Training Stout's Contacts

Like I mentioned yesterday, Stout missed almost every contact at the NADAC trial. I wasn't surprised  :)

I hate to admit it, but I have failed to teach Stout any contact behavior. Yes, I teach agility to other people and yet I have neglected to teach my own dog to hit the contact zone on the frame or dogwalk.

It's not due to laziness, at least not totally  :)  It's mostly due to my indecisiveness.

I know I want running contacts. Watching the finalists at the AKC Nationals convinced me of that.

Porter has pseudo-running contacts - not due to training, but because I failed to train anything else & he naturally hits the yellow.

I tried that a little with Stout. Not gonna happen. Actually, that's pretty much what I've been relying on. He's just too leggy & driven - his natural stride doesn't carry him into the yellow & his speed & desire says jumping it is much faster anyway  :)

I've toyed around with Silvia Trkman's method. I have friends that have used her method & it works great! I hve watched the dvd and even submitted a couple videos of Stout running the plank to our Foundations class with her.

But without a dogwalk of our own, it looks much more difficult. And I'm not crazy about the number of repetitions needed to train it.

Early this year I attended a seminar with Dawn Weaver. Her dogs all have running (& stopped) contacts. I looked into her online class & was intrigued. I could find very little information, seems she secret to her method is well kept.

So I consulted with a fellow blogger who has done both methods & she recommended Dawn's  :)  So I signed up. I have been happy with our progress so far!

Unfortunately, I can't share any info with you  :)  Come to find out, the reason you don't find much info is because she asks you not to release it. I can't blame her, after all, that is how she makes her money. But it does suck not to be able to share our videos. So you'll have to wait & see the results when I'm done  :)

So here is our latest video our online Foundations class with Silvia:

We finally have an in-line serpentine!