Some time to sit back and think

Well no show at the weekend so what do I write about??

The dogs have had a quiet week on the training front as well. We have been busy with SWAG and realised that we had the grand total of about 4 leads and 6 toys in our stock boxes for SWAT show where we have a trade stand this weekend. Cue Dan frantically cutting fleece, me now having repetitive strain injury and Cruze in a strop as he can’t see why he can’t have every single toy that is being made for himself!!

I have spent some of my time reading other blogs and websites and looking on YouTube at various things for inspiration.

I found several things that I thought I’d share with you:

I like this blog; and this post in particular:

Agility - The Chaos Theory - changing your perspective.

I like the tone and I like what the writer talks about and how she always seems motivated to do better and try harder and after reading this entry – I went away thinking she is so right! I want to be good, I want to show my dogs to their best potential – but am I doing enough to achieve this?

I then followed up reading this blog by watching this video:

And coming to the ground halting realisation of Hell no!! I am not doing enough to achieve this!!!!! 

Turns and turning is something all 3 of our dogs need to improve on but not half as much as Dan and I need to improve our ability to ask for these turns.

I know I know this already as this is all Phaze has done – learning to turn. I haven’t done straight lines, she doesn’t go through tunnels in a straight line time after time, I haven’t even begun to think about contacts, and I plan to do 2x2 weaves so we won’t even look at that until next year. However, her wing wraps are getting pretty good, we have worked on rear crosses and front crosses and angles of jumps. She will often train over the same obstacles as the grown ups – ok so the actual order the jumps are taken may not be the same – but they are put on angles, well spaced out, and not ‘obvious’ like you would expect for a baby. A friend of ours said a while ago that they can struggle to get out of Grade 3 as they train their dogs for Grade 7 from the outset as that is where they aim to be. You see time after time a dog that looks really fast over the lower grade classes – but as soon as you start asking for complicated sequences and turns you know that partnership has worked on drive in a straight line a lot more than turning ability (I’m not saying you don’t need a good ‘go on’, as of course you do, but it is not the be all and end all of training).

 I also know that a certain person who is doing extremely well at the moment concentrated on turning ability and understanding not speed in straight lines and this seems to be working out pretty darn well for her at the moment and even the critics are starting to have to sit up and watch this combination in action as they are fast becoming ‘the one to beat’.

I then spent a bit more time trawling the net looking for ideas and those few kind people that like to put up exercise plans!

CleanRun have an archive of exercises from their magazines, the added bonus of this is they aren’t UK courses and therefore force us to handle a little differently – I really enjoy European style courses and the USA seem to have a different style again – I think this is where the UK can seem to fall a little behind on imagination!

Agility Zone also have some fab articles and different exercise plans in their magazines and archives (if you subscribe to the magazine you get access to all the past magazines J ). I like this style of magazine over some of the other choices as it is a lot more about training, new ideas and how other people overcome common issues in agility. Rather than a place to advertise the same things over and over again sandwiched between some write ups of events which happened several months ago and can be seen elsewhere anyway.

So now not only do I now have an Agility Folder which comes to shows with us and houses our registration papers, KC books, R/Os and directions etc (still proud of the organisational skills here!) I now also have a Training Folder in the making with various exercises that we have found useful and to test our handling styles. I am hoping this will give us a clearer idea of the stages we teach things and the way we teach things when our next new Agility dog turns up (it’s not my turn next!! How unfair!!!)

SO I think we are getting there – we know what we want, we are starting to work out how to get there, and hopefully we will see some results – but if not then we will just have to try harder!!