Friday, October 31, 2008

Jumping machine :)

So I have been on the new 16" jump height training for less than a month now and I am rocking! My mom is so proud of me, she says I am jumping great. We have been training pretty hard recently and mom is now talking about even re-training my weaves using 2x2's. She says that if they can help B to get his entry every time that maybe I can learn too. I have done just one day so far and was a bit confused but mom says she's not giving up on it. I will let you know how it goes. Aunt Andrea was so nice enough to take some video of me last night for everyone to see. The lighting isn't great in the arena but at least you can see how good I jump :)







On Sunday mom is taking Baxter and I to McCann's for a fun match :) I can't wait to play at the higher height in a more charged up environment. I will see if someone can video tape me and then I will post it...(the lighting there is much better!)

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Back to training...

So my Mom has been neglecting my agility training these days spending all her time with the border collie boys :( She says that she was giving me a much deserved break but I think that is just bull. I guess she is feeling guilty (I think biting her the other day helped her to realize this) so she took me outside today to work on skills she says. I thought I had pretty good skills but she said we are on a mission this winter/spring for something really cool (a secret but if it works...she will tell me and then I will tell you).

So for the next 6 months I will be using this blog with my Mom's help to track my training to see if we can become an even better team. Might be a bit boring so I will label the post "Training" if you would rather not read about it. If I have something exciting happen in my life I will put a cool title to let you know.

Day 1 of back to training:
Mom has moved the jumps up to 16" today. She says going forward, I will only jump 16" in training and CKC agility. Sadly they will not let me move up to 16" in AAC so we may have to do some of those trials at 10" or FEO.

We first started with weave entries. I never learned 2x2 weaving and instead of going back to basics, Mom has decided to just use poles 1-2 at an angle of 1 o'clock and 7 o'clock to help with entries, we also had 4 more poles totally straight and all 6 poles were staked. We started with offside entries first, and at pretty easy entries. We were able to do entries from 2 feet back from pole 1, Mom really pushing me to stride through the whole 6, throwing a cookie for reward. We did 6 of those in the first session. We then moved to onside entries and I had a bit of trouble understanding the open entry of pole 1-2 so I was going in after pole 3. Mom had to support the entry to get it right...she is re-thinking the open poles. We did 6 on that side also.

We moved onto jumping then. First we did 2 jumps with Mom doing a post turn, I stayed out and jumped those well. I did 2 of those each direction. Next we did serpentines. I missed the serp jump the first time coming past it to my mom. I wasn't rewarded for that so the next time I did it correctly. I did 2 of those in each direction also. Next we did threadles and I found that much easier to come in than take jump 2 but was running under jump 2 when being sent back out. Mom needed to move back and give me a bit move room to get a stride to jump the 16" at a slice. I did a few of those after really nicely she said. Our final work was on 270's. Mom was very proud of me for staying out and doing them. I did come in a few times as I wasn't really reading Mom's body but she says that I was good and that is why we are practicing. For the final one I got a jackpot of my breakfast! woohoo.

So that is it for now. Mom said she will be more organized with the record keeping tomorrow like she does with the boys. Our training plan tomorrow is:

Weave Entries - onside/offside
270's
Threadles
Serpentines
Set Point jumps