Wednesday, April 13, 2011

frame that!

Well well well - much to my shock and delight the aframe seems to be coming together for Miss Sally ... it isn't perfect (in that I don't have the confidence to run her at it hard and leave her in 2o2o yet) but the potential is there. The promise of the frame is exciting. Sally seems to understand (suddenly) that the aframe matters. She can hit 2o2o without falling off the end of the frame - her balance is better; her position is often excellent. I suspect the 20 bottoms a day we did for the three days of Webb made a powerful impression in her mind and on her body. Tuesday night we did 5 bottoms on each side and then  ran two full frames each way. Lovely. Poetry. Perfection. On course they weren't perfect (stay in 2o2o is challenging when there is a course calling) but they were good and worked. I held criteria really easily as I finally have a CLEAR picture of what we want on the obstacle.
Brody did no work and was quite unhappy about that but he was three legged lame for no apparent reason Monday night so he sucked it up and watched. He is a fine supervisor!

3 comments:

Helen said...

That's a promising sign. I've got to rework A-frames with Beckett. I was thinking of going with a running frame and have 2o2o for teeters and the dogwalk.

Muttsandaklutz said...

Yay! Good news for sure! Hope Brody's feeling back on four legs soon though.

andrea said...

Helen - Thea has what I'd call a checked aframe .. it isn't 2o2o nor is it flat our running ..it's a little check as she rebalances heading down the ramp which means she strides on through the yellow - and yes a 9 inch dog can miss a contact with a great deal of joy.
Brody has a running dw and aframe and is pretty reliable on both but he and I are always side by side so I'm not sure running would work as well if I had a boat-load of distance on him ...
(and thanks Lisa - Brody was quite sound Tuesday night - seems to be ok now but he's really never been lame before so I was extra careful)