Saturday, February 25, 2012

Try it Again...and again...and again!

We went to run thrus yesterday to get another shot at the jumpers course.  The tough section looked like this:


In class, Jonah had turned really wide over 5, and his wrap at 7 wasn't great.  I had tried:
1.  Handling 5 and 6 with Jonah on my right and RCing 7.
2.  FC between 5 and 6, shoulder pull at 7.

At run thrus I tried:
1.  FC between 5 and 6 (with me staying close on top of him to really force a tight line), Ketschker at 7.  The FC was much better than last night, although still not as tight as I'd really like.  The Ketschker didn't work too well.  Jonah got confused and back jumped.  We're just not very used to Ketschkers.  When I did the BC part, I moved sharply to my right, opening the bar back up to him.  If I had held my ground better and just run straight ahead he wouldn't have been unclear about whether or not he was supposed to jump the jump again.

2.  Ketschker at 5, FC wrap to the left at 7.  This time the Ketschker worked brilliantly.  His turn at 5 was perfect.  Then the FC wrap at 7 was messy and he went wide.  Oh well.  I was psyched about the Ketschker.

To finish the day we did a novice standard course but I made sections of it into gambles.  He was great with layering a jump to go out to the teeter, but he popped out of our weave gamble.  It was tough:  I was a good 15-20 feet away, the weaves were right into the wall, and they were right next to the other dogs (of whom there were 11!  good business for Grace!!).  He got the entry and would weave all the way to 11, when he wanted to peel out early.  It wasn't great, and too bad that it was the end of our day, but it was a tricky question, and we got it after a couple 'oops' moments.

One woman told us how she always loves to watch us run.  It felt so nice.  Grace also commented on how 'experienced dogs' were flying through one section but green dogs were always taking a funny look at it.  She included Jonah in the 'experienced dogs' category.  I guess it's all about what your reference point is, but it's cool that he's getting towards that point.  What a good boy he is!  Hopefully we'll have a good day at tomorrow's trial, too.

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