Getting me back on track!!

Well today I had my long awaited private agility lesson with the two terrors!!

Jemma:
We did some weave work - with me at different speeds and she did well, she only went wrong when i really really raced her!!! We did some jumping work too and she was good although we really need to work on her drive into the tunnel as this was making things difficult from a handling point of view, she was also very bad and went behind me a couple of times!!! Naughty naughty girl!! We finished with some contact work and Pen rekons she is slowing down on the downward plank, especially on the dogwalk although her contacts were generally good!! Might be looking at bringing back her target as when there is one at the bottom of the contact she does go faster and drives better - much to pens delight!!! :P


Elliot:
We did the same jumping bit as with jem and he worked it a lot better, he has better drive into the tunnel and didnt do any silly going behind me!!! :D We did some weave work with him too and he went really really well until i tried to do "the walk" on the right and then it all went to pot!!! dont know why but it took a while to get him bak doing a nice set with a recall!!! We then did the most important thing - worked on his contacts!!!! We did all three separately and then but them all in sequence - he actually worked really well with the target at the bottom, only going wrong again when i raced him. His main problem is staying on the contact after being rewarded once so I shall work on the stuff from the contact dvd (cant remember its name right now!!) to help with this, i also realised that this was actually the first time we had but contacts in a course in training so why i expected him to do them in competition without the target I dont know!!!

So all in all a good session, I have got my enthusiasm back for elliots contacts and have come up with some more things to work on with jemjem!!!

Group training times two

Elliot
Well he was much better today than last week. He did really well on his jumping and only broke his wait once. One thing we did identify that needed work (with both dogs actually) was thedrive on into a tunnel as if i stopped he stopped, which got us all in a muddle!! We then did some jump - seesaw work and he was quite good, he wasn't overly confident with his nose touch but he did go to the bottom and kind of touch it, we then did the same with the aframe and again he was quite good but occassionally he flew it and broke his wait - i think he was getting tired so we just finished on some wait work - with me walking past him and going back, breaking him and saying a different word and checking he didnt break and by the end he was doing this nicely too. So all in all a lot better than last week but I think as regards his contacts I need to do some confident building work for me with them as I feel I have kind of lost the will to train them as I dont feel we are getting anywhere, hopefully that will happen tomorrow in our private lesson.

Jemma
She wasn't bad, as I said above she also needs to work on her drive into the tunnel as well as anti-cross behind exercise as she keeps doing this and it is really naughty, little tinker!!!! She also needs work on jumping grids as she was knocking poles again. Contact ends need sharpening up again as she has gone a bit daudly again!! Oooo and also her long distance look on the start line needs work as she was only looking at one jump and not beyond but I think the anti-cross behind stuff will help with this as it will remind her that she has to stay infront of me!!! All in all not a bad day for her today either :)

Group training

Because of the snow we joined in the evening classes indoors as the paddock where we normally train was too dangerous

Elliot:
Not a very successful lesson in terms of agility with him today. We started on some contact work, the target was really hard to see and kept getting buried and as soon as elliot couldn't see it he would just go back to bombing off the end, which just tells us what we already know about his contacts and as they weren't getting any better I stopped doing them as I didn't want them to get any worse, so shall leave them for a private lesson!! He did do some nice jumping although started to go under the first jump but i think that was all because of the main problem we ended up having to work on - his wait and focus. One of the other dogs in the class took a bit of a dislike to him and when was working in a different part of the arena came over at least three times and got right in elliots way so that he ended up jumping on him and then he had a go at elliot so i think this worried him a little bit. We then tried some weaves but he wouldn't hold his wait and kept getting it wrong because I wasn't where I wanted to be. This is clearly is main problem when other dogs are around so I spent the rest of the lesson working with one jump getting his wait and working on his focus. I also just did some work getting him to concentrate on me and walk to heel which he did very nicely :) Still feel his wait and focus needs lots more work in group lessons - another thing to add to the list!!

Jemma:
We did some courses that involved interesting weave angles and she was best when i helped her as little as possible - when i tried to make it a straighter angle she would go in too far down!! I just need to have more confidence in her!! She is also best if i keep moving, even running, rather than standing still which i guess makes sense although technically it shouldn't make a difference!! All in all I was very happy with her, bless her :)