Tika In Class/At Placerville

Wow--what a great day we had in class today! She was *on* and doing great!

Aframe & dogwalk: She was wonderful. We're still pretty much at the stage where I place her up high on the obstacle and then i stand still & say "touch" and she goes to the end & touches, two feet on & two off. She did great. Didn't swing her butt off to either side, which we'd been having problems with for a while. Have been working on getting her to sit into the end rather than stand, and she did pretty danged good at that on the Aframe. She's excited about getting onto the obstacle & doing it at a reasonable speed. Did discover that if I make her *wait* at a position on the obstacle and move off to the side and say "touch," she's not too sure about that. So I need to go back a couple of steps and make sure she understands that that means move on down. Rachel just started to introduce us to fading the target--suggested we wait another week before doing it, but Tika reacted well in class to once-there/once-not-there.

Teeter: We're starting on a low table & running to the end, two on/two off. Did very nice, fairly fast. Rachel introduced us last time to something that Susan Garrett does, which is to immediately go into wild play mode with the dog after they do the contact (all obstacles, actually), which is what makes them want to drive & slide into the contacts. I think I can see Tika speeding up already after a week of that.

Weaves: Wow! She skipped one pole only once, and she made her entrances both from a full-speed u-turn from a tunnel and going full speed over 2 jumps beforehand. And she's doing them *fast*! She looks like she's kind of crashing through them rather than doing them smoothly & effortlessly, but at last I didn't have to say "really, she does them faster at home!" Whatta girl!

Jumping/tunnel sequences: I'm still having a little trouble with the last jump of a serpentine, but she stayed with me the whole time in each sequence and was fast & didn't turn off or get confused & she carried out fairly well when I remembered to hold my body right for a long-enough time,and she was *fast* and handled both front crosses & back crosses! It's like we've jumped a whole level since last week--I dunno what's gotten into us. (I *have* been practicing doing more jumping sequences & carrying out here at home because I know that's where the problems are--but I didn't think I'd been doing *that* many. :-) )

Staying at the start line: She was perfect all through class! Class is where she usually *doesn't* stay at the start line, so I was very pleased.

I didn't realize that Rachel saw our run this weekend at Placerville--I was sorta hoping that she wouldn't see us in case we screwed up, but now I'm kinda glad that she did, because she said we did good except for the place I knew where she didn't carry out, over the end of a pinwheel, & Rachel says that's 'cause I didn't hold my position long enough. (Oh, yeah, and there was the not-staying-at-the-startline thing, but Rachel had the same problem with Fable. :-) )

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