We’ve finally gotten to a class where we’re running courses — complete with contacts and weaves! Tonight was our first night of our pre-competition class and we did two courses. I have a few goals for Riot in this class. One is to proof contacts since we don’t get a lot of contact practice and the second is to build confidence.
Our first course didn’t include the weaves, but did have all three contact obstacles and a table. Riot has an awesome table I don’t need to be near him, I just need to tell him table and down and he does it (with the exception of his first table in competition where he had a “wait just a second I need to smell first” moment). Overall I’m pretty happy with the way the course went. We did have a few less that stellar moments. The a-frame was positioned so the dog walk was sort of infront of it and there was a U shaped tunnel under the middle of the dog walk. From the a-frame, the next obstacle was the end of the tunnel closest to us. I had not seen the dog walk as a possible off course during the walk through but as soon as I released Riot, he made a bee-line for it. Whoops. I did two things wrong here: 1.) I took my eyes off of him, and 2.) some of my motion was forward and I all of my motion should have been lateral. Our second issue was the cute to teeter. It was at a funky angle and I probably should have front crossed after the chute, but that is something I never do as I have visions of being knocked over by crazy dogs coming out of the chute. Instead I tried a rear to the teeter. Because of the unnatural angle between the obstacles and a very poorly timed rear cross, I pulled him off the teeter. In order for that teeter to be successful, Riot would have needed to have more drive to the teeter and my rear cross needed to be a little later after he had fully committed. Our last issue was a tunnel to two jumps that were nearly at a right angle to the tunnel. I had hung back to collect him coming out of the tunnel in an effort to avoid having him take the a-frame in front of the tunnel exit. That didn’t work very well. When we tried again and I kept moving he came along with me nicely. The last comment to me was he’s getting faster and I’m going to need to be able to keep up. He really is a fast dog and I think if I’m going to have any hope of running him to his full potential, I need to put distance on him and teach him to drive ahead.
Our second course had weave poles and no table. It actually started jump, weaves poles. And Mr. Riot broke his start line stay. My reaction was “oh no” in a loud voice and Claudia looked and me and said, “You really didn’t see that coming?”
Yeah, I really didn’t see that coming. He typically does the one foot forward, start shifting weight onto that foot like I’m ready to go, but typically he doesn’t break. I should have figured that since this was he second full run of the night that I would see it (he gets even more amped after he’s had a turn). Whoops. Well after that we were off to a not so great start. I was not in the right position because of course I should have been cueing collection instead of extension — I think I’ve gotten to the point where getting through a course is not good enough, I need to understand what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what should have been done differently. Thankfully my instructors are really good at making me think through these things. Riot has wicked fast weave poles, but not as much independence as I want to see. I started my front cross when he was between poles 9 and 10 and he came right out. He should have finished regardless of my position (but, admittedly, I really did have time to cross after he finished). I had another not so nicely times rear cross between the tire and a jump (I was a little late), but other than that, it was a really nice run.
It must have been because I got told multiple times how great he did tonight.
The one thing I’m not happy about was his contact performance on his dog walk. Both dog walks, he stopped about a foot short of the bottom. He was well within the yellow, but was certainly not in 2o2o position. He did this back in his contact and weaves class and granted it’s been nearly a month since he’s seen a contact (too much snow and way too cold outside), but this is something we’re going to need to go back and work on.
Overall, I’m very happy with how he did. Technically, he’s not supposed to be in the class. It’s the next class after his Handling 3 class that he is also currently in. So for a young dog jumping ahead, I have to say he’s doing a really good job.
