UKA and Vyne May 2009

We did our first weekend UKA show last weekend, which backed on to Vyne KC show. In KC shows you do not have snooker and gamblers anymore and I thought they would be a good thing to learn to do. Another perspective on how to approach courses, in terms of flow, timing and points. Gamblers we came second, thanks to Rivi being a smoothie girl. The snooker, I got in a right b-gg--s muddle as having had it explained to me, I thought I had to do it in a particular set sequence, and you do kinda, as a result we only did three obstacles and then I sent Rivi off course, so I left the ring, a bit confused and bemused. Rivi was like “what do you mean we have finished, I can count you know!” Rivi, my apologies. However I am now a bit wiser so look forward to entering them again. I rewarded the contacts and poles in the agilities. So for Rivi two 2nds and a 3rd. No more grade 3 classes YAHOO!!! My next aim at UKA is to reward Rivi in the jumping classes, in the past I have been told theoretically you can’t ‘train’ a jumping round, I do not take this view, as I am rewarding performance. So I am going in to reward Rivi being a darling, the effort for doing jumps and taking direction from me at the same time. That is the beauty of UKA I can choose to reward performance as I would in training by running a NFC round.
The funny bit of the weekend was Marc being the next dog on the line and someone said, your trousers are ripped and indeed they were, it caused much laugher, however his dignity was intact as he had his boxer shorts on. Ha Ha :-) (Sorry darling, had to put it in, it did make us laugh, just like when I knocked the jump down the other week.)
This week I have been trying to work on pull thrus using cones rather than jump wings, as Rivi and I need to move from ‘baby’ ones to good technical ones. And I need to make my training of pull thrus in a way that I get a buzz rather than feeling like I am teaching my guys a drill. My main aspect was that I wanted to convey the information that a pull thru was occurring before reaching the cones. This is so that they understand to commit to the cone and then do the pull thru turn. And last night at training we had to do a pull through the wings and both Rivi and Zev, picked it up I was well chuffed. Knowledge, understanding and insight are bliss when it starts coming together…