Non C-ATCH Day 1 : Not the Aframe!

I think I will write this post now, while I am still raw and in the moment.

Today Molly and I entered our CPE trial weekend: four Standard entries , one Standard Q needed for our C-ATCH.

We ran Fullhouse and I had a fast dog, actual fast trial weaves and a Q with 36 points.

Then it was time for Standard.  Today was offering two rounds of Standard.  I was feeling pretty cocky, pretty sure that we would nail it today and get to relax for the rest of the weekend.

We NQd the first run after the fourth obstacle.  Molly pulled too hard around the fifth jump and when I called her to come back to me she thought I wanted an (off course) tunnel.  The rest of the run snowballed into one of our typical fault ridden disasters...

And now I was extremely anxious, Q-brained, trying my best to be zen and chill and not focus on the fact that we were no longer in that "no big deal!  We have two Standards to run today!" buffer zone.

The second run went really well.  Perfect...except that Molly did an Aframe flyoff and we NQd.  I was devastated two fold.  We did not get our C-ATCH today.  We did not get that big ribbon and the bar that I saw with "Flexible Flyers C-ATCH Molly April 2015" printed onto it, made just for us.  But , and I mean this, even worse... she missed her A-frame contact.  Even worse.   I was so proud, so unbelievably happy with our months and months of nice running A-frames.  Yes we've had a few fly offs but all of them I could related to myself being in a poor position.  She has not once blown an Aframe with me running alongside of her.  And I am so scared that we are back in the bad shape that we were in before.

Colors was the last run of the day and I specifically chose the course with the A-frame in it, hoping to make myself feel better.  Same thing, a near flyoff that was so close to being a scoreable fault that I am honestly shocked the judge didn't call it based on how it looks on my video. (We did qualify.  I would trade that Q for a pretty A-frame in a flash, obviously.) Heart sinking when I have lovingly played and replayed our runs of that beautiful girl striding all the way down the Aframe as fast as her feet can take her.

I am so capable of loving our journey, of enjoying these moments good and bad, of knowing that no matter what I get to go home with the best dog in the world.  But I am shaken to my core to think that we might be back to having an A-frame problem.  Our A-frame problems were such a miserable choking and agonizing thing for me.  It takes everything I have to trust her and run and not micromanage her , and until today she has succeeded with that trust.  And I don't want to go back to how things were before.  We can do it, I am capable of this too...but it sure is hard to feel like you've left something ugly in your past, only to have it come roaring back.

This cannot be happening. :(

Running Contacts, First Sessions.

And when I said that I wanted to teach Molly how to run her contacts, I mean...now.

I removed her paw bandage yesterday and she has not been limping.  She wants to lick constantly, so the cone is in effect.  When she goes out in the yard she has to wear a Pawz rubber bootie.  The toenail is stable but badly damaged, somehow both of those things are possible about this toenail.  But I am super glad that she is able to be active!

We started training this morning.  I took videos of 75 percent of our training session and instantly felt like it was a miserable failure.  It went nothing like I expected.

I expected my dog to run along the plank.  We would do two separate sessions of this today, and two tomorrow.  And then we would start raising the plank to an angle off the ground.

"Every dog is an individual."

Molly did not run along the plank.  She bounded.  She bounced and sprung.  Why would I have expected anything different?  And now what was I going to do?

The spring was especially awesome at 1:00 and the worst part was that I Clicked It!  Argh!  My reward placement was a disaster during our entire session.  I was using Vince's loading ramps to run Molly on, end to end.  I thought that maybe this was too long so I went to one ramp only.  It did not make much of a difference.

The plank was too high off the ground.  And Molly is a dog with a natural tendency to spring and bounce.  I was reading on Silvia Trkman's website that dogs who are being retrained may tend towards jumping because they are confused.  And that dogs like this would benefit from running on plain grass to their reward, or over a carpet.

I got a dog bowl.  I got Molly's cheese balls.  I made a 12 foot long "carpet" out of my interlocking foam squares.  And I again expected my dog to run across the Foam Runway and all would be well.  Nope.  Bouncing.  This next video is a little boring, with more of the bounding action happening at the end.

We went to plain grass.  I put Molly in stays and had her run to the dog bowl with a cheese ball in it.  This was what Molly needed!  I still got some mild bounces (the second run on this video) but I was really able to click a lot more of the running that I want versus the bouncing that I do not.

I may return to some more work on Just Grass.  But I did do one more session with the foam runway and I was a lot happier with what I was getting from Molly.  I have my work cut out for me, and the hardest part is that I am so inexperienced and have the most fragile of understanding of what I am trying to do.  Poor Molly, my first agility dog, suffering confusion for the betterment of our team!  (But mostly, for cheese balls.)

Important things to do:  Must buy Silvia's "Running Contacts that Make You Smile" DVD!
I do not have a good plank (yet) and so there is no reason to rush.  I really need to solidify good running behavior on the foam runway.  When I really have Molly's form consistent I can start getting picky about where her feet are falling (not jumping over the end of the foam runway.)  After that I will acquire and get working on a plank.

A lot of excuses and....fear?  Are going through my head.  I don't have a plank.  I don't have the yard  space.  I certainly don't have a dog walk of any height to continue our work on.  I do not have the skill to train this type of behavior.  I am going to have to rent ringspace and equipment.  How am I going to handle agility class?

Contact Dilemma Forever...

I changed my mind again.

I want to teach Molly running contacts.  For real.

It ain't gonna be easy.  But I think this is the right thing for my dog.