Contacts are back!

So the past 2-3 sessions, Zap's contacts fell apart! He would run past the board or jump every time! But today his contacts were awesome! I'm so relieved that it was just a phase. I worked on left and rights. He missed a few but I wasn't running next to him parallel so I suppose that is why. He is getting much better though sometimes he randomly flips to the wrong side when I call out a direction.....silly boy! Working on sequences that work loose turning like left and right but also tight turning like cik and cap. Need to work more on sends and understanding with this I think. Bars WERE at 4-8 inches but he is so focused on processing the turn cue that he often plows through them, I guess he can't multitask with the "jump + direction" right now so I removed the bars. I'm going to work on jumping skills separate from turn cues for a awhile until he has both down solid, then combine them.

Left and Rights, Cik and Cap, Go ons

^ What our training sessions mainly consist of at the moment.

In the morning I usually work on cik and cap in the garage a little bit. This evening I took our work out to the agility field and worked on getting him to drive ahead to cik and cap, so combining "gogogo" and jump wraps. He was EXCELLENT!

At first I just had jumps 1, 2, and 4 set up. [Only set at 4 inches or lower don't worry] I stood between 1 and 2 and even staying there the entire time, directed him to jump 1, jump 2, wrap 4, jump 2, then wrap 1, then jump 2 while barely moving and just using verbals and arms! Then I took out jump 1. I stood about 10-15 feet away from the tire with zap on different sides each time and did left and right with jumps 3 and 4, varying which side I was on. He got most of them! I tried not to do much with my arms, as I want left and right commands on mainly verbals since I want to be able to handle from behind as well.