Cheetah's Grid on the a-frame

Today I decided to try something that Rachel Sanders suggested in her pdf file from the DVD on the box method for running contacts. She said that if the dog was having trouble bouncing in to the box on the a-frame, to try flattening the a-frame on the ground and putting the jump grid over it. This seems to be working pretty well. The video that I have uploaded shows this process. The one from 1-3-09 was the first day that I did this. The other side benifit is that since I had broke Cheetah's a-frame over the summer, and tried an abridged version of Rachel's method, then when I didn't like what is was seeing I decided to put her 2o/2o back ( which - took about 5 min). I didn't want to "break" her again. So by putting it on the ground, I never had to have her go through that awkard "what do you want me to do now?" stage. It was simply an extention of what we were doing.

I realized that I needed to remove the first jump after a few reps, because she was jumping over the up-side of the contact (not something I wanted her to practice. Plus she was droping that bar a few times, I think because she was trying to figure out how to collect when she wanted to jump extended over the begining of the board. After I removed that jump, things went pretty well. I did 20 reps - here is the break down:
1. strided through
2. good bounce!
3. tried to bounce but hit the top of the box
4. dropped the first bar - then strided through
5. good bounce!
6. good bounce!
7. dropped the first bar - then strided through
8. I left the bar down, good bounce!
9. I removed the first bar - she imediately started hitting the up - good bounce!
10. good bounce!
11. good bounce!
12. she hit the apex jump - and strided through ?? I told her I wasn't getting rid of that one!
13. she Steps over the apex jump - then strides through the box
14. She steps over the apex jump -then strides through the box
15. good bounce!
16. steps over apex, strides through only 3 feet in the box
17. jumps apex - only three feet in the box
18. raise apex jump from 8" to 12" - good bounce!
19. jumps apex AND then JUMPS BOX!! GRRRR
20. good jump! good Bounce!!

I decided to quit while I was ahead - because I should have quit earlier than I did, I just wanted to work out some of the kinks, then I kept finding new kinks!

She was 10/20 for that session. not as good as we would like it but it is a starting point!