Disc Quan Do is a disc dog martial art. It means “Way of the Disc Dog”. In a pop culture sort of way, it is a silly thing, I mean, “Disc Quan Do”… While it is a bit silly in a pop culture sort of way, it is quite sincere in reality. Martial arts are more than fighting and more than sport. It is the study of fighting as well as the study of the self and is not of “sport”, it is art.
Flatwork is not Border Collie stuff. Flatwork is a fact of disc dog – it is happening in the game of disc whether you are working it or not. The Flatwork Compass is a tool we use to cultivate and develop communication and understanding of Team Movement from both the dog and handler.
Vaulting a Disc Dog is a complicated process. We break this complex process down into 3 basic functions – Tell | Trigger | Target. We have already covered the Tell function in an earlier DiscDogger Weekly. After you Tell the dog what we are going to do and where we are going to do it, then we Trigger the skill. We have covered the Trigger skill here on the blog in various places.
DiscDogger Weekly #8 homes in on Team Movement & Flow. We’ve got some UpDog Games, Throw n Go, FunKey, 7 Up, and 4 Way Play. We’ve also got an in depth look at the Figure 8 Cross and Squeaky Wheel Forms from the Disc Quan Do, Disc Dog Martial Art program.
Creating arcing, round lines in disc dog team movement is no easy task. It is rather simple, but it ain’t easy. The Squeaky Wheel Form is a terrific tool for creating shapes in your game and working on the component Functions of the Leaping Catch while improving your throwing skills.
Team Movement is hard for many people because it is more than tricks. Team Movement is moving together. This is often easier said than done with a ballistic collie or a disc seeking missile, but it is an important concept to keep in mind while training your disc dog.
Distractions play a big role in dog training. Identifying and dealing with them is the epic quest of the dog and dog sport trainer. In the case of these videos, the distraction is an agility jump that is placed in play and promises to feature prominently in the game (why else would it be there, right?). This distraction impacts Epic in one way and Loot in another.
What vault are we doing and where are we doing it? That is the very first thing a disc dog team needs to know. We call this Telling and we do it by cuing direction. We tell the dog which vault we are doing and where it will be done. Everybody knows what’s happening before anything actually happens.
Funky throws are the lifeblood of the disc dog freestyler. Delivering discs with various releases are a scoring metric in all disc dog freestyle contests. Continuing development of your quiver of creative releases is a key to growing as a player. I am rather well known for creative throwing and the teaching of creative throwing. Here is a quick lesson on how to throw a funky over the shoulder airbounce, one of my more flashy throws
Playing Defense is a great metaphor for handling a disc dog. The type of defense you play can and does change the nature of a sequence. Ron & Eppie explore and demonstrate this concept with a couple of sweet new moves.
In a recent piece I laid out 3 Disc Quan Do Forms that work in concert to create competent interior play. Let’s focus in on one of them, the Balanced Position Form, and explore how and why it works and how it scales up.
How do you build the skills required to be creative and competent in Interior work? What can you do other than what you always do and what others are putting onto the competition field to build your skillset for flowing interior sequences and Team Movement?
5th installment of DiscDogger Weekly is out. Team Movement, UpDog Criterion Freestyle Rounds from the Endless Summer Series, Throwing, and some Disc Quan Do Forms are on this week’s agenda. Hope you dig the show.
The movements of the Flatwork Compass are both how humans move to throw and how humans move dogs. The stepping forward for the Flank pushes the dog out and in the direction we’re stepping and the switching and opening up pulls the dog towards us for the Pass.
Sweet show for you guys this week… We’ve pulled some stuff from the archives, digging up some Polka Puppy lessons – Hoop and Bitework (more on the puppy front to come…). Some serious throwing videos and a few training jams. Hope you dig the show.
Nothing gets in the way of patience and methodical movement like pattern training in dog frisbee. When a rabid frizbeast knows what is coming and where it is going, odds are the dog is going to go for it, and hard. This is one of the problems that I have with freestyle routines and it gets worse later into the year. By World Finals time my frizbeasts are cutting corners and running on autopilot which can and does cause timing problems for the team.
The affects of a clean trigger in the Flatwork Compass show themselves in most all aspects of the game. Most dogs do not have a clean trigger. Cleaning up your trigger will have a positive impact on many aspects of your game.
12 throws in 4 minutes and we have a dramatically improved trigger, a better wait, and a plan to solve a couple of other nagging problems he has shown throughout his career. A few dedicated sessions and we should have marked improvement in all aspects of his game.
Communication on the fly is a key element of disc dog freestyle and disc dog game play. It is a good idea to have a clear and concise communication system to make on the fly decision making a successful endeavor. Nobody wants to be handcuffed by pattern training. The Flatwork Compass provides a simple and elegant communication system that is based upon natural movements and canine/human pressure and body language.
Historical footage recovered from our cloud archive, the Polkanado puppy learning the Hoop behavior. This was her first shot at the skill and you can see she got it right away. Now part of that is because she is not only super cute, but she’s super smart, but this simple 3-step Hoop technique we’re going to cover right here is extremely elegant and effective.
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