This week-end was the CPE Agility Nationals. Very low key for a
Nationals, which is consistent with the overall tone of the organization.

One of the judges this week-end was also judging last week-end. He was
very helpful to competitors, offering moral support and open to offering
advice. We were talking about Tsuki's a-frame contacts (or rather lack
thereof) and his own dog's issues and he suggested taking Tsuki
momentarily out of drive buy downing him BEFORE the a-frame.

So now we arrive and because this is, after all, "The Nationals" the
courses have to be a little harder than normal so his Standard course had
TWO a-frames. I planned it out .. when Tsuki took this jump and headed
for the a-frame I'd tell him to down. MY timing was perfect. He stopped,
he hestiated he started to move toward the a-fram, turned around looked at
me. He looked briefly at the off-course tunnel but he was positive that
wasn't what I was asking so he gave me the *look*. The look that says "My
Mom has lost her mind, what can I do to humor her?" About that time I
turned him up the a-frame and *contact*. I did the same thing on the way
back *contact*. SO we had one of our very rare 100% clean Qs on a
standard course.

Unfortuantely I had made a mistake in my move-ups and neglected to move
him from Level 3 to Level 4 so the Q didn't really count, but it was
educational. And today's he also Q'd with 5 faults.

As is usual for us we had some brilliant runs and some equally
impressive failures. WE are still in Level 3, becuase we need one last
Level 3 Snooker Leg. But we are also in the Championship class because we
Q'd out of Level 5 in Jumpers. Our Q rate for the week-end was 5 out of 9
runs.

Another very nice judge stayed behind at the end to help some folks with
their dog's dog walk troubles. He ended up giving us a mini-handling
seminar, for which he is ordinarily compensated for handsomely. He is one
of those people who is well aware that you have to handle different dogs
differently and different handler have to use what works for them. Three
of the people there were fairly new to competing (about a year), then
there was me. So he'd have us do a sequence, correct them, then explain
why I ran mine differently. Eventually we got to the point of saying that
he would run a particular sequence differently with Tsuki than I owuld.
And I offered him Tsuki to demonstrate.

Tsuki had the base foundation he was looking for (the "touch" command
menaing to touch the handler's hand, to gt the dog to pay attention to the
hand), and he is a "driving dog". Tsuki did a very nice job of helping
him demonstrate the point. Tsuki is such a resilient dog. He tries hard.
He worked for two other people as well. While I made it look like it he
won't really run for just anyone. I look for animated people, and for
one's who will not communicate that *he* was wrong when it was their
fault. And it was fun to hear Tsuki accurately described as a dog who will
NQ frequently but have moments of total connection that are a real high.
His agility is like his herding - it isn't just drivey, its joyful.

--
Diane Blackman
http://dog-play.com/
http://dog-play.com/shop2.html