SUMMARY: Class ups frustration level with myself.
Yesterday after Team Small Dog's post about weave and tunnel entries, I almost got motivated to work on some real agility drills for tunnel and weave entrances. I said that I've done no agility practice for 2 months, but technically that's not true; since I have stuff set up in my yard, once in a while we do some tiny small thing. Tunnel entrances and sends we do all the time. (They're fast and fun and I don't have to work too hard at it.) Weaves we do a lot. (Same thing.)
Plus I feel like I know what I'm doing with those training drills.
SOOO I went out into the yard. Beautiful sunny day. But the jumps were all down; the weaves were tucked out of the way in random inaccessible places. So I reverted to just Fetch.
Class last night. Drills with Tika went very well, except when she was sniffing at the start line and abandoning it to go check out [fill in the blank].
With Boost. Well. OK, I know that we have problems with rear crosses. I have to decelerate early and then run full blast at the jump without slowing down until she's in the air. We had some tough ones (for us). And I'd walk it with the run full blast at the jump. And every time I'd deliberately and consciously run full blast at the jump, and she'd still stop and push off it. The only way I could get her over the jumps was by running past them, which is NOT a rear cross.
And the instructor would say, you have to decel and then run at it full blast without slowing down, and I'd say I *did*, and she'd say, not enough, or, you need to wait longer, or, just, no, you didn't, you stopped (and I'd say, that's because there was a jump wing a foot in front of me). So apparently I have no idea what I'm doing on the field. I'm not saying she's wrong, because of course she isn't. I'm saying I'm frustrated because I think I'm doing what I'm supposed to do but that's not what's actually happening outside my head.
And then there were the constant reminders to run straight through the end of the course, because Boost kept turning back towards me and knocking the last bar. And, so, like, the last run of the evening, we had problem after problem, and when we finally got to the end, I blasted full speed past the end of the course and I'm thinking to myself, "well, at least THIS time she can't say that I didn't run all the way through," but of course the first words out of her mouth were, "you can't be stopping before the end, you have to run all the way through."
How can I be so unaware of what I'm doing? I feel like when I'm trying to train boost, just training myself: How can I fix the problem when I don't even know what's really going on? It is completely discouraging.
Then for our last run of the evening, we practiced a gamble. Which had a jump-weave entry exactly like that snooker super-Q that we missed on Saturday because boost entered the wrong side of hte weaves. Predictable. She entered the wrong side of the weaves. Then the other instructor told me that my approach was wrong over the jump. I said it was a training issue. He said it was my angle and told me where to jump from. I think I have a clue how to do gambles and when I have a training issue.
I followed the instructions anyway. She entered the wrong side. He suggested yet another approach. She entered the wrong side.
She will be 6 years old in less than a week. We've done so so so so many weave entries. Why can she still not do correct entries? Why why why why why? I don't understand why she doesn't get it but tika got it so quickly. I've never understood that. More frustration. (BTW, Tika had no problem with that entry in the gamble.)
Then of course kicking myself for not actually going out yesterday and practicing weave entries.
Mood: Frustrated to tears and still not really wanting to practice.
