The weekend

Its been a busy weekend. Nothing really great but busy. The weather has been wonderful. Warm 60's and sunny. Whoohoo! On Saturday our club had run throughs at the field. We had some real positives and some small negatives. Miley keeps self-releasing herself on the contacts. Then when I fixed it, she creeped down the side of the a-frame. Then I started worrying that it was to hard for her to stop. But she also self-released on the dogwalk. I began contemplating retraining the a-frame. But after thinking about it, Ive been inconsistent in my releases. In training, I make her hold them a few seconds before releasing. In trialing , I release quickly. Not really fair to my dog. You know the old saying, "train like you trial and trial like you train". Also, Meagan told me that when she watched my videos, Miley is releasing on my motion not my verbal "ok". So time to work on that. I will begin doing the "Bridging the gap" flat work stuff to fix the self releasing. The good stuff from the run throughs was she had great weaves. I put her mat down instead of the table and she had no problems going to the mat. (whoohoo) And she was very excited to be there and started the circling stuff when I stopped to fix the contacts but she was still able to run and get on the mat. Also there was a sequence that was several jumps that were in front of a chute and tunnel and she didnt go off course. The most telling thing that happened was we didnt run either run completely correct during the run thurs. But after we were done, I went out and ran it again. She was perfect. Hmmm, I must be handling differently when I feel people are watching , then when they aren't. Or what ever is stressing me. I didnt feel stressed there but it must be something.
Sunday we took the dogs hiking which was nice. Then I took a class in Charlotte and had a private lesson afterwards. Here was the course from the class. Its to the best of my memory and may not have correct distances.

The first time we ran 1-10 we were perfect. That doesn't happen often for us. Meagan made us run it again and I messed up. She didnt read the rear cross to the teeter. Also I swapped out the table for my mat. She got right on the mat. Then next time we were to run 8-20. Lots of dogs were coming out of the tunnel and going up the dogwalk. Not Miley, she got right in the weaves and was perfect. I decided to stop and reward. I tried to give miley the treat. She spit it out and kept going. So then I wasnt ready and she started circling. Ugh! I was just trying to reward my dog and everything back fired. LoL. So anyway , Miley was a little over the top last night. I think she finally settled down by the time we got to the private lesson. In the lesson we worked on the two excellent JWW coursers that I ran so badly a few weekends ago. What Im not doing is working the ground in between the obstacles. I dont know if that makes any sense and it will be hard to describe.

You see where that green line goes between 5 and 6? Thats where I wasnt going in and working. I was just staying out and expecting my dog to figure it out.
Also Meagan said I could start putting the mat on a flat to the ground table and starting working that. I really hope this works when its time to add it to a trial. Im worried it wont. But no need to worry about it right now.

I had today off and took the dogs for an extra long hike. I was beat when we were done. I dont think it phased the dogs.