Energy Flow

So, after 2 days of training with Pati and Stuart Mah, one of my biggest "take-home" messages was all about Energy Flow...when we run agility, the course has sequences where the energy has to be high and big, and then other parts where the energy has to come down and relax.  "Relax into it" was a phrase I heard a lot and it took me a while to get the feel of that.  How do you relax on an agility course when you run a dog that is 50 x faster than you?  It all sunk in when we played around with "Gamblers" courses using a "time gamble" rather than a distance gamble.  During the first 30 seconds, we built up as many points by making up our own course...then the buzzer sounded and we had 15 seconds to get the gamble and get out. 

We worked two different set ups. The first was a box of jumps and the gamble was to get in the box and do a 270 turn with a straight line through the box.  Essentially, you could go straight through the box, then do a 270 or you could enter the box and start with a 270 followed by a straight line through. 

Since I don't get to play USDAA, and I was a bit unfamiliar with the game, Pati spent a good deal of time talking me through it.  When you rush to get all the points in during the opening sequence the energy is obviously very big and high, in order to get the gamble points, you must be able to settle back down and calm the energy or you won't be able to blast a fast dog in the box and correctly get the 270's and straight lines.  If don't calm down, they'll come in too fast, miss the straight lines, etc... 

What a perfect game to play in order to build the energy and then have to bring it back down rapidly.  I didn't get to walk it since I was trying to understand the rules better, but this was the sequence that Karma and I successfully ran at the end of the weekend...without walking it...how cool is that?  NICE!!!! We finally got the energy flow to work perfectly. 

The 2nd time gamble was a jump with weaves on both sides and we had to take jump-weave sequences...the goal was to get as many of the jump-weave or weave-jump sequences as possible without going over 15 seconds or you lost all the points you built up.