Friday, September 18, 2009

A lesson and my brain


I finally made it up to North Carolina for a lesson. I'm not sure how long its been but over a month for sure and maybe almost 2 months. And it showed. So here was the course. For some reason I forgot my notebook that I put the courses in and write notes to myself about things I need to work on. I had to pull the course lay out from my brain and my brain has been having problems working. There were 20 obstacles and I only have 19. For the life of me I cant figure out what is missing. Plus 14 and 15 may not be right but they are close.
The first time I ran the course , I did a lead out to #2 and then rear crossed between 3 and 4. I cant remember what I did, I think I crossed to early and she missed the #4 jump and took the tunnel. Good table. Then here is were we fell apart. I had her wrap to the left on jump 7 which made her go back into the tunnel because it was a straight line. We tried it again with a wrap to the right, gives a straighter line to the dog walk but she still took the tunnel. I needed to do a shoulder drop and call her over the jump to get her head and then do the dogwalk.
The rest of the course she did well. She had great contacts and awesome weaves. WhooHoo!!
I did have a problem with number 18. I wrapped her to the left when she was on the right lead and should have let her wrap to the right. So one time she missed the tire. There was a jump chute with 18 and 20 inch jumps set up after the course but perpendicular to the course. She took those jumps too. Crazy dog.
So my dog had good speed and was having lots of fun. Came when called. I really had trouble with the rear crosses. We changed they way we had to handle the course after we ran it the way we thought we should. We worked on not doing a lead out and being to the right of the dog and then rear crossing #3. I did terrible with that. My poor dog. I just was crossing way to late and causing her to drop the bars. My very nibble dog kept trying to do what I wanted by turning in the air but of course causing the bar to drop.
Then the last run we were going to put it all together one last time. We started out well but then missed the dogwalk again, started from the table. After a few misses she just couldn't handle it anymore and got the zoomies. Just running and taking anything. I couldn't get her attention, running circles. I finally got her and we did a jump to the weaves, celebrated that and ended.

This was the first time I had been to this training arena. It was very nice. Indoors and great matting. The dogwalk was very nice. I checked to make sure there were no gaps. What I didn't notice was, one side of the dogwalk ramp had slates the other side didn't. So when Miley went down the non-slated side, she did this little gait thing at first. I didn't know why she did this, but as she came down the ramp, she corrected it. Then Meagan told me that side was unslated. The rest of the time Miley ran it without problems. When I left the training building I needed to go left to get back to the highway. I was stopped and looking at the road. I see two lanes and a bunch of trees going down the far side. I wanted to turn left, but something wasn't right. There were white dashes down the middle of the two lanes. I kept sitting there trying to figure out what was wrong. Then it dawned on me, it was two on coming lanes. I had to turn right first, then take a cross path to get to the opposite side of the highway, which was also 2 lanes. No cars were coming. Thank goodness I didn't pull out into on coming traffic. I could have had a head on collision. I told you my brain hasn't been working.
I'm going to the trial tonight. Here is another example of my brain not working. I entered this trail. This club has trails at two places. I thought it was at the place, closer to me. But when people were talking about the trail on Facebook, I thought I better go look it up. Good thing I did. It wasn't were I thought it was. Ugh! That was 2 days ago. Its at least 2 1/2 hours from me so I wouldn't be able to drive back and forth every day. Luckily I found a hotel room. Its about 14 miles from the site , so not to bad. Its suppose to rain all weekend but at least it under cover. I hoping for the best, but now I'm really worried about my rear crosses.

3 comments:

Chris and Ricky said...

Good luck at the trial!! Glad you checked the location so you go to the right place but sorry it is so far away! Don't worry about rear crosses - everything will be fine.

With your course from your class, could you have run 1-4 with Miley on your left and then block the ramp to the dogwalk and send her in the tunnel? Or does that kind of thing only have a chance of working with a slower dog?

Also so glad you didn't turn into oncoming traffic! Some intersections are more confusing than others mom says.

Kathy Mocharnuk said...

Have a great trial and HAVE FUN!!! You will do GREAT!

Dawn said...

I'll be pulling for your successful trial while I'm at work tonight! Can't wait to hear about it!