The Spaniel Annals

Out of all the dogs sports I’ve done, I find freestyle the hardest to train.  I tend to resort to obedience moves and more regimented body movements, which many freestyle judges don’t like.  Then when I start loosening up and throwing in dance moves, my dogs get confused due to all the mixed signals I’m sending them.  Beyond that, I’m not a good choreographer, and remembering a long string of dance moves is not something my mind and body have ever been trained for.  Usually my dogs are learning the freestyle moves late, well after learning left-sided heeling, so things like right-sided heeling are tough for them.  With Journey in particular, these new moves seem to demotivate her and she wants to default to the left.

And now we have a competition coming up in 6 weeks, and our Saturday practice with the club was a disaster.  Yes, it was hot and tough for the dogs to work.   I need to figure out how to keep Journey cool in hot conditions, as it’s apparent she struggles in the heat.  Then I struggle too.  Reardon kept trying, but even he was slowed down by the humidity.  I videotaped both dogs, and cringed watching them. The technique I’m using for right-sided heeling looks terrible, and Journey works slower and slower as the routine progresses.

Yesterday I started completely rehashing her routine.  It’s to Shania Twain’s “Feel Like a Woman,” which has a long refrain.  I’m having a tough time filling in the beats of that refrain, and the sequence of jump up-spin-down-sit is just not working.   So you certainly won’t see a picture or a video of it here.   Then I’m struggling with Journey spinning on just my voice command.  She seems to need a huge hand signal, which I’d like to eliminate.  We’ve been working on this for a while, and it doesn’t seem to be improving.

At the end of our time in the ring, I finally resorting to some jumping over my leg.  I’m hoping by the competition, she’ll be able to jump over my body.

Reardon’s routine is going a bit better, since it’s HTM or Heelwork-to-Music.  He loves his heeling, and we’ve got a beautiful piece of music from Lord of the Rings to work with.  It’s more of matter of whether I can remember our moves throughout the piece and signal them adequately.

I’m certainly hoping we can pull things together in the next 6 weeks.  I love music, and love the idea of freestyle.  Great freestyle teams and beautiful routines can bring tears to my eyes.  This is the only local competition of the year, plus we’ll have some demos around the same time.  We’ll just have to do the best we can and learn from the experience.