time, but the second time we did it better. Also, Walter showed me today that he's a glass half full kind of guy when the instructor kept feeding him air treats, about 6 or 7 times in a row. It was pretty funny, actually.