Agility Practice Journal Entry - Non-Practice Entry?
08 Oct 2004
This entry is more like a bunch of excuses for why we haven’t been training for the last couple of weeks… This lack of training makes it all the more important that I think about a training plan for the next few weeks. I’ve missed most training because I was sent to London on short notice for a business trip onto which I added a week of vacation. Nancy met me there and we had our first “real” vacation in three years. That trip together with Milo’s rehab schedule have really interrupted our Agility training.
In preparing for my trip I had to skip an Agility trial in which I was hoping to finish up Mr. Peabody’s AX and AXJ titles. My trip’s timing also caused me to miss a seminar being hosted by Dana Pike
to which I had been looking forward for a couple months. I also missed teaching and running two weeks of my courses for Dearlove with Mr. Peabody.
On our first morning back we took Milo to TOPS for his fifth ultrasound treatment on his left front bicep. He has also been getting a chiropractice adjustment each visit too. He is improving each time and his limp is now very slight. We’ve scheduled out four more visits over the next two weeks. Last time he hurt himself it took almost 6 months for him to fully recover. This time he is recovering a lot faster. I really hated having to put his treatments on hold while we were away…
So now I have to get back into the Agility groove. I’m certain my timing is really going to be terrible after being away from handling for almost three weeks. Mr. Peabody has also gotten out of training over this same period. It is critical that I set training goals for the next few weeks:
- Mr. Peabody
- Drill lead outs calling over multiple jumps (he dropped a bar on this at the last trial)
- Work some front cross drills for my timing
- Work some rear cross drills for my timing
- Work jumping sequences raising back up to his competition height
- Milo
- Work on "fast downs"
I’m working Milo on his downs for two reasons. He can be very slow doing a down on the table because he wants to move to the next obstacle. I also want him to use a down as his default teeter behavior. So I am going to use his recovery time to work on reinforcing this behavior (since it won’t negatively impact his recovery). Before his injury I had been accidentally relaxing my criteria for a down on the teeter contact and it was starting to affect his performance.
Of course I’ll also spend more time working with Mr. Peabody since Milo is “broken”. Our game has been suffering lately due to our lack of practice. Every injury is another opportunity for some kind of training…
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