Tonite was our first training night in the barn since last winter. It went great! All of our students dogs had no problems with the dirt and the horse poop. :) People were ready for their turns and it moved along at a good pace. My own dogs did well- I took Pixel and Wicca tonite (the boys will come Thursday) Wicca was super- we did some back to basics on threadles and serps. We were very successful and it was nice to have a dog that listened! Pixel was also a good girl- her weaves were amazing- which is funny because at the trial she couldn't seem to remember how...Handling wise she is such a good girl- although I need to go back and work on the basic positional cues exercise as we struggled with an arm change drill. And we did no contacts- just did some happiest place on the aframe.
I am really struggling as to what to do. It seems like I have two choices- a running or a 2on2off, and I don't particularily like either. I won't do a 2on2off on the frame for sure. But without having a frame to practice a running every day I think the progress is going to be too limited. Ugh.
2 comments:
Will Pixel really fly-off of an Aframe? Even wild Jimmy has never leapt off above the contact (and I probably just cursed myself by putting that in writing!) Now, the dogwalk, yes, that definitely has potential for problems....
I, too, only have access to contacts once a week, so very limited practice, as it is a group class environment.
It is really hard to train running contacts without access to equipment on a regular basis. Some dogs take to it pretty naturally, but if you have a jumper (like my corgi) then you need to be on it enough for muscle memory. Silvia Trkman's method can be done with just a board, but I still feel my toller and I are further behind then I want to be with turns simply because we can't get a real DW on a daily basis.
I know some corgi people around here teach a 2o2o and then switch to a quick release but I still worry about that. I am much happier with the 4 on the floor for my corgi and it was taught fairly quickly.
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