Handling 3 - Week 2
Riot has become a very motivated, drive-y dog. I’m finding I really need to work on collection with him as he has great extension, but will over jump if I’m not very careful.
Our first sequence of the night was a jump offset to a straight tunnel to a jump offset the same amount on the other side. Initially I led out about a quarter of the way down the tunnel. I knew he could have handled a bigger lead out, I don’t know why I didn’t give him one. Well, he beat me through the tunnel so I wasn’t able to push him out to the jump the way I needed to. Part of the other half of the class was also walking by at the time which created a distraction for Riot on his course. So we started over. This time I led out to the end of the tunnel and had no issues directing him over the jump, around the nearly 270, over the jump and back into the tunnel. The whole sequence was very nice and class was off to a great start.
Our second sequence was flawless. Diann did made me go back and tighten up my front cross with him (I love that they nit-pick to that level when you don’t have any other issues on a sequence).
Our third sequence of the night proved to be the most challenging. The opening was gorgeous — it was two jumps to a curved tunnel, so nearly a circle opening. I pretty much stood still and directed him around the obstacles. The further I hung back, the nicer the opening was as if I drove up at all, Riot was over extending the second jump and nearly overshooting the tunnel entrance. The next part of the sequence was the most tricky part. It was a 180 with a jump in the middle of the 180 that was not to be taken. Remember what I said about Riot having a lot of extension? Yeah, I really needed to hang back and get him to collect to wrap him around. We eventually got the sequence, but it took a few times.
The last sequence of the night I had him jump 24 inches. This is the first time I ran him in a sequence at a higher jump height. He was over jumping a little bit which slowed him down just a tad, but Elsie says as he gets used to jumping at the higher heights, he’ll even out. He did a really nice job on the sequence and other than me not settling and giving him the proper indication of where he was headed after the jump, it was flawless.
