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crysania4So class last night? Nearly a total disaster. And I kind of sensed that it would be from the moment I walked into class. The first thing I noticed was the way the jumps were set up: side by side. Which generally means doing 180s or serpentines. Dahlia is not exactly ace at these. In fact, she generally sucks because it requires me to stop, which makes her stop, which makes the whole thing just grind to a halt and frustrates me beyond belief.
And then I found out we were going to practice sending our dogs to a jump. As in, we stop and point (with both hand and leg on the left side pointing toward the jump) and the dog is supposed to continue running and take the jump. Oh yeah. That was going to go great.
The first thing we did, after warm-ups, was practice the send without our dogs: first with just jogging and then doing the point and then we moved onto tossing a ball through the tire jump as we did it. It all seemed well and good.
And then we got the dogs out to do a sequence that included this.
This is what the first sequence looked like:
As always, we started at the X, went over the jump, through the tunnel, sending the dog to the tire jump and then following the blue line over to the front cross. The dog is supposed to have enough initiative to take jump # 4 before running to you and taking jumps #5, 6, and 7.
You can see the problem right? Can you imagine what happened here?
The first jump and tunnel went fine. And then came the send. The first time she stopped.
The second time she stopped and then walked around to my right side.
Then Tina had me go almost all the way up to the jump (which is hardly a send) and she threw cheese on the other side of it.
Ok that got her interested in going through it. So we did the send a couple times from a bit further back and she was running out to it. Great. So now let's do the whole sequence!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
This time we did the jump, tunnel, and a beautiful send. I started off toward the front cross area and Dahlia? She started sniffing around for the treats that SURELY Tina must have thrown and since they weren't there she clearly thought TINA must have them so raced to her. UGH.
We did it again. Same thing. Sniffing around. I called her to me and she came, which was nice, but she didn't go over the jump. We eventually had to set her up with Tina holding her to get her to go over that second jump. It took a couple times but eventually she did and she did fine over the front cross jump and the two beyond that.
Goddamn though, the whole thing was SO FRUSTRATING. I was practically in tears because she and I just never seem to complete sequences. There's always something (or several somethings) that cause us to stop, work on that one jump, then the next, then the next. So we basically complete the sequence one jump at a time. Just like we did with that one.
Every other dog? Goes right through it, maybe with a couple bobbles, but they all get to complete the damned sequence.
So anyway...moving on.
We only got to do one more sequence, likely due to time constraints because of Dahlia and I. Oh well. Here was the second one:
This one started off the same, but then did a serpentine with the tunnel and two jumps after it. The dog follows the black line, obviously. The human follows the blue line after the send.
This one did actually go better. In typical Dahlia fashion, she got the send over and came to the next jump. And she stopped. Because I stopped. And she tried to come around to the right of it. I ended up sort of luring her back and eventually just kind of shoving her head backward so she would go over the jump. In order to go over it, since she was right on top of it, she stuck a paw on it and used it as leverage to get up and over (which took the bar down in the process). We rewarded her anyway. It was an effort at least.
The next time she was a little quicker with coming over it, but still hesitant, still tried to go around to the right. At least this time she did a real jump over it instead of a hop.
And the last time, amazingly, she actually went right over it and then went over the last jump with no problem. Almost like she knew what she was doing! So at least we ended on a high note!
After class, we got a chance to socialize with some of the other dogs. The woman who has the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers had a different dog there and this one (Tyler) is very dog friendly, so he and Dahlia got a chance to meet. She also got a chance to meet the black lab whose name I forget. The woman with the Tollers said Dahlia's face looks just like a Toller's only in black and I've sort of always agreed that she DOES look a bit like a Toller in the face. Probably a combination of the narrow BC nose and the larger Retriever one.
So now I have to try to stay positive. Tina's going to kill me if I keep getting so negative but it's SO HARD not to when your dog is the moron of the class. I mean, Dahlia's bright, but she just doesn't get it like these other dogs.
And then I found out we were going to practice sending our dogs to a jump. As in, we stop and point (with both hand and leg on the left side pointing toward the jump) and the dog is supposed to continue running and take the jump. Oh yeah. That was going to go great.
The first thing we did, after warm-ups, was practice the send without our dogs: first with just jogging and then doing the point and then we moved onto tossing a ball through the tire jump as we did it. It all seemed well and good.
And then we got the dogs out to do a sequence that included this.
This is what the first sequence looked like:
As always, we started at the X, went over the jump, through the tunnel, sending the dog to the tire jump and then following the blue line over to the front cross. The dog is supposed to have enough initiative to take jump # 4 before running to you and taking jumps #5, 6, and 7.
You can see the problem right? Can you imagine what happened here?
The first jump and tunnel went fine. And then came the send. The first time she stopped.
The second time she stopped and then walked around to my right side.
Then Tina had me go almost all the way up to the jump (which is hardly a send) and she threw cheese on the other side of it.
Ok that got her interested in going through it. So we did the send a couple times from a bit further back and she was running out to it. Great. So now let's do the whole sequence!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
This time we did the jump, tunnel, and a beautiful send. I started off toward the front cross area and Dahlia? She started sniffing around for the treats that SURELY Tina must have thrown and since they weren't there she clearly thought TINA must have them so raced to her. UGH.
We did it again. Same thing. Sniffing around. I called her to me and she came, which was nice, but she didn't go over the jump. We eventually had to set her up with Tina holding her to get her to go over that second jump. It took a couple times but eventually she did and she did fine over the front cross jump and the two beyond that.
Goddamn though, the whole thing was SO FRUSTRATING. I was practically in tears because she and I just never seem to complete sequences. There's always something (or several somethings) that cause us to stop, work on that one jump, then the next, then the next. So we basically complete the sequence one jump at a time. Just like we did with that one.
Every other dog? Goes right through it, maybe with a couple bobbles, but they all get to complete the damned sequence.
So anyway...moving on.
We only got to do one more sequence, likely due to time constraints because of Dahlia and I. Oh well. Here was the second one:
This one started off the same, but then did a serpentine with the tunnel and two jumps after it. The dog follows the black line, obviously. The human follows the blue line after the send.
This one did actually go better. In typical Dahlia fashion, she got the send over and came to the next jump. And she stopped. Because I stopped. And she tried to come around to the right of it. I ended up sort of luring her back and eventually just kind of shoving her head backward so she would go over the jump. In order to go over it, since she was right on top of it, she stuck a paw on it and used it as leverage to get up and over (which took the bar down in the process). We rewarded her anyway. It was an effort at least.
The next time she was a little quicker with coming over it, but still hesitant, still tried to go around to the right. At least this time she did a real jump over it instead of a hop.
And the last time, amazingly, she actually went right over it and then went over the last jump with no problem. Almost like she knew what she was doing! So at least we ended on a high note!
After class, we got a chance to socialize with some of the other dogs. The woman who has the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers had a different dog there and this one (Tyler) is very dog friendly, so he and Dahlia got a chance to meet. She also got a chance to meet the black lab whose name I forget. The woman with the Tollers said Dahlia's face looks just like a Toller's only in black and I've sort of always agreed that she DOES look a bit like a Toller in the face. Probably a combination of the narrow BC nose and the larger Retriever one.
So now I have to try to stay positive. Tina's going to kill me if I keep getting so negative but it's SO HARD not to when your dog is the moron of the class. I mean, Dahlia's bright, but she just doesn't get it like these other dogs.