Practice makes perfect-a primer.

So first of all. I am not sure why I wore this. It was on top of the stack, is all I can guess. It's a slippery slope, and apparently I'm sliding fast.

Anyways. It's been a while since I've imparted any useful information. As if I have in the past imparted useful information. Humor me.

I would like to say I work really hard when I practice. WHO IS LAUGHING? STOP THAT. I do I Do I DO, too!


Well, yeah. Sometimes the light is cool somewhere and maybe I have to stop and do a photo shoot. But I haven't even been bringing a camera with me lately, because I've been trying to really work as hard as I can and make the dogs better, stronger, faster, fancier, and while it's useful and informative to see exactly what I thought was appropriate to wear out of the house into public, sometimes it's just a headache to deal with the camera.

So I have dogs of different levels. Ruby is semi-retired and we think of agility practice for her like low impact water aerobics and she is wearing a bathing cap and can't get her hair wet. Otterpop has been blowing me away with her most excellentness but we need to get it together more. So 5 fault runs CEASE. And Gambles are got. And certain corgis get beat. Gustavo, he just needs to practice and practice and practice and practice. And practice. And practice.

I like to dole out equal amounts of turn. Although if by equal you mean Ruby usually gets a short turn, and those other two, long turns. I also like to dole out equal skills, so if someone is practicing one thing, the others might practice something similar. Although Otterpop needs to practice working away from me way more than Gustavo, who needs to practice working close to me. And he practices much more basic drills in the beginning, building up to harder ones. His jump angles get moved and I vary front crosses and rear crosses and where we're going so he HAS to watch my cues and not just run 100mph to the next thing. Otterpop practices hard things! I like to think of something really hard, set it up, and figure out how to run it with her. Like in a trial, you'd be all eeeww, when you're walking a course and see some ugly ass evilness thunk up by a judge. I try to think these up too and practice practice practice.

Today, I set up 3 main drills specifically for the G-man. Everybody else got to do these too, but he does them a lot a lot a lot to remember remember remember.

Drill One: A long leadout, send to a tunnel into poles.
Drill Two: An even longer long leadout, teeter totter to 2 jumps handled with variable directions to the a-frame and back down the line of three jumps.
Drill Three: Super duper uper long leadout to dogwalk, practicing me leaving him there and walking all over hell and back, then off to either a couple jumps or the poles/tunnel combo.

So 3 dogs times 3 drills times maybe Gustavo does each on 5-10 times and same with Otterpop and Ruby only once or twice is how many?

Equals 66 turns maybe for me? Hell yes.