Reflections on Course Design

Having a couple of days to reflect on this weekends EMDAC has left me more upbeat than I was before. Kim really did run very well on Sunday and the courses really weren’t her style. I didn’t really appreciate it on the day but the Primary courses were really considerably easier than the Introductory ones. Dylan’s courses were all lovely, running in smooth lines with a couple of changes of hand, options for the handlers to consider and run it differently if need be. The Primary courses were straight up-and-down runs, very little to make you think or make your dog think.

I always want smooth, flowing courses with both my dogs, and I don’t think a hard course can’t be flowing. I’ve done some courses that looked horrible ‘on paper’, but flowed perfectly when Kim and I were on course and I really enjoyed them. Equally, I’ve done some courses that have been a nightmare, not in terms of difficulty but they just didn’t run smoothly. There was a case of this at the weekend, where I walked the course and could not get the ending to flow nicely. I walked it about 30 different ways and it just didn’t work! I went to queue still unsure of how I could get it to flow, and I just couldn’t. I think I saw one dog do it nicely, but everybody else was either falling over their dogs, or tripping over wings, or their dogs were running into wings, in some cases! Technically – ie., looking at the technical aspects of the course and assessing the level – it looked like a Primary course. But it didn’t work!

I don’t have the patience or the attention span to be a judge (and I sincerely admire those people who do!) but I love setting courses, I love designing them. I can appreciate a well-thought out course, and I know it’s not just about the layout of some numbers. A good course designer should think about the order of the obstacles (stretch into weaves? Dogwalk-jump-tunnel?), the angle of equipment, and the distance between obstacles, as well as where the judge will stand and what routes the dogs and handlers might take. I saw some brilliant examples of this at the weekend, by the way, often by judges that I didn’t expect. Equally, I saw some courses that pretty much ignored all of the above, or only really considered one or two points. And some just felt lazy – a judge who maybe had just thrown something together at the last minute.

Anyway, I am happily anticipating that at Shrewsbury there will be some thoughtful judges (perhaps who are strangely blind when it comes to dogwalk/seesaw contacts) who will provide flowing courses that make Kim and I think without being overwhelmingly tricky. This is probably being too optimistic, but we live in hope.