Running contacts, part 2 - The doubt

Once upon a time...


...I wrote about my plans about our contacts with A-frame and dog-walk. Atlast came the time of doubt upon us. And offcourse the issue is running contacts!

We have been working our "behinds" off to make our first appearances at the competitions to be appropiate. I know I have made some tradeoffs because of that and one of them is our RC training!
We have been able to compete officially now for a month. We have competet 4 times during that. Our results have been DQ, 5, 0, 0. So its pretty nice row for a young starting dog. Its something I like to see and have been aiming towards. It has not been easy road. Our weaves have been awfull, still have a lot work in it, our seesaw is risky, some handling manouvers are risky... And we are not talking yet about table, flat tunnel... Urgh. So when I was bitten by the competition-bug, I had to make some sacrifices and sadly it seems Ive been somewhat creedy to be able to compete. (obviously!)

So about my doubt issue in RC.

I have been "trying" to do some courses in trainings and competitions with running contacts.  I have been lucky with them. I have even made myself to do some tricks to make them work (like distracting the dog to make her brake the stride). Some of them have worked and few havent. Ive been getting hesitant with our RC and even started to talk about it aloud. And for what? I have NOT trained them for ages and I presume them to work!

Argh I have been silly. Luckily I have some brain-activity left and I took some time and thought about my issues. I looked after my articles and studies about RC and gave it another thought. These are the things I found out:

•  No RC training since... ages.  -   yeye, Its my ambition about to be able to compete!
• The stage of RC training when I started to be distracted - PERFECT phase 1 of the RC way Im going towards. Why I havent worked towards to phase 2!
• Phase 2 of RC? - I thought that going towards ´weaves, seesaw, flat tunnel, queuing obstacles´ was more important. Theyre "ok" now, so no need to overtrain them
• Training enviroment - Ive tried to convince myself that winter is coming and my ability to train RC is reducing. And even my training time in summer was insufficient...

Well. Thats few things ive found out. Im thinking about quitting RC because I havent even tried to train them :D Someone shoo...spank me!

So, now starts my phase 2 of RC. Wish me luck again, since Ive runned out of luck in less than a year ;-)