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Just finished another 3 day weekend of judging… I Ended weekend feeling VERY VERY grumpy because we got home and had to clear driveway of snow to even GET INTO the drive (gawd I hate snow plow Bumps from clearing street at end of driveways! that Bump was over 24″ tall!!! AFTER 3 days of melting!!! ). Then I had to clear porch before I could even let dogs out of car.. Just in defense of my poor poor me state of mind, you have to realize this was after I judged 7 courses and drove 1.5 hrs home… I get there and have to spend like another hour of pretty hard core snow removal labor before I can rest…..

Today, monday, I’m eating the breakfast of champions to help recover: Coffee and Advil.

EX JWW (click to view) had a record Q rate for me — I sure of it. Seems like entire 20″ class left dogs in weaves and it worked!! The “lowest”, if you can call it low, Q rate for Ex JWW course was in 12″ class. I’m not sure there is much to comment on here because obviously everyone had skill sets for this course!

JWW made up for Excellent Std (click to view) :) . I later heard someone call the STD course the circle of death. Lots of dogs liked that tunnel… LOTS of Dogs!!!! I can’t tell you there was a RIGHT way to handle it because it depended on dog and handler and where handler was in relation to dog.
But you DID have to understand lines of motion. I’m sure a lot of people were happy they were absent due to snow.

Excellent FAST (click to view) I really liked even if I had to move to judge it. Loved that there was crazy number of ways to run it. Q rate was reasonable!

As usual for me, Open is step down from Excellent and I loved how the courses ran. That is good :)

Star City courses are posted under Carol’s courses; if you click on modified Date, you can sort by date and then look for more recent ones.

Meanwhile, here is direct link to Excellent Courses.
I thought the courses were fun, even if challenging, thinking courses…. It was just too bad that the snow really impacted folks ability to train. Usually you expect everyone to have spent last few months working on and tuning up handling, thinking about handling… so presenting handling courses would be fine. Especially in VA…. The handlers there are very good! But snow derailed folks ability to train. Seems I did have WAY more NQs than normal on Dogwalk contact and THE TABLE!!!!!

Fri Ex JWW (click on link to view)
As you might expect, the wrong course at #10 was issue, but more interesting was that, even if NOT a NQ for some dogs, was dogs NOT reading taking #11; handlers really had to do some saves there…. I know why, but can you figure it out?  But that was something I did not expect.

Sat Ex Std (click on link to view)
2-3 caused more issues that I expected. A handful of dogs looked at tunnel after #5 but didn’t cause NQ. Handful of dogs (mainly 16″ and BCs) took wrong course after #6. Lots of missed Dogwalk down contacts. Couple of dogs managed wrong end of tunnel. The ending was very challenging and the big dogs did well with it.  Small dogs really struggled. Some dogs turned wrong way off end of teeter. That was interesting to see….

Sun Ex JWW  (click on link to view)
After the opening… a fast, fast course that was a really nice way to end the weekend. Lots of fun to watch it.

Worth Checking out!!! This was posted to AgilityNerd!!

Angelica Steinker has decided to make her book Click and Play Agility, Clicker Training for Successful Dog Agility available as a free download through AgilityNerd!
http://agilitynerd.com/blog/agility/publications/ClickAndPlayAgility.html

It seems I haven’t posted much on actual sequences or training in awhile… Well there is a good reason for that.

Besides my vacation, Louie doesn’t get trained much (Hey, he’s 9 years old, very accomplished, still doing chemotherapy and hates the cold…)

Did I mention it’s been really cold??

The basenji, Zuri, has good moments and bad. An example of a failure…. During vacation, I tried to train her weaves some in NC in my mom’s little fenced yard but all she learned was how to jump over the fence to freedom. That isn’t how you teach weave poles so I stopped training them in NC.

Then there is Fusion who injured her toe in early Jan and can’t train yet. I admit after it happened I thought maybe she’d miss a week or two. I pooh-poohed those that shook their head that it might take longer… I mean you couldn’t see it hardly. It looked like no big deal. Well, here it is going on 4 weeks and she’s finally starting to look like she might be OK to go. Well, it might still be another 2 weeks but…but….but….Its getting there…and

I’m biting at the bit. I am ready to train her again. We have so much to work on and try. She is ready to explode.

I realized that I can’t assume that she can show or train alot when we start back… I need a plan to bring her back and make sure she’s really OK. I am scared to death that when we start up, she’ll re-injure it. And we’re already on the count-down to AKC Nationals. Another injury would be a HUGE issue.

I guess I could (and should) talk to rehab person but just in case any of my friends have input… I’ll ask…
Does anyone have input or comments on coming back from soft tissue toe injury (out side digit on front paw (the fifth digit or what I call the pinky toe) ? Especially For Agility? Especially Jumping?

My Plan is:
– Swimming for conditioning
– Start easy “straight line” walks
– Order booties that will help support the toe when jumping and turning are re-introduced (I sure hope they come soon and work!! They are ordered!)
– If no issues with walks, start adding jumping/turning at walk, run, low heights and finally back to 26″

How long should I do low heights before going back to 26? Or can i jump up quickly? or does it depend?

Let me know. comments on jumpfast.net are moderated because of all the buy viagra spam… so if your comment on web doesn’t show up right away, please don’t be offended.

Cool.  Googility added index of Clean Run articles.  Nice to see ones I’ve done even if I don’t recall two of them..

http://googility.com/periodicals/

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