Running Contacts

Well I know it has been a VERY long time since I have posted....sorry about that.  Things have been rather upside down but I hope to get things going again. Crystal and I are settling into the new house here in Saskatoon, same goes for all the animals.  The girls seem to love having a house with stairs...seems to be their very own private raceway.  Mia likes to try and beat Hallie to the bottom so she can wait at the bottom in attack mode.  Poor Hallie :)  The back yard is not finished yet but hopefully it will be done very soon.  We have roughly 50 yards of topsoil to be leveled....which will be done as soon as it quits raining.  Then we can order the sod and think about getting a fence up.

I have also started to look into places to train.  I contacted Shirley (who btw is originally from Fort Worth) from  http://www.dsdogs.com/ to see if I could come check things out, hope to check it out next week.  So exciting.  Also turns out if you are an active student there you can use the field when ever it is not in use....for FREE.  I do love FREE!

Well something I do is keep a list of things I would like to train, these could be things that I have never attempted before or things I like to touch on from time to time.  Kind of a reminder list.  Some of the things on my list are:

• Rear Crosses & Crosses @ Tunnels
• Contact Tunnel Discrmination - layering contact between me and dog and visa versa
• Crate Games
• Jumping skills (ofcourse)
• Running Contacts

So I just recieved the July Clean Run online which has an article by Daisy Peel -  "Tips for Training Running Contacts Part 2"  So of couse I also had to go back to my June Clean Run to find Part 1 LOL.  I told you I have been a little upside down.  :)  Anyway, this article really brought something to light for me, something so VERY VERY simple, running contacts are simply about how your dog runs.  Not really about the contact zone at all....just about how your dog runs.  This is an exerpt from the article:  "Simply put, you want your dog to be running with his back and front feet split apart rather than running like a bunny rabbit, with front feet and back feet together and each set used as a pair.  If the back and front feet are split apart, and hitting the ground separate from one another, your dog will be unable to jump later on when the board is raised"  Makes perfect sense to me!  If your dog runs properly it will hit the contact zone....instead of bunny hoping over it.

So now I at least have some ideas on how to train running contacts.  I look forward to posting about our progress.