SUMMARY: Two gamble maneuvers from recent competitions to practice.
Gamble maneuvers sometimes seem to run in trends. Here are a couple trends represented by three gambles seen this year here in California. None of these had very high success rates. Tika, whom I'd have thought would send well across a jump to a tunnel through a box (formed by Aframe and another obstacle), went from #1 to #4 in both those gambles. And although we can do wraps from tunnels to contacts when I can get in there with them, neither of my dogs can do them at a distance--the trick seemed to be to get them to run straight out of the tunnel and then turn them, rather than trying to turn them immediately out of the tunnel like you might close in.
Hoooo boy! That last one is a doozie. Was it really almost 20 feet from the first jump to the tunnel? And then you still have to handle the A-frame/tunnel discrimination from a good distance if you want to be up there to send to the table.
ReplyDeleteSheesh! And that's CPE???
We had that first gamble at a USDAA trial last year. I didn't realize they used the same gambles at different trials. The others look fun, I'll have to try them.
ReplyDeleteThat's one thing about trialing in NADAC, none of those gambles seem all that bad compared to the crazy stuff you have to do in Chances.
I was quite careful about copying the exact distances and obstacle relationships from the course maps.
ReplyDeleteYeah, in CPE, only 3 (?maybe 5) of over 100 dogs got that gamble. But the ones who did it were among the most experienced dogs and handlers. I if the same gamble were seen in a USDAA masters class, you'd have seen a lot more dogs get it. There were no other obstacles out beyond the tunnel and aframe, so you could actually run them out a bit and then turn and run them back towards the Aframe. And if your dog has a good "out", that table shouldn't be a problem from the Aframe. (Says here.)
But it *was* (IMHO) overly tough for a CPE trial. Still, nice to have something to point at to prove that all the Qs aren't gimmees for experienced teams.
Yes, judges reuse entertaining courses all the time. Sometimes they even tell you up front "this is a new one that I'm trying out" or "this was fun for me back in south carolina so I'm trying it again" or "I borrowed this one from (other judge) because I liked it".
-ellen
Oh, I should point out on the last one--quite a lot of dogs went from the #1 to the #2 tunnel. It was the turn back to the Aframe that killed most of them.
ReplyDelete-ellen