Jen Pinder seminar

Last weekend I went to a 2 day Jen Pinder seminar. It was surprisingly good and I'm glad I went. My main reason for going was because I heard that the surface at Placer Dog Training is the same as the surface at WT tryouts, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case. I think they're both a type of astroturf, but the astroturf at Placer Dog is amazing.  It's the best surface I've ever been on and I'm sure Icon agrees!  He didn't slip at all.  I was told it's also grossly expensive, so I'm sure that WT tryout surface is a lesser quality.

I have videos from the seminar that I will post later and Kathie is supposed to send out the course maps, which I will post.  

But the main points I got from the seminar were:

The difference between collection and relative collection.

1.  Collection is a tight turn where the dog needs to significantly reduce his speed and add strides in order to make the turn.  A wrap is an example of a collected turn.

2.  Relative collection is a turn where you want the dog to maintain speed during the turn, however he knows that he is turning before he leaves the ground.

Jen uses lateral motion to get relative collection and generally she uses deceleration to get collection.

Some things Icon and I need to work on...

Lateral Motion Response:  The first day Jen said that Icon doesn't respond well to lateral motion and I need to go back and retrain that.  But he seemed to be ok after that one time.  I still would like to do a bit of training on this.  Nancy G also suggested training lateral motion in our first private, but I had forgotten until this seminar.

Turns out of tunnels:  Again this is something that I was working on with Nancy, but I think I like the way that Jen broke it down a bit more.  With Nancy I was just throwing the toy on the ground beside the tunnel to have Icon turn tight when I call him.  Instead of him depending on me to call his name, he should automatically look for me when he comes out of the tunnel and use my motion to decide where we're going next.  For example, if I'm moving towards the next obstacle he can continue and take it.  If I'm not moving at all he should come to my side.  She trains this with a c-shape tunnel and starts with no motion and having the dog come in to heel position on the same side that you sent him on.  This can start to add movement once he understands the initial motion.

Triple Performance:  Apparently we're not strong on our triple performance.  I should train this obstacle on it's own more.  I do have a triple at home that I can set up, but it's PVC.