Friday night class

Class last night was really good with Shelby. We had a short course, only 12 obstacles. It was 2 jumps to the dog walk, then the tunnel a jump and the table, then a jump to the A frame, then 4 jumps to the end.

The opening was a little tricky because the jumps were angled at opposite angles. I decided to run it with Shelby on my right and led out to jump 2. I knew if I did it that way, I needed to treat the dogwalk like the second obstacle in a serpentine and run ahead to cue the down contact with my outside hand, which I did and it worked fine. Then I sent to the tunnel and did call over the next jump to the table. I handled the next jump and A frame on the right, knowing that I would have to run ahead again to get enough distance to put in a front cross after the jump after the A frame. That worked great, I got the front cross in, then another front cross after the next jump and we were done! Shelby was really attentive and read my cues well. But I realized I needed to call her in the tunnel so that she wouldn't just run to the table.

We got a chance to run the course again and I chose to do it a little differently. I did the opening with Shelby on my left with a lead-out pivot, leading out to the dog walk. Shelby did great-no problems there. After the dog walk, I did a front cross, and then sent her to the tunnel, being sure to call her as she was coming through. We did that one more time, and the third time I got a really nice flat jump over the jump and around the post to the table.

For the A frame and jumps after, I did them with Shelby on my left. The jumps after the A frame were set up almost in a triangle formation, with the second jump being about 15 feet from the first. I called Shelby to me then sent her out to the second jump. The first time it didn't work-Shelby just went across to the third jump. But we tried again and I kept my shoulders open and my hand up, and it worked! I was so excited.

We had a little more time at the end of class, so we had the option to try one sequence another way if we chose. All the others wanted to work on the distance option I had already done, so I decided to do the sequence with Shelby on my right and use rear crosses. It was do-able, but slower than my first choice of front crosses, so I don't think I would use it unless Shelby had gotten way in front of me.

The nice thing about having the later class on Friday is that we can stay as long as we want. Class is generally almost 2 hours. It can make for a long night though since I have Spot's class from 6:30-7:30.