Thank-you Stuart Mah!

[Jo Sermon]

Working with Stuart at Camp Weed is always fun and I come home with lots of ideas to work on with my own dogs. One of the points that Stuart makes very well is that we all tend to focus on 5 to 7 obstacles. This would be much like working a 2 min down stay when you're going to have to do a 10 minute stay in the ring - you need to work above what is expected in the ring so that it's easy for both you and your dog.

One of the exercises that he laid out went something like this:-



Except that in Stuart's version there are no numbers, you simply have to do something different each time you come out of the tunnel.

I liked the set-up both for the reasons that Stuart works these sequences - ie Tyzer currently does 3, 4 or 5 obstacle sequences and I need to begin to ramp it up - but also because it's ideal to continue work tunnel discriminations - does he go straight on out of a tunnel or turn left or right.

[Jo Sermon]

Continuing on, what is surprising is that Tyzer can do the exercises laid out there, it's these he has problems with:-



The jumps have been moved to the more usual UK setup ie straight on and Tyze takes the pole down on #4 almost every time. The gap between #3 and #4 is enough for him to get up some speed and he'd rather get into his poles asap than sort out the jump.

So we stopped and rewarded #4 a few times and then tried back chaining with no success, as soon as he gets up any speed he goes through #4.

So we're going back to basics, working 1 jump, doing figure of 8's around 1 jump and then beginning to ramp it up a little. Criterion for reward - jump the jump 7 times without touching it. This he finds difficult and so it's what we're going to be working on for a while. It shows that although we've worked turns and sendaways, I've neglected to work on duration as far as his jumps skills go.

So thanks to Stuart Mah!

Jox