Back to training

On the last weekend in October i made my way to Belguim to teach a two day workshop. The first day was for advanced handlers and i was very privileged to have top handlers from a few countries attending. The day went well although my heart did sink a little when a handler said she needed to teach her dogs some WOW moves as unless her dog did these she thought her dog would not get anywhere in the top class. I must admit my heart sank a little as she was basically saying that judges are putting more emphasis on the moves than the choreography. This has been my problem with the sport this year as it seems that some handlers are doing trick shows with a backing track rather than putting the moves to the music.
I was wined and dined very well during my stay and had been booked in a lovely bed and breakfast while i was there which i highly recommend if you are ever in Belgium www.koeckenhuys.be
Getting back late on the Sunday night i was pretty tired but come Monday morning i was energised enough to go out and do some training with Pogo on her routines. I concentrated mainly on her freestyle routine as I'm not that worried this year how she does in her HTM also she knows her positions in HTM so it makes it a little easier to practise them at home. With our freestyle routine we really have to go out and train it as the props needs some space around them. I already knew that there was at least one area which i needed to work on but as is so often the case, the moves i thought she was doing really well didn't go as well as they should. So its back to practising these few moves over the next week to try and get them more reliable. Its funny how when you are training a routine if just one or two bits go wrong out of all the bits you practise it feels like the routine is not going well. I tried to walk out the routine without the dog to convince myself that actually most of the routine is sort of there but until i get these three moves exactly right every time i will not be happy.