Once more with feeling (and a few errors!)

labgirl

labgirl

Forums Sage
Last Saturday it was the Christmas comp at my new agility club. Since joining this club my handling has improved and I am feeling far more confident. My goal was to get Merlin whizzing around the course with enthusiasm and get some good placings.

Unfortunately I could only do the morning comps, so only two runs.

Agility: We achieved the enthusiasm! Sadly we also lost our contacts, lol. Had we not done that we would have been 6th

Jumping: We were flying! Until the last two jumps, Merlin did a nice turn, I sent him round the wing and thought I had picked him up successfully, but out of the blue Merlin decided to dive behind me and put in an extra jump. You can actually hear the spectators groan! I was so surprised I just came to a halt, no idea why he did that, lol, one of those days!:lol:

Here's the vid, my friend only managed to capture the end of jumping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABKfO-qs8kA&list=UUkGTE7sn9PidcQW5qkTDB0w
 
I had a long chat with my new trainer last night, and she quickly spotted that part of the problem is that I don't have a clear command for releasing Merlin off his contacts. Basically I just let him hit the contact and then choose when to jump off, thus we keep getting errors. So it is back to basics with a contact trainer and teaching him to hold his 'touch' until I say 'go'. Something to practice over Christmas:wink2:
 
This reminds me a lot of Bentley! When we first started we were pretty lax about contacts--didn't have clear criteria for the contacts. Once we started working on confidence (and along with that came speed) we lost our contacts.

That being said--I'd rather have confidence than contacts! :lol: And Merlin looks great! HUGE improvements I think since your last post. Way to go!
 
That being said--I'd rather have confidence than contacts! And Merlin looks great! HUGE improvements I think since your last post. Way to go!
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Oh yes, completely agree! A large part of that is because of the change of club and my learning how to better deal with courses, so I am not so freaked out when I compete. Plus I have been told to RUN:lol:And you can see how I was getting Merlin pepped up at the start of agility. One of these days I'll manage to get it to all come together, lol:fl
 
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