Busy Busy

Seesaw work this week. Some improvement but I have a list of things still left to work on.

I’ve also been working on introducing tighter turns, ala Silvia Trkman. We’ve done lots of work at home (and on walks, etc etc) but Dyl actually had a lot of the basic skills already, it was just refining what was there, adding a command and changing my reward position. The difficult bit with Dyl has always been the jumping, I think because he has a tendency to jump from his front end and because he is over-cautious about poles. That means he generally doesn’t turn in the air, he turns before or after the jump (yes, also down to my training I’m sure!). We’re currently working on 25cm height and it looks good, but the challenge will really be when we get to 45cm+ I think, that seems to be when he begins to struggle.

I have also, hesitantly, decided to use just one command for turning tight both ways (kip). This is based on my weaknesses and not Dylan’s! I already have a tendency to confuse myself with lefts and rights (not my strongest point), particularly when I’m thinking on my feet, and I don’t want Dylan to get confused by what the command means because I’m inept. So I’m going to rely on body language for direction and the command for the action of turning tight to the wing. Silvia does mention this very briefly in her DVD and says it’s ok to do that, so we’ll see how it works.