After having come back from judging in Louisiana, were the weave-pole performance was to die for, I decided to setup a nice little weave exercise for my class last week.When folks first saw my concoction, there were definitely moments of shock, which then turned to dismay and a few who said it looked like I had puked up a few weaves and then tossed in some jumps . But as usual, there is a method to my madness...
The spacing on this course is intentionally tight for two reasons. First, it allowed the baby dogs to stay focused and not get too far ahead of their owners. Second, it forced the experienced dogs to collect.
There was plenty of flow through this course and the speed was anything but slow which forced handlers to be right-on with their timing and cues.
Since spacing was tighter, I required my advanced folks to stay ahead of their dogs. This included:
- a front-cross between #5 & 6,
- handlers to be in the middle of the #8 weaves so the dog had to find their entry with the handler 3+ poles ahead (a great skill we don't often practice)
- a TIMELY front-cross between #10 & #11 requiring handlers to pick-up their dog immediately and wrap them around the last pole
- to have the handler be ahead and between the #12 & #13 obstacle so the dog had to seek out the #12 jump
- I did require a rear-cross after the #15 weaves to the #16 jump AND
- a well executed & timely rear-cross between #17 & 18 which resulted in the dog wrapping to the right of #18 and still make the #19 weave entry
There certainly were a ton of skills going on here and a multitude of weave pole entries to boot!
A couple of side notes. The #8 & #10 weaves were also channel weaves to help my baby dogs out a bit (although we didn't open them up more than 2 inches) and once folks were timely with their cues, the teams did GREAT and had a ton of fun!
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