Training - difficult course for March

Last night we worked on a course that Bernadette had published on her blog a few weeks back. We are keeping up our regime of having one difficult course to work on per month. This one proved very challenging with loads to work on. The course was taken from the AKC try outs for the 2006 FCI World Championships.



Some of the "more mobile" amongst our number managed to get the two front crosses in at the two-jump sequence (#5 & 6) before the A-Frame. I was not one of them. I found the first front cross useful but then found it smoother to let Niamh take the second jump of the sequence towards me and cross behind her.

The other way that we all liked handling that same sequence was to stay top side of the two jumps; send the dog around the wing and recall over the #5 and then push our dogs over #6. This appeared to allow the handler to progress further down towards the jump/tunnel sequence after the A-Frame and get into a better position for a front cross between the jump (#8) and tunnel.

The sequence #10 - #13 was quite tough. I think we might have had it set out slightly differently from Bernadette and Lisa's attempts and also from the ACK tryout videos as it didn't work out quite the same for our attempts. See links below if you're interested in seeing this course running.

Most of us wanted to get in a front cross between #12 and #13 so that we ended up with the collapsible tunnel on our r.h.s. That said some chose to 'pull' through the box to the tunnel and their dogs were amazing they just powered out of the tunnel, took the jump and picked up the weave entry brilliantly. Me and Niamh weren't one of those clever teams, I had to get the front cross in the box. When I tried to stay top side of the tunnel she just didn't focus on the jump before the weaves, she was turning back to look for me because I was too far behind (how could that be I wonder!)

After the weaves it was easy peasy. Most of us chose to put in a front cross between #18 and #19 which enabled the handler to progress down that finishing straight.

You'll notice that there are 21 obstacles. That's because there were a couple of jump combinations within the course which are numbered 5a/5b etc. I couldn't read the numbers clearly enough on the copy of the course plan so I just cheated and numbered it 1-21!

Bernadette & Lisa running this course (from Bernadette's blog)

Two competitors at the AKC 2006 world tryouts click on Day 7/Round 5 link (from Agility in Motion)

Our puppy class (please note it's called puppy but all the dogs are well over a year old now!) managed to negotiate this pattern from #1 - 13 really well. In Kizzy's case #1 - 15 as she is weaving whereas it's still work in progress with the other youngsters in the class. Andy was really chuffed with her.

By the end of the session we were all exhausted but the consensus was that everyone really enjoyed the course and the challenges it presented.