Masters Jumpers Q

His Masters Series jumpers run, the one he came in second place by 7 seconds. He sure doesn't look slow to me, and only one place where he went wide, after that yellow jump behind the tunnels the first time.

So hard to know what is a reasonable outcome goal to set when our best performances are still deemed not good enough. Not just this run, but that Novice agility run where we had that one off course.

Du'

If Anna can believe in Du', then maybe I can believe in Kraft. I chose this video mostly for the title, not because of Du's antics. This is a person who knows what it takes to get to this level, has had her share of struggles with this dog, and keeps persevering. I think they're about the same age too since I think the first of her seminars I went to with Spy when Kraft was a puppy, she had Du' out during some of the breaks.
Now I'm extra excited to work with her in 2 weeks.

Compliments Are Hard to Bear

When you don't feel worthy of receiving them. 

I'm at a funny place right now with Kraft. All winter we struggled with staying connected on course. I figured once we got over that hump, we'd hit our stride again. Unfortunately, even with staying pretty connected, we still can't seem to get through courses. We did two days of UKI this weekend, two different clubs, two different locations, same judge. Kraft did a total of 6 runs. He already has all the points he needs in novice in the games and jumping to move up, but 0 agility clears. I entered him the first day in gamblers, agility and jumping to try to take advantage of easier courses to get his Q's for the U.S. open while we work on those agility legs to move up. He had a smokin gamblers run to start the weekend, felt really in sync. But then agility we made a complete mess of a fairly simple course and I started wondering if we were losing our connection again. It wasn't a terribly hard course, but he did break his start line again. I shook it off, disappointed that we didn't get the run we need, but there was always the next day. He held his stay in jumping, which was good because I really needed an almost 3 jump lead out but then mysteriously missed his weave entry. I tried to brush that off, it was just a warm up for the next day right? The next day started with Masters series agility. Considering the previous day he had done all novice, and this particular judge likes WIDE open lines for the lower levels, yikes, I knew I was going to have to hold on tight. The course looked very doable, well within our skill range. Didn't matter though. We made a complete mess of it. E'd in three places. I tried not to get too down, I knew that class first thing in the morning  would be tough for him. Next was novice agility. Here's the course:

8-9 was our problem area. He curled toward me and took 16. I had squatted down at the tunnel exit in the walk through. They could see the chute straight ahead, but not the jump. I was hoping that a verbal "go on tunnel" would be enough to get him to commit to the chute before he exited the tunnel, so he wouldn't even consider the jump, but since I had to slow down and read cross the tunnel he felt that and curled toward me. In hindsight, perhaps my rear cross should have been done further back away from the tunnel, closer to 7 so that I could be accelerating when he entered the tunnel. Would have been easier to believe my go on cue that way. Ideally would have liked to already have him on my left for 7 so I wouldn't have had to wait around to rear at all. I wrapped 5 to the right, then had to stay up there and support 6 since those jumps were pretty close together. I considered wrapping 5 to the left by rear crossing it which then would have given him a really good line to 6-7 and I could have taken off immediately and blind crossed between 6-7. But that corner was really dark and I didn't think he would believe me that I wanted him to turn that way. Any other suggestions, I'm all ears. This course was a total heart breaker because he was so perfect on the whole rest of it. I just about wanted to cry. 

Then was masters jumping. It looked tougher than the agility course. But I still thought that, at home at least, we could do it. But I didn't expect much. To my surprise though, he kept his head together and Q'd. I was stoked! Finally, a course where he showed his true potential. I thought he had gone pretty fast. We were a little wide in one spot. I knew the other dog that went clean would be faster. It's a dog from the local Sheltie clique who all are pretty much WTT contenders from the day the puppies hit the ground. I stuck around to check scores, hoping for maybe 3-4 seconds behind that dog. But no, 7 seconds! So despite a really great run, feeling super connected and like we did our very best, there's still no way we can shave 7 seconds off our times to be competitive. 

So it leaves me wondering if maybe he just isn't cut out for the level I want to be at. It's so hard to admit it. I don't want to sell out, stop believing that the terrier can compete with the Sheties. Hell, there are several terriers that ARE competing with the Shelties. Turns out, Kraft just isn't one of them. It's just getting hard not to feel disappointed, like we are a total let down with all the potential he has shown. People were complimenting his runs all day and I wanted to scream at them "did you even see that run?" Each one I received I just felt like we were an even bigger let down, so much potential that we just aren't living up to. 

Sigh. Taking a bit of a trialing break in May. Couldn't afford any with the seminar I signed up for in the middle of the month. Maybe we'll learn something useful. Then again, all the seminars we've gone to thus far haven't really done squat do us. Feeling frustrated and kind of like I want to give up, not agility, but the hopes and dreams and goals I've set. Maybe they're too lofty. I wouldn't feel like crying over failure to meet performance goals if I wasn't hoping to qualify for the Open or tryouts next year or all the other outcome goals I have.  

Quit Being Afraid

On Friday I did a Masters handling seminar with Soshana Dos. I find it crazy I had to drive almost 3 hours to take a seminar from her when she lives probably about an hour away from me but hey. The unofficial theme of the day seemed to be quit being afraid of forward motion. Sure, deceleration works to cue a turn, but it has its drawbacks. That seems to be what the Finns have going for them: they use very little deceleration to cue things, which keeps their dogs going full speed at all times, but use their other cues so effectively that the dogs are still turning appropriately. I think using deceleration slows the handler down, and while the dog reads the cue well, the handler is then stuck trying to get back up to speed, so the dog likewise does not accelerate as well as he could out of the turn. The biggest difference I see between the Mecklenburg system and OMD is this. OMD recognizes handler motion as the strongest cue but manages to use all the others without diluting the dog's responsiveness to that motion. Soshana mentioned that Mecklenburg followers probably have the easiest time transitioning to OMD because the cues and cue combinations are so similar. That said, I am still struggling, still clinging to using deceleration as a primary turning cue when I don't need to. I think this is where a lot of my frustration in trials is coming from, I'm still learning this handling system, and my execution is still leaving much to be desired.

I look at this video, and while there are some nice bits, I have a long ways to go. You can see it took me 4-5 tries at each of the hard places to get it right, and I'm still not sure I would be able to get it on my own at all without someone tweaking my efforts with each repetition. And even one of the easy places (1-3 on the first course) took me 6 (!) tries.

I love that I was pushed as hard as I was, I just wish I wasn't harming Kraft's body in the process. His knees are not going to last. He's only 3 and while I've been quiet about it, the past few months I've really struggled with how to keep him sound. He came up dead lame one night. The surgeon says his knee is still not bad enough to require surgery, the patella still isn't actually luxating, but just riding on the inner groove so the pain is him developing arthritis from that. His thighs are starting to look asymmetric so he's clearly off loading onto his good leg. I've started him on Adequan, and doing more fitness work and less frequent agility. Sigh. At this point, I don't know which dreams are still realistic for us and which ones I need to let go of.