Sometimes training pays off! (videos from this weekend)

[Toffee's Mom]

OMG
what SMOOTH running!????
wow your Bella understands her lines, that was a GREAT video to watch.. how in all the heck do you pull off a serpentine like that?
just wow... your FC's seemed really flawless to me! You guys are an amazing team!
Are there any other videos? cuz I love to see you guys run! (haha, never mind I just subscribed, I will be stalking you on youtube, heheeh )

Congratulations!

 

[DogIsMyMantra]

Thank you everyone for the kind words. I was so nervous going into this trial after taking so much time off, but overall pleased with how it turned out.

Your pull into the tunnel was perfect! Looked great! I can't believe you were ever able to front cross in there...Bella's so quick.

It was never pretty.

Just out of curiosity, how did you train that? Lexi has a hard time understanding a pull like that when she's moving--2o2o helps a little! (she also has terrible tunnel suck). Bentley is so handler focused that it's quite easy.

I started working on pulls with the discrimination exercises in Mary Ellen Barry's Foundation Fundamentals dvd. She demonstrates how to use appropriate motion (and what not to do in practice) and starts the exercise out with simple things like cones. I worked on practicing the proper motion without Bella around (75% of the battle for me!) and then worked with her with the cones/whatever was handy.

Eventually I moved to working with a tunnel, then later adding a jump before the tunnel, then two jumps, then other obstacles, etc....

I use decceleration, her name (instead of the word tunnel) and lateral motion at the appropriate time as a combination of collection cues to achieve the pull.

Great runs. BTW, what happened with the E on JWW? WAs it because Bella went off on her own?

Once she popped the poles (after my handling went south with an unecessary send) I got kind of off my handling strategy. When this happens the rest of the run usually ends up being a mess for poor Bella so I decided to just abort the run and head on out. She doesn't know the difference either way and this way I could save her the frustration. Of course when I stopped actively handling she took a ton of weird obstacles on the way out.....but that's just Bella. The girl likes to get her money's worth.