A fun course to play with :-)

Great news! I trained Maze for the first time since I pulled him from the last run of the Mile Hi trial, he ran great!!! He seems to be feeling great and I am seeing no signs of any pain in his back or hips! YEA!!!
In a couple of weeks Maze and I head to the World Team Tryouts in Hopkins, MN so I set up a course that would once again test our "International" skills :-)
SoBe and Maze both got to play on this course and they did great! I have to say though, I am starting to get concerned that my dogs may not be able to actually take the front of a jump anymore since all we seem to practice is back side sends! LOL!!
the dogs had a week off while I was in SLC and Kamloops teaching and will get another 10 days off while Geoff and I are in Hawaii on a working vacation :-) I think it is a perfect schedule given the events coming up.
Maze will have a couple of days of training this week, a couple of days of training right before the Tryouts, and, a lot of rest in between. Maze has had a couple of months of pretty consistent trialing and now some much needed rest before we start up again.
I definitely find that my dogs do better with breaks in between trials, especially when they are high pressure trials.
I can say in all honesty that I am ready for a vacation myself! I am working while in HI, but Geoff and I have a week of vacation between my seminars, I am going to force myself to RELAX!! I will miss my dogs as quarantine issues in HI mean everyone has to stay home, but the rest will be welcome after a super busy winter, spring and soon summer.
So, back to the course... give it a try, let me know how it goes :-) I played with the pieces first before running the whole thing. I started with 8-9, followed by 7-9, then 6-9 :-) Next we played with 9-15. The obvious issues with these sections were the pull throughs to the back side sends. Think carefully about the cues that you will use to ask your dog to negotiate these sections, remember to maintain consistency regarding what each cue or combination of cues means to the dog to ensure that you are asking for the right thing!
I also segregated 1-5 and worked it as a seperate sequence as well :-) I always like to break down any course or sequence to just 1 or 2 major challenges allowing me to really concentrate on each one. This also maintains a high reinforcement ratio making the learning process go so much faster! Keeps the fun factor high as well :-)
I do not always put the pieces together it depends on how each piece works out. it is crucial that we end on a high note and that I do not overwork the dogs :-)
As an aside, Danger is looking FANTASTIC!!! He gave me the best Teeter performance ever today and is getting the whole channel weave poles concept beautifully!
Dog Walks, well... fabulous is the word..