Blame it on Sally!

We had a little sequence in class last night that provoked a rather high fail rate. The sequence features a blind approach to a jump (meaning that the handler needs to step in and shape the approach)… and a choice of directions in which to turn the dog. This was something I first saw back in about 1992 on a USDAA course designed by Sally Sheridan and put up in Phoenix, AZ. It looked like this:

Note that the handler has a choice of directions to turn his dog at  jump #3. Any time I’m faced with a choice of directions I’ll subject the puzzle to a bit of critical analysis.

1. What is the natural turning direction for the dog? Almost surely, coming out of the weave poles the dog will take the jump at such an oblique angle that a turn to the right is the natural turning direction.
2. Which direction offers more/less risk? Turning to the left offers creates the risk of a back-jump on jump #3 and gives the dog another good look at the weave poles. Further, the approach to the A-frame won’t be fair and square unless the handler steps up to sweeten the approach. Turning to the right offers no options and creates a natural square and safe approach to the A-frame.
3. Which direction offers the shorter consequential path? The shorter path is probably to the left.

Answering the which-way-do-I-turn question doesn’t complete the riddle. How do you get it done from a handling point of view?

Bud’s Google-proof Trivia Contest

It struck me that google/bing searches on the internet make trivia questions very difficult to write, especially if the key words are in the questions. For example, I put my “four kings” question into bing.com and got several pages of the correct answer. And so now I am faced with the task of writing a trivia question that is not easy to look up by some smarty pants on the internet.

Try this one on for size:

In the movie Titanic Jack Dawson tells Rose (in the scene where he saves her from jumping)… something that can not be true. It is not so much a lie (about something he did as a boy); rather, the writer’s research on inland waterways was incomplete. What was it that Jack Dawson tells Rose that can not be true? And, why can it not be true?

First correct answer posted as a reply to this blog post wins a free copy of the February Distance Notebook.

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Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston: BudHouston@hughes.net. And Check out my latest publication the Go the Distance ~ Dog Agility Distance Training Notebook – Jan 2010 available on the Country Dream Web Store: http://countrydream.wordpress.com/web-store/