The TDAA Petit Prix is one of the most fun venues in the world. The semi-final rounds consist of several games and standard rounds. Players will earn points for placement. The top dogs with the most points get into the final round (one game and one standard round).

This year we’re playing a new mix of games. I was reading up on “Tunnel Vision” a fun game invented by one of the true great luminaries of our sport, Darlene Woz! Darlene has been responsible for inventing a number of fun games over the years. True games have so few outlets in the world. The USDAA and CPE and NADAC have stock games (tho NADAC’s are all boring follow-the-numbers-games). But in the TDAA we can play any game that can be dreamt.

Tunnel Vision #1

The key to Tunnel Vision is the performance of tunnel “clumps”. Yes, that is the correct technical description. The objective is to perform the three tunnels in any conceivable order… but without repeating any *and* accomplish this feat while constrained by a containment line.

Now I’ve set this up for practice. In the diagram what you see is a table over two jumps to actually introduce flow to the sequence.

I think that a big mistake that a lot of people make when doing distance work is to believe that it’s a static exercise and involves standing still, flapping your arms, and shouting a lot. In fact, all of those things are more likely to spoil a “distance send” than make it successful. So, the flow is important.

This sequence might be started by getting the dog into the rightmost pipe tunnel (you’ll note that this is a 15’ tunnel, while the other two are 10’; this is true because I own only two teacup tunnel [16”] and a number of 24” tunnels). Now I am pretty sure that the last thing the dog should see coming out of the first tunnel is a handler standing still, flapping his arms and shouting. Instead the handler should be tracking back to the left, giving the dog a nice calm/clear “tunnel!” command.

Now, whichever tunnel the dog goes in leaves the handler to the riddle of how to get the dog into the other/last tunnel in the clump. I am favor a flip-back Tandem at a distance (if you don’t know what that means… humor me… it’s just rotate and push towards the dog to turn the dog back).

It might be worth practicing working the flow into the tunnel entry on the opposite side of the clump. This might be set up (using the flow obstacles I set up to introduce) using a Front Cross to turn the dog sharply and send ahead.

After getting the dog into the left-most tunnel I’d ideally like the dog to take the other short tunnel. I accomplish this, by movement at a distance, by giving a wicked counter rotation at the instant the dog emerges from the first tunnel. So when the dog comes out of tunnel two the handler basically can just apply lateral pressure (movement) in the direction of the last tunnel. Failing that… and the dog pushes out to the far tunnel after the first, the handler’s pressure would go the opposite direction.

Tunnel Vision #2

I don’t know what the configuration of the tunnels will be at the Petit Prix. The judge can do almost anything in the design process. This is a thing I dreamed up and seems kinda fun looking and quite solvable. The handler can take the two tunnels to the outside fairly easy, and hope for the best in getting into the center tunnel.

Note that in the game it’s probably not a good idea to draw the dog back after each performance of a tunnel to the handler’s containment line… as surely there will be a time consideration. The performance of the tunnels should be as neat and timely as possible.

I’ll speak more to the rules of this game within the next few days. And, I should speak of the other games as well.