Silvia Trkman Agility Foundations Class Lesson 4

Lesson 4

1. straight line as a serpentine: now that you mastered straight lines too, it’s time to show the dog they can come in different forms Let’s try angling the jumps as you can see in a video, still working on extension vs. collection. Keep angling the jumps all the way to a serpentine. You should still throw in some wraps to keep them attentive to possible collection cues.
Showing the angling in 4 steps, but try to go even more gradually and make it a serpentine in 6 or 7 steps:



2 Sequencing



With long-strided dogs, 10 will be hard – so you can simply take the other entry instead.
3. let’s check how far you have got with weave entries: send in your “top 5″ – choose the 5 hardest entries your dog found, the 5 you are most proud of.

What I said, "I know you said to only send the best weaves, but we haven’t done them at all, so this is all the weaving we have done so far. I don’t really get what I’m supposed to be doing. I think I have to wait until she gets more commitment to doing them before I start with the distractions - right? The 2nd video is what we did today. Tibby was having so much fun! I’ve started doing a ‘dying rabbit’ sound that Tibby likes. Later in the day I tried to do the sequence, but Tibby was too tired. I think she likes the straight running parts the best. I left in a lot of the parts where we are playing.'

What Silvia said, "Yeap, for the weaves, you are trying too complicated stuff too early in the process. I would still work with something at the end for her to focus on and releasing her to it from very slight angles. With something at the end for her to focus on, you should be able to do some work for independence (doing different stuff when she is in), but you sure need something at the end for now to be able to do that. Rewarding from hand is not yet a good idea. And yes, she sure seemed to like that straight line! You can mostly work on that for now if that’s what she loves the most. Still, make sure to not do too much, I think two sessions per day, if they include more as for example one or two straight lines, are too much for her for now. Definitely don’t push her to do it if she doesn’t feel like it! "