When working on the bit I started yesterday I “ran out of time”. This actually means that I mismanaged the time available to me. Time needs to be viewed as a continuum that has no finite boundaries. Of course we have all kinds of devices that parcel up time and define it in manageable chunks with various systems of chronology like the calendar that creates the illusion that time ebbs and flows based on seasons, changes in temperature and conditions. As a consequence I was born in a Year of the Pig and under the alignment of stars that makes me Cancer.

I’m loving the emergence of the trees as they leaf out. Some of them start with a vulgar display of blooms straight away. I noted the beauty of the Redbuds and Dogwood at this time of year. When I bought my old properties at Dogwood I had to plant trees and make my own forest. For several years there I called it the “Short Forest” for the evident reason that it takes a tree a long time to grow. But now on these 28 acres I have a forest already and they are too abundant to actually count.

Okay, the right thing to do would be to look it up in Websters, which says: 1. a mentally deficient person: a feeble-minded person having a mental age of three to seven years and requiring supervision in the performance of routine daily tasks; 2. Idiot.

Dang… I’m impressed (with myself obviously). I believe I actually had the definition correct in my mind all this time.

Continuing the Curriculum Design

This sequence clearly presents a challenging approach to the weave pole entry. The handler isn’t left much room to shape the approach were he inclined to do so. As the criteria for the entry is rather high in terms of the dog’s performance it mightn’t be a bad idea to wire up the entry to help the dog solve the riddle. While putting up such an approach to the weave poles would be widely scorned if a judge were to do so in competition, it’s really not a bad training objective to teach the dog to seek out the correct entry himself so that the handler doesn’t have to be constantly shaping the approach and the dog can be trusted with nearly any possible approach.

You’ll note from a handling point of view the approach is quite easy if the handler trusts the dog. Drawing the dog out of the pipe tunnel the handler need merely draw the line over the jump and let to dog go forward to seek out the entry.

Much of my thinking in the design of the floor for Sunday mini-clinic classes was how I might swap out just a bit of equipment to make the challenges different so we don’t get stuck in a stereo rut that makes the day a bit tedious. In the four hour advanced/masters session we take short breaks for dogs to be walked; and during these I can easily swap out the equipment. Note the equipment designated in red should be staged nearby so that the change is quick and easy.

And of course since we are working now on the opposite side of the floor I have a bit of leisure to tweak the placement of the equipment while everyone is concentrating (or walking) the sequence on the opposite side of the floor.

The black-numbered sequence is quite interesting. The key to this is really the transition from jump #6, through the tunnel, and up the A-frame. Any time I have such a tunnel to A-frame transition I will caution my students in advance that they have a responsibility to make the approach square and safe for the dog with sufficient approach to get up and over. I will even show them precisely on the floor where the corner of approach might be.

When training with me we’ll always start with the entertainment round, meaning that my students will solve with the handling of their own device. What we’ll find in the turn to the tunnel is that if the handler has dog on left at the tunnel the sequence will be fairly doomed. At the same time a simple Post from jump #6 to the pipe tunnel might be too weak a signal to keep the dog off the wrong course A-frame. Oh what to do? I actually use this kind of discrimination to teach the RFP. If you don’t know what that is I suppose you’ll have to come train with me.

This sequence is a lot tougher than it looks. As most handlers default to fast dog handling (behind and pushing) we’ll get a fair number of dogs wrong course up the dogwalk straight-away after jump #1 as the handler removes himself from the picture in a lazy Post for jump #2. And frankly given the oblique slant of the first two jumps it’s difficult to set the dog up at an angle severe enough to take the dogwalk out of the picture.

Another interesting moment in the sequence is the rather wide open jumping sequence #3 through #6 to get the dog into the pipe tunnel. Many handlers will want to run up and micromanage the entry to the pipe tunnel as though the dog goes through the day being confused about where to place his own feet when he runs. Indeed the bold thing would be to send the dog out over jump #5 and let him find the pipe tunnel himself (without smothering him with supervision). This allows the handler to own a leisurely advantage in real estate to make the change of sides required for jumps #7 and #8.

To Be Continued