Clean Run - June 2017 - 56

4

5

6

FC

FC

T

Setting the dog's line toward an
off-course tunnel in the absence
of a trained shoulder pull.

a lateral send to the tire, would find that
they inadvertently set a line for their
dog that would carry them directly over
the second-to-last jump and directly
toward the last tunnel unless they had a
strong pull as shown in Figure 4, but at
least they kept the dog out of the tunnel
under the A-frame!
A false turn executed in the pocket defined by the two jumps and the upside
of the teeter had mixed effects. For
some teams, the handler kept the dog
off the teeter with little difficulty. In
some cases, the handler over-rotated,
sending the dog onto the teeter instead
of over the downstream jump.
The teeter offered off-course challenges
as the teams rounded the end of the
A-frame at the far end of the ring. Handlers looking to direct their dog over the
tire without a lateral send would attempt
a blind cross or front cross on the landing side of the jump located immediately before the teeter. See Figure 5.
If this was not timed well, the dog
would remain on and follow on the handler's right and take the teeter or be on
a path to bypass the tire. This seemed
to happen mostly when the handler was
relatively far ahead of the dog at this
part of the course. If it was timed cor56

T

The effect of moving the front
cross closer to the second jump
by the teeter.

rectly as shown in Figure 6, the handler
could direct the dog over the last three
jumps and the tire by running with dog
and obstacles on her left.
Dogs that were not trained to work laterally from their handlers struggled in
two places in particular: at the winged
jump in the back right corner, and at the
tire. Handlers would send the dog to
these obstacles and then begin to turn
away without supporting the jump, and
the dogs would turn and follow. If the
handler attempted to resend the dog,
then either he stopped or one or the
other of them turned back on their path,
leading to "death."
Lastly, a few teams met an untimely end
(to their run) when the handler stopped after sending the dog to the table, but before
the dog was on it. This was an example of
the corollary to Bud's third law of motion
that correlates the dog's speed to that of
the handler: "Stopping is stupid."

Resurrection
So what is a story about marksmen and
guns without sound effects? One of the
visitors to the trial was a well-known
agility writer and her children. Her fourand-a-half year-old son joined me in the
ring, where he led the crowd in shouting

T

The effects of timing and location
of a front cross in the box defined
by the two jumps and the upside
of the teeter on the dog's path.

"Bang!" whenever a team violated one
of the motion rules. The game is perhaps a bit morbid, but the trial attendees
did seem to enjoy the audience participation aspects.
After all of the teams ran, and at the
suggestion of my course reviewer, I
gathered all of the handlers together
to let them know that my great-greatgrandfather, who I claimed was a Native American shaman, had given me
the power to resurrect fallen teams. All
those teams that had met their end in
their first runs were entitled to reattempt
the course. While agility purists may
scoff at the lack of seriousness in this
game and the opportunity for a mulligan, the handlers were quite pleased.
That said, some dogs just needed to
check out the same tunnels in their second run that they visited in their first.

The Game for Training
I find that students enjoy some friendly
competition in class, so I have used a
variety of games to capture that enthusiasm while providing a learning and
training opportunity for them. Since the
course design requirements are fairly
simple, a Last of the Mohicans course
can be set up using existing equipment
Clean Run | June 17
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - June 2017
