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.

Jon Watts - a very good handler and instructor from the UK. He was here this week on Holiday and gave a 1 day seminar for starters/novice dogs. Jon is 22 years old and has represented Great Briton at the world champs. I went to that as an auditor because I felt Kiltile was not up to a full day of training yet. I learnt a lot from the day. Everything he says and does is common sense, and pretty simple. Jon doesn't talk about front crosses, RFPs, pull through etc. He talks about dogs running with us and changing directions. He wants us to work out the most direct route as a handler and the shortest path our dogs should take - pretending that she is the perfect dog that can levitate over jumps! None of us have this perfect dog, but the more we strive for this, the closer we will get. He made dogs go through exercises on a double box, then we were shown his contact method (nothing special - 2 on 2 off, cool!), how he trains the see-saw (teeter for guys in North America) - he gets his dog to run to the contact zone and wait to be released (I can give you more details if you're interesteds). We then went onto a jumpers with weave course that the UK used for world champ trials and broke it down into 3 sections, and finished with the whole course. Jon then went through weaves and how he fixes various problems, like entry problems, slow weaves and early exits. All in all, it was a good day, especially for us people in NZ, we don't get too many overseas visitors.

I went back later that night for a private lesson with Kiltie, I think his first in NZ with a manic Beardie! We worked on front crosses, and tightening 270 deg turns, took a break to start her see-saw training. And went back to tightning turns, which is hard work for Kiltie, she has a tendancy to jump long arcs and loves to run fast straight lines. We finished a little early, because Kilties was nackered, she generally doesn't do more than 15 minutes work with me at home, or at the club.

I've attached a copy of the jumpers course, but I think I may have made it a little easier than the one we went through - it's amazing how things get fuzzy in what little capacity of my brain is left :-)

 Jon's Jumpers with weaves course