Last weekend Grace, Magic and I tried to run teacup agility. In teacup the equipment is smaller and the courses seem tighter. I chose this as Graces first attempt back to agility since she got sick since I thought the smaller trial, smaller equipment and nice local location would make it easier for her. Well she was amazing as far as her health and happiness. She never stopped wagging and smiling the whole weekend. She ran 6 times total, and we actually qualified 3 times, twice in standard and one game. In her second run of the weekend she started to give me serious attitude, so she got pulled off the course, but the rest of the times she was wonderful. We had a few bobbles, heck we are out of practice but overall she was terrific and I was so proud of my pumpkin girl.
Magic only went on Sunday. He ran all 6 classes and qualified 3 times, 2 games and one standard. His issue was leaping contacts. We really may have to consider changing to a 2 on 2 off. Running is not working with him at all. On the positive side, while he was a wild man, and we had a few miscommunications overall he tried really hard and I can't fault that. I messed up both dogs a couple of times when I forgot which dog I had and handled wrong. I need to work on that! But thats OK we have plenty of time to play together!
2 comments:
Go Corgis!
I wouldn't judge Magic's contact style form Teacup. With the different angles and length it just changes the striding so much. If he as a natural stride for full height equipment you could just try and manage it a little for the smaller Teacup contacts.
It's pretty common for a lot of people to let their dog have "moving contacts" vs. a stop because often the dog doesn't have a problem with that in the class environment. This is what I did with Luke -- My instructor warned that a stopped contact is safer, but being the newbie I was I thought it was stupid to do all that work when he was getting his contacts in class without a stop.
Then we started to trial. And by the second trial he was missing about 85-90% of his contacts, the dog walk in particular.
Yup, I put a stop on him.
If a dog has a truly reliable running contact (not a "cross your fingers" moving contact), then the size of the equipment should not matter. The contact zones are the same length.
I, personally, like to Q -- So a stopped contact is just safer. :o)
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