Black Box Course Design Go to Source I had a course design discussion with an associate not too long ago. Our conversation had mostly to do with methodology for designing courses. The course designer always begins with a completely blank slate or tabula rasa, an awesome and sometimes intimidating challenge. Once you get a start, of course you have foundation for nesting and variations on a theme. But getting a start really can be the hard part. Anyway, I gave her an idea or two about how to get the creative juices flowing and in a timely manner lay out a design that is interesting, and fun, and challenging. I left off our study by wishing her luck. And I told her… “remind me

The Exploding Pinwheel Go to Source The dog training objective in this exercise is to teach the dog to take ownership of the pinwheel, as though it were a single obstacle with multiple elements, rather like the weave poles. The exercise, and the diligent practice of doing the exercise, has several other benefits: The dog will adopt a powerful obstacle focus for jumps and hurdles; Teach and reinforce a powerful directional command: “Go On!” The dog will learn to work independently at a distance from his handler; The pinwheel becomes an element in competition that allows the handler to gain advantage in field position. “Exploding” pinwheel possibly conjures an image of wings and jump bars flying everywhere as if blown up dynamite. Just to settle down the

Named Obstacle Discrimination Go to Source You know, I remember the first time I ever saw a tunnel under an A-frame. It was at the USDAA Nationals in Houston Texas in 1993 on a course designed by Kenneth Tatsch. My boy, Winston the Wonder Dog, took the wrong-course obstacle. I went home determined to solve the riddle of to the “obstacle discrimination”. And frankly, I studied and developed some very reliable handling solutions. At the end of the day, turns out, it shouldn’t be a matter of handling at all. What if I were to actually teach my dog the names of the obstacles so I didn’t have to handle at all? Instead, I could just give my dog the information and trust