christy

I've been working for some time on getting Wylie to work at a distance. As
is the norm for Shelties, he likes to work close, or more correctly, he
likes ME to be close while he runs as fast as lightning - and that just
ain't happening. So we've had real issues with him turning back and barking
when he gets too far ahead of me, or cutting in when we are working at a
lateral distance. It has cost us many a clean run when he's checked in and
gotten refusals, so it has been a priority to work on sends and lateral
distance.
This past weekend, all my hard work paid off. We had a very tricky jumpers
course which required us to layer a jump pinwheel sequence around a tree,
among other complicated sequences. I was less worried about the layering
than the weave entry which required a rear cross, something I avoid at the
weaves. Anyway, it turned out that the layering of the pinwheel was no
problem, in that Wylie easily performed the sequence - only, he jumped the
wrong jumps. Somehow I managed to layer not only the tree, but the pinwheel
as well, as he performed an nice wide arc of the further out jumps instead.
I couldn't help but laugh - there's the distance work I wanted, alrighty.
Now I just have to figure out where I need to be...
Oh, and he nailed the weave entry, rear cross and all. And the next run, we
managed to work the tricky discriminations and blow a simple chute-jump
sequence. Now that we're getting all the hard stuff, we just have to perfect
the easy stuff...

Christy