More 2 x 2's

So the 2 x 2 training continues. I decided that Sonic's understanding of what he was doing after some weekend sessions was great enough for us to start rotating the poles around into a straight line. We did this progressively over an afternoon session (cooling off in his paddle pool inbetween me moving the poles). He did make a few mistakes, especially when we started, but you could see his understanding grow through the process. By Tuesday I had him running through straight 2 x 2's and then on Wednesday he was abley handling a set of 4 weaves on competition bases. He did so well that later that session I added a jump which he also managed easily with some pretty flashy entries on his behalf.

So the next plan is to introduce 6 poles. This will have to wait until the weekend as we are going through another couple of days worth of Perth's extreme heat. Once he can manage the 6 straight poles I will add in the other 6 as per Susan's DVD. All going well I think I can safely predict that Sonic will be doing 12 straight weavers WITH amazing entries by next weekend. How very awesome that will be :-)



The Canine (or should I say "Dog West" now) grounds have finally reopened so I can get a bit more training done under lights. I didn't do a lot of contact work over the last few days, but the couple of dog walks that Sonic did were very nice. Sonic appears to be generalising the running down the contact into two on two off at any location and on any dog walk which is great. His A-Frame isn't too bad right now. I would like to see a bit more speed however I feel certain that this will build when he gets more confident. At the moment you can see him being careful when he goes over the AF whereas he appears a lot more confident and surefooted when he does a dog walk.

His sequencing is going pretty well although some of the harder grids from Greg's "Great Dog, Great Handler" DVD are still really challenging us, particularly the serpentine grids. But we shall keep plugging away at them. He has improved so much on other grids in only a few weeks so I know that we will get there.