Surprise

New layout for undermybed.co.uk – I like it. Do you?

Things we did this weekend.

We played training games.

We played cage balls.

We played football.

We also visited Castle Hill, and whilst the dogs were in the car, I took the opportunity to actually go up the Tower. The Tower isn’t open very often and I’ve never been up before, and despite living in Huddersfield for 50 years, neither has my dad. So we wandered up.

Shame I forgot my camera.

I also had a slightly more productive weekend with the dogs. I spent a ridiculous amount of time working on very simple cavaletti and jump grids with Dylan (we have an excess of sports equipment around our house, you’d be surprised how good some of it is for inpromptu dog training). I video’ed every attempt and then also videoed Kim working the same exercises. Kim is my standard for how a dog should jump.

From watching the videos back, it seems pretty clear to me that Dylan’s jumping form is significantly better when he’s working in front of me. His arc is cleaner, he judges stride patterns and take-off points more cleanly, and he tends to power off his hind legs more, which makes him faster. All of these things suffer when I’m in front or racing him, and the basic conclusion is that he cannot do two things at once, ie. jump and keep up.

It looks (or seems, or feels) to me as though he is beginning to panic about being left behind, and therefore begins to panic about everything. Dylan is a classic worrier, you can almost see the thought process as one thing leads to another in his mind, and he can’t control it all and panic steps in.

Unfortunately, I cannot handle him on Grade 3 courses from behind, because most of them involve long straight lines of boring.