International handling lesson

There is this great agility group in Edmonton called Blast agility.  They are a group headed by Justine Davenport, an amazing agility handler that has been on the world team too many times to count!  The club prides themselves on their ability to handle the hardest of the international courses.  They live for threadles, backsides and all sorts of tricky handling moves.

I'm up in Edmonton this weekend with the Shelties for a CKC agility trial. While up here I decided it would be great to get a training session in with one of these ladies.  I booked a lesson with Jessica Patterson,  a very talented agility handler and a member of this years world team.  I wanted to work on international skills, the type of stuff you don't normally see in our AAC or CKC agility courses.  But they are fun skills, challenging and worth learning how to execute properly.

It came down to 4 skills that the dogs need to be able to do independently:

Wraps, from any angle, with minimal support from me. I should be able to send my dogs and run away.  Luckily wraps are something that we do work a lot.  The only difference is that I need to work more on the multiple wraps that Sylvia Trkman does around a pole. My dogs need to keep on wrapping until I stop cueing it.  This should tighten up my turns and teach Spryte how to bend her body.

Backsides of jumps. Again this is a skill we have been working on, and Spryte made me proud showing off her awesome backside abilities. I need to work more on having her do it across the face of the jump, and I need to be able to leave and have her complete the job no matter what my body position or motion is saying.

Running past obstacles while I call her name. Wow is that a hard skill!  As a lot of you know, snooker is not our game! Having Spryte run past an obstacle and not take it is just not in her nature.  But it is a skill that we are just going to have to learn. So from now on if I want her to take an obstacle I am actually going to have to name it on course ("over").  Where up until now I only speak if I need to get her attention and call her off an obstacle.  The international style handling is almost the opposite. If I name the obstacle she can take it, if I'm calling her name, run past it too me.  This will need work.  LOTS of work.

Lastly I need to work on my threadle skills. I don't enjoy threadles. I would rather push my dog through a gap than pull her.  It just works better for both of us.  But now I need to work harder on those threadles.  And to top it off  I am supposed to do it all on one hand!  Yikes, that will take some adjusting to as well.

We did some blind cross stuff too.  But I was surprised at how little they use it.  I was expecting most of the lesson to be on blind cross skills as that seems to be the rage right now.  In their system they will use blind crosses when an obstacle is turning the dog already, otherwise they just stick to front crosses. The theory being that the dog notices it sooner and isn't caught off guard. Ensuring that tight turn and confidence from the dog.  I was fine with that, as I still prefer front crosses on most turns.

Oh the other difference was that they avoid rear crosses whenever possible. I'm ok with this too as I prefer to be in front of my dog and have my dog follow me around the course. Their theory being that the dog should chase you around the course. This leads to faster dogs and more efficient handling.

So all in all it was a great lesson with lots of information, drills to practise and skills to perfect.  Justine and Jessica are planning on coming down to Calgary for some lessons in the near future. I will definitely have to get in on those and try out my new skills on some tricky courses.