Class this Thursday night was very interesting. I haven’t slept well all week and had been working so many extra hours trying to get my accounts all caught up before I took time off for surgery, so I was very tired and unfocused. Thus we decided to let Chris run Gimme. I considered staying home, but she hadn’t done anything all week other than nosework class on Monday and I thought she deserved an outing. Blynn tried to run Gimme once a long time ago and it wasn’t very successful. Still Chris has been play-training Gimme since she was a little puppy, so I thought it might work.
Initially I needed to be on course to encourage her. However once she learned what great goodies Chris had, then she was more willing, needing less support from me.
The course had a lot of back-to-back sliced jumps and once Chris worked out the timing (her dogs are Papillions, so quite a difference), it was really beautiful to see. What we did not fully appreciate was how much more effort was required for all those sliced jumps. Gimme got tired, but it was close to the end of her first turn, so we just ended. We didn’t begin to appreciate how much more effort was required until Gimme started avoiding jumps early in her second turn. We found other things she could do and ended on a good note,
I’ve had people (instructors even) try to tell me it takes no more effort to clear a sliced bar jump than a straight-on bar jump. Its very clear to me it does take more effort. Slicing the jump changes the depth of the jump, making it equivalent in effort to jumping an oxer. If someone needs to see it, I can try to diagram it.
One thing cool to see was what happened when Chris peeled off wide halfway through the weave poles to get in position for the next jump. Gimme was a good girl and finished her weaves like she should. In the past I’ve tried unsuccessfully to get ahead of her in the weaves and she hurries and ends up skipping poles. So, I never would have gone wide, figuring both were something we needed to train through. It never occurred to me Gimme understood her weave job to that level. So now the questions are:
- will Gimme let me go wide and still finish the poles on her own?
- did she skip poles when I got ahead because she thinks the job in the weaves is to stay with me?
- just where are we with weaves and what do we need to train this summer?
I am two days post surgery and things are going well. I planned ahead and am pretty much set to take care of myself this time. also have several friends who call to check on me and are standing by to help if I need anything. I do think this is healing much faster. I am taking pretty much the same amount of drugs and getting total coverage of pain. before I would take the drugs and still have a little pain left over. The worst I was getting is a buzzing sensation like when your foot falls asleep and you move it so the circulation comes back. I am not getting any pain now, so am already gradually spacing out the drugs. I am sure it makes a huge difference to not be fighting infection.
Of course Gimme is very bored. She is really good about snuggling with me on my many lengthy naps. In between I’ve been giving her lots of Kongs to entertain her. We have a cue for her to find her Kong (“kong”) and then retrieve it to my hand is “bring kong”. All the sudden today she just couldn’t figure out what to do when I cued it. Rather than repeat the cue a dozen times and weaken the cued behavior after a few failures, I decided to help her get it right. When I walked over to point at the Kong, I suddenly understood her dilemma. There were three Kongs close together and she couldn’t decide which one she was supposed to bring me and didn’t want to be wrong. Such a good girl.
No comments:
Post a Comment