Seminar Highlights

This was by far the best seminar of the three outreaches. Not sure really what the difference was- but it was very good. I did however send my notes (okay, I forgot them) home with Brenda so they are in cranbrook right now. Yeah. Smart eh?

So I am going to try and remember all the good stuff.

Saturday we worked a lot on Acceleration/Decceleration which was good as I sometimes struggle with this. Why you ask? Well because I tend to go all one speed. Slowish. It is hard to deccelerate when you are already going slow. So we talked about having to accel even for a few steps in order for the dog to read the decel. We did some pretty neat exercises that showed wether or not the dog understands the motion cues. Wicca gets it when I get it :o)

Sunday we worked on rear crosses, and course analysis. The rear cross exercises were fun- we talked about how to tighten a turn up with a rear (crossing closer to the jump) and how to make the dog understand what is expected of them. I use rear crosses a lot with Wicca but I still learned stuff I didn't know before or hadn't really thought of. It was neat to see dogs who didn't really "get" rear crosses learn them.

The course was wicked. When I get my notes back I will draw it out for you all. But believe me it was pretty technical. The coolest part was using a serpentine cue out of a tunnel. Who would have thought of that! I can see that Wicca and I will be using that one day! After we all ran the course once we picked it apart into stations and got to rotate throught the stations. I really needed to work on my threadle cue and wanted Kim's advice so picked that as one of my stations- we talked about how Wicca tends to power out of a threadle because of the front cross cue- she broke it down for me and showed me exactly where to reward. It made sense and is not something I will forget.

I got lots and lots of information this weekend and plan to put it all to good use. I am pretty excited again about training- so excited that I am going to order more jumps for at home. :o) It is hard to only train once a week with two dogs!

I have decided to do Outreach again next year. I waffled all weekend but it is a good group of people and I think that in order to improve I need to continue with the seminars. Other than seminars Sarah and I get no instruction so it is well worth it in the long run!