Rainy, Cold Nasty...

This week the weather has been terrible. We didn't have Course of the Week because it has been so cold and then on Thursday it was so rainy class was cancelled. On Wednesday I went to a Youngsville agility Club meeting and started getting ready for AKC trials coming up this year.

Teamworks Rescue Dog Benefit Trial results.

This weekend Teamworks held its Dog rescue benefit trial. It was a NADAC trial. It was a nice size trial but the weather was a little cool, but what do you expect, it is December. All the money raised went to local dog rescue groups.

I was a little disappointed at how Clover did this weekend. She didn't Q in any of the runs that had weave poles. We have been working very hard on weave poles, maybe too hard. During a trial, they have a set of 6 weave poles for you to warm up on, Clover ran those fine, but during the actual trial she didn't take the weaves. I had to try again and again, and on some runs, I wasn't able to get her through them. It was very disappointing. I guess I don't know what to do at this point. I know she knows how to weave, she just won't do it in competition.

Clover did well in the none weave classes. She got 1 jumpers Q, 2 tunnelers Q and a gamblers Q. She obtained her open gamblers and Tunnelers titles.

We don't have any trials until Feb, so we will be working on weaves.

below are her results.

Pictures...

I decide to open a flickr account to post pictures of Clover. You can find her pictures at Http:\\www.flickr.com\photos\dogsrule . I just reposted old pictures, but hopefully I will be adding new ones soon.

Back to the Drawing Board with Weaves...

Last night Clover and I had a private lesson and to put it simply, it is back to the drawing board with weaves. Just like when clover kept blowing all of her contacts and we had to go back to the very beginning and retrain her, we are going to have to do the same thing with weaves....we are reteaching her. She has developed such a pattern that she has to be completely retrained. The way we are doing is putting guide wires on the weave poles so she has to enter correctly.

Clovers problem is that she herds the weavepoles, or circles the first 2 poles before she does them correctly. As we get into elite classes, she would be called for refusal and we would be eliminated., so it is important to attack the problem now.

Michele wasn't feeling to well last night so we only worked on it for a few minutes, but we got clover to go through the weave poles with guide wires on. I will keep the guide wires on until she is patterned with them then I will gradually take them away.

Now is the time to totally retrain, since we don't have another agility trial, after this weekend until Feb. That will give us a couple of months to work on it.

To day I looked at ways to make my own guide wires... I think I have figures out how to do it. I will work on it tonight. We also have course of the week tonight.

Back to the Drawing Board with Weaves...