Jam has a FABULOUS running contact on the a-frame. Many people would kill for her running contacts. Funny thing is, I never trained it...she just does it. I can't even take credit for training it that way. Shhhh...don't tell anyone!
While her a-frame contact is rock-solid, her dog walk contact is not. I have to slow her way down and keep telling her to "target" all the way to the end. I really, truly want running contacts on the dog walk so I told my instructor this last night. She pulled out two stick-like things...the type of sticks you use to put up the orange snow fencing...and made a "teepee" at the end of the dog walk contact. I had Jam hop up on the downside of the dog walk a couple times to let her go under this teepee. She did it with no problems. Cool! Now...let's see what she does at full speed!
I put her over a couple jumps then sling-shotted her out of a tunnel onto the dog walk. She was MOVING! At the bottom, she simply dove under the teepee and ran after the ball I threw for her. It was beautiful!! I did it a few more times and she had no problems whatsoever. My instructor also did it with her so I could truly see how she's lowering her head, without missing a stride, and diving through the teepee.
I am so psyched! Now I have to find me some teepee making poles and build myself a dog walk so I can practice this at home! I would so love to not have to worry about her dog walk contact. Not to mention that it would shave a bunch of seconds off her time, which may allow us to beat some of those darned Shelties!!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
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2 comments:
OK, it's the "old-fashioned" hoop strategy. The big question is usually: How are you going to fade it so that the dog continues the behavior without the hoop there to remind her?
Team Fernandez-Lopez has some posts recently on running contacts; they didn't actually talk about the hoop method.
I know someone who used this method (btw, they're also called zoner honers by some people)and she tried to fade them by painting them green to match the grass. And also made them as skinny as possible.
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