Sequencing in Sunny Norway

We’re still having the same beautiful weather and after getting reports of a lot of rain from both Justine in Alberta, CA and Laura in England, I’m very happy to be in Norway this May. I just hope that the rest of our summer will be as good. We had a really nice day yesterday and Karine, Therese and Lene came here to do some agility training. Karine has a sheltie who competes in the highest class and a mudi (hungarian sheepdog) who is the same age as Shejpa and probably will start trialing at the same time as Shejpa (probably in September since that’s the only weekend I have off before November). Therese has a young field bred golden who is one month older than Pi. Lene has a mudi puppy. Training with us was also Nina with her kelpie Agera who unfortunatly is still injured and we havn’t done any agility with her for almost two weeks. I hope that we can start with her weaving again on Monday.

We ran the opening (1-7) of this course today:

This is a course that I got from a friends blog and some other people with blogs have also been running it. People find a lot of serpentines in it that I don’t really agree with. 1-2 was a definate straight line, but Shejpa had trouble with it and wanted to go around the second jump. I have to work more on slices with her. I did a LOP at 3 and I’m not sure if the dogs went straight from 3-4. I think there was a slight turn for most of them. Missy tried to bounce 3-4 but had trouble with keeping both bars up when she did it. She was better when she put in an extra stride but it would be nice if she could bounce it and keep the bars up… We had a harder weave entry than above, the weaves were about two meters down and Missy had some trouble with hitting the entry. Maybe I should have used a threadle there. On the other hand, she did it well when I did the first four jumps with a toy placed at the first pole, so I guess it has more to do with value for weave entries…

5-6-7 is an obvious serpentine and Shejpa did it well. I don’t train a lot of weaves (the 6 sets of 2 annoys me and I’m waiting for my new set of weaves) but she was perfect with both entry and serp. Missy had some more trouble, mostly with keeping the bars up in she serp. She knocks about 98% of bars on the middle jump of a serp. Even in one jump work. Even on low jumps. I don’t really know what to do with it, but I think her jumping is improving in general. Missy is a superstar on jump grids, while Shejpa is to aroused and just throws herself. But when we run a sequence, the roles are reversed. I’m surprised and happy when Missy keeps a bar up, but when Shejpa knocks a bar, it’s usually something I did. Missy used to be a good jumper for her first months of sequencing and I can still see that she has a lot of talent. Maybe she just needs to do a lot of sequencing (and jump grids!).

We didn’t do the whole course today (I’m still waiting for my equipment to come from England. It should be here by now…) but a lot of people seem to be serping 7-8-9 and 9-10-11, but I think 8-9 and 10-11 is straight lines (or at least should be if the dog is turning well and reading the lines). I’ll have to set it up some time, but not today. I just entered Missy in an obedience trial three weeks from now and we have a lot of training to do.