I spent awhile yesterday reviewing TDAA courses. Mostly a course reviewer’s job is to point out the obvious; and maybe to educate a little bit on what should be obvious. But you know I have to share with you this admission that I almost always come away from course reviews having learned or discovered something.
I have this great little stereo-sequence from a course designed by TDAA judge Coleene Davidson.
As I reviewed the course my first thought on seeing the dog’s approach to jump #5 was to recommend that the jump be rotated to be a bit less obnoxious in the angled approach. Noting that the jump is shared by the #15 my eyes traced back to see the nearly mirror image riddle on the return trip. And it struck me that what I was seeing was really quite fun.
I’ve drawn the dog’s path in the #3 through #6 sequence. The #13 through #16 makes nearly the same demands on the handler though, as I noted, in mirror-image. It strikes me straight away that this will be most elegantly accomplished using what I call a Post & Tandem presentation. That means the handler will position himself on the side away from the turn, drawing the dog in Post after the #4 jump to open up the approach to the #5, whereupon the handler will flip back with a Tandem Turn.
Surely it could be solved by bump & grind handling with the handler being on the inside of the curve, stepping ungraciously into the dog’s path to open up the approach to the #5 jump. There… by my selection of adjectives I’ve pretty much colored which approach I like the best.
New Product on the Web Store
I have a new product in my webstore. I’m calling it “Thousand Hour Eyes ~ Video Review by Bud”. It’s a thing I’ve been want to try for awhile. My far flung students can send me video of themselves and their dogs in competition, and I’ll write back an earnest critical review
I’m taking the project quite serious. I’ve gone so far as to design (on paper) a database for saving and retrieving videos and previous correspondence so that I can track a student’s progress over time (if I don’t make them cry and chase them away, that is).
You can find my new temp webstore at: http://wp.me/PmSZZ-or.
Quoth
“Biddable dogs seem to be born with an abnormally high opinion of You. It is just not natural to want to give up liberty and all of the fun that goes with it at the drop of a hat, simply for the chance to be near a human” Jane Killion ~ “When Pigs Fly” (p. 123).
Pretty Days
Pretty warm and sunshiny days have been playing a game of cat & mouse with cold wet windy overcast days here in Southeastern Ohio. And so when it’s a pretty day I’ll wander outside and find a chore or two and labor in the sunshine. We’ve had two pretty days in a row now and so my writing and computer-bound homework has been scanty. I note that it’s a full moon tonight. I might build a fire in the pit outside so Marsha and I can sit and ponder.
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Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston: BudHouston@hughes.net. And Check out my latest publication the Just For Fun Agility Notebook #30 available at www.dogagility.org/store.
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