Thursday, January 16, 2014

Classes and stuff

 Even though its been raining a ton, the river is down. The lowest Ive seen it in the last year. To bad it isnt summer or spring.

It been a busy week. I started teaching agility classes again after work.  The one class Im teaching is for people who have finish the agility foundation class and this is the next step.   Im really sorry if I offend anyone but it was horrible. First a couple of people didn't show up. Not sure what is up with that. Then a couple of the dogs in class have no self control.  I don't have a problem with dogs that run around the field because they are excited or what ever. But these dogs start bombing other dogs.  Its weird, the will sit and wait to be released. But once released they with either take the piece of equipment and then start running or just start running from the get go. Then at full speed, the run right at another dog. OMG, it was stressful. I think the border collie in class wants to eat these two dogs. And Java would too if she were in the class.  How these two dogs got released to go on to the next class is beyond me. I sent the person ahead of training my problems and concerns. I don't want a dog fight in class. I'm not a behaviorists.  I have no training for this. And it just waste a lot of time. My next complaint is that there are a bunch of people teaching these foundation classes but no one it teaching things that  more agility people want their dog to learn. Ugh!!!  They have no idea about what Im talking about. The one girl said they were running sequences in her class.  Yea, but her dog cant take a jump without her luring it over with food in her hand.  Its not her fault but now I have to go back and teach the foundation class. This isn't fair to the people who already do know the foundation stuff and are ready to go on.  Im pretty sure this is the last class I teach. And I had sent my concern about everyone not teaching the same stuff to the person in charge of class a long time ago. She didn't think it would be a problem.  Well guess what, it is.  Im tired to trying to clean up other peoples messes. Because then people get frustrated with me and feel they are going backwards and not forward. Then the quit the class. Ack!!  Part of me wants to just forget all the foundation stuff. Maybe its only important to me. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they just want to run their dog and not worry about anything else.  Here is the problem.  You get the agility bug. You decided you really want to run your dog in agility. Your dog it going to need that stuff and they you will get frustrated because your dog doesn't know certain things and you will have to then teach it to them. Then it will all come back on me.

Java's 2o/2o is coming a long nicely. Im going to a trial this weekend.   I know she wont do it at a trial so I don't expect anything from her.
Something I wanted to tell you about Daisy Peel's on-line classes.  She has changed them up. Now when she post the handling course maps, she puts a video with it. She talks to you about the course, why you do will do certain things. Why you would turn them this direction vs the opposite direction. Its really good. Its like a "how to read a course" class.  Then she also added some live coaches call. She tapes them to so if you cant make the time of the live chat, you can what it later too. So that's a nice feature.

My  husbands broken foot is slowly getting better. He is no longer needing the knee scooter. Which I highly recommend if you hurt your foot or ankle and cant bear weight.  He still needs crutches.

This week, at school, this girl fell and couldn't get up. I went to go get her and her knee was dislocated. One good thing about all those skinny jeans the kids are wearing. It made it easy to see what the problem was. I could see her knee cap sitting off to the outside of her leg. Plus her foot was facing the wrong way. I don't know how this girl wasnt screaming and crying.  She was in pain but wow was she in control. I would have been boo hoooing every where. Poor kid.

5 comments:

Cowspotdog said...

gosh you are having a busy time...glad to hear the hubby's foot is doing better.

Unknown said...

Sorry that you didn't have a good start in your class; it's a waste of time if some people who aren't ready for your class and it isn't fair for those who are well-prepared before the class. It's really tricky to teach such a class.

Glad that your husband's foot is getting better; I think he will be on the track again in no time.

Didn't that girl feel the pain? She's way too cool!!!

Sara said...

I'm not sure I could teach adults! Too bad there aren't more junior handlers out there. They would probably make better students.

Anonymous said...

People who just want to see their dogs "do agility" are too common. I don't know that there's a way to get them to see that there is so much more to it, and that it is much more fun if the dog (and handler for that matter) knows the foundations. It's why I can't stand classes at the local, bigger training facilities who cater to that crowd.

Chris and Ricky said...

A class like that would frustrate the crap out of me!