We finished last week our fourth agility camp of the year. Four days, with a small group… that’s the way I do it now. They were a fun group who took my coaching with kindly good humor and seemed to learn in leaps and bounds. On the day that camp ended the two Linda’s arrived in their big honking RV and camped over for another four days, taking three hours of private lessons with me, while enjoying the recreation of our near wilderness property with all their spare time. On Sunday I had a group come in for our Gas Savers class; so it was a busy day for me in which I worked nearly as many hours as a person with a job.

Today it was 500 miles on the road, driving to Traverse City Michigan where tomorrow I’ll begin a four day judging seminar. I expect to start back home on the last day, but expect I’ll probably wind up spending the night in a hotel down in Toledo.

A helter-skelter as I understand it is a type of slide that children play on in the United Kingdom. It starts with a small spiral that gets bigger and bigger, apparently accelerating the speed and fun up to the end. Well, that sure sounds like fun to me. In this helter-skelter course I did not number the reverse. Yes, after hitting the tunnel at #17 the handler turns his dog back (the tunnel does, actually) and runs the course all the way back in the reverse direction.

I am fond of a technical and challenging course. I’ve always endeavored to allow the dog to get working at full speed so that even subtle challenges loom as a significant test of the dog’s training and the handler’s canny skill. A helter-skelter for all that it looks like a matter of great simplicity manages to expose simple flaws of handling. Look at it this way. I know as a course designer that if I put a simple four-jump pinwheel in a course, the NQ rate will go up at the pinwheel by about 15%. That being said the helter-skelter is just a great big ol’ pinwheel and in many ways not as forgiving as a four jump pinwheel.

So what are the errors that handlers make? It’s really a short list and consequently a study of some basic handling discipline. Allow me to list: failing to honor the dog’s path (working on a different obstacle than the dog); drawing the dog into handler focus when he should be in obstacle focus; not running when the course demands it; running when the course demands brakes.

Oh, and by the way, the Helter Skelter course is a fine romp for a dog. And when handled correctly will have that dog flying.

Frick’s Threadle

I saw a bit of training tape in which Steve Frick was teaching a cumbersome handling plan for a threadle. The bit I liked the most was that he put it on a hexagon which makes for a more forgiving threadle than a line of jumps (arranged in erstwhile serpentine fashion). I got to put this up at camp, and had an absolute blast with it.

Aside from the obvious challenge of the threadle sequence, #3 through #6, the course had other interesting moments. Note that I give dog’s choice to the entry to the pipe tunnel[1] at #7. While the handler is given the option of releasing the dog into whichever entry, a real strategic downfield advantage is gained by entering the pipe tunnel on the right side, to straighten out the approach to jumps #8 and #9. The #9 through #11 transition is also a bit interesting. The handler might step out on the landing side of jump #11 into a Front Cross (or Blind Cross) to preserve a nice “L” shaped dog’s path. Or, the handler might push the dog through the 235º turn from jump #9 to #10 to layer back to the landing side of jump #10 for a deft Front Cross.

Note that during the performance of the weave poles if the dog has been well trained to weave unattended by the handler… the handler can actually get an advantage in real estate fading back to the inside of the hex to have position for the closing. The closing itself is a bit of a challenge of orientation. As the dog comes into the hexagon over jump #13 there are no fewer than five exits from the hex. So the handler should have a pretty good spatial awareness.