Running dogwalk/training update

The practice field finally dried out and I've had a few practices with both dogs.  Lola isn't working on much, mostly distance and sending work since that's our weakness right now.  I'm mostly using her to help Strummer learn to control himself while other dogs are running agility and because she loves to go to the field to play.

I've also had a chance to see where we are with the dogwalk.  First session was not so great, it had been weeks so it wasn't surprising.  It wasn't awful but not as good as I was hoping for.  Second session was nearly perfect though and I've got that video posted below.  There was one miss (and I think also one hit) that doesn't show up on the tape because he was going the other way and it was off camera.  All the others were hits.


Running Dogwalk 2-3-2010, Strummer from colliebrains on Vimeo.

 And here are some short clips of where Strummer is at with his self-control issues.  Not very exciting, mostly for my own reference.  I missed shooting a lot of this training because I kept thinking the camera was on when it wasn't or he was out of the shot.

 A-frame

Untitled from colliebrains on Vimeo.

Tunnel
Untitled from colliebrains on Vimeo.

I'm finding the filming distracting to the training but it's so helpful to have video of the training.  More practice with dealing with it all I guess.  I long for the days when I went to the field with a ball and some treats and we ran around and did whatever and I didn't spend so much time worrying over the gizmos-video camera, tripod, remote treat gizmo, sheesh, I feel like I'm filming a documentary.

Let's not even talk about how Strum's weave poles went.  I think I pushed him way too much this session.  Each little session was too long and not enough rest in between.  It's so good to be out there practicing I got carried away and forgot my good dog training skills.  The weaves were at the end and I think his poor brain was fried.  The self-control stuff is very difficult for him and it fries his brain.  I've been doing a lot of stuff at home but few distractions rival another dog doing agility.

The next 4 days are an agility seminar which includes a weave pole session so hopefully I'll have some good training ideas for next week.  I've been wanting to do a post on Lola's table training and I will get to it but probably not for a week or two.

Finally some agility training

Training outside has been an impossibility due to snow and crazy single digit arctic cold that finally broke last week.  Since we were all going stir crazy I decided to drive the 45 minutes to Golden yesterday for morning course run-throughs at an indoor arena that we sometimes trial at.  I seldom train indoors and it's nice for a change.  Lola has a USDAA trial coming up so I wanted to work on her table issues and Strummer's crazy issues.  Joy says he needs more practice in trial type environments and she's right.

Lola has had ongoing problems with the table and last January I started a retraining program with her.  Her next USDAA trial was in April and since that trial she's had 100% table success until October where she started having issues again.  I was unsure if she'd do the table at all at the run-thru or if we were back to square one but I brought sardines and she did all her tables with no problem.  The first run-thru I rewarded her on the table and had her redo it several times.  Second run-thru she tore away from me towards the table as soon as we got near it on course.  I was thrilled to see her sucking to the table but she's not allowed to make up her own course so I didn't reward that and called her off it.  I got her back on course and she did the table again with no problem but this time I didn't reward right away.  I had her do it another time or two with some jumps in between, finished the course and gave her a huge jackpot of sardines outside the ring.  Hopefully this will be a sufficient tune-up for the trial in a few weeks and of course I'll try to get in some practice sessions in the yard.  One of these days I'll write up a post about her table retrain.  I was hoping to see more long term success before posting about it but I have the time now so maybe I'll do it anyway.

Strum did great overall.  2/2 on the A-frame, 4/5 on the dogwalk, though his teeters have gone right out the window.  He was not nearly as amped up as at a regular trial but he was more amped up than at regular practice but not so much that he completely lost his head.  It was the perfect atmosphere for him to learn to keep his head and focus while being excited.  I have to get off my butt and get him to more of these things.  We also need to work on his teeters some more and rear crosses at a chute.

I'm guessing the practice field will be melted by tomorrow so hopefully I can get some more training in.  It's probably o.k. today but I've got a cold or something and my head and ears are blocked up and I'm tired and wah wah wah.  I think I'll take it easy today just because I can.

Who else geeked out and watched the Steeplechase/Speed Jumping Finals?

I'm not sure how I come to the point in my life where I spend my Saturday night in front of a computer watching dogs run around an arena but there you go.  I totally get how people like to be there in the stands-the noise and excitement of the crowd cheering, the loud music, the drunken revelry.  It's like the difference between going to see a band live and watching a concert on DVD, believe me, I get it.  But I guess I'm old and cranky because for me it was a huge luxury to sit in my fuzzy slippers and watch from the comfort of home.  Somehow I was less bored than when I was actually there in the stands.  Go figure.  My only complaint was the appalling camera work.  It was zoomed in too close to get a good feeling for the handling and the switch between the different camera angles was jarring and unnecessary.  They did this when they used to show it on t.v. and I can understand why because the average t.v. viewer wants to see the dog.  But I'm supposing most people watching the live feed last night were agility geeks with a different agenda.  Anyway, it was free so I guess I shouldn't look that gift horse too much in the mouth. 

I didn't know very many people running so it was hard to get too excited about the competition aspect of it but it was interesting to see how the different handling options panned out.  I loved seeing the mix win and the other mix come in second and the dude with the Malinois winning the 26" Champ. class.   But the highlight for me was the interview with the junior handler who won the ridiculously competitive 22" Champ. class.  The announcer was asking her about her win and she said something to the effect of it's all about getting out there and having fun with your dog.  It was great to see someone that age competing at the level who gets it.

Watching all that high level competition is inspiring but also a bit depressing.  It feels like I have so far to go and I'm progressing at a snail's pace.  Strum's last couple of lessons have had me feeling like I'm beating my head against the wall.  On the other hand it's good that I'm being challenged.  No point paying for lessons and I do everything right and never learn anything.  But it feels like the list of things to learn is long and I'm at a frustrating platueau in both my training and handling.

On the other hand I took Lola out to the field the other day for a rare practice session.  It was in the low 30's, cloudy with a storm blowing in-perfect agility weather for my dogs-and she was fiesty and full of herself.  She flew around that course hitting all her weaves and contacts, following my every move like the awesome little girly that she is, running with a pure joy that she saves for those times when it's just me and her alone at the field.  It was one of those perfect agility days where I know exactly why it is I love the sport.

Then I went back the next day and tried running Strummer on the same course and I'm in a good mood right now so we won't talk about how that went.  My kingdom for some younger legs and faster reflexes.

This week we had 60's-70's shorts weather, today we have snow.  Biking weather to skiing weather in 24 hours.  But the sun is shining now and the snow is beautiful so I'm going to throw on a fleece and burn off some of Strummer's boundless energy.

Huh, I guess I have a trial this weekend

It's a small USDAA trial, only one day and only 3 runs offered-Gamblers, Standard and Jumpers. I hemmed and hawed and hemmed some more about entering because August means HOT and neither the dogs nor myself enjoy trialing in the heat. But you never know, I've been to trials in August where I'm in rain pants and a thick fleece jacket. In the end it was hard to resist a one-ring USDAA trial only 45 minutes away and I figured at the very least we'd be o.k. for the first run of the day so it was only $40 worth of entries I was gambling on if we had to pull for heat for the other runs. The trial is small, only 58 dogs and 163 runs or so and I'm hoping it will be some good ring experience for Strummer and maybe Lola can pick up a few more Q's towards her Perf. ADCH, we'll see. I haven't been training with her much in an effort to preserve her feet and yikes it was not pretty out there when I finally took her out to the field the other day to brush up on some things. I'm hoping her loopiness was due to being distracted by the zillions of bunnies that were out there but wow she was having problems with the simplest of sequences and was slow to lie down on the table (sigh). Hopefully she'll have her head about her on Sunday when she realizes there are sardines at stake.

I've been plugging away at Strum's dogwalk and I'm finally starting to see some consistency between practices. I had brought back the treat gizmo and the plan was to work a lot more with it until I was having a lot of success and consistency but then the inevitable happened and I lost the remote. $42 to replace the sucker. I decided to try doing without for a few weeks since Strum is happy to run to the thing then I run up to it and drop the treats in the bowl myself. Then I decided to give up and order the remote and of course they're out of stock. Stupid gizmos, I hate relying on them. We're up to the point of having a jump after the dogwalk and before the gizmo so hopefully we're close to fading it completely. I live in hope the remote will pop up somewhere but it's been a couple of weeks now and I've combed every possible place. On the other hand my house keys turned up in my bike shoes once so you never know, maybe it will magically appear when I finally look in the most unlikely place.

Anyway, Strum had a lot of practice this week since we've been enjoying cool, cloudy weather-was a high in the 50's one day and I was shivering in my shorts at the practice field. He had one bad practice with the dogwalk and I was tearing my hair out and cursing this stupid sport and why don't I take up something more sensible then he was better at a second practice that day in the evening then this morning he was doing much better and seemed to understand what to do and we'll just see how my sanity and his contacts hold up on Sunday. We've had about a month's worth of lessons with Joy and I was feeling better about my handling then Joy had sudden knee surgery and she's out until Sept. so I'm on my own for a while and hopefully I can remember everything and not revert to my bad habits while she's rehabbing. She's had a terrible time of it, hasn't been able to run her dog for over a year and is on her second knee surgery. Ugh, not fun.

We'll see how the training holds up for Strum this weekend. I feel like I haven't progressed all that much since his last trial in May but hopefully that's because we chip away at things little by little on a daily basis so it's hard to see the overall improvement. The trial is part of the Larmier County Fair and I'm not sure exactly what the implications of that are but I talked to the trial secretary about it before entering and it sounds like the distractions shouldn't be anything other than what I'd see at a normal trial. I'm hoping these are not famous last words but again if things look iffy once the crowds show up it's not a huge financial disaster if I have to pull one or both dogs for the later runs.

I'm hoping I'll be able to check out the fair a bit myself but we'll see. I don't want to leave the dogs unattended for too long and I can imagine the chaos if I tried to walk around the fair with them. I loved the County Fair as a kid and it's been a lifetime since I've been to one so hopefully I can sneak away for a short bit to check it out. Maybe even sneak a ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl so I can jumble my brains around before my Jumpers run. Or...maybe not.

Are we having fun yet?

I took the Trouble Twins to a Fun Match last Sunday to work on various training issues. It was at a place called Riverstone Agility and we'd never been there before so it was a great opportunity to get Strum on some new equipment at a new place. Also the owner generously gave all the money to Western Border Collie Rescue so it was good to go out and support them. I do the occasional reference check or home visit for them and they're an excellent group. And no, I didn't come home with more dogs than I left with though at one point I was ready to come home with less dogs than I left with. One good thing about Strummer, he's put me off wanting any more dogs which is good because I was sorely tempted by this little sweet pea. She knew all the moves-gave me that look, crawled in my lap so she could reach my face to give me lots of puppy kisses, acted cute at every and all opportunities. But I resisted though was tempted to see if they'd take a trade-in on Strummer. Oh, I keed, I keed, I would never part with Mr. Guaranteed Personality.

C'mon, you know you want me


We'll start with Lola since she was the success story of the day. My goal for her was to practice the table and she was perfect, flew right on no problemo and stayed until I released her. There was a curved tunnel next to the table so I was able to
send her through and do a bunch of table/tunnel reps. sometimes rewarding on the table, other times after she'd done a tunnel then the table again. The thrill of the sardines seems to be wearing off for her though so I think I'll try something else next time. And just when I was finally getting used to the smell. Her weaves and contacts were perfect. I think her only mistake for 2 runs was a knocked bar on a serpentine and those are so rare for her that I don't worry over them. She was a perfect little rockstar.

Strummer on the other hand. Actually his first run was not so terrible aside from some missed dogwalks. A-frame and weaves were perfect, teeter was a little iffy and I should have had him redo it. I can't remember how many dogwalks I had him do but it seemed like a lot (4 or maybe 6) and his success rate was low. Can't remember exactly, maybe 4/6, and I was depressed about that.

The course was nice, there were plenty of opportunities for modifying it for your needs or there were a Starters and Masters course nested if you didn't want to worry about being creative and making up your own. You can see the course map here.

I ran the novice course first with Strummer and he did a fairly nice job. I got in a front cross between #5 and #6 and I think everything else went to plan except for the #14 tunnel to the #15 dogwalk. For some reason Strum kept insisting on the tunnel and finally I had to send him back through the tunnel exit so I could get him on the dogwalk.

I should have run the novice course for his seocnd run because we weren't there to work on handling, just obstacles and especially the contacts but I thought I'd give it a try. Trouble was there was a storm coming and some distant thunder during our warm-up for his second run sent his brain straight out of the building. The ring was empty of dogs while people changed the jump heights so I decided to use the practice jump and on his second jump he went flying over the jump and charged straight into the ring even though there were no dogs running there leading me to believe that his desire to chase other dogs doing agility is perhaps in part a stress releaser. All along I'd figured it was a prey drive/self control issue but now I think there is that other dimension to it as well which makes the job of dealing with it all that much harder. Anyway, it was a challenge to get him to not lose his head at the dogs in the ring while we waited our turn which was a huge contrast to his first run of the morning where he was calm and focused. On this video you can see how relaxed he is (at least for him) as we enter the ring for his first run (scroll to mid-page for the video then we are at the very end).

We started off with the dogwalk and I can't even remember how many I had to make him do before he finally got it right. When he did I called him to me to collect his reward so he knew for sure that yes, that is what I wanted. I was out of position after the dogwalk so the handling after that point was a mess, poor guy was so confused as was I. It's always a challenge for me to get back into the flow of the course at fun matches after I stop to reward and get out of position. He did manage a nice A-frame again and weaves so it wasn't a total loss but yikes what a mess in general. Poor guy, I'm not sure if he was unhinged by the thunder or by being in his crate for over an hour while other dogs were running or what. I parked away from the ring with his crate facing away from the ring but still I imagine he could still hear to some extent. Also, there was a severe storm system on it's way that eventually turned into tornadoes in some areas. We were home way before the tornadoes started but maybe he could feel the bad weather coming and coupled with the thunder it upset him. He is o.k. doing some things outside with thunder and there were just a few isolated claps far away but still I guess it was all a bit much for him. He was a bag of nerves all day and for a while I was thinking maybe agility competitions are going to be too much for him if he's going to be a wreck for the whole day but then I found out about the tornadoes and even though they were far away (15-20 miles I think) perhaps the unsettled weather systems were upsetting him. Lola was off her head all day as well so hopefully that's all it was.

Strummer has no more trials until August so we have plenty of time to work on that dogwalk but that match makes me feel like I'm beating my head against a wall. My new video camera is supposed to arrive today so I can go over some practice sessions I taped before my old one started to croak. Trouble is there is such inconsistency from session to session, one day he's brilliant, the next it's like he has no clue. It's hard to say if he simply needs more practice or if what I'm doing is never going to be effective and I need to try some other way. I have a few ideas of things to try and maybe it's time to move ahead with them.

I squish dead fish between my toes

It was so nice to have a quiet weekend at home with no obligations other than a fun match on Sunday and that was fun, not an obligation at all. I took Lola and Strummer up to Powerpups again for another little fun match. I'm starting to think I like fun matches up there more than trials. It's only $5 a run, I can have all the do-overs I want, a full 90 seconds in the ring, Lola can stuff her face with treats on the table, I don't have to wait in line all day for my runs, and if I don't like the course I can make up my own.

I decided to try sardines for treats for the first time and the good news/bad news is that they were a big hit. Good news because I got some spectacular tables from Lola and great recalls and attention from Strummer at the practice jump while the other dogs were running the course. Bad news because, ugh, have you ever handled sardines? And the smell! It was all I could do to keep the contents of my stomach where they belonged while I was removing them from the tin. Somehow I was picturing tiny individual fish that I could grab by the tail and dole out one whole fish at a time. Instead what I got was big fish parts that needed to be de-boned and fell apart into slimy disgusting bits in my fingers and became even more special with the addition of dog slobber. We have Susan Garrett to thank for this mess. The sardines were a suggestion from her email newsletter which I was just on the verge of canceling because with all I had going on last week I got behind on my email and my inbox was getting overrun and most of the suggestions I'd already read seemed to be geared at beginners and please, no more crate games, the woman does love her crate games, but I have other ways of dealing with impulse control issues that are more practical for me and I grow weary of hearing about games and crates and woe to my poor neglected inbox. But the sardines turned out to be a good tip and unfortunately I think I may have to buy some more for special occasions and how did I ever come to this?

As for the fun match, Strum's dogwalks were good in that he didn't miss any but when I run with him he adds an extra stride and slows a bit on the flat plank as opposed to when I stand still and send him to his treat gizmo so we'll need to work on that. Next week I'll also start adding obstacles on either side of the walk. His first A-frame was perfect, I was incredulous. The second one was less so, a bit of a leap over the apex which I'm trying to get away from since that tends to lead to some spectacular acrobatics including sometimes leaping over the apex and completely missing the A-frame on the way back down. My heart can't take much more of that. More work with the frame is in order but I think he'll be good enough by his debut in standard in 3 weeks. Teeter and weaves were great, he went flying off the table in one rep so we'll have to work on that but otherwise his tables were great (mmm, sardines). He was running a bit amok as far as following the course went and most of this was due to my handling going right out the window. This was mostly because I kept stopping to reward the obstacles and getting off track when I started back up again.

Lola went flying down on the table first time and that was before she knew about the sardines so of course I broke them out right away and let her munch away. Her table training away from the ring has been going so well lately, maybe there's hope. I alternated rewarding her and no reward as well as the amount of time I held her on the table. I got in 3 reps per run and rewarded 2/3. The second rep of the second run was the only time she hesitated and went off stress sniffing but I quickly got her on. I didn't reward her for the first table and when she realizes she's not getting rewards for every rep she starts to balk but this is exactly what we need to train for and why I need to keep taking her to matches. She did everything else no problemo, such a sweet happy girl. I'm so tempted to retire her from USDAA and we'll stick to DOCNA but her table has been an interesting training challenge and we'll see if my crazy made-up training scheme will work in the end. In the meantime I need to see if I can find a less slimy brand of sardine or maybe some other kind of small fish that is an actual whole fish and not fish parts. Or maybe I need to seriously reconsider how I'm spending my free time.

In other news poor Cody has to go in for surgery tomorrow to have a skin flap removed from his eyelid. It didn't seem to be bothering him and I was hoping it would fall off on its own somehow but it got bigger and his eye started oozing green stuff then red stuff so I decided it had to go. I'm not worried about the surgery itself but I am worried about anesthesia on a 10 1/2 year old dog. Poor guy, I'll have to spoil him next week to make up for it.

Fun Match and more running dogwalk

Fun Match
Took Strum and Lola up to Powerpups again for another fun match. This time the weather was cooperating so we were able to run a course and there was a fair bit of a crowd to provide the necessary distractions.

Strum did mostly well while waiting ringside. Had a few outbursts and ran off of the practice jump as the dog in the ring zipped past. Luckily the arena is fenced and once he figured out he wasn't going to get in he came back and worked nicely with me. Usually I won't let him off leash at the practice jump unless I know the distraction level is such that he won't leave me but since we were at a practice match and I knew he couldn't cause any trouble I wanted to push him a little. Both his runs were a bit crazy from a handling perspective, he was running wild, not collecting, knocking bars, running past obstacles and several times I had to stop and call him back to me to remind him uh, hey buddy, remember me? I had him repeat small sections of the course until he was focused on me and collecting and then we'd move on. I'm glad I chose to run him on the masters level course, I can't imagine the carnage we would have had on the novice course. I also stopped to reward dogwalk, weaves, teeter and table so that caused some break in the momentum of the runs as well. The good news is that he was something like 80-90% (8 or 9 hits out of 10 or so reps) with his dogwalk and I was thrilled about that. Teeter and table were nice too though he didn't get his elbows down right away on the table, he was so excited to get moving. That's the first time I've seen that so we'll have to go back to including more tables in sequences. The weaves were after a slight turn after the dogwalk and I stopped to reward all dogwalks so getting him back and lined up for the weaves was a bit awkward and he missed a few entries. Once I got him in they were beautiful though except the last set of the last run where he popped out about midway through because frankly I think by that point his poor brain was melting. 90 seconds is a long time to be running full tilt. Tonight I take him to Boulder County Fairgrounds for the last run through of the season and my plan is to work small sequences, maybe even put him in a sit in between sequences to settle him a bit and keep things from getting too crazy out of control. Also I'm going to go back to using more control type focus exercises to warm him up. I tried using a tug toy during his warm up at the fun match to see if he was ready for that and I'd say the answer to that is not. He sure had fun out there though and as I came out of the ring a friend who's never seen him run before said I'd better put my running shoes on, he's so darned fast.

I brought Lola along to work on her table issues. I've been working on this away from agility and even away from the table and on the one hand I wasn't quite ready to be putting her on a table during a course but on the other hand fun matches are so few and far between that I wanted to take advantage of being able to reward her on the table. Luckily the table was in a central location so I was able to redo it several times in a row then carry on with the course then come back to it again and redo it some more. The first run I rewarded her for the first time she got on the table then withheld reward the second time then rewarded the third time. She was hesitant to get on the third time but she did it. For the second run I didn't reward her the first time and she put up a bit of a fuss getting on the second time. I pulled her off the table because I didn't want to reward her for balking if she did eventually go down. Then I gave her another chance and she went down, got lots of treats and was fine for all other reps. I wish USDAA would do away with the table, what a stupid obstacle. Sucks all the fun and flow right out of the run.

She did a great job on everything else for both her runs-perfect contacts and weaves, followed my handling beautifully, lots of sassy barking. I'd say she was having some big fun as well. She's a dream to handle compared to crazy wild man Strummer, I'll tell you that. I didn't realize how good she was until I had to go back to novice with a crazy wild green dog.

Running Dogwalk
Strum had his first perfect practice (10/10, 100%) on the full height dogwalk out at the practice field on Saturday. Of course I'll need to see it a million more times before I'll believe it's for reals but I was so happy for that one good practice. Then his good showing at the fun match gives me even more confidence that we're going to pull this one off. I'm going to see how solid he is this week and if things go well I'll reintroduce the A-frame next week. I think (hope) my mistake was introducing it too soon before the dogwalk behavior was solid enough. My yard's a bit muddy right now but once it dries out I'll go back to working on turns on the plank/table set-up.

We're having much more fun

I took Strummer to his first ever fun match this weekend and he had a great time playing in the obedience ring. Which would have been great had we actually been entered in the obedience part of the show. Unfortunately when I signed up for the agility fun match I did not realize we would be sharing the indoor arena with 4 rings of obedience right up next to the agility ring with nothing but a few flimsy bits of surveying tape to divide them. There's no way I would have signed Strummer up for this had I known but when I arrived and saw the setup I figured that he'd been doing so well in class as far as not leaving me to join the dogs in the other agility ring right next door that he'd be fine with obedience which didn't seem nearly as enticing. Thing is I don't know much about obedience and as it turns out one of the exercises they do involves throwing a plastic barbell thingy and it was just my luck that they happened to throw it right at the exact moment that Strum was driving out of the weave poles into a nearly empty corner of the ring that had only the table. It's possible he thought the flying toy was his reward for a job well done in the weaves or more likely he wasn't thinking much of anything at all and in his sky as a kite state was attracted by the motion of the flying toy. I saw this coming a mile away and called him. He ignored his first recall, ran up to the toy then decided to heed my second recall and came flying back to me, thankfully without picking up the toy. On the plus side he's so fast he was in and out of there in the blink of an eye though it felt like an eternity to me. I'm not sure if the obedience people found this amusing or were horrified by the wild crazy coyote dog flying into their ring. I don't recall hearing any great peals of laughter and given how stuffy the AKC agility trials are around here and how the obedience folk seem way more uptight than the agility people I'm supposing it was the latter. This is what I get for naming my dog after a punk rock icon. There's a big AKC show next weekend, one of those huge deals where they combine conformation, obedience, agility and who knows what else. Big huge crowds come out to watch and for those that like that kind of thing it's a great opportunity to show off for the crowd. But it also puts people preparing for it on edge and because AKC trials aren't on my radar I had no idea this fun match, put on by a breed club, was meant to be practice for this big fancy trial and not so much practice for the baby dogs. Oh well, next time I'll know.

I altered the course to avoid the dog walk and A-frame and instead got extra practice on the weaves and table, both of which were good. Teeter was good too. Jumping/handling however had gone right down the crapper. He was so wound up he wouldn't collect for anything and he had one eye on those other rings so he was distracted and not following my direction as well as he should have. On the plus side he was way more focused on his second run, stayed out of the obedience ring and had 4 beautiful runs through a full set of poles. He even squeezed between the judge and the first pole to get his entry because she was standing right at the entrance since the next obstacle was supposed to be the A-frame I was avoiding and she was in position to judge that. He still wasn't collecting properly on his jumps on his second run though it's possible I cued him too late. I ran the same course with Lola and she read the front crosses no problem but she's not nearly as fast as Strum. Either way I'll be paying close attention to that at class tomorrow night and I'll break out the portable jumps on my lunch hour for a little refresher course. He was even having problems collecting on the practice jump so I think we need to review a bit and I need to rile him up a bit more in practice.

I took Lola to the match as well so I could work on her table. I've been working on her 'down' cue off the table and that's been an adventure that I'll write about eventually but not tonight. I wasn't quite ready to put her on a table in a new place but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to be able to reward her right there on the table if she managed to do it. On her first run she balked at the table at first but she got on and went into a down. Yeeha, lots of treats for that. I ran her back and forth on the A-frame then back on the table and she did it no problem. On her second run through I waited a bit to reward her and she popped up after 3 seconds. I did get her back down though without a fight and she once again gots lots of treats. I put her on and off the table about 4-5 more times really quickly before my time ran out and she did great. There may be hope for a Standard Q after all. The trick with her has been to avoid turning it into a battle of wills because that makes her freeze right away. One of these days I'll remember to write about what we've been doing. The rest of her run for both runs was perfect, good weaves and contacts, no problems with the course though we were running a novice/open level course. She was even moving at a decent speed without me pushing her. She must have been feeling good and her feet not bothering her.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After I got home from the match I shot some photos of Strum on the dogwalk plank in the backyard. Table is at 4' high. He was 10/10 so I didn't get any photos of his gait for a miss and I certainly wasn't going to try to get him to miss in order to get a photo. As it turns out he is doing a rotary gallop, at least in the photos. I'll try to get some video this week as well.





He had a successful week of training on the dogwalk, I was beyond pleased. His sessions have been a combo of backchaining the full length 4' high dogwalk (6 reps or so) and running the full dogwalk (4 reps). He's been 100% over 3 sessions for the full dogwalk reps though 50-70% on the backchained reps. Best part though was that I took him up to Powerpups which is an outdoor facility where he's never practiced before and he was 100% on all his dogwalk reps even with the wind howling. He had nice weaves, teeter and table there too. There was supposed to be a course set up for run throughs but when I arrived the wind was blowing so badly that the field was a mess of collapsed jumps. It wasn't blowing that badly in Boulder when I left so I didn't even think to call to see if it was bad up there. I'd driven an hour to get there so Alan generously offered to let me put Strum on whatever equipment I liked since there was no way the jumps were going to stay up for me to run a course. This was more the sort of practice Strum needed anyway and I knew we had the fun match the following day so the drive wasn't a total waste.

Today was a relaxing day of hiking on the Mesa Trail/Skunk Canyon for Strummer and Cody. The dogs were off leash for a good bit of the trail but there were warnings of mountain lion sightings so we kept them on leash for the iffy parts of the trail. This was the steepest, longest hike I've been on (just under 2 hours) since foot surgery and the resulting knee problems I've been having. Aside from a bad knee twist on a rocky part of the trail I managed o.k. and I felt o.k. for the rest of the day after icing the knee a couple of times. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. Would be good if I could get back to regular hiking. I started back up with running this week too, one minute run/one minute walk for about 1/2 an hour. I had worked my way up to 3 mins. run/1 min. walk a month or so ago but then my knee flared up again and I had to back off until now. Hopefully this will be it and I can finally return to normal running. I miss it a lot and keep having dreams where I'm running long races and flying along effortlessly then I wake up from them with my knee all sore and feeling gimpy. Not fun and I've had enough of it.