For more on running contacts, it's best to join running contacts class or get a Running Contacts DVD. This page is meant for those who just have a quick question or want to show their finished product - you are very welcome to do so, it still brings a smile to my face when I see a beautiful running contact, it's something addictive about it. It is on times frustrating as well... - but it all makes the end result even sweeter. So... Happy training, everybody!
 Last call for May classes! You can still join us in Tricks/Puppy class – or Running Contacts Repeaters class!!! |
 Silvia Trkman is known for bringing every dog, from her first dog on, to the very top of the sport. Her dogs are known for great speed, tight turns, running contacts and long and injury-free careers. Silvia is in agility since 1992 and is– 3x World Champion (with two different dogs)
– 5x European Open winner, with 4 different dogs (Lo, La, Bu, Le)!!!
– National Championships podium and World Team member with every dog she’s ever had – National Champion for 22-times (with 5 different dogs of 3 different breeds) – World Team member for 19-times (mostly with at least two dogs at the time – sometimes four 🙂 ) |
Thanks Silvia! She has to do one hit at the up ramp and 2 hitos at the down ramp?
Normally 2 up, 1 down.
Hi Silvia, we started on a knee-height DW, is it ok like this?
Yes, looks good! Just fix it better 🙂 and try some less speed approaches to get more rf. Ideally, you want rf-ff-rf striding on a down ramp.
I see, I will try that! Thank you so much for your patience, I know you have told me before to fix it better and I thought I did, but reviewing realised it is still bouncy…:)
Hi Silvia, I´m working with Samba at more high and she is doing great 🙂 thanks for your help.
Could you help me with Astro? this is a video from last competition, but he is touching too high on the yellow zone, many times he is touching with only one rear leg, haow can I improve that? only one leg is dangerous, the judge could not see well 🙂
thanks
To me, it looks like he collects rather as drives down… Maybe you would need to go lower with him as well?
Hi Siliva!
I just want to show you that me and Jumper now finally are on full hight. I’m so happy that I took this class in June. Now where almost finished. Just need to get him to turn off the DW too. And of course the A-frame. But then we’re ready to go for our first trial. 🙂 Hopefully it will be done in the summer. Jumper turns 18 month in april. So there are still plenty off time to get it right. 🙂
Thank’s a lot Silvia!
Great!!! Definitely all ready for AF as well and then all ready to trial! Try as many different DWs till then as possible.
We did 3 diffrent sessions today (have all on film) The first to we struggled a bit with getting JP so I experimented with diffrent startingpoints.
The last session (the film I put here) is the result of the experimenting
With only 1 m startingpoint we get 5 strides (insted of wanted 4) but almost always JP
Moving to 3 m looks like it can giv both 4 strides and JP.
Letting her run round the stone was mostly JP this session but not the two erlier ones and I also get a bit worried about the up contact..
coming from a bend over obsticals was today not goog case she mostly missed both contacts making her first step onto DW too long and then landing after 4 strides just outside DW
Thougths?
The last send shouldn’t have been JP :-/
If you want to see the other two videos from erlier today let me know
Best regards Anna with Trolla
Cool! Mostly use her good 4 stride starting spot (with ff in the up contact and rf in the down contact ideally). If the successful rate drops too much, throw in some 5 stride tries.
Ok 🙂
Hi Silvia, I hope this is ok to post a video here, I am auditing your RC, but do not want to take advantage :). I asked the question, a whle back, about how far one might go with a young pup. This video is showing where we are, at except since this video, I have raised it to a little over 11″ with same set up, wrapping jump at 12′ and she is showing the same striding. She is close to 8 mths old. My questions are… what is the highest the apex should get with this set up. Will doing these 2 boards for an extended length of time affect her striding once she is old enough to start on low DW? My ideas are to play around with starting spots using wraps and a tunnel, start fading toy (your suggestion from the past post). Could I also start the turns, maybe with a different set up prior to her getting on the full DW, or should I wait? At what age might you suggest I start her on full DW? She is a tiny little thing, and has not grown in height in the past month, but do not want to push her too fast. Selfishly, she is just so much fun to play with! Thank you for any input you can give me, and any comments on her striding, etc. is appreciated too!
Well, first thing to worry about is separation -- there isn’t any in first half of the video, so we definitely need more consistency first, even if that means going flat again. You can only start thinking about the rest then… You can then still raise this set up once or twice and then switch to low DW. You could also start turns yes, but again, looks like you actually might need to go soem steps back first -- and NO new things until you get a consistent running with good separation!
Thanks Silvia,
Yes, I noticed no separation on many also and ended up looking back thru videos, somedays nice separation, somedays not, can’t find a pattern. I also looked at videos just on ground, same thing. Should I go back to flat and only start raising it slowly again after there is 100% separation? I’m asking this because I don’t know, but could the drive for the ball be too much, thus making her lose separation? Thanks so much for your insight.
I must have seen more as 1000 dogs run in slow motion and never saw one without separation when in full extension… Can you post that, running on the ground with no separation? The ball can affect it when thrown too late yes, so make sure you throw very early.
This is why I’m learning from you :). You are correct, I am seeing her with no separation only first strides until she is in full extension, then there is separation. We are back to carpet on ground and will slowly start from there and I will use vet wrap on back legs for a better visual. Thank you so much! I am glad that I submitted the video and you gave me the direction on how to continue, much appreciated!
Yes, certainly try to get consistent hits with good separation on flat first.
Ok, one more question on this please. Just for my own information, I did same board set up but started her w wrap at 21′, instead of the 12′ wrap we were using. First hit up there was barely separation, last 2 hits there was good separation. At 21′ should every hit have separation? I looked at several student videos and saw some with, some without. Should there be separation with each hit no matter what distance they are started from? Just trying to learn here :). Oh and I am still going to start again slowly focusing on separation… a lot to focus on! Thanks!!
When going up, there is some less separation once the angle is quite steep already. At lower heights, less separation on the up means less confidence ie. the dog is checking the stride entering something strange.
Ahhh, thanks for this, very helpful.
Silvia, I am sorry, I thought 10 April was the last day to post for the Dec running contacts course. I have one last clip from today where I gave her more space on the AF as you suggested, running to and from a tunnel to try to get more extension. Would you just mind giving me your last thoughts on this clip? And thankyou, I really enjoyed the course, and learnt a lot, even if our running contact isn’t quite ready for this summer 🙂
Looks good! I would continue with speed loops tunnel-AF-tunnel-AF, keep going for misses and click&JP for best hits. And decide based on % of hits if you want to use in trials afterall -- even if high, if she is in, that’s good enough for trials.
Thanks Silvia. So I need to bring my 2o2o back in but could use running when she has a long enough run up and fast exit so I can get the extension? I will do as you suggest and see what I get % hit wise, but also see how clear she is on the 2o2o. I will need that this season. She understands 2o20 on the dog walk so hope I can bring it back in ok and have both on AF. If that works and she does ok with different cues for running and 2o2o AF then maybe I will go for the running dog walk too next winter!! Thankyou 🙂
While I know many using both on DW, I don’t know anybody using both on AF and think it might be harder, actually. So I would see what you can get before your trials with just RC, it looks like she might be ready.
Oh, I hadn’t realised that. Great to hear you think she is ready. So do you just think she naturally hits high because of her stride? She certainly has been hitting but usually high. I will give the speed loops a go, so I assume if I am getting success I see if I can get it on tight turns and less fast approaches and exits. I might not have time to test that all before the first trial though!
No, she could certainly hit deeper, but is not extending all out yet, probably because of a stopping history. That’s why I would prefer to not add a stop again… I would focus on speedy approaches&exits for now and handle everything as straight in trials for now. How often do you see no speed approaches to AF? -- We almost never see those because of safety and minimal distance requirements.
Aah, I see. That all makes sense. That’s what I will do then. I have a couple of trials in April and then a couple of weeks break in beginning of May before my next trials I think so if it all falls apart I guess I can use the couple of weeks in May to bring back the stop. We get a lot of tight turns after the contacts, but that’s ok as I can just let her run on for now to try and get this. I wish the course hadn’t finished though! Would you mind me posting a video of her next speed loops.
I have been saying ‘run’ as her cue, but already had a ‘go go go’ cue for sending her on over a line of jumps, or any straight line and I think this is a stronger ‘run really fast cue’ as it’s also what I say on walks to get her to run really fast ahead to the river etc.
I tested her ‘run’ , ‘go’ and ‘target’cues on a short plank yesterday and she went into 2o2o position when I used target AND run which I thought was really interesting! And shows the history of 2o2o as you say. When I said go she just ran, so I will use this from now on for her AF. Run was a new cue just brought in during carpet and AF training. Thanks Silvia, I would be doing this all wrong if it wasn’t for your help.
Hi Silvia,
I will join your Graduates Class in a few weeks, but would like to ask you a question already here. We had a weird training session yesterday…
After a long time I tried a tunnel at the start and moved the exit jump slowly to the side in order to set a second jump straight ahead and vary where to go. BUT Holly missed every time if she was taking the tunnel before the DW. I tried the tunnel at different distances (4 -- 7 m), but it didn’t make any difference.
So I went with gtcg to the exit jump and that was no problem. Also if I started her right in front of the DW (without the tunnel). We did the whole session this way untill we had 2 jumps ahead. It would have been really great whithout that weird problem with the tunnel… I threw in a tunnelstart here and there, but again -- not even one hit. 🙁
Can you give me an advice how to deal with that? Or do you need a video?
Was she fine if starting her with a jump? If yes, just add a tunnel two or three obstacles before a jump to a DW -- and then do less&less jumps in between until you take the DW directly from the tunnel.
I didn’t try it this way, but thought of it afterwards…
That’s a good idea, thank you! Hope it will work! I was really surprised by it!
Hi Silvia,
actually I didn’t want to bother you on this page too much, but we have our first trial next week and it drives me crazy! We had a bad session again. I don’t know why the success rate dropped from 90% to only 30%. The problem started after a short break (about 1 week) and after that it was like she forgot everything.
These are some runs from our second last session where I only could get hits by starting her from a stay infront of the DW or gtcg.
In the last session I tried it with a jump start like you suggested, but again, mostly misses. I don’t think she is uncomfortable. She mostly goes for 5 strides instead of 6. Or do you think it’s because I tried some handling here and there? Maybe I tried too much in the last weeks. But it looked like she was ready and she didn’t have problems with the changes. So I kept varying the scenarios before and after. And now that huge setback! She only hit 3 times. First try with 1rf -- R and twice with both rf. I don’t know whether all of our runs are shown in the video (I only included a few runs). I tried gtcg too with success rate about 60%. Should I try a session with just a straight approach and a straight exit? Pull the carpet up again? Or is it something she has to figur out (low speed vs. full speed approaches)? I think she was experimenting how to pass the second appex, because her striding there changed a lot within the session. Any idea?
Definitely make everything as easy as you can and if needed, mostly do gtcg. You can also pull the carpet up -- whatever would help her hit… Keep it all extra easy until a trial.
OK thank you! Hope she will be back to normal soon!
What should I do to get her to stop over extending on the down plank?
But -- she is not overextending on a down ramp??? She could hit easily with 4 strides IF she extended MORE on a top plank -- she has very little separation and reach on a top plank and that throws her striding off. You need to get better extension, so I would certainly go lower, she is not comfortable on that height -- OR she is thinking about a stop (if a retrain) -- but she certainly isn’t showing reach&separation that we need…
Hi Silvia,
did you notice that Chrystal had put the tug-toy 30 cm after the down contact?
Hm, no, I stopped watching after I saw there is only one run on a video and I only now see the dog then comes back to get a toy that is not even 30cm away from the contact… Chrystal -- I think you need to watch RC DVD before confusing the dog any further…
Thank you for your help, I was having trouble deciding what she was having troubles with. It was a piece of her toy that was lying on the ground, it had broke, the rest was still in my hand. I have take an online class of yours & I do have the dvd. Thank you again, I will lower it again.
Yes, it didn’t look like the dog was diving to a toy, that’s why I didn’t even notice it originally, but then thought that you’re maybe trying to make her hit that way… But yes, definitely go as low as necessary to get better extension.