The off-season...now what?

Our club's training field closed last week, so it's now our "off-season" until it opens again in April. We have no trials until March, only fun matches. So the winter gives us a good chance to work on individual skills!

I remember last off-season my main focuses were preparing Mika for Regionals and Wall-e's foundation training (which both paid off!!). I remember that Mika didn't even know rear crosses last year, that was one thing we trained during the winter. Ha! I wouldn't be able to survive without rear crosses now, she's gotten so much more speed!

This winter my focuses are:

Mika

- Refresh her 2on2off training. Since she's been missing most of her contacts lately (except at our last run where she hit both dog walk contacts and the A-frame!!), I've decided to train a 2o2o on the DW and AF, but only for a couple weeks. Then we'll go back to running. Her 2o2o is awesome on the stairs and on the plank right now, hoping that it'll transfer nicely to the "real" contacts!

- Weave entries. We'll be working on tough weave entries with 6 poles in the basement. She's pretty good at the medium-hard ones, but once they start getting more severe she enters at the 2nd or 3rd pole.

Wall-e

- Finish training his 2on2off. This is actually going pretty good. He can do 2o2o on the plank at speed. I'd like to add a nose touch to it though to help him get his focus off of me.

- Perfect his weaves. Great news! -- WALL-E WEAVES!! He's obsessive about it, too. Whenever I go in the backyard he runs over to me, leaps in the air in traditional Wall-e style, runs over to the weaves, and starts weaving. Crazy dog. They're his favourite obstacle now! He has nice entries, which the 2x2 training helped a lot. The only thing is that he skips poles at the end when he gets really excited (like when I'm using Nature's Variety raw food as a reward!)

Contacts and weaves. We'll refresh foundation training too. Not a lot to work on, and nothing really "crucial" this time (unlike last off-season when I was preparing Mika for Regionals). I plan to teach them a lot more tricks and just have fun with training. Although I'm sure I'll start REALLY missing running sequences and courses soon (since I have a small yard) it'll be a nice winter!

~Nat