torstai 10. joulukuuta 2009

Running contacts?!

As everyone knows, there is huge "battle" with running contacts vs. 2on 2off contacts. There are many who say the other and there are a bit less who says about the other. Namely running contacts are a bit underdog in this matter.

In my opinion 2on2off are excellent way to teach contacts: Its moderately easy to train, reliable and you can win world championships and european opens with it.
Running contacts are considered less reliable and the life after dogwalk is usually the argument used against running contacts. But its really fast! You can win up to a whole second with running contacts against perfectly done 2o2o contacts.

I will not go into details about these methods, but I will tell all you why im taking this path im going to take. This is a note and a diary for myself when after few years im pondering "why I started running contacts in the first place..."

  1. Physical attributes: Shelties stride is considered natural for doing running contacts. My own running speed is decent or some would say fast. I dont need to stall the dog so I can catch them in the course. Blitz will be mini dog and this also helped in my desicion.
  2. Goal: Ive set my goal in agility pretty high. I want to take every possible part of seconds out from the clock.
  3. Reliability: Well trained running contacts are reliable. There will be misstakes in the beginning and this is considered to be the blame why people think running contacts wont work.
  4. Amount of training: Running contacts need alot of training. But so does 2on2off! Ive been closely looking at my club-partners who have world class 2o2o contacts. They do ALOT of work for it also. I think the same amount of work can also make running contacts to work. At this moment I will have it easier to train running for Blitz than trying to make her stop :-) I have my own dogwalk and A-frame to train with, now im only missing summer!
  5. Experience: I consider myself not being novice anymore. So this means I know what I want and I know where to get help if/when needed. If Blitz would be my first dog or less trainable I would definately go for 2on2off contacts.
  6. Training-training-training: I will train Blitz to be able to understand commands as "Left, Right, Go forward". Running Dogwalk training does not stop at hitting the contact. I will train the tools to work after the contact. There is allways the option for re-training! If I fail miserably with running contacts, It is considered easy to re-train contacts to 2on2off.
I will update some parts in English so that I can update my friends abroad how my runnings are going!

Wish me luck!

8 kommenttia:

Jenny Damm kirjoitti...

Nice reading!! :o) Good decision. Good luck and have fun with your training. I look forward to future reports!

Ingerid kirjoitti...

I really do wish you good luck! As I said RC is a lot of work, but it is a rewarding process. In my blog you can look at posts tagged "running contacts" to see videos of the process with Orkan :-)

Eyespy treenit kirjoitti...

;-D

Mia kirjoitti...

:-) Nice!!!

Hannele kirjoitti...

Wau ! Please tell us more about your running contacts process with Blitz...interesting:)

Eyespy treenit kirjoitti...

millon sä alat treenaamaan?

Petri ja Blitz kirjoitti...

Treenaamisen tähän aloittelen pikkuhiljaa. Pitää pari juttua hoitaa ensiksi alta pois. Esim tuo uudessa päivityksessä oleva paikallaan pysyminen :D

Anonyymi kirjoitti...

Saiskos saman suomeksi?