So, Layla and I had a great day at the Stacy Peadot-Goudy workshop today. We left this morning at 5:30 and it was snowing, again. About 20 miles away from home we got on a road that no one else had driven on yet, including the plows and even though there wasn’t much snow, my little Honda Fit just doesn’t do well. I drove about 40 mph from there on for about the next hour. Needless to say, I would have been thrilled to have been sitting in front of a nice home theater seating rather than out driving on those roads.
Once we got there though, it was well worth the drive. I can’t say that the weather was much better once we got there. I was bundled up, in a t-shirt, knit jacket, a fleece pull-over, and then my heavy winter coat, gloves and I borrowed a hat from a friend. It still wasn’t enough when the wind was blowing. LOL The agility was awesome though. Made sitting in cold well worth it. I was auditing the morning session and then Layla had a working spot this afternoon. We worked on some really fun sequences and all in all, I thought Layla did well. She did great on her weaves the first three runs. Hit the entrances very nicely and weaved all 12 poles no problem. After that, she struggled. I think it’s just that we had to kind of rush through our weave work last fall, and haven’t had much chance to work on it, since winter came. I think she’s got a basic understanding of the weaves, but under stress, they aren’t a strong behavior yet. Just green dog stuff.
Another weak point I knew would show up would be her contacts. When she came up lame, I didn’t have a chance to really solidify what I was doing with the criteria for the end of the contacts. I had intentions of retraining, but again the weather got the best of me.
So, I really want to be able to see some improvement in both areas by the time we have our next Stacy workshop in April. That means that I may have to haul the equipment back out into the field and hope it doesn’t sink into the mud so we can work it. On a good note, I can see where some of the future steps on that Jump training DVD will be helpful in the kind of sequences that we worked today. It’s always nice to see that you might be on the right track with something you’re training.
It’s going to be a busy, busy week. Tomorrow I need to dremel nails, brush dogs and make treats for Wednesday!!! Wednesday I am going to Salt Lake for an agility day with Stacy Peardot-Goudy. I’m really excited, but also nervous. Everyone that has been to these mini workshops just raves about how great they are. Then I have to get back home and Thurs. I have a cleaning job, Friday I have to bathe dogs and pack to leave again for the DOCNA trial on Sat. back up in Farmington. It looks like I’ll be racking up the miles on the car this week.
I’ve spent the last few days printing up some things for a some friends of mine. Not on an epson tm-t88iv, or anything, just on my regular printer. It was one of those projects that seemed like a good idea at the time, but once you get started you realize that you’ve taken on something much bigger than you expected. At least I’m pretty much done now, and I hope they like it.
Layla and I got out in the yard today and I finally got the video camera out too. So, here is a really quick video clip of her working on the next step of the Jump Around the Clock drill. It’s called, “run by” if I remember right. The idea is to run with the dog, (no stay or wait required) which should encourage an extended jump style. You do the same thing you did on the previous drills, working the jump from different numbers on the face of the clock. Here is the video. It’s nothing great, but you get the idea.
Anyway, I’ll try to update throughout the week as I have time. If you want to check out what Dare is working on, here’s her latest trick video.
The jump training continues. The first video is of Layla doing the tighter turn drill that had me baffled. I think it’s definitely better now that I’ve moved the jump. Here’s a short clip of the new and improved tighter turn drill. LOL
The next video is of the Jump Around the Clock drill. We don’t need any industrial hand wheels to do this one. I just need to keep track of our imaginary hands of the clock. If I remember the drill correctly, you are to have the dog jump from all around the clock. So, if you set the dog at 6 you go to 12 on the clock. If you set the dog at 4 you go to 10 etc. The next step would be that you start changing up the distance of dog from the jump and also your distance from the jump to test out their ability to recognize the need to either extend or collect at the jump. I am thinking that we may run into some trouble doing this in the limited space in the barn. We’ll see though. In the meantime, here is the first part of the drill that we’ve done.
I always get uncomfortable videoing training sessions and posting them. I have to say though…I’m really glad that I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone and doing it anyway. Yesterday was a perfect example. I came in after training with Layla a bit baffled. If I hadn’t had video, I probably would have still been scratching my head about why I was getting a different response from Layla on one side of the tighter turn drill than the other. Thankfully we didn’t need a finger pulse oximeter to help us figure out the solution. LOL Seems that all we needed were some really helpful observations from everyone. Someone mentioned placement of treats, someone else that maybe I was seeing a tighter turn in one direction because she just prefers one side, and finally that she may have been uncomfortable turning towards the wall. I appreciate all the comments, both on and off the blog. I thought about it and figured the easiest one to test first was if it had anything to do with my placement of of the jump near the wall. Guess what? That seemed to be the problem. I moved the jump to a different spot today and she started jumping much tighter to that left side of the jump. Woot, thanks Diana for the observation!
Layla and I went out today and did the first couple exercises on the DVD “One Jump, Two Jump”. The first exercise went really well. We’ve done it before, so it was more of a refresher for us than anything. The idea is to get the dog comfortable with the jump and to work your way up to full height, while keeping the dog’s head low and having them jump rounded. (I think). The handler is not supposed to lure the dog or give any signal, just let the dog offer jumping. So, here is a short clip of Layla doing the first exercise.
The second exercise is supposed to help with teaching the dog tighter turns. The handler is to stand on the approach side of the jump. Ideally, the dog is supposed to read this as a cue to collect as they approach the jump and turn tightly back to the handler. I noticed two things when we did this drill. One, Layla isn’t jumping with her head very low. In fact, she looks to me like she jumps with her head really high. I think part of this is because she’s so short. Of course the dog in the video is a Border Collie and so the style of jumping is different all together anyway. Anyway…someone mentioned that maybe if I tossed the reward before she’s done jumping her head might be lower. That makes sense. I will probably try that tomorrow. The other thing that I noticed is that she is turning tighter in one direction than in the other. When I stand to her left side, she is still jumping almost in the center of the jump, then hesitating, and then turning back. I am curious to see if it’s the same tomorrow. Anyway, here is the video of the second exercise.
Lately I’ve found myself stuck in a rut of just going out to train with the young girls, without much direction in mind. Not the most productive way to train. LOL So, the last week or so, I started really trying to sort out in my head a direction to go with each of the girls.
For Layla, I think I’m going to focus more on agility stuff right now. I think I did really well when I had a goal of getting her weaving. However, once she got the general idea and the weather turned all bad, I lost a bit of focus. Ok, so I lost a lot of focus and motivation. Maybe some nutritional supplements would help. We are limited to a much smaller space in the barn right now, but that’s really no excuse. I got a DVD called “One Jump, Two Jump” by Sandy Rogers a while back. It gives you a lot of exercises to do in limited space to build a good foundation for handling. I’m going to watch it again today and get started with Layla. I’ll try to keep you posted on our progress.
Day 3 of the ASCA came and went as fast as the first two days. I don’t think I’ve been to a trial this small in ages, and to be done running by early afternoon was just great. Anyway, Zoe finished off the trial with another Regular run Q and another Jumpers Q. So, she had a total of 3.5 Regular for the weekend, (she dropped a bar in one run, so it was just a half q), and 4 Q’s in Jumpers. Not bad! Here is her Regular run from round 2 yesterday. Sorry, again I didn’t get any course maps, so I don’t have any to post.
Another great day of agility! Today we had two Jumpers runs, two regular runs and one gamblers. Zoe ended up Qing in four of the five classes today. Of course the one that we didn’t qualify in was gamblers. Always has been our worst class. I only got video of one of the regular runs today though, but here it is. She did fine, but I was really late on the front cross before the A-frame and almost sent her to an off course jump. Fortunately, she called off and there aren’t any refusals, so we were fine.
We are at the ASCA trial this weekend. It’s usually a smaller venue than AKC, but this trial is really, really small. Almost more like funmatch size. Anyway, Zoe is having a great time! She is totally full of herself though. She ran around like a wild banshee in the first gamblers run, blowing her contact on both the A-frame and the dogwalk. Fortunately by the Standard, or regular runs, she was running nicely. She qualified in one of those and then q’d again in Elite Jumpers. The Elite Jumpers run is the only one I got on video today. It’s just part of the run, sorry. You’ll just have to trust us that it was nice. I’ll try to post tomorrow if I get done early enough again.
So, I keep hearing about how important a good warm-up routine can be for agility. I have to say that I’ve never really concentrated much on it with Zoe. But with Layla and Dare I don’t want to take anything for granted and I want to help them anyway I can. I especially worry about Layla. Ever since she came up lame for no reason that I could see, I’ve been worried about her injuring herself again. I was intrigued by Diana and Miley’s trip to see Debbie Gross Sanders and to attend her seminar. I would love to know more about what kind of warm-up routine she recommended, but I do know that one thing that Diana mentioned was having Miley weave through her legs. So…with a little help from Ricky we were able to find a video to help me figure out how to train that behavior.
Anyway, this is just a silly short video of different skills Dare has been working on, including weaving through my legs. I don’t know if any of them would work into a good warm-up routine or not, but I figure it can’t hurt to teach all these different things anyway, and if we don’t end up having a use for them, oh well!
We are limited to a much smaller space in the barn right now, but that’s really no excuse. I got a DVD called “One Jump, Two Jump” by Sandy Rogers a while back. It gives you a lot of exercises to do in limited space to build a good foundation for handling. I’m going to watch it again today and get started with Layla. I’ll try to keep you posted on our progress.