The last 2 weekends have been spent on trying to choreograph this routine. I figure I need to get it finished by this upcoming weekend, to give myself at least a couple weeks to just practice and learn it. I'm also desperately trying to track down the parts of the costume I want to wear. I want to have a old-fashioned cabbie's hat (looks like a chauffeur's hat), and then a shirt with checkerboard trim, a yellow scarf and black pants. I found the hat on the internet, and the shirt, but unfortunately the shirt is one sold for promotional uses (it's the one used by USDAA for the Grand Prix of Agility), not sure I can get just one. Biggest problem for me is finding something relatively attractive (as I'm a fairly heavy woman) without it interfering with my dog's movement. I also need to decide if Taz will wear anything...he's a sheltie so his ruff covers most collars, and even bandanas a fair amount.
I think I've listened to the song 100 times in the last few days, trying to get it sketched out. I have limited practice room at home, so I can only roughly estimate moves. I paid my club for a key rental, so I can use the building on the weekends. Not cheap, but it's worth it, for the one place I can get to that's big enough to practice. Unfortunately, it's almost an hour drive from my home. Thankfully, I have all the weekends in March off, other than herding practice. Otherwise, I'm not sure this would even be possible!
It makes me glad I work downtown and take the Metro to work. That gives me a good hour a day to just sit and listen to the song over and over and over, visualizing moves and writing down possibilities. I have about the first minute pretty solid now, and there's an instrumental section in the middle where I will be putting in Taz's distance stuff, and the rest is still sort of sketchy. Today, I think I filled in the gap up to the distance stuff, and just need to finish up the end. We'll practice it a little tonight and see how it fits.
The biggest problem I have with choreographing is keeping it from being too choppy. It's easy to fit moves with certain sections of music...the transitions are what I find tough. Also difficult with Taz is timing, as he does different moves at different speeds, making it tough to put them in the same music without getting him to adjust his speed. I have that problem with his weaves. Weaving forward, he doesn't quite fit this music unless I speed him up or slow him down. In either case, chances of collisions are much more likely (Taz does VERY fast weaves). So, we're going to play with that a bit tonight.
Well, enough of a report for today. Let me know if you think you'd enjoy reading these, and I'll continue or not as people like.
Okay, onto more training stuff. The word that I try to keep in mind most when training and choreographing is "balance". I think this is something that comes fairly naturally to me from all the agility and herding I do, where the dog must be capable of moving in both directions, and from different sides of the handler. It's something that comes a little harder to the obedience dog, but is well worth the effort.
If you compare canine freestyle with figure skating, a fairly natural comparison, IMO, one thing that is very important in both is balance in the program. There are a number of different ways that balance is important. Technical and artisitic strength should both be present, the use of space should be balanced, and the moves themselves should show variety and not over-emphasis on one skill. Even in skating, where you might think there is an emphasis on jumps, a skater will not score well if they don't show the capability to do a variety of different types of jumps.
Likewise in freestyle, I myself believe in the importance of showing the dog's flexibility and capability to freely move through a variety of skills. When I train, I put a great emphasis on each skill being done in different directions, or from different sides of the handler, or in a variety of ways. Then when choreographing, I make sure to not repeat moves more than twice, without also varying the way that move is done.
Use of the space is equally important. When putting the various moves together into a whole routine, I try to make sure to separate similar moves. Take the moves that have you standing still and separate them with the ones that have you moving more freely. Generally by alternating like this, you will find yourself using the space without much thought. By adjusting your transitions as you come out of each stationery move so that you head in different directions, you should be able to cover most of the ring. If not, you probably don't have enough movement in the routine.
I sort of naturally do this now, and this routine fills most of the ring pretty well. This is certainly one of the areas where practice in the full ring space is fairly essential. In addition to making notes about where my moves fall in the music, I also make notes on where to start in the ring, and where I should be through various portions of the routine. Make sure to not have a move that is really going to crowd you up into the side of the ring, you want to allow yourself some leeway, as in an actual performance, you often end up places you didn't expect!
I'm having to adjust a few spots in my routine for this reason. My opening moves include some serpentines and lateral work, and goes from one end of the ring to the other. In finding myself ending up too close to the edge of the ring routinely, I dropped one set of laterals for a turn, which is a stationery move. I can also adjust the angle I move in...it's easy to find yourself always moving parallel to the sides of the ring, but a little diagonal movement adds nice variety and can improve your use of the ring space. And moving diagonally will give you more movement per length of the ring.
Just to add another couple notes on balance. Don't expect that your audience is always going to pick up completely on your moves being balanced...in terms of doing them on left and right, or doing spins in both directions. Particularly if they are separate in time at all. i.e. it's a lot more noticeable that a dog spins to the left and then to the right if they are done one right after the other, versus one done at the beginning of the program and the other at the end. For that reason alone, I will sometimes put the two close together in a program.
But it's not something I insist on. Balance is it's own reward. While it may not always be immediately noticeable that you are doing moves in different directions, what IS noticeable is when they are always going the same way. Circles, spins and laterals in particular can cause a routine to seem a little less balanced if always done in one direction.
Now, if you are at a stage in your training where you haven't been able to get a lot of variety in the direction of your moves, there are other ways to make it *seem* as though you have balance. For instance, if your dog always spins in one direction, don't do it just in heel, do it on the right side as well, and it looks like the dog is spinning in a different direction, since he is doing it the opposite way *in relation to you*. With laterals, if your dog only goes one way, try doing a lateral in front of you to make it seem as though you're going the other way.
The hardest thing for me in doing this routine is adding some semblance of dance to my own movements. I remember a discussion awhile back about the difference between CFF and MCSI, dog versus handler moving to the music. Most people seem to feel it is easiest for themselves to move to the music...that is definitely not the case for me. Perhaps it's the fact that I've never done much dancing, or that I've done only CFF for a couple years, and am patterned to moving another way. It may be that since I am fairly large, it's easier to see my dog's feet than my own! For whatever reason, I find myself really having to work on getting in time to the music. So, every day on my way to work, I plug in my music and practice just moving to those first few measures of music. It's the very beginning of the music that is toughest for me, so I have to keep starting it over and over...
I do have a fairly decent sense of rhythym...I played the saxophone for 10 years when I was in school. But this is not the same as reading and playing music! I will admit that one thing that attracted me to CFF at first was that I didn't have to dance to do it. In a way, that was a bit of a cop-out. Yes, I'm fairly self-conscious about my weight and whether I would look silly trying to dance. But now that I've added more movement to my routine, I find that Taz is responding and enjoying the routine more. I think to him it seems more like agility, where I am moving freely and energetically versus obedience where I am more formal and restricted. He has learned what type of performance I expect in each of these...speed and energy in agility, control and concentration in obedience. What I am getting in this routine is sort of between the two (I don't think I'll ever convince him that freestyle is quite as fun as agility!)
I have brought some things I've been taught by CFF with me though. I strongly believe that the dog should be the center of attention, even if the person is doing more dancing themselves. After all, it *is* canine freestyle, the dog is the whole reason we aren't just out there by ourselves. I try to never lose sight of that, and to always play the supporting role for the dog. I never liked freestyle routines I saw where the dog was asked to stay while the handler danced and moved around, or where what the handler was doing was so distracting, the dog was put off by it. One thing that impresses me so much about Sandra's and Caroline's and other top freestyler's routines is that you never get that feeling when watching their routines. You are drawn to the partnership being exhibited and never feel like the dog is playing second fiddle to the person. Again, using my ice skating analogy...I liken the dog to the female of the pair, the one you tend to watch and notice more, while the handler is the guy...the strength behind the routine, the guiding force behind most moves. Both are essential parts of the routine, and never do something that would detract from the other person. You would never see the woman just standing on the ice while the man went merrily skating around getting all the attention. So, that's the role I try to stay in and play. And of course, not being much a dancer, it's not too hard. ;-)
My feet are starting to bother me from all the training, so will have to back off a little bit the next day or two. They're luckily much better than several months ago, but nowhere near normal enough that I can do as much as I'd like. The herding on the weekends doesn't help, but I hate to give it up as it's not often that I'm not doing agility, and the weather is still good enough to be outside! There's a herding test in our area in May that I'd like to do and get a PT on Taz, and then maybe have him ready for his HS for next year's Sheltie Nationals. If I go, I would also do agility and obedience, and see if they would like a freestyle demo as well...wouldn't that be fun!
Meanwhile, I am still trying to get a costume together. Will be heading out this weekend to the biggest fabric store in this area (imagine several FLOORS of all different fabrics) and am still trying to get the darn hat. The first place I found that had it, also had a minimum order. The second carries it, but it's out of stock. Arrgh! May have to pay for that minimum order (and twice the cost of the hat) just to get my hands on it. Meanwhile, I still haven't been able to get word on the shirt. No one ever returns my calls. Sheez! I will feel much more relaxed once I know I've gotten this taken care of.
Why is it that everytime you are short on time, things just seem to go wrong left and right?? I only have 4 weekends left to get this routine together, and had planned to practice tonight and tomorrrow, and now I have the flu! Well, it's a fairly minor case, so I may go out and train anyways, but I'm not going to be able to get much done, that's for sure. Still, it's better than just lying at home feeling sorry for myself.
Meanwhile, have run into a problem with one of the new moves I'd taught Taz and was planning to include in our routine. It involves Taz backing through my legs, doing a half-spin as I turn 180 degrees, and then he backs through again, etc. The tough part is getting him started right....if he doesn't go into the move correctly lined up, he ends up angling more and more the wrong way, and a disaster usually results. That's what happened last night. I wasn't paying close enough attention to him, but rather to the music and to what I was doing, and we had a pretty bad crash. I didn't help matters any by saying "Ouch!", but it took me by surprise. So he's apparently decided it'd be safer to stay away from my legs when backing. He is, after all, a small dog! So we spent the rest of the night just trying to convince him that I would be more careful.
I love training the fairly complex moves. It's a real test of your creativity in training. Usually, I'll spend a lot of time just trying to find different ways to teach something until I hit on the one that makes sense to Taz. I use a clicker on occasion, but more often than not, rely on taking old skills and finding ways to evolve them into something else.
For instance, one thing Taz is good at is weaving through my legs as I walk forward. He does it VERY fast. But it's still something that a lot of dogs do. So, I wanted to teach him to weave the other way. Not tail first...I wanted to teach him to weave facing the other way, as I walk backwards. The trick was figuring out how to teach him.
What I ended up doing was taking a fairly simple skill he already knew....while facing me, I use a command and hand signal to the side, "go round...through" to signal him to go around me and come through my legs from behind. I actually originally taught him this for flyball so I could hold him between my legs, but it makes a nice freestyle move. By doing several of these to opposite sides, he does Figure-8's through my legs, going behind me and coming through, rather than the other direction that most people do.
To take this, and get the weaving, I just add my walking backwards, as I use the signals to send him around me and through my legs. At first, he would tend to need a fair amount of direction as to where I wanted him to go (since he would be doing less of a circle when weaving than withe Figure 8's) but as much as he likes the weaving, it didn't take him long to figure out what I wanted. So now he weaves in the backwards direction as fast as forward (assuming I can walk that fast backwards without tripping!) I think we make it look a lot easier than it really is, but that's certainly the sign of a skill that has been well-taught and learned.
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