TRAINING A DOG

Devon and I left the house this morning at 5:30 a.m. to run the first class at a USDAA trial. I entered her only in Starters Jumpers. She's been measuring into the Championship 22 inch class; but she's not secure on 12 weave poles and has not see a tall A frame, so I decided we should just run this one class to work on teamwork. In February we ran a USDAA Starters Jumpers course at the same building, and it didn't go well mostly due to "green" teamwork. I was interested to see what today's run would bring and what difference 10 months of maturity and 3 months of intensive agility training would do.

I was very pleased with this run! It was fast and well executed. As you can see from the video, Devon really has to think and push herself a little harder to clear 22 inches, which isn't a bad thing. She's tucking her rear feet nicely, but she is taking off a little early and jumping more from her front. Her usual 20 inch jump height is so easy for her, I'm not surprised by this style when she has to work a little harder.

On my end, the only handler error (and this is really picky) I see was when she started to turn back on the last rear cross, I redirected her mainly using my right arm which could have changed her lead (thankfully she was smarter than that). She actually read the rear on the take off side of the jump better than the rear on the landing side.

And for the icing -- Devon not only qualified her run, but she also placed 4th! SCT was 31 on a 107 yard course. Devon ran the course in 21.87 which was 4.89 yards per second. Out of 10-12 dogs in this competitive 22 inch height, Devon was right behind three border collies, one who runs in Excellent/Masters level in AKC. I think Devon's Aunt Abbi needs to have a talk with her about the need to beat border collies!