Xs and Os Revisited – Shaping Patterns in Dog Frisbee
Back in the day, 2004, if memory serves me, I wrote a piece called Xs and Os of Diverse Routines. It’s a pretty good piece on reading dogs and working patterns in dog Frisbee, but it was written about 5 years before the idea of organized disc dog flatwork crossed my mind. It’s dated and things have changed.
A Year of Work
OverAn Over is any leaping catch that happens over top of the handler’s body. Overs are usually named by the part of the body over which the dog flies, i.e - Leg Over,... More the last year, Si and I have been learning a ton together. From the realization that she’s really only comfortable leaping while on a counter clockwise flank (looking over her left shoulder). In order to put her at maximum leaping height on most every throw, we worked Flatwork, Flanking, Interception, the Bent Cavaletti and are a far better team for it.
Apryl and Kiva did some of this work as well, but they were pretty close to being ready for the bigtime contests so they focused more on Owning the DropShorthand for “stimulus control over the Drop behavior” Owning the Drop is a key part of disc dog freestyle. You can play the game of disc without Owning the Drop, but your game,... More and sequence building. You will probably see the results of her work on TV this winter in the Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge Finals where they had a strong showing in an incredible field of teams.
We had the ability to field test a bunch of this stuff in our seminars and camps over the year, and it went quite well. FlatworkFlatwork is the stuff that happens between the catches. How the team moves and transitions, often without the disc, is flatwork. Flatwork concepts in disc dog are taken from the agility and herding... More is becoming a common concept throughout the disc dog world.
Xs and Os Revisited
This is the first piece of a series where we Revisit Xs and Os of disc dog routines. Over the next few weeks to help bring some more clarity to both Flatwork and patterns that we can use (or get used by) on the field.
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