I spent the weekend judging DOCNA at Kathy & Craig Chittenden’s wonderful Sugarbush Farm in central New York. Sugarbush is a working dairy farm and maple syrup plantation. I’m slightly amazed at Kathy and Craig… they run a working property of some 300 acres and surely have plenty of chores. And yet they find the time and will to host agility trails on their property… and compete in these trails with a half dozen of their own dogs.

This was a lovely trial reminding me greatly of how agility used to be in the early days of our sport, before we started taking ourselves so seriously. It was a one-ring show; so everyone got to watch everybody run. People cheered for one another and had a load of fun with their dogs.

I was struck by the sense of community among the players. Certainly no one acted like or was treated like a stranger. There was an impressive bivouac of travel trailers camped around the ring. And so the evenings were affairs of socializing, cook-outs, and an abundance of free-flowing beer.

A deep undercurrent within the community stemmed from the NEBCR bunch… New England Border Collie Rescue. These are people who commit time and resources out of their lives to save abandoned Border Collies. Obviously, these are people after my own heart. It was a pleasure to be among them for the weekend.

Sugarbush Farm is evidently well known in the area. Wearing my new Sugarbush Farm tee-shirt I was hailed by a couple named Gordon & Liz (who apparently run Belgians in agility, and train with Kathy at Sugarbush) while getting breakfast at McDonalds in the early a.m. at the airport in Albany.

It was good to be out in gorgeous weather playing my favorite game. But I am looking forward to getting home. I have chores to do that I’ve overlooked.

How My Gamble Skunked the Class

For many years I’ve held a private notion that “skunking the class” probably means that the riddle itself probably stunk the joint up. I’m fairly positive that most people who’ve ever trained with me could actually do this gamble so I’m just going to assume that the class wasn’t ready for the challenge at this particular trial. So do note that I’m not particularly taking credit for any stinkage.

Anyhow, in DOCNA they call the class “Traditional Gamblers” which is probably mostly to proclaim that it is “unNADAC-like” gamblers. NADAC gambles are primarily impulsion-based lateral distance romps that don’t actually test handling at a distance. In Traditional Gamblers, we ask the handler to negotiate interesting handling sequences while working at a distance from their dogs.

The trial at Sugarbush Farm was rather small with the number of Specialist (masters) dogs being most rarified. So this gamble didn’t really have an adequate test in numbers. However, enough ran that I will maintain that the chief difficulty in solving this gamble isn’t so much the notion of whether a dog will work away in the weave poles; but how to effect the turn from jump #2 to the weave poles.

While the dummy-jump beyond the turning jump might provide considerable enticement to the dog, it is certainly far enough away that a handler who has gone through the pains to teach his dog to turn away from his position might just as well treat the dummy as though it doesn’t exist.

The predominant (and failed) handling looked like this. The handler makes the approach to jump #2 with the dog tightly on his right side, into a Rear Cross at jump #2. The real difficulty with this choice of handling solutions is that the most important attribute of a Rear Cross is that it creates a tightened turn on the landing side of the jump. As you can see, the moment actually calls for a wide sweeping turn… not a tightened turn.

Another mistake that most handlers made was in failing to keep pressure on the approach to the weave poles. Pressure can be defined mostly as those physical cues that the handler might adopt to give the dog direction… what direction are you facing; what are you looking at; what are you pointing at.

Pointing is the key, I suppose. The handler points more surely with his toes than he will ever point with his hand. So in the dog’s turn after jump #2 he must surely be facing the weave poles if only for a glancing moment. If he checks in with the handler, as most dogs will do in a Rear Cross, if the handler is facing the pipe tunnel the sequence is surely doomed, no matter where the handler’s arm might be pointing.

My own solution might have looked like this. I would use a Layered Tandem. The Tandem is, of course, just a form of the Rear Cross. But it is executed on the landing side of the jump rather than on the take-off side. An important attribute of the Layered Tandem is that it creates a wide and sweeping turn.

I should point out a couple other important details of the handler’s movement in this solution. Note that the handler makes an initial send to the pipe tunnel from a position nearer to the exit than to the entrance. This gives the handler an advantage in real estate to get to position for the Tandem on the landing side of the jump.

Note too that the handler works at a comfortable lateral distance from the dog in the transition from the pipe tunnel to jump #2. This allows the handler to make the turn in convincing fashion, selling the dog on the notion that they are both making the turn and assuming a new direction in space. The effect of the handler moving in generous fashion is that the handler’s path and dog’s path reflect one another, operating in Tandem as they work.

What might be hard to illustrate are those matters of timing and discipline. The handler makes the cue to turn (verbal, arm-signal, rotation, and accelerating step) as the dog gets up in the air over the jump. The handler continues to give focus to the weave poles (facing, pointing, looking) until the dog gains entry.

Thinking Outside the Box

Lest someone accuse me of being one of those “my way or the highway” guys… I’m fairly convinced that whatever actually works… is right. One interesting solution to this gamble might have been to use a Front Cross in the transition between the pipe tunnel and jump #2 so that the dog’s line of approach through jump #2 pretty much favors the weave poles. I don’t know if this is particularly easier than the Tandem. A 20′ send into the weave poles is impressive by any measure.

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.