Friday, August 31, 2007

A Good Class!

Notes from instructor:

Week Three: Skills worked: dogwalk/stairs, 4 jump distance grid, sequence with broad jump, winged jumps, focus forward, bang game/teeter, weaves, aframe

Cash: Teeter: Working 4 on board with bang game (he was just sure it was 2 on/off). Did run full teeter several times, had to lure with salmon, but got better each time. Julie is holding board and letting drop carefully. Would only run Cash on full contacts at this point, to build his confidence. Sequence work: Great understanding of FF, broad jump good. Stays good, little bit of yahoo, but came back easily, some sniffing. Dogwalk: Would not run up ramp, so physically placed on each time, backchaining running the full ramp. At end of time, he turned himself onto the ramp and ran full. YEAH!!


I was really proud of the little guy this week. In addition to the skills worked directly with instructors we were able to also work independently on weaves and A frame. His A frame was a little tentative at first but he was soon running it to a 2 on/off that was solid even if I walked away. So solid in fact that he did a handstand to stop and still landed his hind feet on the contact.

If we keep this up we may get into Handler's class yet. Yay!

2 comments:

Avalon said...

He really makes rapid progress from one session to the next with only a little direction ( or so it seems). That's wonderful!

And, still loving those reports. i wish our instructors would do that.

Julie said...

Thanks for your kind words. He has almost exclusively been shaped in his behaviors so he's had to think from the get go. *Oh, Mom doesn't want that, so how about THIS?*

He really surprised me since we had NO TIME to practice what with us leaving for Vegas the morning after last week's class and getting home Monday evening. Tuesday evening was nothing but rain here.

I really like the email recaps we receive from our instructors, and these chicks pull no punches. If you aren't doing something right, THEY TELL YOU, and tell you WHY they want you to do it the way they do. I bow to their experience and expertise. All of our instructors have titled several dogs in different venues and attend Tracy Sklenar, Susan Garrett and Greg Derrett seminars as often as they can. We've even had Tracy at our club for seminars.