Adrian Rowan is a young handler in Kentucky who has been training running-contacts with her Border Collie Panic. They started in April 2009, using Silvia Trkman’s method. Adrian reports that Panic has only missed one contact in competition, which happens to be the 3rd dogwalk in the video below. This is a compilation video of Panic’s contacts in competition.
Adrian’s LiveJournal Blog has a number of posts about the training process. I’ve summarized and linked to the relevant posts below. Follow the links to the individual blog posts for more detail.
April 3, 2009 Adrian decides to experiment with running contacts. Panic already has a stopped contact using 2o2o.
April 12, 2009 Up to 28″ already! Adrian is intermixing running performances and and a stop on the plank. Can you spot the performances that should be rewarded?
April 29, 2009 Panic is doing a full-height dogwalk in class situation.
May 9, 2009 Adding turns to the end of the plank.
June 9, 2009 Panic has a regression and is jumping off a lot of contacts.
July 18, 2009 Adrian realizes that some of the repetitions that she’s been rewarding have been jumps that were deep into the yellow, but were still jumping and not truly running. Re-watch the videos above. Can you spot any jumps? Developing the ability to distinguish between jumping and running the most difficult, and yet, the most important part of Sylvia’s method. Everyone seems to struggle with it at some point. Adrian has some great pic’s that she let me post here. Not every dog has their back feet apart when running but most do.
Panic Jumping -- Back Feet Together
Copyright 2009 Adrian Rowan
Panic Running -- Back Feet Spaced Apart
Copyright 2009 Adrian Rowan
July 20, 2009 While working on turns after the dogwalk Adrian discovers that Panic does well with turns cued with deceleration but tends to jump when the turn is cued with lateral motion away from the dogwalk. I’m not sure that I’ve heard anyone make that distinction before. I wonder if it’s a common issue. Adrian attributes it to Panic still being green and feels sure it can be worked through.
August 20, 2009 More work on turns.
There are more videos on Adrian’s YouTube channel and on her Vimeo page . Check those out, as well as Adrian’s Blog for future progress reports.
Tags: Dogwalk, Running Contacts, Silvia Trkman, Training, Trialing, Trkman Method