A Lack of Direction

Rio and I were a bit hit and miss at training this week. I wasn’t really feeling motivated, and that showed. The only run I felt motivated to do was a sequence where I could try a blind cross. I have been reading a lot recently about blind crosses and decided I needed to at least try if this was something I should be using more often. I talked to my G1-3 group about how and why we might use a blind cross, and then borrowed super cute Bichon x Poodle Rosie to demonstrate. Rosie is a little speed demon and I had to run, but we nailed it and thankfully did a good demonstration! My group tried it and hated it though, everyone got too anxious to commit fully, and therefore felt it slowed them down too much. With time to get confident with it they thought it might be useful, but for now they aren’t really seeing the point.

Obviously I had to give it a go with Rio in the G3+ class. She’s never done a blind cross before, but it was fun and she got it perfectly. It’s something I do want to try and take advantage of whilst running Ri, she likes to race me and her jumping skills are good enough that I can trust her to get on with that whilst I move into position. Although you wouldn’t necessarily think her jumping was good, we had quite a lot of launching and throwing herself over jumps this week. I’m not entirely sure whether to work on this, or just to let her work on finding the take off points herself (and rewarding as we go). We’ll see if she makes any progress over the next few weeks, and then make a decision.

We also did a little bit more seesaw work. Another thing I’m not entirely sure how to tackle without regular access. If I had a seesaw at home and a couple of tables, we could do it by the book, but I have access to a seesaw once every few weeks in a class. It’s not ideal. Rio is not a fan, and although I think her confidence is growing, it’s not where I’d like her to be at this stage. The seesaw is my least favourite obstacle, have I mentioned that recently? It causes the most problems and I’ve never been exactly sure what it’s supposed to test. The dog’s bravery? Stupidity? Self-control? It’s a mystery.