But Thursday night, we headed over to Goose Creek Dog Sports to do a little training with my friend Camille and her Miniature Poodle James Brown and Papillon Gus. I expected to have to set up some sort course (which I am not that good at doing), or just doing some jump grids and weaves. But, I was excited to see that the jumpers course that was used for the 2013 AKC Invitational Championship!
It seems like LaMesa does better with the more difficult courses because we have to really work together. Maybe it's because I am more in tune with her and how to run her on the tighter, difficult courses? Or maybe because those types of courses don't really call for a lot of all-out speed, which can start to get to LaMesa's head. Whatever it is, it works. I worked her over this course multiple times, starting off by working different sections here and there, mostly with rear crosses.
When I worked Dally on the course, I had a lot of blinds, with one rear thrown in, and those worked great with her because she was on fire. I don't typically school a course over and over with Dally any more, but if it's something that I know we'd benefit from by working different parts and seeing what I can do to make our course more efficient, I will.
Anyway, I finally decided it'd be fun to video me running LaMesa on this course. By this time, we had really worked on a lot of things, so she was tired, which might explain the knocked bar. I do wonder about running the opening with a Ketschker on the wrap, like I heard some people ran at the Invitational, but for LaMesa's size, I think the wrap was more efficient. I ran it with a wrap with Dally, too.
So what do you think:
I love how she likes to run these types of courses.
I'd love to try to get her qualified for the 2014 AKC Invitational--if we can get more consistent at the trials (nail all 12 weaves the first time, keep the bars up, and listen to me), we might have a chance. I won't be able to trial a whole bunch the first part of this year, which means the last half of Invitational qualifying, but we'll give it a good college try.
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| Happy Stump Kids, glad to be back to agility!! (That's Dally wearing her Back on Track blanket, I'll post on that in the next few days.) |
You are lucky to be able to work like that on your own. I don't have a training spot that lets you do that. There always has to be an instructor present.... The opening sequence looked fun and tricky.
ReplyDeleteYes, we are lucky. However, with LaMesa I really wish I had someone there to tell me what I'm doing wrong, how I can make her better. To do that, I have to drive the hour to Louisville to train, which gets rather expensive and tedious.
DeleteThis course was a lot of fun, definitely try to set it up!