Tuesday 8 February 2011

Isle of Man training weekend

Isle of Man.



Last weekend Anna & I did a training weekend in the Isle of Man. We left on Friday night on a rather stormy evening for flying and made the short flight to the Island.


Saturday we split the training groups up into small groups of 4 or 5 who worked with each of us for and hour and a half. We then swapped groups after a short break.


In the afternoon we did the same thing with two groups who were competing and again spent an hour and a half with each group.


Both of us did a lot of work on turns (on preparing the dog for the turn its will make) verbal commands, timing, go arounds, pull throughs, body support and efficiency in handling.


We also worked a lot on analysing the path of the dog, and making sure as handlers we were not in that path of the dog. I was using my stop watch quite a bit, which enabled us to find ways to save time by handling in different ways.


The weather over the weekend was really rough, with a lot of rain and wind all weekend. Fortunately we were indoors, but flying back on Sunday evening on the small Flybe propeller plane was pretty fun, the approach to Birmingham resembling more a theme park ride than anything else!


This week I have lessons every day up until Sunday. Monday I spent laying a new land drain on to the course, as it has been very wet in recent weeks.


Lee


http://www.leegibsontraining.com/