Have uploaded some videos to music of Competition Night at Agility Addicts - UK.  We have an agility and a jumping class which we run 3 times over.  There is a prize for the most consistent agili

Finally got round to finishing my Day Two notes of Stacy here in Perth. Enjoy and feel free to comment.

Today Stacy indicated that she wanted us to work on various handling skills such as our shoulder movements, front crosses and rear crosses. First up though, she talked about an exercise that someone had enquired about the previous day to do with teaching dogs to flex from the middle of their spine leading to greater and more efficient turning capability over jumps and on the flat. We organised a witches hat or cone that was around knee height and we tried a couple of dogs on the exercise however Stacy needed a dog that wouldn’t care about where mum was and was a high toy drive, in particular willing to tug with her. I was asked to bring Cypher out (he apparently has a reputation for his somewhat insane addiction to playing tug, he’s not even 2 yet!) and although at the start he was watching me closely as soon as Stacy brought the tug out the game was on, she had him in the palm of her hand. Stacy would hold him by his collar (as an extra note here she spoke about making sure our dogs were completely unconcerned about being held by the collar, that we should be able to reach out and hold the dog by the collar without the dog feeling like it was being corrected or feeling uncomfortable). So she held him by his collar in her left hand, had the tug toy in her right hand (this was a half meter length ropey tug toy – I think this exercise would be better with a longer tuggy rather than a short one). She held Cy so that he was facing just to the left of the cone, then she brought her right hand and the tuggy round the other side of the cone (she herself was obviously positioned fairly close to the cone). When Cy could see the end of the toy on the left side of the cone and was raring to get at she let him go telling him to “Get it” in an urgent excited voice. As soon as he leapt for it she dragged it quickly round, nice and close to the cone, Cy chased it turning really tightly round the cone and he grabbed it and played when they were clear of the cone heading off at a 90 degree angle to the cone.

On the Saturday we set up a fairly Masters level agility course containing all the contacts, the weavers and around 20 obstacles. At 8.30am Stacy asked us all to walk it and then run it how we would in a competition – no treats, no toys first run of the trial type scenario. This was used as an evaluating exercise really on her behalf so that she could see what level we were running at. After each run Stacy usually had a few questions for each of the handlers regarding their contact cues but other than that she waited till we had all run and then gave us her honest and frank assessment.

I had to re-surface one of the A-Frames from our club last week. We covered it in small rubber chips, an awsome surface. So while I had it at home I used it to practice Kilties contacts. Within a week she had nailed 2 on 2 off in a dwon position at full height. Isn't it great what you can do with access to the right equipment. Off-course I'll need to proof this with lots of different environmental distrcations, but it's a good start.

These videos show how shaping a dogs line in between obstacles can determine where they go next. It is crazy how 6 inches of movement into the dogs path can make the line for the next obstacles different.

The following is from the Stacy Peardot-Goudy Seminar, 1.17 - 1.19 in Happy Valley, AZ. Bold info for clarification added 1.26

Ever wonder what the time difference is between a double front cross (in this case could be called an RFP) at the weave poles and a front cross before and after? Here is the answer: