Errrrr.........we need to do some more practice !

Today was the first time i have been out and worked the potential HTM routine for Pogo. To be honest i have been doing more practise for her freestyle routine so i suddenly felt i should just take a look at her HTM routine. On the positive side at least i remembered the routine which is great considering since i have worked it out i have not really done too much on it.
As usual as you start to work the routine there can be some pieces that need to be changed. One thing i try to avoid is just doing a couple of paces of one direction before changing as often it does not showcase the position and can look rushed. This was the case at one section where i thought Pogo would do a few more paces to the section of music but as it turned out she only did a few so some adjustments were made there.
Of course something you often debate as a handler is how many positions and directions should you put in. As much as judges/officials of the sport say a few positions done well is better than them all done but with some performed not so well, I'm not sure all judges think like that. Often you see judges marking ever single position off on a tick list and if you miss one out you get less content points. Then of course what if you only do a minimum of one position will they down mark you for that.
Anyway the practise was ok but as we all know ok is not good enough and i really need to work on some of the positions. Time seems to be rushing by at the moment so i really must knuckle down and do some precision work with Pogo.

First real practice

Well today i went and did my first real serious practice session with Pogo ready for January. I had recently taken delivery of a couple of props so there was not much room in the van. Although i had mocked up one of the props this was the first time Pogo had worked with the actual one. After a few mistakes she seemed to pick up mostly what i wanted and i can see that we need to do a lot more practise on this one sequence. The only problem is i need space to do this sequence so i can only do it outside so will have to set it up outside when its not raining so i can do it several times during a day. The sequence a little way into the routine was the only real weak section i felt as i videoed the session and can see most the rest of the stuff is OK.
The freestyle routine seemed to take up most the session but i did run through the HTM routine on my own and it seemed OK. Its a good job i can hire an indoor arena to practise in now and again as i think if i had done this session in the park some people might have given me really weird looks : )