Let's actually start off with the students thing... I am very proud of M and her awesome BC (coincidentally also name Chaos), for working so hard. In just seven weeks, she has made such progress and the program is not even finished! Well done!
The on-line training has been a lot of fun, but also an eye-opener. When you are teaching a class in person, you have everything at your finger tips, you get to know dogs, you get to know people. When you have are working on-line with students (often people I have never met), you have to ask a lot more questions, you have to force students to analyse themselves and to think creatively. It has been a good experience and I am definitely planning on expanding the initiative if the interest is out there.
Speaking of analysing, I read about and hear of and speak to and get asked about agility problems. That is normal, but the question is why so few handlers successfully solve their problems. My personal opinion is that people lack the ability to analyse their problems properly. Wait that didn't come out right. What I mean is that when people learn agility/are taught agility, they are taught the steps and the obstacles and the names and the turns etc. But they never learn to really think about it. Of course I am generalising, but I just don't think that very many handlers have good analytical skills. Not an easy task mind you, but once you can properly analyse agility, nothing can get you under. Tied in with this, is a lack of planning and a lack of procedure. I am not saying that you should be some anal fishwife that is as inflexible as an iron rod planted in cement. But if you have no plan, you have no goal and then you can't have results.
Enough moaning. I haven't trained contacts in ages, so decided to do a quick A-Frame session with Spaz before the show this weekend, I also wanted to test my quick releases. I have to say, that after that test, I am REALLY not ready to give running contacts a try. If you look at Chaos's second quick release (the one where he didn't slip), he has a good running action through it. Now I KNOW the difference of running contacts is the actual acceleration into it, but then I will always be able to get a tighter turn off there. Oh well so many arguments on both sides I guess.... haha and I am not in an argumentative mood today.
A friend of mine also has a young dog that is busy learning the poles and the two of us are collaborating to come up with the best way/combination of ways to teach small and medium dogs the poles. Not ready to make conclusive statements yet or even post videos, but let's just say I am very happy with the progress. Here is a super quick video of some training I did with Volt early this week.
Sorry, this was the most uncreative and boring post in all of everness... it is the HEAT that is still affecting me. I am about to go insane or rip my hair out or sue the sun or something. Oh well, lets just hope it cools down before our shows this weekend.
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