Thursday, March 31, 2011

Weekend Inspiration and 100% running dogwalk contacts

A little inspiration for everyone trialing this weekend.  Heck even if you're not trialing this weekend.



You get that song in your head while you're waiting at the gate and then standing on that start line and you can't help but have the most awesomest of runs.  That's my plan for this weekend anyway.  We're only in 2 classes per day of a USDAA trial because I didn't want to enter classes with dogwalks but one of those classes is Steeplechase and we're going to have the most awesome fast smooth clean run.  Because I said so.  And because we've been practicing our butts off.

In even better news Strum finally had a 100% dogwalk practice.  Oh joyous rapture of 100% dogwalk contacts.  I nearly broke down weeping from the joy of it.  Set-up was dogwalk-jump-treat gizmo then after a few reps I added a jump before the dogwalk.  I went back to the treat gizmo so I could be sure I was judging the contacts properly but I'm intrigued by the 2 toy method and I'll be going back to that.  I'll probably alternate back and forth between them to keep us both on our toes.


Stats:

5/5 (100%)-full dogwalks

50's, breezy, morning

9 comments:

  1. that's awesome!!! He looks great. We'll see you this weekend at the trial.

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  2. Yay!!! fingers crossed you have many more!

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  3. Great news!!! Boy I would not want to be the judge who has to watch that flying blur. How in the world do those USDAA judges catch both the up and the down contact??

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  5. Great song for motivation. I think if we all had really excellent music in our heads before going into the ring,we'd all do much better.

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  6. Boy it's great to have a 100% training, isn't it. I'm sure Strummer was glad as well :)

    We tried our first whole dogwalk run yesterday (lowered to 3 feet). That was fun! It seems that when I'm behind it's very distracting if I throw the toy ahead just as he's about to do the contact. He prefers if I just throw it afterwards, wich works because he has a strong pull toward the jump.

    Have fun in ring this weekend :)

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  7. Any video of your full dogwalk? Just wait until you get to the fun of your first competition dogwalk.

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  8. I just published highlights from that training. We only did full length of dog walk for fun and curiosity (at 0:52). We should have back-chained it. The way we did it I think Ruby was a bit surprised at the speed with which he was running and wasn't comfortable. But I'm glad we did it, because now I know that his striding at full length is going to be very different from what he's doing now.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHOqrYoOGkg

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  9. Wow, Ruby looks great!

    It was a big jump for us to go from the table/plank to the full dogwalk and to go from the 2' tall dogwalk to the 4' dogwalk. Such a different animal when you add in the speed.

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