Team Fernandezlopez

Lead out stand still decel cue: I lead out to the take off side of the jump, and orient myself forward, looking over the appropriate shoulder, but do NOT MOVE my feet until my dog collects/gathers for the jump. The dog wraps the wing nearest to me and basically comes to my front where she is rewarded. Taking a step forward before the dog jumps will launch the dog in extension and destroy your tight turn. The concept of cueing “collection” or tight turns with physical deceleration of the handler is a life changing concept (learned from Greg Derrett) for a front cross dominant handler. With this tool, the “front cross-only” handler can avoid a lot of wide turns you create by running full blast for a front cross and getting there late. However, using it generally forces the handler to immediately rear cross the next obstacle.

In motion decel cue: In the first photo above, I am decelerating, slowing down in an attempt to come to a full stop just before the wing of the jump in order to cue a tight turn to the right. In the next photo, I am accelerating, about to run past the wing of the jump, as I want my dog in full extension and racing forward. Notice the contrast between a handler slowing down vs running.

Simple turn to the right: This is how I cue a turn to the right. This is pretty much how everyone cues a turn to the right. Unfortunately, many people will cue a rear cross to the LEFT by first pulling their dog to the RIGHT with their shoulder (and sometimes feet) and releasing them back to the left, like pulling and letting go of a rubber band. For these handlers, their dog will often incorrectly anticipate the rear cross, turning the wrong way after the jump, when their poor handlers wanted a simple turn. This is because the visual/positional cue for a simple turn looks the same as the first half of the rear cross. The dog will usually guess correctly, but sometimes chooses the wrong one. If your dog has ever inexplicably turned the wrong way, you could be one of these folks.

Rear cross: these 2 sequential photos show how I currently rear cross. I am turned slightly toward the dog and I apply pressure to her path. This type of rear cross has the benefit of NOT looking anything like a simple turn to the right to my dog, so I don’t suffer the inexplicable wrong turns/spins other handlers get. However, I am very unhappy with my rear crosses. I do NOT have the ability to wrap a wing with a rear cross and I do not have a reliable way to send my dog in distinctly different directions after the rear cross. Annie Pyle has a great piece in Oct 2010 Clean Run page 43 where she notes that with respect to rear crosses “handlers often choose to force late front crosses or attempt awkward landing-side pushes.” Annie’s anxiety-provoking Figure 2 kept me up for an hour last night; I could barely eek out my QQ double 1st place this morning.

I see a few options: I can use the same rear cross cue in the same place relative to the jump but move in different directions/speeds/turning after (which I currently do, I think). Or I can use the same rear cross cue but do them in different places relative to the jump (closer to or further away from the jump/similar to Greg Derrett’s positional front cross cues?). Or do I need to scrap my system of rear crossing and come up with distinct handling cues to navigate jumps 7a-d in Annie’s Figure 2.

Tell me what you think. Because I really need to know. And then I’ll tell you how I would handle 7a-d with rear crosses and try them in the field.

This movie has been (and continues to be) advertised as a family/child movie for the holidays. SPOILER ALERT: it’s not. The big gruff guy next to me was heckling everyone sniffling during the movie, only to eventually break down IN TEARS…so don’t take your children to this movie. Was it a movie about some lab or was it the life story of my rottweiler Sammie? We got Sammie before we’d been married a year; she’s been there through all our cats, graduate school, medical school, our child, and all of these other dogs.

The movie was excellent. It just wasn’t a Christmas movie, and it sure wasn’t for children.

1. Speaking of judges, great job by Rachel Long. Yes, I’m biased because she is from Texas but she designed a great course and she’s a great judge. There was one other shaky judge with really borderline/poor down contact calls, but I don’t know her name.
2. Get rid of the up contact rule for straight on approaches please. No BC handlers have to train that (if you seriously have to, please drop a comment so we can talk). I do have to train it, and it slows my dog, and gives others an edge. They already have all the edges, give me a break. Gordon pointed out at that the new longer contact up simply ensures that BCs hit it more often while helping the >23″ breeds not at all. My rottweiler is almost 24″ and Gordon is right.
3. Loved the venue, the weather, the parking, the potty areas, the bathrooms, the stadium seating, and everything was very well run, finished in a timely manner, with 4 rings. As usual, it was hard to watch all your friends compete, but I think nationals is so big, it will be like this from now on. At least it’s not as bad as USDAA.
4. Heard a dog screaming on course and I immediately thought of Mayhem and came over to watch. I thought the handler was calling “Chase” but it was actually “Jase” and after hunting a bit, I tracked down the handler, Lisa Ross. She’s a tall, slim handler who spins out front crosses like a dance. They finished 2nd in the 26″ challenger round with a 31.66. Jase is a Mayhem x Credit pup, I knew it!
5. Speaking of Mayhem pups, the “random BC” who won the 24″ hybrid was Zippity, another Mayhem pup. Not so random!
6. Saw the most amazing golden run the hybrid in 30.44, named Beamer (Bronson). I wish I could have watched more dogs run but with Sarah running 2 dogs, and Sammie trying to make the challenger round, there wasn’t much sight seeing time. I didn’t get to videotape any awesome dogs, and I would have LOVED to tape some 26″ and 24″ dogs.
7. Other rotties there were Peaches, in 26″ and from Texas with handler Connie Richards. Peaches is a rescue and a great dog. Yoda (Elaine Swancer) also did well. I am disappointed the other top rotties did not show up, but who can blame them? It’s tough to motivate yourself when three clean runs gets you nothing, and you have to consider travel, expense, vacation, etc. This goes back to what Gordon was saying about BCs in 24″.
8. The best part of any show is when random people come and tell you how great your dog is. We get that a lot because Sammie’s a rottweiler, and we got some before the challenger round. But AFTER the challenger round, it was like Christmas for us. We packed up slowly, literally lingering to soak in every last moment. We were one of the last competitors to leave. As we were packing up, a competitor said that we had a great run (or something like that) and I remember saying, well, you had great runs all weekend. Which was true, I’d seen her run an awesome 26″ BC. She totally looked familiar but I didn’t know her. Back home, I was perusing the AKC site for info for my blogging, including last year’s national results, and I saw her picture! She’s Daisy Peel and runs Jester, who won it all last year and made the world team (I wasn’t at nationals last year because Sarah forgot our entries, bleah, so I had no idea what she looked like). But I actually remember her for her BC Fly, because I heard the dog was a rescue, and they did great at nationals one year, simply dominating. That prompted me to start a 2 year search for a rescue BC that never happened, but I remember that hearing about her inspired me to try to find one and get that kind of relationship with a dog.
9. Which leads me to Maggie Downey, who now runs Markie and Carly, goldens. It all started with Kelsey though. I saw their teamwork and it hooked me on agility. It’s actually the reason I got Gypsy, my golden girl, and why we train at FlashPaws. Kelsey passed away this year, and I miss her. I’d been so busy with residency and life that I didn’t even hear about it until several weeks later. Kelsey was amazing. And Maggie, who had a rottie before Kelsey, has always been a big supporter of Sammie. Thank you, Maggie and Kelsey, because without you guys, me and Sammie would never have found the sport that has brought us such joy and companionship.