Moved to other group

I now set courses for the more experienced group rather than teaching the beginners. Hopefully I will go back to the foundation group again at some point.

foundation 19/07/2011

We are progressing towards doing the seesaw. The trouble with the seesaw is that it moves under the dogs' feet; scary! I built a couple of wobble boards for the class to use, one the classic with a thing in the middle so it tips in all directions, the other a very short plank with a pivot in the middle. They seemed to go down well. I was surprised at the range of reactions. My own dog was very suspicious of them, and would only put his feet on for a treat. At least one of the "beginner" dogs was happy to walk over it just to get to the other side.

I also put the A-frame in. Unfortunately our a frame does not lower. I had to tell them to be very careful so as not to scare the dogs. Most at least went over it, but this needs resolving. Someone is in the process of making a training a frame for the class so hopefully this will lower and can be used for the less confident dogs. Best dog in the class at this? A yorkie! Shows you that you can never predict these things!

We had the channel weaves out again. I need to bring a spanner to class as they are tiltable poles, and they keep tilting themselves. One dog has been taught elsewhere and needed luring and cueing for each pole and had a very slow weave. By the end he just needed the handler close and cueing with her knee. I think this dog will soon get the idea. The others are doing OK on lead.

We did a couple of jumping exercises on a double box. This confused people, but we will keep working on this, it's the first handling exercise we have done really.

In all they are all still learning, which is the main thing.

progressing on

I split the class into 4 last week and did one segment including weaves and a curved tunnel, another with just the dog walk and another 2 with just jumps in a up pivot and back configuration. It worked well because the dogs are all OK with each other, though some are a bit too sociable.

This week I split into 2 and it went OK. Simple up and down set ups, one with tyre, weaves and a curved tunnel, the other with the baby dog walk and a wall. The dogs are not bothered by the equipment and got on well again. There is a new dog with a bit of a thing about b&w collies, but you don't see many of them in agility :).

Hopefully I will start building more full courses and giving more 121 attention as people work their dogs. That way the distracted ones will be OK. As per usual some of the dogs are getting more distracted as they gain confidence and start to predict getting excited by others running. They will hopefully learn to calm a bit.

Another problem people are getting is that their dogs are focusing one jump at a time and trying to return to the handler between. So far solved by squeezing the jumps closer. I will try to find info on exercises to solve this for next week.

All in all they are all nice dogs, and the owners are all interested. Some perhaps want to go faster, but there are limits to how quick you can teach agility safely especially in groups.

Front Cross

In the above diagram it makes sense to start on the right of jump 1 or thereabouts. If 7 was in a different place one could just run up the inside to 4, turn with the dog still on the left and run back down the line. However, 7 is there. Dogs tend to come towards us and If you do what I just described there is a chance they will take the back of 1, not 7. The answer is to get on the left hand side of jump 5 and 6. But how?

Use a front cross between jumps 4 and 5.