Where did my contacts go?

Yes, I figured it was going to happen, but I hoped that it would not. I have been training Rip to use the "box" to do running contacts on his Aframe and Dogwalk. Initially I taught him contact position, where he would do a 2on 2off for me, so I knew he had some understanding of the position, and I transitioned to having him run through the box on the ground, and then moved the boxes to the equipment, and had him do contact positions in the box. All's well... Then he was doing full height equipment with the box and the boy would hit his contact nicely every time, just stride right down into them. Every time!

Now, he didn't have a lot of speed doing this, but he wasnt on a liesurely stroll either. As time goes on, he is getting more comfortable running on the equipment and his speed is ever increasing. Now I am finding that he's started leaping. Damnit all, it couldnt be easy, could it? No, turn into a leaper just like every other dog out there training for running contacts.
So now the wife has some ideas for us to work on to get him striding back through again. I havent given up on the box yet, but why cant this just be easy... why cant we tell them what we want, and they just do it?

Where is Joey?

Some might have noticed that my blog title is minus the "Joey" part, as it was "Gregs Dog Blog with Skye, Joey and Rip". I haven't been training Joey in agility for quite a while now as too much frustration had set in and I really just couldn't do it anymore. He's our hard headed deaf boy who just never listens! In reality, it would take me 30 times longer to teach him something than Skye or Rip, and I don't have the patience or time unfortunately. After more than a year at "level 3" agility, he still would bail off the side of a dogwalk, leap all his contacts, and was perfecting the teeter as a launch vehicle to get good air. He had zero startline stay and tunnels would call him from across the room. He thought every sequence had to start with a tunnel. The boy also has zero self preservation skills. He once went after a toy so carelessly that he bounced his head off the steel building's wall, and other folks in class thought he might have a concussion.

So, though he was funny and brought a good deal of entertainment to the class, I couldnt do it any longer.
I will still play frisbee with him, which in itself is quite comical, I am not going to do agility with him anymore, so I removed his name from the blog as it really is about my agility boys.

AKC weekend at Castle Rock

This has been a different experience for Skye and I at the AKC trial this weekend at Douglas County Fairgrounds. As an experiment, I am jumping Skye at 24" instead of his usual 20". The benefit is in less competition, where we have 25 dogs in the 24" group, compared to 55 dogs in 20".
In his first 3 runs this weekend, no bars came down, but then the last run today, JWW, he knocked two bars. I am not sure what the deal was and haven't reviewed the tape to see if I contributed to it.
The weird thing for this weekend, which hasn't happened to us before, is we have run and Q'd our both our STD courses, but then NQ'd jumpers. Every other time, if I have Q'd standard, then we also Q'd jumpers for a doubleQ, so its opposite this time. On the plus side, we have had pretty fast times in STD, getting 22 MACH points yesterday and then 20 points today.
So, no QQ's so far, but we still have tomorrow. I haven't decided if it's worth having Skye jump 24" yet. We did get a 4th place in STD today, and our NQ times in jumpers would have netted us 3rd's. Same times in the 20" group would put us a bit further down.

Update 4/12/09: We finished up today and unfortunately we did not Q either of our runs. We had a really great Standard run this morning, and I came off the course thinking I had Q'd it, but then found out Skye was called for his dogwalk contact. Bummer!! It would have been 2nd place.
In JWW, we had done the first 6 or so obstacles, then it was the weaves. I frontcrossed before them and gave Skye a good line to 'em, but he entered in pole 2 and came right back at me, looking at me. I was not sure what the heck he was doing... I dont remember what I said to him... it was like time stopped for a moment while we stared at each other, then what the heck, I just continued on, missing the next jump but then picking it up for the last 12 or so jumps, which went very well. Just a bizarre weave thing. Not sure how accurate my time was with the whole space-continuum freeze going on, but our time would have been good for 1st by almost 2 seconds. I should have some video to post later.
On the plus side today, we again had no bars come down at 24".

So..... having this trial under my belt at 24", I need to decide if I will enter him at this height again. Our next AKC trial that I already had to enter is for 20". Probably I will review the taped runs and see if I like how he is jumping and how it all looks. I admit, I do think a little more about properly handling the course so "I" dont cause bars to drop. Maybe that is a good thing??