Having returned home from a long stint on the road I’ve had a pretty good schedule of private lessons. There were all crowded into the few days I’m home before taking off for a seminar in Pocatello, Idaho. Marsha takes care of scheduling matters… and pretty much makes it work.

I’m a little on the exhausted side. But this break-neck schedule happens every October it seems. On the return from Pocatello I’ll be home only a couple days before returning to the west coast for a TDAA judges’ seminar and trial near Portland, OR. I carefully avoided getting a red-eye flight on the return from either commitment. I’m getting to old to actually survive the red-eye

Not too long ago I got a stack of DVDs from Stephen Lewis representing the 10^th anniversary of the 1997 USDAA Grand Prix (up in Cleveland, if ya’ll remember). In watching the running of 16' division in the first round I’m struck by the observation that Tom Haskell, Jane Calleghy, and Sue Henry all competed on that day.

Coarse Review (sic)

Pictured below is the Jumpers course that I put up as the last event of a three-day weekend, just passed. The Jumpers class is a lovely way to end the weekend. The performances are quick; I don’t have to yell out numbers, or even count for a table performance. I especially like that I don’t have to chase a bunch of damned Border Collies up and down the length of the dogwalk to see if they touch yellow paint.

That is not to say that the judge doesn’t have an obligation to work, by the way. Indeed in the Jumpers class the judge must get a strategic position on course and constantly on the move to hunt down the refusal planes of the jumps. Well, at least this is certainly true in the international-style agility venues like the USDAA and the AKC. In NADAC or DOCNA a judge might very well park himself on a piece of lawn furniture or under a tent and simply keep an eye on whether bars drop and if the dog follows the numbered path.

Opening

In the opening of this course there were two challenge jumps that invited refusals. The first, jump #2 is a bit on the subtle side. The thing about subtlety is that the handler mightn’t see the challenge in the course walk-through. In this opening the handler might be occupied with the task of getting to the landing side of jump #3 forward of his dog for a change of sides; and so preoccupied could easily pull the dog off jump #2 before the dog actually jumps it, inviting the dog to pull of the jump, earning a refusal penalty.

Jump #5 represented a somewhat more overt challenge. The dog comes firing out of the pipe tunnel already only 2′ away from the refusal plane of the jump. The handler is obligated to show enough pressure to the jump to bring it into focus for the dog. While we did get a number of refusals at the jump the saving grace of the course is the left turn after jump #7 (or, arguably, after jump #8). That means that a fair percentage of handlers intended to push to the landing side of jump #5 to draw the dog into a Front Cross and so situate themselves on the turning side of the course. Considerably more problematic is the lazy convention of the “fast dog” handler to stand still and point out to the jump… almost surely causing the refusal at jump #5. Many of these handlers don’t seem to realize that dogs get directions more from the handler the feet than he’ll ever from the arm.

Intermezzo

The midpoint transitional course was a robust and lovely figure-of-eight most handlers followed a handling plan that had the dog on right for the approach to the spread hurdle at #8. Though some used a Tandem Turn (crossing behind the dog on the landing side) at jump #8. Neither plan yielded any trend of faults from the class.

No more than a couple intrepid handlers sent the dog ahead after the tire to finish the loopy portion of the figure-of-eight

The figure-of-8 never quite manages to close itself but will instead dismount sharply to the dog’s right and to the top of the bumpy road leading to the finish of the course.

Note too that the approach to jump #16 was not so much of a slice as it might appear on first glance. Indeed the arrangement of jumps leading to the jump managed to shape a rather squarish approach to the jump.

Where the course after the figure of-8 is an important question as the might want to have a plan for which side the dog should be working.

The Closing

In the transition between jumps #16 and #17 we saw some wide and inefficient turns as the dogs tended to study the wrong-course option of the dummy jump straight ahead.

Mostly what we saw in the overall sequence was a “fast dog” handling plan, with the handler crossing behind the dog and pushing through the serpentine. Aside from yielding the occasional dropped bar there were few faults in this part of the course. Only a couple dogs took the dummy jump mostly; (probably because  their handlers were too far behind and were unable to give the dog  a proper cue to turn.

Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston: dogwoodbud1@earthlink.net. And Check out my new publication the Idea Book – Agility Training for a Small Universe available at www.dogagility.org/store.