UKA: Merlin goes Novice!

labgirl

labgirl

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We had our first UKA show of 2016 yesterday. Merlin ran really well, 4 out of 5 clears, including our first qualifying win in a games class, which happened to be Snooker, even despite him freaking out a little! But, best of all, he finally got his last points to progress to Novice in the Steeplchase programme!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhbGSmxW7Do

Sparrow ran beautifully for me, we have lost our waits a bit as she gets over-excited at the start. Running past a jump in our first Steeplechase gave us faults, and in the second she took out a jump, so again picked up faults. She would have won both otherwise. But as I don't want her going Novice yet, I am rather relieved we didn't go clear!

Shame about the crash though, especially as she has been doing so well on her pacing lately. Fortunately she is ok and unhurt.
https://youtu.be/57xmV5Gh5Ps
 
Merlin looks great! Congratulations!

And Sparrow is a rocket. That tumble she took looked really scary and she just picked herself up, no drama, wagged her tail, and went onto finish it. What a great girl!
 
Sparrow scares the life out of me regularly:eek2: But that's what I get for picking a working cocker!

Thank you:smile2:
 
Thank you. I notice Sparrow has grazed her front legs a little where she took out the pole, but otherwise no harm. She zoomed around agility class last night. I have analyzed the video and I am pretty certain that what went wrong was her stride pattern. On all the other jumps she took one or two paces in-between. However, between the jump she hit and the one before she took no paces and simply attempted to bounce it in one, hence hitting it. I am going to try keeping my voice calmer on the home stretch in future, in case it is me hyping her up and making her rush and not concentrate.:wink2:
 
labgirl said:
Thank you. I notice Sparrow has grazed her front legs a little where she took out the pole, but otherwise no harm. She zoomed around agility class last night. I have analyzed the video and I am pretty certain that what went wrong was her stride pattern. On all the other jumps she took one or two paces in-between. However, between the jump she hit and the one before she took no paces and simply attempted to bounce it in one, hence hitting it. I am going to try keeping my voice calmer on the home stretch in future, in case it is me hyping her up and making her rush and not concentrate.:wink2:
Click to expand...

ahh- stride regulation. we've been working a lot on that with Cranberry trying to get him comfortable with changing his stride between jumps. I was setting up one of the Salo jumping exercises every week and trying to do it at least twice a week. we were making good progress until we weren't able to practice it on a regular basis. I've noticed that he needs it often or he reverts to running around the jumps because he's not in a good take off position.
I probably need to do it with all the dogs but so far Jocu and Destin are good jumpers.
 
Sparrow had been so good lately I thought we were conquering the stride issue. The other week at Agility Ability she had no knocked poles and I was thrilled. Then she just lost her head on Saturday and BANG. Sigh, think it is a spaniel thing. Would much rather she ran around the jump, rather than just jump and hope!

Merlin has never dropped a pole in four years of agility, bless him
 
Big congratulations to Merlin. And I love watching Sparrow run...she is so full of life and obviously having a great time. :smile2:

Trini
 
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