Friday, January 2, 2009

Miley Practice

So Ive been trying to decided if I should jump Miley at 16 inches in USDAA. She measured 13 3/4 at the last trial which means she jumps 16 for Championship. I could just do performance and keep her at 12. In AKC she will be allowed to jump 12. I don't want to over stress her body by jumping 16 but after watching her today and looking over the tapes, she seemed ok. The bars were at 16 except maybe one. I have also been obsessing over her weave poles. Mostly entries. Ive been trying to work around the clock and its boring and she goes slow. She never goes slow. I went to bed last night and the last thing I remember thinking about were weave poles and it was the first thing I thought of this morning. Ugh!! I'm contemplating doing 2 x 2 weaves. But I don't want to confuse her. It looks like you can get great entries but maybe that's only if your a great trainer. I talked to Kathy at Agility Adventures( see her blog on my blog roll), and she said its a great way to teach weaves. She is going to go back to reteach her other dogs with this method. Any opinions? ( o'yea, Its raining again)

6 comments:

Chris and Ricky said...

We wish we knew more so that we could give you some advice! Hopefully someone who does know more will leave you a comment. We did read your comment on Susan's blog about how difficult the 2X2 weave training seems to be - and although we haven't seen her dvd, we agree with you that it doesn't seem to be all that easy. Wish we all had a live-in trainer to go out and practice with us every day!
Good luck - we always think Miley and you look great though!

Chris and Ricky said...

Hi - we just read a post at Elite Forces of Fuzzy Destruction (they're on my blogroll) about Susan's 2X2 method - it's very interesting and the post has 40 comments - also very interesting to read before starting to work on the method. Just for thought.....

Sara said...

I don't know anything about the 2x2method either. I have heard it mentioned on other people's blogs though. It must be gaining in popularity.

When I saw the action shots of Miley jumping, my first thought was, "wow that dog is jumping way higher than that bar is set!" So, I think Miley would be fine at the higher jump level.

Diana said...

Thanks Ricky. I did read Elite Forces yesterday. But now there are even more responses. I will go and finish reading them. Thanks. Diana

manymuddypaws said...

i didn't retrain wicca's weaves with the 2x2's but I did go back and work with just two poles for a while to get better entries. Wicca had to learn to collect and that was the best way. Even now we alternate 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 poles. She never knows, and if I am working on entries I only use 2 o3 three poles so I can reward for the entries...

Lian said...

My Sing was very unlucky to be measured into Medium. He is just very slightly above 13 3/4 and he has to jump in the Medium height. It was very hard when we were changing from Midi to Medium, the new Medium height was 2" higher and it took us 12 months to get over the "go under" problem.

Since Miley is still young, I would suggest to continue jumping her in the lower height until you are certain what you want her to jump. With the lower height, this can teach her to go fast instead of slow.

I have seen quite a bit of 2x2 weaves but never try it myself. I teach my shelties to learn the different entries by putting the wire.