To windmill arms or to not windmill? Seems that would be an easy decision.

So the consensus is that I am screwed big time, excuse my French, but I may be in a lot of trouble in our trial this weekend, LOL. So last night we had a great private lesson with Alicia, but...it has become clear that Chloe the sheltie is not a border collie, and vice versa. So....doing rear crosses, and Chloe runs pretty much with all rear crosses, Chloe has to have wind mill arms or she doesn't understand it at all and whirls and twirls when I try to change sides. The border collies can not have arm movements with the rear crosses or it totally throws them off and they think I am signaling to go somewhere else. I am doing good to remember to run, so I think when I am running all three dogs this weekend it is going to be a mess. How is that for positive thinking? LOL. Then we hit the border collies. Liz is a haul butt type of dog and she jumps flatter, she is all about speed and just figuring out how to collect and gather up her body is hard for her just lately. I really have to get her attention very early and really work at keeping connected and letting her know everything really early because she just commits every bit of her being to where she is going. Liz slams into my knees if she really wants to get somewhere and let me tell you she feels like a freight train. She is like running a race car. Breeze on the other hand is so handler focused and sensitive to any movement that she does excellent rear crosses, I do not need many verbal cues at all, if I slow down a little or quit driving in the least little bit or cue things too much too early then she will just stop dead in front of a tunnel or pull off something she is practically launching for. So just running those two dogs is weird switching from one to the other.

My one happy thought for this weekend is that our start line stays were very nice in our practice last night. Breeze is holding her start BEAUTIFULLY, and a good thing because there are those horrendously long lead outs to run one of those courses. Breeze was even not running around the first jumps, YIPPIE, so hopefully that all holds up over the weekend. Liz on the other hand is keeping her stay-she has always been pretty good about that but she is going around the first jump now. I do not plan on Q'ing with Liz, if she stays with me for 3 jumps then we are going to be a success, so guess if she goes around a jump it is not a big deal.

So just a funny thing I saw last night--Liz is starting to do the border collie thing on the start line trying to move while holding her stay. I had never seen it, but last night I asked Alicia to try a sequence with Liz and so I was watching and Liz keeps her elbows down but her little butt keeps raising and she is trying to figure out how to scootch. Both of my dogs do a down at the start line. It is obvious that to Liz the start line criteria is to keep the elbows down, her and I have had that discussion before when she thought laying down might be the body sort of down and half way on her front legs, so I explained the elbows must touch the ground and apparently she got that part, LOL. I might not find this so cute and funny in a few weeks, but I thought it was so cute last night. She is really getting into the game, and I will have to put a stop to this now, but.....So the other funny thing is that Alicia held the dogs last week so we could concentrate on the sequence and not the stay....apparently on the start line both dogs get so excited waiting to go that they actually sit and hold their breath waiting for the release.

So I thought I would put a link to this video that probably everyone has seen a thousand times, but watching Liz trying to creep made me think of this video.