COW--Practice, Practice

Last night we attended the Course Of the Week. I have started trying the elite courses, along with the novice. Clover actually does better on the elite courses. I think it is because she has to slow downdue for the extra stops and turns etc. The basic course, especially in NADAC, is very open and she gets moving so fast it is difficult to give her directions.

We have entered another NADAC trial at the beginning of April at PBH. Unfortunately, this trial is only games and has no standard runs. So I will be entering tunnelers along with touch and go and weaves. Touch and go is a combination of contact (A frame, dog walk, teeter) and tunnels. Weavers is a combination of weave poles and tunnels.

These classes pretty well lay out what we need to be working on for the next 3 weeks. 3 class types--- 3 main things to work on...

Tunnelers--- we need to stop the double barrel dog canon, where clover leaves one tunnel and is moving so fast that she just goes to the next tunnel she sees. We need to stress left, right and turn.

Touch and Go --- Contacts, Contacts, Contacts

Weavers --- Entry and 10th pole pop out.

Last night we worked mostly on weave poles and contacts. When we first got to the field, clover was once again, overly excited and running all over and missing contacts. We ran the novice run. For the second run she calmed down and we ran the elite run. She did very well on the elite run, even hitting her contacts. She did have the 10th pole popout problem though and I could not get her to finish the weaves after trying 4 times. So we worked on 12 weave pole runs. The first 6 weave poles were fixed and the second 6 were channel weaves. The channel weaves are adjustable so you can slide the poles out sideways, to give the dog some room to play with. She was able to do it, but once again, if she got tired, she skipped poles 11 and 12. it is going to take a lot of work.

The elite course had a serpentine and clover managed it very well.