Handling 3 - Week 3
I didn’t get this updated right after class and now I don’t remember a lot of the specifics.
The first two sequences of the night we ran at 24 inches. The first sequence Riot nailed. If I remember it was some sort of box configuration with a figure 8 pattern with one front cross required. Riot read everything beautifully and it was near textbook perfect. Elsie asked if I wanted to run it again and I decided not to since Riot does seem to start to question himself when we re-run things.
The next sequence was a bit harder, but we still did a good job on it. Elsie had us re-run it because I wasn’t doing a good job queuing collection and Riot wasn’t doing a good job reading it. We ended up repeating quite a few times the one part, but in the end ended up with a much tighter turn and a much nicer line.
Then we moved on to work with Diann and the ugly serpentine with a tunnel infront of it. I knew Riot was going to beeline for that tunnel since he could see if from the start line and despite my lateral motion with no forward movement, he was taking that damn tunnel. I also decided to up the jumps on him the this sequence and introduce him to 26 inch jumps for the first time. Riot handled the 26” jumps like a pro (Diann said she thought he looked better at 26 than at 24) and we did eventually work through our serpentine with the tunnel suck issues (please, please, please don’t let there be anything like that on any upcoming corses).
Our last sequence was similar to the one before but heading the other direction. Our first attempt, I pulled him off the jump before the tunnel as I was a hair too early. But he came to me so he got a big reward for not taking that tunnel and listening. Then we were back to the tunnel suck. Diann distracted me and changed the subject and then had me run it again. And we did fine. She laughed and said sometimes you just need to get me thinking about something else and a little less focused and I do so much better — must be why Cisco and I Q when I don’t walk the courses and don’t have time to obsess :-P
Overall, it was a really good class. Elsie told me I’ve done a really good job with him. To which I replied “he’s almost been too easy.”
She replied “There is no such thing as too easy.”
After I thought about it, she’s right. He’s done really well at picking up most of the concepts in agility, but teaching him a serpentine was a painful, multi-week process. And lets not forget about the 8 months it took to teach him to retrieve ;-)
