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.