Rosanne DiMascio seminar
Saturday's seminar was excellent! The timing was pretty much perfect to challenge me to change up some of my decade-old handling presets and see how Eri would respond. The answer is that I am clearly programmed to move in certain ways but that Eri does not yet have expectations that I will always move in those ways and is able to read more cues than I was giving him credit for.
Specifically... (tried to put this under a cut but it won't GO!)
Front crosses. I've pretty much been doing these the same for 13-14 years (ever since I learned them!) with the minor change of adding a cross arm indication when I took classes from cflyrun with Brin. Rosanne had us open up the front of our bodies to the dog through the FC rather than going shoulder to shoulder. I don't know if it was a different way of explaining something I've seen other people do, or just the right timing for me to have to think about my body mechanics, but this was a hard thing for me to process. I had to really concentrate on opening up parallel to the dog's line of travel. My FCs were oddly timed all day, but Eri seemed to think that was OK and kept up nicely.
Rear crosses. I was cuing them oddly I think! I completely forgot that I usually give him a verbal reinforcer that he's turning away and consequently with the change to the FC cue he got a bit muddled about which way to turn. We will be going back to the barn to work these some more obviously! It was interesting to me that when he was moving at a good clip he was less confused than if I'd slowed to give a turning cue. It may be that when he's thinking about other things, he doesn't have as many brain cells to spare on second guessing my inconsistent handling *g*
Blind crosses. So I learned my handling skills when these were strictly forbidden and I've been completely convinced that Eri, with his total lack of personal space, would simply take me out at the knees if I used them. NOT SO! He had no problem reading them at all unless he'd taken a wide turn out of a tunnel (couldn't see me changing direction/side) and that was easily solved by using his name to turn him back into me. Looking back at this, I shouldn't be surprised, I've been doing endless games of 'find heel' and 'find side' from all corners of the house up and down halls for the last two weeks. I KNOW he can find a cued side! Again, my body mechanics were way off. Every time I was supposed to throw a BC in, I would start the rotation into the FC, force myself to stop and turn the other way. It made for a very jerky turn, but I am quite sure this will even out with some work.
I really liked the way Rosanne set up her exercises to build on each other. The set-up is similar to one I've used repeatedly in classes, but there a set of jumps in the middle that were closer than I usually set them so that when jumping on a diagonal Eri had to decide whether to bounce between them or to put in a stride to turn tighter. He hasn't had much exposure to bouncing jumps or to making the decision to squish his stride down that far so we had a lot of running around a jump or knocked bars until I remembered barjor getting on my case about insisting that he take jumps. I cranked up the pressure and sure enough, he was able to make the decision. There were still bars down, but fewer as the day went on and as he got more fluent with my new movement (jerky stops and all!), he did a very creditable job. I was proud of him for doing so much work in one day - this is the most agility 'work' I think he's ever done at one time and he hung in there really well.
On the downside, on the second to last exercise, I heard something pop in the back of my 'good' knee as I pushed out of a bit of soft sand and was barely able to walk off the course. I did manage the last exercise, but only once! Fortunately, the bars stayed up and Eri read the BCs nicely because I couldn't have done it again and I certainly couldn't have done FCs! By the time I got home there was significant swelling around the where the tendon from the calf muscle attaches into the knee. It will mend but right now it's pretty tender. I think I'm going to have to get a sub for League which sucks because I wanted to do do the game this week!
At any rate, I will definitely go back to another seminar with Rosanne. It was a day very well spent! (Thanks, barjor:-)
Specifically... (tried to put this under a cut but it won't GO!)
Front crosses. I've pretty much been doing these the same for 13-14 years (ever since I learned them!) with the minor change of adding a cross arm indication when I took classes from cflyrun with Brin. Rosanne had us open up the front of our bodies to the dog through the FC rather than going shoulder to shoulder. I don't know if it was a different way of explaining something I've seen other people do, or just the right timing for me to have to think about my body mechanics, but this was a hard thing for me to process. I had to really concentrate on opening up parallel to the dog's line of travel. My FCs were oddly timed all day, but Eri seemed to think that was OK and kept up nicely.
Rear crosses. I was cuing them oddly I think! I completely forgot that I usually give him a verbal reinforcer that he's turning away and consequently with the change to the FC cue he got a bit muddled about which way to turn. We will be going back to the barn to work these some more obviously! It was interesting to me that when he was moving at a good clip he was less confused than if I'd slowed to give a turning cue. It may be that when he's thinking about other things, he doesn't have as many brain cells to spare on second guessing my inconsistent handling *g*
Blind crosses. So I learned my handling skills when these were strictly forbidden and I've been completely convinced that Eri, with his total lack of personal space, would simply take me out at the knees if I used them. NOT SO! He had no problem reading them at all unless he'd taken a wide turn out of a tunnel (couldn't see me changing direction/side) and that was easily solved by using his name to turn him back into me. Looking back at this, I shouldn't be surprised, I've been doing endless games of 'find heel' and 'find side' from all corners of the house up and down halls for the last two weeks. I KNOW he can find a cued side! Again, my body mechanics were way off. Every time I was supposed to throw a BC in, I would start the rotation into the FC, force myself to stop and turn the other way. It made for a very jerky turn, but I am quite sure this will even out with some work.
I really liked the way Rosanne set up her exercises to build on each other. The set-up is similar to one I've used repeatedly in classes, but there a set of jumps in the middle that were closer than I usually set them so that when jumping on a diagonal Eri had to decide whether to bounce between them or to put in a stride to turn tighter. He hasn't had much exposure to bouncing jumps or to making the decision to squish his stride down that far so we had a lot of running around a jump or knocked bars until I remembered barjor getting on my case about insisting that he take jumps. I cranked up the pressure and sure enough, he was able to make the decision. There were still bars down, but fewer as the day went on and as he got more fluent with my new movement (jerky stops and all!), he did a very creditable job. I was proud of him for doing so much work in one day - this is the most agility 'work' I think he's ever done at one time and he hung in there really well.
On the downside, on the second to last exercise, I heard something pop in the back of my 'good' knee as I pushed out of a bit of soft sand and was barely able to walk off the course. I did manage the last exercise, but only once! Fortunately, the bars stayed up and Eri read the BCs nicely because I couldn't have done it again and I certainly couldn't have done FCs! By the time I got home there was significant swelling around the where the tendon from the calf muscle attaches into the knee. It will mend but right now it's pretty tender. I think I'm going to have to get a sub for League which sucks because I wanted to do do the game this week!
At any rate, I will definitely go back to another seminar with Rosanne. It was a day very well spent! (Thanks, barjor:-)