Resq TailsThe trials and triumphs of rescued dogs

Layla is not the only one around here that is getting some needed direction in her training. I also wanted to get something clear in mind for Dare. So, I found this great training outline by Sue Ailsby called the “Training Levels”. It is a really detailed program to give the dogs a good foundation of skills that are useful in Obedience, Agility and also in general life. Because it is so detailed I decided to move my posting about Dare’s training to her own blog. Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re not going all the way to medical travel Mexico or anything. I just didn’t want hog all of ResqTails with posts about Dare, (who certainly isn’t a rescue). There will still be posts about Dare on here too, if you don’t want to be bothered with having to check out yet another blog. LOL For those of you that are gluttons for punishment though and that do want to read more about Dare’s training, here is Dares new blog.

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!

Ok, so I really have a hard time saying the word pivot without thinking of an old episode of the tv show “Friends”. They were trying to move a couch to Ross’ apartment and they were going up some stairs and he just kept saying, “pivot, pivot, pivot”. Just makes me laugh everytime I think about it.

Anyway, to get back to the subject at hand. Dawn and Ricky wanted to know how I taught Dare to pivot. So I went out and attempted to get a video showing what we did. The problem is that since she already knows the game, she kept offering it with or without me asking. LOL So, this was our best attempt. I will forewarn you that it’s not great. You have to keep in mind that I’m not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination, and Dare kept wanting to just give me the finished skill. I still think that the video on youtube of Kikopups was probably better.

A couple things to keep in mind if you do want to use a dowel instead of the perch box. Some dogs don’t like the dowel at all initially. If that’s the case and they are worried about it, I would do some work with them to get them comfortable with the dowel separately before you could even start using it in combination with teaching the pivot. The other thing is that if you are as uncoordinated as I can be, you may want to practice using the dowel without the dog there at first too. Just see if you can keep your hand with the treats were you want the eyes to focus and still move the other hand in the direction you’ll need it to direct the rear end. It might sound silly, but I know that I find that sometimes my hands don’t follow the plan that I had in my head. LOL Anyway…here is the video.

So, my friend that I train with calls it doodling when you work on the little bits and pieces of heeling position and obedience exercises. I find doodling to be a really useful tool in not only teaching and reinforcing heel position, but also in giving you something that you can use for a quick little warm-up routine for obedience before you go in the ring. I use it for keeping my dogs connected before we go in the agility ring too.

Anyway, today I took Dare out and we worked on the “finish” part of the recall in obedience. I want her to be able to “finish” from both sides. Right now, I’m still using both a verbal and a hand signal. I will have to fade out one or the other before the skill is ready for the obedience ring. We also are working on an “in” which means that she needs to be aware of her rear end and move it as much as needed to keep her body in heel position. We are also working on reinforcing heel position by just taking one or two steps forward with her in position. For agility we are working on directionals, though I have serious doubts that I’ll be quick enough to use them when I really running a course. LOL So today we worked on “right”, “left”, and “back”

I think it was Diana that mentioned that it was recommended that she have Miley weave around her legs for a part of an agility warm-up routine. It sounds like a great idea, so I think I’ll be searching for videos to help me figure out a plan on how to teach Dare to do that next. Anyway, here’s a short clip from our training today.

Today was a test. Not one of those annoying emergency broadcast system tests, but a test nonetheless. LOL I just haven’t been able to make up my mind about whether I was comfortable entering Layla in an agility trial yet, or not. I thought it would be a good test to see how Layla would do in a new place and on different equipment before I decided what to do next. I have to admit, that I was pleasantly suprised. Especially with her weaves. She never missed an entry and she finished all 12 poles every time. Not bad for a young dog that’s been weaving for just about a month! All in all, she did great. I also got some information about where I need to focus my attention on her training, specifically on her dogwalk and A-frame contacts. Also, I keep forgetting that if we’re going to do AKC agility, I need to work on a broadjump with her. Anyway…here is her video from today.

After the 15 degrees below zero last week, we had a bit of a heat wave with the latest storm. It was in the upper 30’s and it melted all the snow we had and the new snow that fell was so wet that it just melted. So, my grass has made an appearance again and we’re thrilled! I brought out the weave poles again for Layla. I thought I’d add a jump to what we’ve been doing. First we did the jump before the weaves and then later we tried it after the weaves. If the weather cooperates, I’ll start changing the angles of the jump for different entries next.

I went out yesterday and took another short video clip to show where we’re at with training of Layla’s weaves now. I’ve taken the more visual grid guide things off the poles, except at the entries at both ends. I replaced them with guide wires, and now I’m taking the guide wires down little by little. You’ll see they are attached to one pole each, but no longer forming a complete guide. Next I’ll be taking those down. Hopefully the weather keeps on cooperating long enough that we can get to that point before we get snow again. I’m still working on me being on both sides of the weave poles, and running ahead of her and behind her, but this clip is short and I just don’t have the patience at this point to do all the fancy editing and stuff that a lot of you do with your videos. So, it just shows her going through one time, one way. Oh, and as a little side note, I do see that my stick in the ground weave poles are starting to look like they are about ready to fall over too. I may have to move them if I get some ambition later today. LOL