Thursday, March 11, 2010

Running Contacts

I have put a lot of thought into contacts this past year. Risk and I would always go head to head at a trial for her 2o2o contacts. It was making trialing her not very fun. I also have several young dogs coming up and I needed to think on how I was going to train them. I did a lot of research, reading, watching videos and talking to people.
I have come to the conclusion that I will always teach a running A-Frame to any dog I train. I think this will help out with shoulder and back problems in the long run. I also like the striding a lot better than a 2o2o. Now, I know that I won't teach a running dogwalk to everydog as I don't feel it is meant for every dog. Some of my dogs are doing Silvia Trkman's method and some are going to do a 2o2o contact. I took this last year off to figure out what I wanted to do with Risk's dogwalk. I have been doing Silvia's method with her and I am really loving it, with her, so far. I started with Singe and I am very happy that he was taught to just run the plank as I think it will help him in the long run. I have decided to do a 2o2o with him because of his stride and style of running. The verdict is still out on Fusion. She like Singe is very bouncy, so it makes it frustrating.

Here is Risk's A-Frame. It is at 5'2" in this video. I am going to raise it up to 5'6" and take the stride regulator away today.



Singe's A-Frame is coming along nicely. I had to add a stride regulator on the descent because he was not extending coming over the apex.



This video shows the first time I took Risk off of the plank and put her on a baby height dogwalk. I was backchaining in this session.



Risk was then allowed to do the entire dogwalk at baby height. I have learned that 6 or 7 full dogwalks is all that Risk can take mentally and physically at this time. She starts to get tired after that. She is the type of dog that puts everything into her training and tugging add that to thinking about what she is learning. She starts to slow down and revert back to a partial 2o2o stride when she gets tired.