Dogwalks and Tunnels

We did lots of dogwalk work at training this week! I had three things to work on in our classes; dogwalk, weaves, and long-jump.

For our dogwalk training, I planned a similar set up to his very bad run at Lincoln and he refused again, so I think we can conclude that the tunnel under the dogwalk is definitely a contributing factor to his meltdowns. I’m not sure why – it’s a fairly common feature and not something we’ve had a problem with before – but it’s something concrete that we can work on. We broke it down and rewarded for driving on the up-plank, and then pieced it back together.

By the end of the session he was powering through some really beautiful dogwalks, which always makes me happy! If I got half the dogwalk in competition that I do in training I’d be happy, and with our next show being UKA I hope we can work toward making that happen.

We also had part of the course set up for fast weave entries that encouraged the handler to run on ahead, since some of our less experienced dogs are struggling in competition to check up for the weaves (and Dylan popped a few times at Hare’n’Hounds). Of course, everyone was perfect! I couldn’t get Dylan to pop out and all the baby dogs nailed their entries.

The long-jump is a bit of a weird one, Dylan has a tendency to check his stride/stutter into this at competitions and it can be a sign of injury with him, so I wanted to see how he worked in training. Apparently nothing to worry about, he was extending nicely and no stuttering, and he was also offering it as an obstacle when I mis-timed my cues.