Clean Run Magazine - January 2007 - 16

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Mary Ellen Barry THE BACKYARD This month’s “Beyond the Backyard”
again focuses on front crosses. When you are doing a front cross, you are
telling your dog to change direction toward you and change sides.When you
are performing a front cross, you should try to position yourself as close
as possible to the next piece of equipment. By doing this, you are moving
in the direction that the course is going.Therefore, your position keeps
your dog moving in the direction of the course and also lets him know that
the turn is coming. See my May 2006 “Beyond the Backyard” article for
positional cue exercises, as well as November 2006 for position of front
crosses. © ALEX PREISS When you are deciding where to put a front cross
on course, always put the front cross where the dog is turning toward you.
When you start a front cross you want your dog to have an immediate
reaction to turn into you. Therefore, if you are putting a front cross on
a straight line, you may dilute your cue somewhat. The dog may begin to
wait until you complete a front cross before he starts his turn, and this
delay can add up to time lost on course. For the purpose of these
exercises, we will focus on how to decide where to put the front cross on
course. When you are walking a course, you should ﬁrst analyze the
dog’s ideal path and determine when and where he is turning. After you
determine the dog’s path, you should then sort out your handling to keep
him on that path. This 16 analysis will enable you to determine where to
put your crosses. After you decide on your handling path, use the
remainder of the walk-through to commit this path to your memory. When I
ﬁrst get on the course, most of the time the judge is still wheeling it
or has just ﬁnished and the bars are still on the ground. I actually
walk the dog’s path through the uprights, which provides insightful
information about what the dog sees as he is airborne and landing from a
jump. He should have the information on where he is going next before he
takes off for a jump. By the time he lands from that jump, his line to the
next obstacle should be set and he is already making determinations on
where he is going after that—so take a good look at the dog’s lines
when he is landing from a jump. One error that I often see is a handler
doing a front cross between two obstacles where the dog is turning, but
after the front cross the course leads away from the handler and the dog
needs to be “pushed” away as seen in Figure 1. In this sequence, the
handler has performed a front cross between #2 and #3 as shown in Figure
1a. Because the dog is in his ideal landing spot from #2, he knows to
drive to the handler’s left side and he is already making decisions
about where #4 is. As he looks through #3, however, he cannot see #4. His
natural inclination is telling him to continue driving toward the handler.
As the handler moves around jump #3 to push for #4, she continues to pull
the dog on his natural path, which does not intersect with jump #4. This
can lead to dropped bars the bar at #3 Clean Run | January 07 Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid
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Clean Run Magazine - January 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - January 2007