Monday 8 March 2010

Contacts

Scandal's aframe has been looking really good this week. She only did a 1-hit twice, the other times it was a nice 2-hit on the down ramp. Her turns are also coming on nicely.

The dog walk on the other hand..... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I HATE THE DOG WALK!!!

The dog walk at home = lovely. Nice and confident, 100%, running through the contact perfectly. We went to James and Sam's yesterday, and Scandal didnt hit one dog walk contact properly! In the end we left it, even if I only let her go from the down plank, she still was missing it.

I'm now at a loss with what to do. When she misses it, I say 'no' and we go and do it again. Previously, this worked... she'd almost always do a perfect hit the next time. However yesterday it became quite clear that Scandal had no idea what she was doing. Then I got into a tizzy because she wouldn't do it (and I didn't know how to solve it) so she jumped off from even higher up.

So, the plan for the time being, until I've worked out what to do, is to do a 2o2o dog walk everywhere except home. Increase distractions at home, and see if she still maintains criteria.

I don't know what to do... don't know what is best. If I call her back, she flattens. She'll keep trying, doesn't shut down, but she doesn't go as fast, which throws her stride out even more. If I ignore it, and carry on, then I'm accepting that (it'd be like her not stopping in 2o2o and me just carrying on) and then I don't see how she'll differentiate wrong from right. I guess the best thing to do would be to let her pick her toy up, but not play with her, and then jackpot it when she does a good contact. Problem is, like yesterday, if she doesn't do any good ones, then she switches off completely.

If any one has any suggestions on how I could work on this pleasse get in touch, harding_charlotte @ hotmail.com (remove spaces) as I'm completely at a loss with what to do next!

1 comment:

Me said...

What I do with the contacts for my dog is: (but now, bear in mind, I'm only a beginner, just at Grade 2), if the dog walk is on my right hand side, I sprint to the contact and then I point to the contact with my LEFT hand and my dog's nose follows my hand and he runs through the contact nicely. And vice versa if the dog walk is on my left hand side. Its difficult to do it though because you have to straighten up really quickly and start running again after you have pointed out the contact, but it works for me. The reason I use my left hand when the contact is on my right hand side is because if I put my right hand, the dog jumps over my right hand! I hope this is of some use.x