BACK UP!

When you have an exam or a big event coming up-ever feel like "geeze I wish I had studied or done more work on ____" LOL, well as we are getting closer to where Cricket is really putting it all together to do agility,....that is what I am feeling like!

We are doing some agility work, we have the teeter almost trained, the key pieces are coming together, she has a killer four on the board contact, she is rushing straight up to the end of the board, she runs back and forth on the teeter and is not bothered by the movement, she LOVES the bang it game....I still want to work on teaching her to find her entries and enter it straight, but the teeter is looking good.

Contacts are coming along, right now Cricket runs across the dog walk at full height and I am clicking for striding to the end of the board and not jumping. I am working on the contact for a four on the floor separately....and that is looking GOOD. Not sure what I will do on the aframe, I am considering letting her do a running contact.

As far as jumping we are doing a lot of one jump work. As far as lots of jump work or weaves.....I was reading more articles and am trying to hold off and just do lots more foundation work until Cricket is 13-15 months, I just do not want to take any chances of hurting the developing ligaments and bones, muscles...I am sure she is good to go now but .....we are working on plenty of things so guess after having a dog like Breeze that we have just dealt with soooo many injuries, I just feel like it is better safe then sorry and working on all these components should make putting everything together go pretty quickly.

Soooo back to what we feel like we should have done more work on.....
REAR END AWARENESS, gosh I was reviewing the 2x2 video because I am working on Breezes stride through the weaves...and preparing to do the weaves with Cricket. At one point SG says I would recommend this dogs owner does a lot more rear end awareness to get a better stride....then I am watching a heeling video....they are basically doing 90% rear end awareness....then I look at the jump program and the first lesson is......YOU GUESSED IT! REAR END AWARENESS.

Sooooo, for Breeze and Cricket I am feeling like this is something I wish I had done even more work then I had done....so that is where my new found rear end awareness training focus stems from!

We have worked a lot on pivot work and shaping back up on the flat, yesterday while my daughter was swimming I decided to try backing up the stairs.

What is funny is I live in the high desert....everything is on one level, and I had to look a LONG time to find some stairs. I finally found some at a real estate office, I already scoped and they have the stairs we are using and some different size ones on the other sides of their building, so I wait until they close and then use their stairs. It is right next to the highway though so a lot of distractions-which is good!

I thought the girls did pretty good for a first try--stay tuned for the finished product!



The plan to teach basically is:
First have the dog on the top stair-with the back legs on the top, and the front legs on the first step down-C/T for moving the front leg back, or a weight shift if necessary
Second you can move down so the back legs will have to go back up a step, C/T for picking up the leg
Watch to see which leg the dog is using and hopefully they will use both legs and definitely not both legs at one time, it should be a slow movement so the dog is deliberately reaching back and you want them facing forward
as you move down the step ping pong between number of steps, do not just keep making it harder, maybe do 1 step, then 3 steps, then 1 step then 2 steps, then four steps, something like that!
If you have taught the dog to BACK UP then it goes really fast.