Last Handling 3 Class
For our final class we had two short courses. One was 11 obstacles and the other was 10.
The first course was a little tricky, it was tight and Riot was a little high and was jumping long. I ran him at 24 inches since there were no other 20 inch dogs in class — Since we introduced him to 26” jumps, I’ve been jumping him in class based on what he’ll see at a trial the following weekend. Since we’re doing obedience this weekend, I hesitated on what to do with him in class. He is a bit slower at 24/26 than he is at 20 and this is something I need to be aware of. I was further ahead of him that I expected a couple of times, one of which nearly resulted in a collision :-S
So the first course, the first time I pushed up too far on the rear cross and he swung wide missing the next jump. Hanging back more resulted in a much tighter turn. I really did have enough time to front, but we do need additional work on rear crosses. It was a really touch weave entrance that included a surface change and we never did get a solid entrance at the speeds he was going. He was very focused on course.
The second course had a tire at 90° to the next jump. I led out laterally until I was close to even with jump number two, took one step forward and said tire and took off running. This course was essentially a big loop and I used “Ri” once to make sure he was turning over one jump and a go to get him to drive ahead to take the triple. Other than that I did not speak to him on course. He nailed the sequence and he understood what was expected of him on the lead out perfectly — we did a lot of practice with lateral lead-outs as a pup, but before class tonight, I probably would have been hesitant.
I’ve had a hard time getting Riot to tug on his “tug leash.” Before the trial last weekend, I took his favorite tug that he was given as a puppy and braided it around the meat of his leash. The tug did need some TLC and at least a re-braiding. This seems to have helped some as after every run at the trial he did run up to the leash his chair was on and put his mouth around it. I didn’t get a whole lot of tugging there. But by the end of the day I was starting to get some. Last night in class, I only used his tug wrapped leash as his tug reward after his runs and he did seem to be tugging with it more. I’ll probably leave it like this for a few more weeks and work on tugging with him, but I’ll either need to re-braid it or consider replacing the lead part with a new braided tug — maybe I’ll braid his tug in with a new piece of fleece or two. I am definitely getting more interest than I got before I added his tug.
