Cairn contacts...agility question

[agilityterrier]

Hello. I'm Joann, I live in Ohio...and now I have a Cairn.

I found Izzy, a brindle Cairn, at my local animal shelter.

So, we're in training and I'm looking for some tips for Cairns.

I will preface my question, by saying I've done agility for over ten years with first a Scottie and then a Wire Fox.. I'm just new to Cairns.

This little Cairn girl is a hoot...she is utterly fearless. She dives into everything. She is also impossible to tire out. She squeeeezes under the gate to get back into the agility area. She loves it. And she particularly loves the contacts.

Okay, here's my question... I think I know this answer already...but at a mere 10", I'm thinking running contacts. Crazy? Or possible?

And, if you have trained running contacts (and not just hoped for the best), how have you done it? Has anyone trained with the Silvia Trkman method?

thanks for any advice

Joann

Wire Fox Terrier C-ATCH Summerfield's Ranger Riley AX, MXJ, NAP, OJP, RN

Cairn Terrier Summerfield's Isabella Bird...agility dog in training

Scottish Terrier MACH Summerfield's Dougal OAP, AJP, RN 1994-2008

[Karen]

Hi Joann!

Great to see you here! I never trained contacts with Morgan since she was my first agility dog and small. Our instructor at the time had never heard of a small dog missing their contacts so didn't have us train or work them. Well, Morgan opened her eyes! She would miss them sporadically thru her career.

Because of that I made sure to train them with Mac. I took him as a "student" to one of Bud Houston's Instructor camps. We were the students for the instructors to practice what they'd learned earlier in the day from Bud. Bud trained the aframe by putting a tunnel over the top of it (lowered the aframe too), and the tunnel was stretched between the two contact areas. The dog would run up the contact and go into the tunnel. The tunnel was long enough that on the down side, by the time the dog exited the tunnel, they were near the bottom and the tunnel prevented them from jumping off until they were in the contact area. I also worked on a sort of 2o2o/sit with Mac so that he learned to go to the bottom of the contacts. As he progressed in training, I turned this into a running contact although not as fast as Sylvia's. I don't believe Mac has ever missed a contact in his agility career.

We started Bud's method by making sure dogs were ok with the tunnel, then the aframe was very low with the tunnel over it. The aframe was gradually raised with the tunnel on it. But at no point did the dog ever do an aframe without going thru the tunnel.

Good luck with Izzy!

Karen

[amity]

I worked in different methods with different dogs.

Mostly i train 2 on 2 off, because i want to get my dogs somewhere at the parcours. They are really fast.

But i have worked with Silvia Trkman