After the Flashpoint trial on Sunday, I took Dexter back up to Linda's. He was AWESOME!!! Fast Aframe and DW and a good teeter. not going as far on the board before pausing as I'd like, but he did it with a fair amount of confidence and was happy to perform it multiple times. I was so pleased.
Last night I took Dexter to one of Vicki Woods' classes at Flashpoint Agility in Marengo. I was for the most part, very happy with how he did. He was pretty fast on the jumps/tunnels, and I got to work on getting some front crosses in while he is running at that speed. At BRAG class, he does not run fast!! It's frustrating because I can't work on the skills we really need. Instead I'm dragging him along, doing FCs with ease because he is nowhere close to where I am.
It's so interesting to me that when Dexter is running fast it's much more difficult to do FCs than it is with Panic. Of course it makes sense, because with Panic I can get lateral distance. With Dexter, he would pull off of jumps due to being so green. So I have to run the whole path with him and then try to get ahead. It's tough!
Anyway, back to contacts. The course was set up perfectly for what I needed, A-frame was the first contact, followed by the dog walk and then lastly the teeter. The A-Frame, I think he refused once (although I think he was distracted, not not wanting to do it), and then he was fine. The DW he was fine right away. The teeter.... well he did it but not great. We did get to work on a teeter that was set very low and we got to work on it like a wobble board basically. So, improvement was made. I did convince him to do the teeter a few times but he wasn' happy with it. Gotta get him on more!!
2 comments:
You should work on the front crosses in your lesson w/ Linda. With a little dog, the way you do them will probably be totally different than with Panic because you really don't need him to collect - ever - on probably 99% of courses. So, you can probably get away with doing a lot more FMFCs - giving mostly forward cues for each obstacle and then essentially doing your cross on the flat between jumps.
Hi Lisa - thanks for the comment. I am only taking Panic up for the Linda lesson, but I will definitely work on my FMFC's with Dex. I think you are right, I am trying to run to BEAT him so I can do a FC instead of smoothly doing my FC while moving forward. For example at the flashpoing class, there was a serp, and then off the third jump two jumps straight in a row before a right turn at a 90 degree angle where I basically had to do a FC. He really picked up speed here and I had a tough time getting my FC in because I was doing it so abruptly and at the last minute, so it really interrupted our flow. A FMFC would have made total sense. He is just now getting speed to where I actually need to handle, and I really need to adjust my thinking. Thanks!
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