So it was a beautiful, sunny Monday yesterday, a perfect day to brush up on some stuff. And not do weeding. Which is what my super nice husband asked me if I was going to do on my day off as he walked out the door in the morning.
I was all, "Yeah!" and sort of gestured vaguely towards the backyard where the presumed weeding presumably would happen.
And then he went to work. And then I packed up the dogs and drove up to practice. And do some painting.
Oh hell, stupid weeding.
Some of the weeds look like lucky clovers. And I saw what could have been a leprechaun walking down the street the other day. But it turned out to be a teensy, tiny old lady with a limp in a long, camel coat. Which freaked out Gustavo so bad he froze on the spot. So a real leprechaun would have been worse, most likely.
Which is how I explained the same weeds in their same places when my super nice husband came home from work. Leprechaun prevention?
Also, these drills aren't in the order I practiced them in. They're in the order I drew them in so they would fit in my notebook. Under where I had written "Don't forget about the 2 guys carrying mean pitbulls down the side of Green Valley Road." And something unreadable about Blackheart Procession. And "trucker hats with quilted chickens on top."
My writing's really messy. So it might not say that. But I'm pretty sure it does.
I like to call this one "Weave poles when the person stays back behind some jumps and sends the dog in any crazy old way." Otterpop also had to do these with me relaxing in a chair way out to the sides of the jumps and go in from all angles.
Basically, the dogs just gotta do those poles no matter where I am or where they're turning off of the jump. Robot gives them the treat so I can just hang out and jump up and down and stuff.
The point? Yer dogs should do the damn poles as fast as they can no matter where the hell you're standing or what they just did.
This scenario is a problem for both dogs. This drawing is not to scale. Think spread out jumps, requiring SUPER fast running. Gustavo has to work on tunnel leadouts with me far away and get it through his little noggin that I can be lateral to him and far away and he still has to release into the tunnel. He's getting better.
Otterpop's scenario with this setup is tricky. She has been going very, very fast and I run off the start with her. I'm doing this freaky leadout now where I keep her barking at me by asking if it's her birthday and I creep backwards and then RUN. I like it that it's becoming very scary whether I'll beat her or not so I'm trying to get further away from her with my birthday creep, because as you can see, a front cross is involved here.
You see that, right?
The point? Yer dogs should have a plan for when there's a tunnel on the start and the angle is weird and you want to lead out and have super speed.
Gustavo also got to practice a modified version of this with 2 poles and the same tunnel. With me leading out on both sides and him getting it, come out of that tunnel and right into those poles.
The point? Even a dedicated tunnel fan as himself needs a trained plan with leadouts and leadout pivots, and blasting out of a tunnel on a weird angle is a perfect place to practice those pole entries.
Gustavo has made it through quite a few Masters Gambler's Q's on the basis of fast running, and his joy of running away from me and over and through obstacles. Lucky. Probably because out there in the weeds are genuine 4 leaf clovers. Another reason to not weed. However. This does not equal the same thing as trained directionals and for him to ever get any hard gambles, he has to learn this stuff. Just like Otterpop had to.
So we are poking away at his Turn at a Distance. It's looking good. I use robot to reward him. We have to practice it a million more times before it's going to work in a trial situation.
The point? So Gustavo gets some rad gambler's licks like Otterpop.
Otterpop got her mad gamblers skilz due to my stubborn perserverance and her willingness to ignore my speaking in tongues. She is on a 9 in a row streak right now, which I likely just jinxed. Otterpop is rad. Her agility is becoming so rad. Her gamblers skilz are rad. But I can't let them get dusty. Today I made one where she had to come out of the tunnel, not jump a jump by me (like, you know how EVERY gamble always has that fakey jump on the line?) and go out past the tunnel entrance, do a jump, then turn back into the tunnel.
The point? So Otterpop can become the excellent gambling superstar queen of stubby, tank-like, barking small dogs everywhere.
1 comment:
I am all completely signed up for your exercises and in fact have been doing them for years since even before you posted them, is how precognitive I am. In fact, during the long dull rainy autumn months when i didn't feel like practicing agility, the only thing I ever felt like was sending dogs to tunnels and weave entries from random places. And so Boost chose to miss the one weave entry on the only weaves she had a chance to do on saturday and it happened to be the #7 obstacle standing in the way of a superQ and so we will go back and do more weave entries. Nancy would say "do hundreds of them." I think I have. Maybe not the correct hundreds.
On the other hand, it worked well for Tika when she was young and we used to smoke people on tough weave entrances. But now everyone has much better weave entries. OK, must do thousands of them. Hope otterpop and gustavo pick up the idea faster than Boost has.
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