Terv agility at Cow and upcoming TAC meeting

wednesday, once again, I helped run the Course of the week at Teamworks. We didn't have a lot of people come out, because it was so warm and I didn't run Clover a whole lot either. We did practice jumps. I put a board in between each jump to help her with pacing and try to break the habit she has of jumping to early.

we also had a Youngsville agility club meeting, but only 3 people showed up.

This coming weekend we have a show-n-go at teamworks and on Sunday is a Teamworks agility club meeting. We will be showing the doc on Clover. If you are interested in seeing it, come on out.

Clover weaves --- Canes win

Last night we had a private lesson with Michele. She had to postpone it until 9:30. Unfortunately that was in the middle of the Carolina Hurricanes Stanley cup game. I watched the first period and then went to lesson and made it back for the 3rd period to watch them win the stanley cup!

It was worth going to the lesson. I took the video of the Youngsville agility trial and we reviewed it frame by frame and tried to figure out why I had to restart clover in the weave poles both times. My wife has a great little player that we could watch each run in slow motion. It was interesting watching because you could clearly see that clover was jumping to soon about 70 percent of the time. It looks like something I am going to have to work on more.

I would love to take the Jumpers seminar at Bon-Clyde in August but I heard it is full already.

After we reviewed the tape, we ran a quick little course and worked on contacts. We then discussed ways to help her time her jumps. One suggesting was to put a board half way between jumps so checks her stride and takes off a little later.

It was a very instructive and informative lesson.

Weavers Course

On Saturday Clover and I rented the ring at Teamworks and I set up a weavers course. Clover did very well. NADAC weavers courses are made up of just tunnels and weaves. I could tell that clover really enjoyed it. It was the first time that we really have practiced weavers in a long time.

Agility Speed Calculator

I found a neat lit app on the internet. It is an agility speed calculator. You just enter the course yards and your time into the calculator, and it will calculate your yards per second and Miles per hour. It has a little speedometer for slow to fast... Just thought it was interesting so I added it to my links...

Agility Speed Calculator

Last competition class--In the rain.

Last night Clover and I attended the last competition class for this session. It was a fun class, even though there was a steady rain through the entire class, thanks to tropical storm Alberto.

In class we worked on handling skills. We had a jumpers course where we reviewed the many ways we could run the course and then ran them. We came up with 5 ways to do the opening. I tried all 5 ways with Clover and she did great. She also did great with the weave poles tonight. I must have taken her through about 10 times and I only had to redo them once because she jumped out to early.

I got the results from this past weekend's trial:

1. 6/10/2006
   Novice Preferred Standard - 20 Inch - Judge: Blair Kelly
   Distance: 116 yards SCT: 68 seconds
   Score: 90 (Q) Time: 47.54 seconds 2nd Place
   
2. Novice Preferred JWW - 20 Inch - Judge: Blair Kelly
   Distance: 96 yards SCT: 37 seconds
   Score: 100 (Q) Time: 29.05 seconds 1st Place
   
   6/11/2006
3. Novice Preferred Standard - 20 Inch - Judge: Blair Kelly
   Distance: 126 yards SCT: 73 seconds
   Score: 95 (Q) Time: 55.26 seconds 1st Place
   
4. Novice Preferred JWW - 20 Inch - Judge: Blair Kelly
   Distance: 94 yards SCT: 37 seconds
   Score: 100 (Q) Time: 22.83 seconds 1st Place

Youngsville agility club AKC Trial -06/11/06 Results 2 Qs!

Today was another successful day at the Youngsville Agility Club AKC trial at Sanford. My wife went with me today and taped my runs. Hopefully, I can figure out a way to post them to the web for you.

Today they ran Jumpers with weaves classes first and they ran the dogs from short to tall. Opposite of yesterday. So the first class we had was jumpers with weaves. Clover did very well, except of course the start of the weave poles. She ran right by them the first time. I brought her back but crowded her on the first pole and she popped out. I then brought her back farther and she went through them fine. She did everything else flawlessly on the run.



The second run was the standard run. It was a fun run. Mostly because I was very happy with the contacts. She didn't seem to rush them like she did yesterday. I did have to restart her in the weave poles 2 times. The big mistake was after the dog walk, she went into the wrong end of tunnel 12. I think one of the main reasons was because, her breeder, Lori Grove was part of the ring crew and sitting right behind the tunnel entrance that clover took. It didn't matter because it was only 1 off course, so we did Q. And it was a fun a run.

Over all, I couldn't be more pleased that we Q ed on every run that we ran this weekend, but as always, we still have things to work on.

Youngsville agility club AKC Trial -06/10/06 Results

Over all I was pleased with how the trial went on Saturday. The trial was an AKC trial hosted by the Youngsville Agility Club at Bon-Clyde in Sanford. Bon-Clyde is a fairly nice site for a trial especially in the summer because it is held indoors. It is not a huge facility so there is not much room for spectators. It does have 2 rooms where you can crate your dot inside though. That is a necessity in the hot summer weather of NC! It can get a little load in the crating rooms though. The dogs do have to be outside when they are waiting in line to compete.

I moved clover down to performance. Performance jumps at a lower jump height. I did this since she has been having problems timing some of her jumps. Moving her down to performance, means that we have to start from scratch and compete in Novice again and work our way up. One nice thing about that is that we get to work on 6 weave poles again.

Since we moved down to novice, we could get there after the elite classes. So we arrived at about 10:00. This is especially nice since it is about an hour and half drive to Sanford. I did have to get there a little early though because I was ring steward for the open class.

The first class that Clover ran was novice standard. My goals for the weekend were to get the weave poles and contacts. I was a little disappointed with her contacts. To anyone watching, they were fine because she slowed down and obviously touch each contact, but she released before my command. So I was not happy. In fact, on the teeter, she released so early she went by the next obstacle, the broad jump. When I tried to bring her back, she back jumped it. Fortunately, in novice you are allowed 1 off course. I was happy with her weave poles because she nailed the entry. Unfortunately she rushed them and missed the last pole. She did that 2 times. She did Q.

The second class was the jumpers with weaves. She did very well in this class--no contacts. I did have to restart her 2 times on the weaves.

Bon-Clyde Practice Night

Last night, on the recommendation of Michele, Clover and I went to "individual practice night" at Bon-Clyde in Sanford. We have an AKC trial there this weekend and Clover has never completed the weaves there, so we thought this was a good time to make sure she was familiar with all the equipment and that she could do the weaves. The weaves there are less sturdy and they bothered her the last time we completed there. It was a long drive for an hour of practice. It is about 1.5 hour drive one way. Hopefully it will be worth it.

Bon-Clyde runs their practice night differently than Teamworks. Bon-Clyde just has obstacles out and lets people run them however they want. They also allow all the dogs in the ring at the same time. There were only about 5 people there so it wasn't too crowded. They don't have any course set up to run, so I guess they can't call it course of the week.

Clover did very well. She did the weaves perfectly almost every time. The last time she did them she was getting tired, but I was probably pushing her. We must have done them about 10 times perfectly. We also worked on the broad jump. I heard the judge at this trial loves the broad jump. Clover had no problem with that. She did well on the contacts. If she performs like she did last night all weekend, it will be a wonderful weekend. I just have to keep her calm.

Preparing for YAC Bon-Clyde AKC Trial

This week we are working at preparing for the AKC Trial hosted by the Youngsville agility club coming up at Bon-Clyde this weekend. We had private lessons with Michele yesterday and ran the course that I set up for course of the week last week. Clover did very well, even on the weaves. She ran through the 12 weave poles 3 times and I only had to restart her once. They were all during course runs. She did fairly well with contacts, only rushing one.

After we ran the course a couple of times, we did a jump shoot. A jump shoot is a about 5 jumps set up in a straight line going from short to longer distance apart--compression to extension. This get the dog used to collecting and judging distance of jumps. It has been a long time since we worked with jump shoots and it really helped. She well on the first one, when I started her close to the first jump. The second time I started her farther back and she was unable to get the jump between the first and second jump and knocked a bar. After repeating, she was able to figure it out. We then reversed it, going from extension to compression. Once again, she was unable to collect herself at the end where the jumps were close together. We ran it a couple of more times and she didn't knock the bars anymore, but she did jump off her front feet, which is not good form and hard on the dog. This is something we will work on.

Clover's jumping has greatly improved. After purchasing a triple jump and practicing jumps at home, her timing has greatly improved. Jump shoot training should help this even more.

In preparation for the upcoming trial, Michele recommended that I go to the course of the week at Bon-Clyde where the trial is held. This will give me time to get clover used to the weave poles and contacts there. Their COW is on Thursday night. Clover has never completed the weaves at Bon-Clyde.

Clover's Premier

Thursday night was the premier of "Clover's Run." It is a 9 minute documentary about getting Clover ready for competition and takes you through her first trial. The Doc was made by my wife through her studies in the certificate program for Center for Documentary Studies at Duke university and the showing was part of the graduation of the program.

I hope to be able to post the film in the future for you to see.

After the showing of the film, they had a reception. We took Clover along and introduced her to the attendees. Clover behaved very well. It is not often she is exposed to those kinds of crowds and new people. She even had exposure to small children, which is rare.

Congratulations to my wife for completing her certificate and on Clover's Run. I will keep you posted on what becomes of the Doc.