A few different skills this week

1. Converging - This drill requires a tunnel and a jump. To start set the jump about 6 m from the tunnel. There are three variations to this one. First one has the jump in the middle of the tunnel, so there is a slight covergence going in and out of the tunnel. In the next one you have a lot of it going in to the tunnel, but not out. And the last, is not much in to the tunnel but a lot coming out. In all of these variations, the dog has to make assessments on their lead legs. Make sure to practice it all on the reverse sides too. If your dog is great at this, you can make it harder by putting the tunnel closer to the jump. Please take careful note of where I set the dog up and my handling line. In all of these scenarios, you should be running in on the dogs line. Even if you do a drawing up from the video of where the jump is, dog and my start position and line in and out. I guarantee you will forget, if you just watch the video then go out to do it all lol

2. Tyre - Here is where we start teaching the dogs not to touch the tyre at all. Start off shaping it like you did the jump. Only rewarding clean jumping. Keep in mind that they may do a bit of knocking with their tails, because they are turning in the tyre. Don't worry about that, just the feet and body. Once the tyre gets to a point that there is a gap under that they could choose, you can try some toy distractions. First of all from a sit and then the harder option from the drop. You will note that Keen hit more doing this but it is very hard for them to get the toy without based on where it is. I still rewarded the drop one, because the previous session he chose to run under the tyre, when he was in the drop. 

3. Push to the back front x - Start with your dog a few metres back and you will be in close to the jump. Physically and verbally cue a push to the back and then control their line over it by having the other hand out to show them their line out. It's better if they are bending around on this as much as possible. Change their start position, up to 8 m back eventually. Next same exercise has you running in and releasing them. Just adding more handler motion in to it. Same thing, change their set up point, until up to 8m.

## During this week, I want you to try to work out your dogs extension spacing between two jumps if you can. Start out with a spacing of about 4.5 m between the jumps. You can either have them going to a tunnel or a toy out in front of the two jumps. Have this about 10 m away. Set the dog up 4.5 m from the first jump, and lead out nearly to the toy or tunnel. Run the dog through and pay attention to how many strides they do. Increase the distance between the two jumps by moving jump number two towards the tunnel or toy. Every turn move it a foot closer to it. Keep doing this, until you see them add an extra stride. If you get to a point where the second jump is closer than 7 m you can move jump number one. When your dog has added that extra stride go and check what the spacing is and bring it back in a couple of feet. Whatever that spacing is, will be the spacing you will start all two jump drills, in the future. 

#NB if you don't have room to do this it' fine. I will give a likely spacing based on dogs sizes.