Sunday, April 1, 2012

Gambler Seminar

On Friday Jonah and I went to our first ever seminar.  It was great!  Grace had the full ring set up, and would change the different gambles around.  So, we'd plan an opening, then the whistle would blow and we'd go to the closing.  We generally got to run each one twice.  After 3 different full courses, at the end we just did a few distance exercises without doing the whole opening.

It was really neat to do each course twice, as it allowed us to really perfect the opening to get as many points as we could.  The ring is fairly small, so I could do more obstacles in the allotted time than usual.

As for the gambles, we had trouble with the first one, but after that we got in a rhythm and Jonah looked awesome.  Sometimes our openings didn't flow beautifully, but I'll take responsibility for that.  I was really tired and just not as focused as I like to be when I run him.  In all honestly, I was probably too tired to give him good handling, and I should have considered just not going, but we did learn a heck of a lot, so that was good.

The first gamble that we struggled with was a discrimination at distance, sending the dog out around the DW to a tunnel.  I guess I need to practice our voice cues more, but this was tough because the gamble line minimized my ability to handle the discrimination with body language and relied mainly on the verbal.  We got it done the second time, but it showed a gap in our training.

Other than that, his obstacle performance at distance is quite good, so teeters, weaves, jumps and the like didn't prove too difficult to us on the other side of the line.  We did some layering that he nailed very well.  Good boy!

Overall it was lots of fun.  Being so tired definitely meant I didn't give him as accurate of handling as I would have liked, but sometimes that's just the way of things.  Also, we worked out of a crate and Jonah really didn't like going into the crate.  Bribery works well, though!  However, once he was in it was nice to be able to go walk a course and not have to worry about him.  I'm not really sure it's worth it for us to put a lot of training into giving the crate more value--the only one we have lives permanently in the car.  Maybe some day, but we have more pressing things to work on for now.

On another note, he was absolutely perfect with other dogs at this workshop.  There were others around and out of crates between turns, but he never barked or anything.  That was a plus!

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