Today after the Obedience trial at another part of the fairgrounds they had Course a Lure set up. I thought that it would be fun to let the young girls give it a try. Layla had a great time as usual. Course, there’s really not too much that she doesn’t enjoy. Too bad I can’t have more of her energy and zest for life. I wouldn’t need any anti ageing cream if I was like her. Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have someone willing to take still pictures and someone else that I suckered into taking video.
So, here are some of the pictures.
And here’s the video of her first run through the course. She’s so funny. She does the line of little jumps and then thinks that maybe the little lure must have gone back under them, so she had to check to make sure. LOL By the third time she ran the course, she had it figured out though and she ran it in 25 seconds. Those little legs can fly.
So, this weekend is Twist’s obedience trial. He’s entered on Friday and Saturday. We’ll be back up in Farmington again. Seems like we’ve spent more time in the Salt Lake area than we have at home the last little while. Fortunately, the dogs don’t mind traveling and for the most part neither do I. One of the only things that I don’t like about traveling is trying to eat well.
Last year a friend of mine convinced me to try a diet with her and basically it involved just eating fresh whole foods rather than all the processed refined junk that it so easy and convenient. I felt so much better and I lost about 25 lbs. The problem is that ever since we went to AZ for DOCNA Championships last Oct. though I’ve had a hard time eating right consistently. In the last 6 months I’ve gained back around 5-7 lbs. Sometimes it’s just so tempting to try to find some fad diets that work, but I just don’t think anything but eating right and exercising more works for me. Since this is the last trial for this month until May, I think I’ll be able to get back on track starting next week.
Back to the obedience trial. Twist will be giving Open a try again. He’s such a funny boy. I know that he knows all the exercises, but he’s just so distractable. Hopefully with this being an indoor trial the distractions will be at a minimum and he’ll do great. He can do such nice work when he’s on. I should be able to update everybody tomorrow on how it goes.
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.
We all know I’ve been griping for months about the cold and the snow. Well, last week we had a good thaw and it was a horrible muddy mess, but it finally all seemed to be close to drying out when we got hit with that storm that dumped 7 in. of new snow on us. Bleh. Well, once again, it’s warmed up enough to really get things thawing and here’s what greeted me at the front door today.
As you can see, keeping my house clean for the next little while is going to be a real task. LOL It never ceases to amaze me how dirty these two can get. But, they sure do have a good time running and playing out there, so I guess a little clean up is well worth it. In fact it’s not really anything to complain about. It’s not something serious like if someone we knew had Mesothelioma Cancer or something. Today I’m really grateful to have what teeny tiny problems are mine. I’m going to try to keep in mind that these two muddy girls are trying to tell me that spring and warmer weather are just around the corner.
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.
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!
Too bad I can’t have more of her energy and zest for life. I wouldn’t need any anti ageing cream if I was like her. Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have someone willing to take still pictures and someone else that I suckered into taking video. 
