Lead outs

P

Phebe*DD

Forums Enthusiast
Now that Phebe has a somewhat solid stay, I've been working hard on getting longer and longer lead outs at the start. If the first few obstacles are pretty much a straight line or slight curve, I can get down course as far as about the 3rd obstacle before releasing her. If there is a more pronounced turn, and/or I have to set her up to take the first jump on a diagonal, our success rate plummets.

Here's an example of my instructor being successful doing this with a young dog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUMyRptDBgg&feature=channel

Phebe runs around the obstacles and straight for me when I try this kind of lead out. Ideas?
 
Wow--the ones your instructor was doing are tough! The dog seemed to have no trouble with the tough slice jump in the second one.

It's hard to give advice without seeing a course...some of them lend themselves to giving the dog hints. For instance, you could step in briefly at a certain point, or use an RFP to get Phebe's attention. Also, you could try a lead out pivot to add a turn.

Also, you can backchain the obstacles. Try getting her to do 2 in a particular sequence, then add the 3rd.
 
Our lead out pivot is pretty good, and we've done some backchaining in class, every time it's like she's never seen it before. I think it's probably going to be like the weave poles and I'll just have to keep repeating in short sessions until one day the light finally goes on.

I love that Donna pushes us to do things that are difficult, because I know that it will pay off in the end. Kwik, the BC in the video, is only 3 months older than Phebe and she whizzed right through her novice and open titles. I think she's going to run her first excellent classes this weekend at 18 months. See what I have to live up to? :razz:
 
My trainer can do similar things with her Belgian Shepards. The way she does it is with the "out" command we were discussing in the other thread. The way she trains it is so it means to her do that you do that thing far away from me while I go over here".

Without hearing her commands to the dog it hard to tell how it was trained.

Regardless of how it is trained, its beautiful when it works and is really worth the time to train.
 
That was an impressive video.In AKC Novice you can whiz right through it.It is Open that we call Pergatory. I love the way the BC jumped.It will all come together for you.:biggrin2:
 
One thing Tully has is a great lead out (except for tyres). I always step into the line of where I want her to go, look at her and say 'ready' so she knows which way to head, then I drop my hand and move aside. In training I dont worry too much about being in her line of sight and am working on moving ahead of her as soon as she starts moving. But at trials I only go 3 obstacles ahead and give her a line of sight - I see too many people trying long leadouts at trials and stuffing up the opening.
 
Last edited:
holy moley I look at that video again, gawdzook that was novice????
With jumps like that and lead outs as all get OUT, lol
Man oh man you guys really are in a league of your own, if you and Phebe can do stuff liek that :smile2:
 
Disclaimer: I apologize in advance if this comes off as....pretentious or uppity or anything other than me thinking out loud.

That lead out, doesn't look bad at all. She's set the dog up STRAIGHT so that he'll (or was it a she?) go over the two jumps. She wasn't curved at all. If you set them up and it's a straight line, they should slice the jumps regardless. At least, that's what I was taught.

I know with Koji, as long as he's supposed to take something in a somewhat straight line, I can go out as far as needed (we're working on the curves too). So, slicing or not, they should know (right?).

For me, I haven't worked on this in awhile, but basically, from my understanding, if you set up a dog, he should take whatever is in front of him, regardless of where you are. Yeah, easier said than done. With Koji, I haven't worked on it a lot, mostly cuz I have to run with him (velcro dog), and in NADAC novice, you can usually lead out at least 2-3 obstacles (cuz they're straight...literally). But he does need to learn. Backchaining is always good, but if she's not remembering, hmmm.....more work? Throw a toy? Distance work?

Obviously, I shouldn't give any advice. I haven't worked on it. lol. And we have no distance. So maybe don't listen to me? I'll shut up now and keep reading.

Lastly, I was just thinking as I proofed this. If your dog isn't used to slicing jumps, start there. Otherwise, it's the typical, place Phebe in front of the jump, stand next to the jump, release. Then you move away from the jump, release, etc. When I do that, I can release Koji at 10ft. However, like Phebe, he seems to forget. But then, I have a puller velcro dog.
 
Last edited:
Toffee's Mom said:
holy moley I look at that video again, gawdzook that was novice????
With jumps like that and lead outs as all get OUT, lol
Man oh man you guys really are in a league of your own, if you and Phebe can do stuff liek that :smile2:
Click to expand...

Mind you, did you notice in the second run she got errors from being too far away from her dog. That's always the problem with trying to get distance with a novice dog. Here there are no faults allowed in novice so there's always a risk of DQing not babysitting your dog in the early stages. That's why a lot of BCs here take time to get out of novice (and why Tully managed to place over BCs in novice), because the novice dogs tend to get out of control if they aren't guided (and a lot of BC owners are masters agility people who try to run novice dogs as if they are masters dogs).

Must say, a couple of those jumps that dog cleared beautifully - what an amazing jump he has.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top