Handling 3 - Week 2
Tonight Riot jumped 24 inches for all 4 sequences. This didn’t seem to phase him at all after jumping 20 inches all weekend.
The first sequence of the night I had a lot of problems adding in lateral motion where I didn’t need it. Once I stopped moving laterally, the sequence came together nicely. This sequence had a couple of really tight threadles — which were good since Riot needs to work on collection. He also got distracted for a minute watching the dog run the sequence on the other side of the ring. He just stood and watched for a minute and then came back to work.
Our second sequence we did a really nice job on. There was another tight threadle that Riot was able to collect nicely for.
The third sequence we picked up speed coming out of the tunnel and did a pinwheel into a serpentine. Riot did really well following my direction. Maybe too well as we had to repeat the serpentine a few times because I kept dropping my arm too soon which was pulling Riot in before taking the last jump. Sometimes he’s almost too sensitive to body cues — but he’s certainly going to make me a better handler.
For our last sequence, we had a threadle after the table. The first time through the sequence there was some hesitation on Riot’s part getting on the table (whoa, big table after the 16” table he had seen all weekend). The threadle was no problem, but we repeated the beginning part again with a lot more drive to the table.
