The teeter and dogwalk were used in today's sequences, and I was glad to see that Lucy showed no hesitation at all on either. But, she did a terrific job of demonstrating that her dogwalk contact is nowhere close to being anywhere close to being independent.
One of the sequences involved a tunnel which was snaked under the dogwalk, followed by the dogwalk. Thing is, the exit of the tunnel was set back from the dogwalk upramp, so the question was how to give a good line for a safe dogwalk. The following detailed graphic illustrates the setup, where the "o" represents the tunnel exit and the "l"s represent the dogwalk:
l
l
lo
l
The following was suggested as an option for handling this: after exiting the tunnel, the dog circles around behind the handler and is then lined up for a straight approach to the dogwalk. A benefit of this handling is that while under full acceleration after the tunnel, the dog can continue to accelerate while circling around the handler, like a horse doing barrel racing. The instructor had seen several teams handle such a setup this way at a trial and it worked brilliantly for those teams. So, homework is to practice the dog circling around, pretty much like a finish in obedience but driving ahead afterward.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Lesson
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2 comments:
Wow, what a sucky entrance to the dogwalk. I don't think I've ever seen that in either USDAA or CPE and I'm pretty sure you'd never see it in NADAC, either. Even if one scoffs at attempts to make agility safer & safer for dogs, this seems like a dangerous approach.
-ellen
Agreed, sucky entrance for sure. I'm glad to hear it's not a not common at all, at least in those organizations. The course the instructor had seen this handling strategy used on was Gamblers; don't know if it was part of a gamble or just something some teams opted to do in their opening.
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