Well you knew this was coming. When I taught Strummer running contacts lo the many years ago the only resources I had were an article on Silvia Trkman's website and some video of Daisy Peel teaching her dog. That was about it. And nobody in my area was training them at the time so I had no one to compare notes with and share shoulders for crying on. But now? Lots of resources including a DVD from Silvia which is what I'm currently using. And some other locals who have been through it, in fact some even appeared on the DVD training at the place where I train. So hopefully between all I learned from Strummer and all the new resources as well as local people I can pester things should go more smoothly this time around. Ha. Famous last words I'm sure.
The first thing to do is get some video footage of the dog running. So I took Ruby to the dog park this morning and while she had a grand time running around it was very hard to get footage of her because she was so far away or running towards me or trotting instead of running, etc. I got a nice photo but video not so much.
So this afternoon I busted out the old treat gizmo and my GoPro and did some restrained recalls to the treat gizmo then called her back to me for more treats. Back and forth, back and forth. Seems like it should be tedious but somehow I like it.
The video analysis is tedious though and I don't like it. Especially since I wasn't sure what to do with the footage at first. Finally settled on picking a few reps, zooming in and putting it in super slow motion.
Unfortunately we've had a very dry summer and I gave up trying to keep the grass alive so her little tan legs blend in with my tan grass. But I can get a reasonable idea. She has decent rear leg separation but her reach (distance between last hind foot to hit and first forefoot of the next stride) is practically zero. Ideally it would match her rear leg separation. Or so Silvia says. But Ruby has that long back compared to her leg length so it makes sense that her reach would be short to non-existent. On the plus side she doesn't seem 'airy' and she run low to the ground, again functions of her structure. I think she'll be a good candidate for running contacts and that it will be more fun for the both of us. Someone please remind me I wrote this when I'm banging my head against the wall and wondering WTF I was thinking.
Next step would be to start her on a flat piece of astroturf that I have but first I want to work on her running and chasing a bit more. She's finally excited about her lotus ball and will chase it but I want her even more excited about it and maybe chasing some other toys before we get into full on running contact training.
So overwhelming to train a new dog, so much new stuff to learn and old lessons to remember.
Strum had about the best weekend I could hope for, getting the 2 remaining legs he needed for his Advanced Standard title and winning Steeplechase Finals. So so happy to be able to enter Masters Standard at the next USDAA trial in March. Finally. We only picked up a Gamblers leg in the games so we still need Q's in all the rest to totally move into Masters but it's the standard legs we struggle with so I was over the moon to get those so easily. This was his first trial entered in Advanced but he moved up for one standard run at the last trial so we were able to complete the Standard title. Funny that it took him nearly a year to get his Starters Standard title yet he got his Advanced Standard title in his first 2 trials. I think we do better with challenging courses.
Both rounds of Steeplechase were a lot of fun. Round 1 was somewhat technical for a Steeplechase course, lots of E's. Strum and I made it through but had a fault at the broad jump and a missed weave entry on the second time around. But the little stinker is so fast that we still made it to finals. Just.
Steeplechase Round 1
I almost didn't hang around for Round 2 because they switched the running order so it was at the end of the day on Saturday rather than on Sunday. I was through with my runs at 1:45 p.m. and would have to sit through Starters Standard and all 3 levels of Pairs to get to Steeplechase Finals. I didn't enter Pairs because I didn't want to be at the trial super late. But the course looked fun so I decided to wait for a bit to see how things ran. The judge was very efficient, Pairs went quickly and I was 2nd dog on the line for Steeplechase so the wait wasn't too bad and I was done at around 5:20 or so. Round 2 was a pure speed course, very fun and perfect for Strummer. Glad that I stayed. And the money I won was exactly our entry fee so we got 2 tournament runs for free.
Steeplechase Round 2
Steeplechase Finals
I also have video of Saturday's Advanced Standard run. Not as nice as his flawless run on Sunday but a good view of his good dogwalk contact.
I think my Flip is on its last legs. The quality looks terrible. Sometimes I hear a little piece of something loose rattling around in it and other times I don't hear it all. I don't think that's a good sign. I'm not thrilled with the idea of giving people my phone to tape me so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll try smacking the Flip around a little, sometimes that does the trick.
A very fun weekend but so cold. Sofa king cold. Single digits in the morning working up to a high in the mid-teens each day. Thankfully the heat was on in the arena but it wasn't toasty warm, especially Sunday morning. I was very happy to be done with my one run by around 9:00 a.m. on Sunday. It was 10 degrees when I got home and I was glad to be snuggled up in my house and not freezing my butt off at the arena for the third day in a row. These extreme temps. aren't normal for us but it is normal to have a few cold snaps like this throughout the winter. At least it wasn't so cold that I was shivering like I was at the trial a few months ago when there was no heat at all.
Poor Strummer doesn't do well in the extreme cold. He has sensitive feet and he'll sit on his haunches with his feet up waiting for me to warm his tootsies when his feet get too cold. Which take about a minute or 2 of walking across the parking lot. Somebody had to come to my rescue and warm his feet for me because my hands were full and he was sitting up refusing to go any further just 10 yards from the arena door. The person rightly called him a 'Sissy Dog' but obliged him anyway.
Fun courses this weekend, I've always liked Tim Verrelli's courses and he's a nice judge and so efficient, the trial ran quickly. Unfortunately Strummer seemed to like him too much and almost jumped off the table to say hello on one of his Standard runs. He was laying down on the table and wiggling his whole rear end during the table count. I couldn't lead out at the count at all, had to stay on top of him or he would have jumped off to snuggle the judge. Such a goof. I guess it's a whole lot better than being worried about the judge.
Overall I'm happy with the weekend, especially considering we've practiced only once in the past 6 weeks. Strum only missed one dogwalk (Gamblers) and 2 weave pole entries. He had 2 knocked bars but those were both due to my handling errors. I was more rusty than he was but after the first day I started to remember how to handle. Hopefully we'll get more practice in before the DOCNA trial next month.
Trial Stats
Advanced Gamblers Q, 2nd place
Advanced Standard Q, 2nd place
Advanced Standard Q, 1st place
Steeplechase Q, 5th place Round 1, 1st place Round 2
Titles: Advanced Standard
Dogwalks: 3/4 (75%)
A-frames: 9/9 (100%)
Weave entries: 4/6 (67%) popped out in one Standard run
Knocked bars: 2, both were obvious handling errors
Teeters: 4/4 (100%)
Table: 3/3 (100%) fast, perfect table, almost jumped off table to say hi to judge
Off courses: 1 in Jumpers due to me trying not to over handle and not handling enough, 1 in Standard when he didn't turn off the dogwalk and took a jump right in front of him instead
2 refusals both due to me not supporting a jump.
1 broken start line stay during his last run of the trial (Standard). I went out for a long lead out and took my eyes off of him and I know he was a little nervous on the start line when I left him. I let him get off with it, it was really more my fault, shouldn't lose contact with him like that when he's worried.
I've not been doing much backyard training lately because my yard is very small and only good for working on foundation type behaviors and we're at a point where training sequences is more important. I've found that with a fast, big strided dog the backyard foundation stuff is not enough, I need to take it to somewhere where he can stretch out and run and learn to execute the obstacles at speed, especially the weave poles.
However I do want to participate in Blog Action Day and after last weekend's DOCNA trial which had many dogwalk - 180 degree turn to tunnel scenarios, I had a few people asking about Strummer's flips with the running dogwalk. He was 5/5 with that dogwalk/tunnel scenario at this trial and you can see a few of his runs in the post below.
So I thought I'd re-post the backyard portion of the training I did for that. I also have posts about taking it to the full dogwalk and you can find those by clicking on the 'running dogwalk' label and looking around October 2010 or so. The following are 2 posts from October 2010.
I've been on a mission to get the 180 degree flip from dogwalk to tunnel on a verbal. I thought I mostly had it but DOCNA Champs showed me that oh no I don't.
Even though I have a practice tunnel I decided to use a plastic lawn chair for him to run around because for one I could get in a lot more reps without having to wait for him to run through the tunnel and also because it's a wider turn and easier on his body. In theory anyway. That silly dog refuses to have any respect at all for his body no matter how I try to help him.
I've been working with the chairs for a few days now, several quick sessions a day and it took a good 3 days before he seemed to have any clue as to what I wanted. After he failed for the third time in a row I'd give him some physical cues to help him then take them away and he'd be back to making mistakes, ie not turning away on the verbal cue and running straight ahead.
Yesterday's last session saw over 80% success though as did this morning's so this afternoon I broke out the tunnel and he's been near perfect. Sort of. After watching the video I'm not entirely happy with the performance. He's not running to the bottom and turning but rather turning before reaching the end and sliding down the plank a bit. He hits the yellow but if he takes to diving in the tunnel before running through the bottom of the plank he could easily start missing and in fact he did this on the A-frame at Champs. He wasn't running to the bottom either with the chair and I was rewarding it. The last rep isn't too bad and part of the problem I think is that I need to repaint/resand my contacts. Glad I finally shot some video before I got too far along.
Some of the reps were straight ahead runs to a jump that was off screen. My camera doesn't zoom out far enough to catch all the action and my yard is so small I can't place it farther away. I had a lot of reps go straight because I don't want him learning to automatically dive into a tunnel whenever he sees one under the dogwalk. He was starting to do that last summer.
Though I want the turn on a verbal I have been helping him out by remaining stopped and facing the side of the dogwalk towards the way I want him to turn when there's a turn and facing straight and moving forward when I want him to go straight. If I want him to turn towards me I call his name and face the direction I want him to turn and indicate with an arm. I'll get some video of that. I didn't think he was having problems with that but now I want to see for myself on video what's going on.
After some thought I decided to try using the prop of the pole to help Strum run all the way to the bottom before turning. As I said in the comments on a post below I'm not fond of props and this is largely because I'm so crap at both using them and fading them. I don't have a lot of faith in them either so I avoid them for the most part. But I thought I'd take the opportunity to learn how to use them. I wanted to use the running dogwalk experiment to improve my training techniques and here is one that could use some improvement. Well, you can see from the videos below how that worked out. In short, the pole only seemed to confuse and cause leaps and jumping off the side early to avoid it. So after giving it the good old college try for a grand total of 2 days/training sessions I said adios to the prop. and the next session I had perfect turns. I did have a training session on the A-frame/tunnel with my training partner but the mechanics of that turn is very different from the dogwalk. Still it probably helped some.
I had a theory that he was cueing off my lack of motion and shoulder position (ie facing the direction I wanted him to turn) rather than the verbal so I tried running forward and saying 'turn' and sure enough he went forward the first time. I tried it again with a little less forward motion and he surprised me by taking the turn. Maybe he is learning the verbal after all.
This session saw even more goofiness with the pole. After that I decided I'd leave the poles to the strippers and figure out something else for next session.
Tuesday evening I met at my training partner's house to practice teaching verbal discriminations and turns for the A-frame/tunnel. He was 100% with his turning cue, even with some forward motion on my part. He was not 100% on his verbal for the tunnel vs A-frame so I helped him out with some physical cues but by the end I think he was starting to get the idea. Verbals are hard, it'll take a lot more work but what I saw was encouraging. I still question his ability to ever learn to process a verbal that doesn't have some physical cue to back it up during a course when he's flying full speed. I think where it might work are instances where the physical cue is weak and the verbal will be extra information, like when the dogwalk and tunnel entry are close together and the physical cues to indicate one over the other are subtle and maybe not all that clear, the verbal can help him out. In theory anyway. We'll see how it works out in practice.
I cheated a little here and positioned the tunnel opening so it was next to and a bit forward of the dogwalk plank. This was to encourage him to run all the way down. I'll inch the tunnel back a bit over more sessions to make sure he doesn't start to dive in from the side given the opportunity. This session he started anticipating the turn and even turned with forward motion on my part for one rep. And I rewarded it with a yes! Next rep he started to do it again then stopped himself. Third time was a charm and he went forward no problem. I need to remember to put a lot of forward reps into each session like I did when I was starting out.
This post is part of Dog Agility Blog Action Day. You can go here to see more posts on Backyard Training.
Strummer and I had some big fun at the trial last weekend. This was our first chance to start picking up Q's for Nationals and it was my first time ever running in the Championship division of Grand Prix since my other dogs were lifetime Performance dogs. What a kick in the pants that was and Strummer had a beautiful run and a Q. So many people in the stands cheering us and everybody else on, I'm not used to that though to be honest I didn't even notice the crowd until we were done. Except for when he pulled off a really nice dogwalk, I did notice the crowd then though I promise that's not why we have a running dogwalk. The Grand Prix course was fun and when I walked it I was confident we could do it, all the challenges were within our skill set and the dogwalk set-up was a good one for Strummer.
I watched a bunch of runs before mine and when I didn't see a single person with a fast dog do the same thing I had planned I started to wonder a little. But I didn't like the options most people were doing for us so I stuck to my plan and it worked great. Most people treated 3-4-5 like a serp with their dog on their right and did a rear cross on the flat between 4 and 5 but I ran to the take-off side of 4 and put in a front cross between 3 and 4. This allowed me to be far enough ahead to get a front cross in between 7 and 8 while most people with fast dogs were stuck with their dog on their left at the A-frame. Some people then had problems between 8 and 9 with some dogs even going into the #3 tunnel. I had a bobble after the teeter when Strum ran his teeter causing me to bring him around to get a messy front cross in between 15 and 16 but I didn't trust a rear at that point since he was running a little crazy after the teeter and I wanted to get him back in control a bit. This cost us time and dropped us down to 4th place but I didn't care, I was so happy for the nice run and the Q for Nat's. and anyway 4th place is not so bad in the big competitive 22" class. I'm not a big placement person anyway. The trial was huge for our area, lots of people who don't normally do USDAA were there to qualify for Nat's. and the hosting club had to switch from one ring to two.
After my run I did see one other person with a fast dog pull off that front cross between 3 and 4 and a couple of people with small dogs did it too. I didn't watch every run so there may have been others.
Strummer Grand Prix
Steeplechase was the other Q I was hoping for and again the course looked fun and do-able for us. The only part I was concerned about was 3 to 4 because earlier in the day Strum had missed a similar kind of weave entry but I called his name before he took off for 3 to collect him then easily picked him up and got him in the weaves no problem. After that I figured it was just a matter of working all the jumps and keeping the turns efficient. I did a rear cross between 9 and 10 as did most people but a few threw in a Ketscher turn at 10. Strum had a tight enough turn with the rear but it worked nicely for some of the dogs that did it. Then between 13 and 14 I'm not sure what went on in Strum's brain but he leaped off the A-frame, missing his contact and going over the #7 off course jump. I hadn't even considered that when I walked it and not many dogs, if any, made that error. Somebody who saw my run said I had cued him properly and I thought I had as well so I don't know. That's the fun of competing with dogs, in the end they have a mind of their own. Strum doesn't usually shoot off like that though, it was weird. I called his name while he was descending the A-frame to warn him of the turn and maybe this stressed him a little, causing him to leap the contact and run away as a stress response. Or who knows. Other than that though it was such a lovely run and he was clean for the rest once I got him back. Ah well, at least it's only January and we still have a few more chances to Q.
The rest of the trial was in the Starters ring and I was not so thrilled to be back in Starters but it turned out to be o.k. The Starters class was full of really good dogs who are normally in Masters in AKC, was funny to see such a big, competitive class for Starters though maybe the true beginners didn't think so. I was in the stands waiting for the class I was supposed to work to start and asked to see someone's Starters Snooker course map and next thing I knew a crowd had gathered around and I was holding a beginner Snooker clinic. I have this inexplicable and disturbing love of explaining Snooker to people so I didn't mind. I guess it's the engineer in me.
Strum got his first ever Standard Q in USDAA as well as a Pairs Q which is my least favorite class so I was happy to be done with that. Unfortunately he missed his dogwalk contact in his other Standard run, dropped his only bar of the weekend in an otherwise lovely Jumpers run, got called for his teeter in Gamblers and holy cats I don't know what happened to my brain in Snooker. Deer in headlights syndrome and poor Strummy was trying so hard to figure out what I wanted. A snowball effect of confusion finally led to the wrong side of the #4 tunnel in the closing.
There was one bad incident of the weekend when Strum noticed a fast BC that he knows in the other ring while Strum was on the table for his Standard run. There was no space at all between the rings, just some snow fencing which I was sure would be fine for him but the dogwalk happened to be right up against the snow fencing and fast dogs on the contacts particularly get him overexcited. To his credit he stayed in his down on the table while he watched the other dog screaming around the ring, got off and did the weave poles then the course looped back to face the other ring and as he ran over the A-frame he had a perfect view of the other dog racing across the dogwalk right in front of him. He hit his A-frame contact then ran over to the ring gating to stare at the other dog. He didn't bark or rush the gating, just stood there and stared. I called him back and he came eventually, it seemed to take forever but he came back and finished the course, still about 11 seconds under course time for a Q and 3rd place. I found the other person after her run and asked if Strum had screwed up her run. Thankfully neither she nor her dog had even noticed him. But I was not happy, not happy at all. I was talking to the judge later that day and he said I'd handled the situation well and he was impressed Strum hadn't left the table but still. I've been working on this issue with my training partner and he's been getting so much better but clearly there's a lot of work left to be done. Not sure if Nat's. will even have fencing for the rings. I know they didn't in Scottsdale. If I'm not confident that he can control himself by Sept. then there will be no Nat's. for him. But we have plenty of time to work on this so that's a big thing on our list.
I also had some drama of my own when Strummer suddenly lifted his right back leg while I was walking him around the grassy area behind the arena on Sunday before his first run. At first it looked like he'd stepped on a sticker but I couldn't see anything in his paw. He seemed fine right away but that leg has always had a hitch in it and I'm worried at some point he'll have an ACL tear or something. I asked someone to watch his run and she said he looked fine. Then I took him out of the car again later and again he lifted his rear leg then started limping on his front leg as well. There were no stickers in his feet but I ran my hand over the dirt by the car and immediately felt tiny stickers in the dirt. I'm used to the dogs getting big goat heads stuck in their paws and these stickers were so small and thin, not the sort of thing that sticks in paws but Strum's so sensitive about his feet that apparently just touching them was enough to make him limp. At least I hope that's all it is. Limping right after getting up is always a big red flag so I was still worried about him though he ran just fine the rest of the day and when I stopped walking him through the dirt with the stickers he was fine. Still I've been keeping my eye on him, especially when he gets up after lying for a bit. I hate that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think the dogs are sick or injured. So far this week I haven't noticed a single funny step so I'm feeling good about the sticker theory.
Overall a fun trial despite the 2 rings and inherent conflicts and short tempers. I was done by 4:00 on Saturday and 1:40 on Sunday and it felt so good to be done so early. The trial site was less than 20 minutes from my house too which is always nice. During the week I was hoping we'd be done early on Sunday so I could get a bike ride in since the weather was so nice but, yeah, that didn't happen. In short I was tired and nursing some middle aged Crazy Dog Lady aches and pains and didn't feel like it. Instead I attacked the ice flow on my driveway which was probably worse for me than going for a bike ride but at least now there's almost a clear path from house to street. Poor Cody slipped on the driveway ice a few days ago so I've been doing my best to try to clear a path for him.
Trial Stats
Championship Grand Prix Q, 4th place
Starters Standard Q, 3rd place
Starters Pairs Q, don't know place
Dogwalks: 2/4 (50%)
A-frames: 8/9 (89%)
Weave entries: 4/6 (67%) Popped out of poles in Gamblers, completed all other poles.
Knocked bars: 1 in Jumpers
Teeters: 3/4 (75%)
Table: 2/2 (100%) And he stayed on while watching a dog in the other ring, both tables were fast
into a down, one was right after the dogwalk
Finally some interesting DOCNA courses this past weekend, at least in Standard. We even had the back side of jump in one Standard course! Very fun. I screwed it up by not rotating far enough out of the front cross and sending Strum to the tunnel rather than the #13 dogwalk but still was fun to have the challenge.
Overall a fun trial and some good stuff from the Strum man. Nice dogwalks, he only got called on one and while none of them were that horrible outright leap there were some that I wish were nicer but overall good. All his A-frames were pretty fabulous, didn't get called on any teeters but some weren't so fabulous. DOCNA is very generous with acceptable teeter performance. Still struggling with weave poles but he got quite a few this weekend. Only 2 bars down all weekend and of course they had to be on an otherwise perfect run. At least they were on the same run.
Saturday didn't look so great on paper with only 1/5 Q's but really I couldn't complain about any of the runs except Jumpers at the end of a very long day. It was after 6:00 and the 5th run of the day and both of us were tired. I pulled him off of one jump then he ran past a jump on a long straight line at the end, something he did more as a baby but if I let up at the end he'll do that sometimes still. They're talking about eliminating a standard run from February's DOCNA trial so the day won't be so long and if it turns out they can't then I won't enter Jumpers because it's too long of a day and silly for me to run when I'm so tired and out of focus.
We made up for it Sunday though with 4/5 Q's and some really nice runs, 1st places in Standard, Jumpers, and Trigility.
Strummer's 1st place Jumpers run from Sunday
Was happy to pull off that rear cross between #11 and #12. Maybe practicing those rears is finally paying off. Otherwise nothing too exciting here, DOCNA's typical pinwheel to serpentine to pinwheel Jumpers course. At least the Standard courses had some interesting challenges.
Of course the only Standard run I don't have on tape is his perfect 1st place finish but oh well, here's the map anyway.
I put a blind cross between jumps 13 and 14 and it worked great since I was easily able to complete the cross and pick him up on my left before he took off for #13. It's the only blind cross on a jump that I attempted for the whole trial because it was the only place that seemed a good choice.
The Standard runs I do have video for each have some minor errors, 2 dropped bars on the first video (Standard Rd. 4 map) and Strum misunderstood my flailing arms on the second video (Standard Rd. 1 map) and thought he was supposed to come up on my left after jump 14. It's tempting to blame that on the blind cross from the other run but this run was before the run with the blind and aside from a few exercises at the seminar I haven't done them at all on a jump. Was simply a miscommunication. I don't flail my arms nearly as much as I used to but old habits die hard. Even Jonny noticed it on the tape and thought it was confusing to the poor dog.
Standard Runs
Overall I'm pleased but definitely room for improvement. So much snow and cold right now though, don't think the practice field will be clear anytime soon. We were supposed to get 1-2" of snow on Friday night and I woke up to 4-5" in my yard and it was still snowing. Almost rolled over in bed thinking I didn't want to drive but it's only 18-20 mins. to Boulder County Fairgrounds on a good day so I decided to chance it. Roads were fine, just snow packed so I drove nice and slow and thankfully the few other drivers out on the road didn't do anything stupid so it was no problem, about 33-34 mins. and I was there. I walked Strummer around the grounds before the trial started and the snow was all sparkly and magical. I don't mind it if I don't have to drive in it. It stayed in the 20's all day but the sun came out and the ground was so warm, was shorts weather a couple days ago, so the roads were clear for the drive home. Thankfully my Jan. and Feb. trials are also at Boulder County Fairgrounds so it's not a long drive if it does snow.
I had a dinner party on Saturday night after that long long day, was so tired and was late to the party but I couldn't miss the 2nd Annual Soup Off. Last year the competition was casual with no voting or prizes but this year we had official ballots and prizes. There was some controversy over the scoring and some possible shenanigans from the Russian judge but after the smoke cleared Jonny took 1st place in the vegetarian category for his Sweet Potato Chipotle soup. Was too spicy for me but I gave him high marks anyway. Was a very fun night with our mountain biking friends but I didn't have time to shower and felt obliged to explain my grubbiness and (hopefully) faint aroma of horse arena. Everybody else scrubbed up nicely and dressed all fashion forward but they forgave me, at least to my face anyway. I only made it until 9:30 though then pure exhaustion set in and I had to make my apologies and go home. I think the only reason I was able to get up at all on Sunday morning was that I jolted awake from a bad nightmare about the dogs and couldn't have gone back to sleep if I tried.
Somebody at the trial asked me if Strummer was neutered which I thought was a strange question at first. When I told oh hells to the yes he is neutered she was disappointed and I realized she wanted to breed one of her dogs to him. I told her it's just as well, he's crazy and she said she likes crazy. But still. I love Strummer to pieces, wouldn't part with him for the world and I love his personality but I'm telling you, the world is not big enough for any more Strummers. Plenty of fast Border Collies that would make great agility dogs sitting in rescue anyway, no need to pump out any more onto the planet.
There was a winter Farmer's Market/holiday gift market going on in another building next door to the arena and on Sunday someone reminded me about the awesome tamales from last year. Mmmm, vegetarian spinach tamales, sooo good on a freezing winter's day. I brought some into the stands to watch the Starters class and soon everyone left to go get their own they smelled so good. Have to remember that for both days next year.
Next trial is USDAA in January. It'll be my first time ever entering the Tournament events in the Championship division - very exciting. Otherwise we're back in Starters. Not very exciting. Now if only the snow would melt so I can get back to the dogwalk and weave poles.
Final Stats
Specialist Traditional Gamblers Saturday Q-2nd place
Specialist Standard Sunday Q-1st place
Specialist Strategic Time Gamble Q - 3rd place
Specialist Trigility Q - 1st place
Specialist Jumpers Q - 1st place
No titles that I'm aware of.
Dogwalks
4/5(80%)
A-frames
100%, not sure how many we did, somewhere between 8-10
Teeters
7/7 - 100%, though some were close
Weave pole entries
Can't remember exactly.
Bars down
2 bars down, both in the same run one right after the other.
Finally had a chance and the motivation to head out to the practice field for some running dogwalk practice. This is my first ever try with the stride regulator that Rosanne recommended to me at the seminar last week. It worked a treat, he was 6/6 though the video only shows the first 3 reps because the battery died.
I didn't push my luck and remove the stride regulator this practice session because I have a trial this weekend and a snowstorm coming tomorrow so no other chances to practice and I wanted to end with success. I'm also debating whether or not to fade it at all. My training partner always puts stride regulators on the A-frame for her dog, the only time he doesn't see them is at a trial. He's got a beautiful running A-frame and in several years of competition I think has missed only 1. There's a certain logic to leaving it up all the time. For now I think I'm going to use it every practice until the mid-January USDAA trial and see how he does at the trial. Nothing to lose at this point really. If the behavior holds up in the ring I'll continue with it, if not I'll work on fading it. I'll probably test him without it once or twice at course run-throughs between now and the Jan. trial but I'm going to try to set up the regulator at most course run-throughs as well.
I'm not thrilled about using a prop but I'm out of things to try and preliminary results are promising so we'll see what happens with this experiment.
I put the A-frame up to USDAA height and he had a few misses so I'll have to work on that as well for the next few weeks. His A-frame was perfect at the seminar and it was USDAA height so no feedback for that. I think I just need to reward the successes and stop the sequences when he misses same as I've been doing. His A-frame is back to being very reliable so I'm not too worried about that.
Worked some teeters and weaves as well to sharpen him up a bit for the weekend. Also did some easy Ketschker work with jumps. I had a handling practice session with my training partner yesterday and Strum and I were struggling with the Ketschker, mostly with him refusing to take the jump so I worked with just one jump then 2 with me stationary with back to jump. It wasn't until I added motion and turned into him to get into position for the Ketschker that he started refusing again mostly because he was too focused on his toy. But we worked through it and he finally got it. Definitely not something I'm ready to use in a trial but I can see how useful it'll be once we get a handle on it. No good places for practicing blind crosses yesterday, we'll see if there's a good place to use one during the trial.
I have a triathlon tomorrow so of course we're having a heat wave at the end of August. Last year I blew up in the unseasonable heat in this race and conditions look like a repeat for this year. I've also been struggling a bit with swimming in the Rez in my full wetsuit in the warmer weather. I'm o.k. for a lap but by the second lap I'm getting too hot. Or at least I had been for the past few weeks. Once I even took off the wetsuit for the second lap and was a little chilly after I got out but was mostly o.k. I didn't even own a wetsuit when I did my first couple of Olympic Distance (1500 meter swim) triathlons in the Rez way back in the day. So I came up with the idea of not wearing a wetsuit in the race tomorrow in the hope that I might be a little chilly when I get out of the water and I won't overheat too badly for the rest of the race. It's only an 880 yard swim, how cold can I get?
I was a little toasty after my first 1100 yard loop of the Rez yesterday morning so I thought I'd test out this theory and take my wetsuit off for the second lap. The coach suggested I just do half a lap but I told her I'd done this a few weeks ago and was fine for a full lap. Unfortunately I'd underestimated how much the Rez had cooled down in the past few weeks and I was cold as soon as I took my wetsuit off. But I needed more yardage and there's no way I was getting the suit back on while it was wet so off I went figuring that the sun was blaring warmly on the water and I'd warm up once I got going like I did a few weeks ago. Except I never quite warmed up. I probably swam my fastest loop ever though even without the advantage of the wetsuit. Even when I got to the place where I could head back to shore for 1/2 a loop I stubbornly kept going, need more yardage, can't turn back until I get a full workout in. I was already cutting the workout short by doing only 2 laps. I made it back to shore and thought I was o.k. and even changed into dry clothes at the car but when I got in the car to drive home I starting shaking, well beyond shivering even. I blasted the heat and luckily the Rez is close to my house because it was an interesting drive home. I got in a hot shower and 50 minutes after getting out of the Rez I finally felt o.k. So the plan for tomorrow is to wear my wetsuit because the water will likely be a couple of degrees colder even than the Rez. At least I figured that out before the race and didn't have to try to navigate a mountain bike on single track while shaking uncontrollably.
Unlike last year I've been training in the heat this year so I'm better prepared. My plan is to have a small cooler in transition with a bottle full of ice water to pour over my head before the run and a small water bottle to carry with me on the run to pour over my head as needed. Last year the water supplies for those of us at the back of the race weren't so great. There aren't many aid stations which is understandable but when I finally did get to one they gave me a cup of water filled maybe 1/4 of the way. I think they let me have 2 cups but it still wasn't nearly enough. I hate to carry a bottle, it's such a nuisance and extra weight to haul up the hill, but I don't trust the race to provide enough water and I'd rather be sure to have it. Also I can have it when I need it and not have to wait so long between water stations. I'll be able to go faster if I can keep coolish so it'll be worth it.
This race is not an 'A' race, it's a fun end of season go out there and enjoy race. But I am going to race my hardest, especially looking to improve my running. But I haven't been training in earnest, no more 2 a day workouts, no more intervals. I did the bike in 1 hour 22 minutes for the last 2 years, weird since the courses were different each year, and I plan on cutting some time off of that. And I'm always trying to better my swim.
In other news Strummy finally got to go play at agility this morning.
If you throw the ball I might forgive you for ignoring me all summer.
I finally got him doing some dogwalks. Set-up was curved tunnel on one end, jump on the other. If he hit the contact he got his toy, if not I kept going until he did. He got all 4 reps with the jump at the end, all 4 perfect contacts. However he only got 1/4 with the tunnel at the end and it was the 4th tunnel rep that he finally got. I ended there but played with him a bit so he didn't think hitting the contact with a tunnel there meant the end of his fun. Even at 7:15 am it was too hot to do any more dogwalks after that.
Then my training partner and I worked on a little exercise that was already set up. We managed to work everything in - weaves, teeter, table, A-frame. Strummy was pretty perfect except for leaving the teeter when I moved ahead to front cross. His teeter had been so good but was getting sloppy at the last trial so I'm back to working it in practice. Weaves were pretty awesome even with coming at them at speed out of a tunnel and me doing a rear cross. Good practice over all but it was quickly too hot to do too much. Bring on the fall!
Finally had a chance to sneak in a dogwalk practice yesterday in between the rain storms and classes and Stuff I have to do. I had a great suggestion for a training exercise from a reader and I've been eager to give it a shot. The set-up was jump-dogwalk-jump. You wrap the dog over the jump, do the dogwalk, wrap the dog over the other jump, etc. If the dog hits the contact you reward profusely, if not you keep going. The logical/trainer part of me doesn't like the idea of not marking the miss but it was more fun and felt better not to mark it and keep going. In a sense the lack of treat is a no-reward marker but still it's getting a bit fuzzy. Nonetheless I gave it a try. Results weren't great, 3/7 or 43%. I'm going to try a few more times though and see if I see improvement over time. I like to give something new a chance before I dismiss it even if the initial results aren't great. It's a tiring exercise for both human and dog so I didn't get a whole lot of reps in. With warmer temps. Strum gets hot and slows down much sooner now and there's no point doing dogwalks when his tongue is hanging out.
I originally thought the point of the exercise was to get the dog to shorten its stride in anticipation of collecting on the flat for the jump wrap but according to the reader this is not correct. And in reality it didn't work that way either.
I also ran a course that was set up and had 1/3 (33%) hits on the dogwalk (I missed filming the first rep.). I also managed to get an A-frame on tape and he missed it and I don't think I noticed. I need to start paying better attention, that's probably why he's missing in trials, he's doing it in practice and I don't even notice.
The other interesting thing to notice about the video is that I'm striking heel first when I run. The chiro/p.t. did a video gait analysis of me running on Monday and that was the first thing he pointed out. Apparently this is a good way to strain your hamstrings. He gave me an exercise to help me learn to run more flat-footed. Imagine trying to learn how to run (and walk) a completely different way at age 46. I'm glad to be able to learn better running form but it's sort of twisting my brain around. Maybe this is good for me, it'll keep my brain from gathering too much dust. He's going to take a closer look at the video and give me the results on Friday. There are 20 different things he looks at. Who knew running was so complicated? I always joke it's so easy, any idiot can do it, there's no skill or technique involved at all. I also realized after the fact that I wasn't supposed to be running but oh well. I don't think that small amount of running did any damage but I'm going to lay off it until Friday.
Today I worked on fading the need to face Strummer to get him to shorten his stride/not leap with the tunnel at the end of the dogwalk. I faced him for the first 3 reps then faced sideways or forward and moved to a forward position for the rest. He had some pretty good success. Adding motion will be the hard part, I'll start with that next week after at least one more session of varying positon.
My practice field had the AKC finals course from the recent Nationals set up last weekend so Strum and I gave it a shot.
Here's the course.
On our first shot Strum knocked the first bar. On our second shot he ran clean to the dogwalk where I thought he made it and I stopped to reward him profusely but as it turned out it was a weird sort of miss. Then I got behind on the straight run from 17 to 20 and he took the #12 jump. I knew this would be a problem when I walked it but I couldn't see much of a way to get ahead. A rear cross at the #19 tunnel only puts you further behind and when I tried it I got the #11 jump. I checked out some videos on Youtube and there were at least one or two other handlers with fast dogs that got the #11 jump with the rear or a refusal at #20. Eventually I realized I had to trust him after the chute and run as fast as I could and finally that did the trick. A good example of that is here, Rosanne DeMascio's win in the 20" class. As an aside, she's coming to the Boulder County Fairgrounds to give a seminar on November 19-21. FRAC members have the first shot at working spots and in the past they've gone quickly so if anyone local or semi-local is interested you might want to consider joining FRAC. Anyway, she does a nice job of running ahead and keeping an eye on and connection with her dog, something I've been focusing on a lot lately for myself. I handled the rest of the course almost completely differently from her. Wish the course was still set up, I'd like to try the double rear crosses she did from after 4 to7. I did double fronts and it would be interesting to compare. The handler with the 2nd place run from the same class was behind the tunnel exit when her dog came out of the tunnel but the dog continued on a straight path to the finish. I'm guessing she used a verbal. Of the videos I saw of people with fast dogs very few people had success with that sequence if they weren't past the tunnel exit when the dog came out. This seemed to be the only challenging part of the course and only challenging if you had a really fast dog. Seems like it tested the handler's physical abilities more than anything.
The set-up at the practice field had the 1-2 jumps a bit to the left of the teeter so 3 to 4 was like a threadle in order to get a good safe approach to the teeter. I started out with Strum on my right, did forward send to 2 then a little backy-uppy between 3 and 4 to handle the threadle. A front after 4 and another front after 5. I handled 8-9-10 like a serp with a rear cross on the flat between 9 and 10 but I didn't like that much. I was standing around waiting for the rear, could have easily got a front in instead. A lot of people on the videos did a front between 8 and 9 but I didn't like that option with 8 being a tire and the difficulty of getting in there for a forward motion front cross. I kept Strum on my right all the way to the #14 tunnel. A lateral send between 11 and 12 kept him off the #20 jump no problem. Most people on the videos did a front after the weaves and I'm guessing it's so they could be in position to manage the tunnel-dogwalk turn. You see this all the time in DOCNA, sometimes in a gamble, so we've practiced this to the point where he's fairly independent and I can get a head start on the dogwalk and trust him to get on the dogwalk and manage his entrance so I stayed to the left of the tunnel entrance and had a nice head start on the dogwalk. The rest of the course was just a horse race.
This morning I was at the field bright and early in some bad winds to practice the dogwalk. I don't like putting him on the dogwalk in high winds but they weren't quite to level that I would consider dangerous, more annoying than anything. Nonetheless I did mostly backchaining from the top of the down ramp so he wouldn't get caught in a gust running full speed. We did do a couple of full dpgwalks and a few reps of backchaining from further back when the winds seemed calm.
Since the past 4 practices with the dogwalk-tunnel set up have been so unsuccessful (40%-50% success rates) I decided to stand facing the down ramp so he'd shorten his stride and start having some success. Once I felt he was going to make the contact I turned and sent him in the tunnel. His success rate for these reps was 100% (or close, I didn't go back to check) and the misses happened when I tried to fade facing him and/or added some movement. However he did have 3 hits where I was facing the tunnel or not directly facing the walk so he was starting to get the hang of it. The effect of my location/motion is obvious in the video.
I think what this shows is that I did a poor job of fading the treat gizmo and tossed toys and that the tunnel is a different challenge than a jump. Yeah, I know, DUH. But we need to work through this and I think that if he can get this then he's going to have a better understanding of what he's supposed to do. He's not nearly as sensitive to my position or motion when there's a jump so this is a good way to work on generalizing the behavior.
If I had this to do over I'd introduce obstacles after the plank from the very start of the plank on the ground. Not during the initial stages of training but after the dog was running the flat plank I'd put a tunnel. And I'd do it at each stage as well. I did most of my early training in my backyard and didn't have enough space for a tunnel. I did put a jump and that's probably part of the reason why he's so much better with jumps.
Stats:
12/17 (70%)
Again, I think all the misses were when I wasn't facing the dogwalk but we did have 3 successes with me not directly facing the dogwalk. I'm going to continue with this next week but also maybe throw in a session with a jump and some tossed toys so we don't forget that.
Had a fun handling practice this morning in the wind. I felt like I was doing o.k. and handling things smoothly, thinking about things but not overthinking. Then I got home and saw the video and realized how many mistakes there were. Oh well, I had fun anyway. We had some back sides of jumps in Exercise #1 and a threadle in Exercise #3 that took me a while to recognize as a threadle. I struggled with it a bit then realized, duh, it's a threadle and once I handled it like a threadle it was no problemo.
I probably should have stopped at the coffee shop on the way to practice, apparently I'm still a little out of it at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday.
Dogwalk practice this week went downhill once again but I changed the set-up and expected a degradation on the behavior. I replaced the jump at the end of the dogwalk with a tunnel and this has always been a problem for Strummer. I have lots of theories about the why of it but not so many about how to fix it other than to keep at it until he gets it. These videos go back in time as you go down the post. I'm mostly posting them for myself, nothing too impressive to see in any of them. I'm hoping he starts getting it next week or I may go back to the jump just so he can have some success again. Next trial is in 3 weeks, ugh. I was so sure I'd have this fixed by now.
Friday, April 15
Stats:
8/15 (53%) total
8/10 (80%) backchained
0/5 (0%) full
Wednesday April 13
Stats:
8/12 (67%) total
5/6 (83%) low dogwalk
3/4 (75%) low dogwalk backchained
2/2 (100%) low dogwalk full
3/6 (50%) regular dogwalk
2/5 (40%) regular dogwalk backchained
1/1 (100%) regular dogwalk full
The dogwalk was lowered when I got to the training field so I thought I'd see if he would have problems with the low dogwalk. He did great and what that tells me is that he does have a good foundation. These stats aren't accurate either because I had some technical problems with the camera and I missed a good chunk of practice on the high dogwalk that did not go well. One of the more frustrating practices I've had in some time and I got a bit mad at myself for getting frustrated. Even through Friday's practice didn't go well I made sure that I had a much better attitude about it.
April 7
Stats:
5/11 (45%) total
2/5 (45%) backchained
3/6 (50%) full
This was the first time with the new dogwalk-tunnel set-up so I started out with some backchaining but it didn't seem to matter, he was still missing quite a bit. I realize now it was nearly a week until I tried again so I must have been fairly discouraged.
Another good training session this morning except for the part where the camera fell over and I missed the first few reps. which contained a miss. The other 2 reps. you'll have to take my work for it that they were hits. I was doing much better with my throwing and watching the contact as well.
Stats:
Set-up was 20" jump-dogwalk-12" jump-treat gizmo for first 3 reps then no gizmo and I used the 2-toy technique.
5/7 (71%) or 6/7 (86%), one rep. was so close I don't know how to count it. All full dogwalks.
In any case I think he's close enough to the 80% success rate for 2 sessions that he's ready for a new challenge. Next time, a tunnel after the dogwalk.
I also worked on some A-frames and they all looked pretty fabulous, not sure what was going on at the trial. Next time I'll film some A-frames to be completely sure I'm seeing hits that are really hits.
A little inspiration for everyone trialing this weekend. Heck even if you're not trialing this weekend.
You get that song in your head while you're waiting at the gate and then standing on that start line and you can't help but have the most awesomest of runs. That's my plan for this weekend anyway. We're only in 2 classes per day of a USDAA trial because I didn't want to enter classes with dogwalks but one of those classes is Steeplechase and we're going to have the most awesome fast smooth clean run. Because I said so. And because we've been practicing our butts off.
In even better news Strum finally had a 100% dogwalk practice. Oh joyous rapture of 100% dogwalk contacts. I nearly broke down weeping from the joy of it. Set-up was dogwalk-jump-treat gizmo then after a few reps I added a jump before the dogwalk. I went back to the treat gizmo so I could be sure I was judging the contacts properly but I'm intrigued by the 2 toy method and I'll be going back to that. I'll probably alternate back and forth between them to keep us both on our toes.
Some handling and dogwalk practice today and it all felt kind of flat. Struggling with some lateral sends for handling practice then a dogwalk practice that felt much like Friday's. I was struggling with the toy throwing again though finally started getting the hang of it by the end. I was extremely tired yesterday and maybe still dragging a bit today. Not sure why I should be so tired after sitting on my butt in a class all weekend but for some reason I am. Could also be the training catching up with me.
Stats:
Set-up was jump-dogwalk-jump. Cool morning, sunny, 30's.
6/10 (60%) all reps.
3/5 (60%) for full dogwalks
3/5 (60%) for backchained dogwalks
Rewarded most if not all of the misses, ugh.
I may have to go back to the treat gizmo if I can't get my mechanics down with the toys in a hurry. Rewarding the misses is NOT good. I did lower the jump to 12" to make it easier to throw the toy. I think I'll go back to the yellow chicken toy, it's easier for me to throw and moves through the air more quickly so if I mess up and throw it a little late it's not as bad a thing. My aim was so bad with the Kong rope toy that for more than half the reps he didn't even make it over the jump because the toy went sailing elsewhere.
One fantastic thing about practice was that Strummer never ran over to join my training partner and her super fast dog who were also working on contacts while we played on the dogwalk. There was lots of noise and barking and excitement coming from their end of the field and I was still able to leave him in a sit-stay and lead out on the dogwalk. At times he was straining to go over there but he kept his stay on his own and was happy to play with me instead. Such a huge breakthrough for the Strum man.
Today I started with a jump at the end of the dogwalk. The original plan was to wait until I had a higher success rate without it but I wanted to see how the mechanics of throwing a toy over the jump were going to work. I also used a Kong at the end of a rope for the low value toy in hopes I would be able to throw it better. I still used his red chicken for the high value toy. The conclusion of this little experiment is that I'm not so very good with the throwing, not a surprise to me and the main reason I don't typically train with thrown toys but I'm hoping with some practice I can get better. I found it a near impossible challenge to run to the end of the dogwalk, throw the first toy accurately over the jump, watch the contact zone then remember to throw the second toy only if successful. It was kind of a comedy routine, or maybe a tragedy depending on how you want to look at it. For one rep. I forgot to throw the first toy entirely and I got a terrible leap as Strum was looking at me and the toy instead of ahead. I ended up having to lead out to the downramp in order to pull it all off and for a few reps. the little stinker ran straight to me and the toy rather than taking the dogwalk. I had to keep my eye on him until he was committed to the walk which added another challenge to the equation.
Stats:
Cool morning, mid-30's, sunny, calm
6/10 (60%) hits, all full dogwalks (no backchaining)
20" Jump after the dogwalk for some reps. but not for others. I rotated the jump in and out as I tried to get comfortable with the toy throwing. First few reps. had a jump after the dogwalk.
Lots of weirdness with his gait though the latter reps. were getting better. More jumping off the dogwalk than I normally see which was my worry with using toys but this could be more due to my atrocious throwing. I was trying to throw farther this time as well. I'm going to keep up with it next week, we'll see how it goes. Strum gets the whole weekend off because I have a class but I think I should get in some throwing practice in the yard before I leave for class in the morning. Because my neighbors don't already think I'm weird enough.
I tried something new with the the dogwalk today thanks to a suggestion from a reader who actually trains with Silvia. Rather than use the treat gizmo I took 2 toys, one that's Strum's absolute favorite and another that he likes but not nearly as much. I've been reluctant, nay chicken, to use toys in the past because for one he slams to a stop when he chases toys and finally gets them and also because I was concerned that he'd extend his stride even more if he had a toy to chase vs the stationary treat dispenser. But I love to experiment and thinking about it Strum probably slams to a halt even worse at the treat gizmo so I decided to give it a try. The method is to throw the first, lower value toy while he's on the walk then if he gets a hit throw the second higher value toy. The results were pretty good overall, much better than I was expecting and my throwing/timing was also better than expected though could use improvement.
The biggest improvement was that he added the extra stride for every rep. and didn't have any of the big obvious misses that he's been having recently. But now we're back to the less obvious misses and sure enough I rewarded 2 misses. One of them I suspected was a miss right after I rewarded it. The other was so close I had to spot it on the slow motion video. Both were fairly close hits, hard to see, but I could sense that one was a leap right after the fact.
The first 2 reps were backchained so I could get my timing down with throwing the toys. The rest were all full dogwalks. A few times he didn't get on the dogwalk and went straight for his chicken and while I wasn't thrilled about that it's interesting to have footage of him running on the flat. I put a short bit of it at the end.
Stats:
Cool sunny morning, about 29-30 degrees
4/6 (67%) hits
2/4 (50%) hits were full dogwalks
2/6 (33%) misses were rewarded
Both misses were close
I'm happy enough with today's results. I did make it easier by leading out and not having so much motion on my part. I'll continue this set up tomorrow and if we can get 80% then I'll start adding motion back in. So glad I didn't enter Strum in any Standard runs at his next trial in a week, I want this all worked out before I ask him to do it in the ring. Next trial after that will be in May so hopefully I'll have everything near perfect by then, or at least back to where we were.
Strum's dogwalk isn't getting consistently better so I decided to play around with his reinforcements. He doesn't seem to care if he misses and in fact I'm convinced that after all this time he's still not clear on what's expected of him. So in order to try to make things clearer for him and give him some motivation to try to figure things out I'm making his reward vs no reward more obvious. If he gets a hit he gets treats from the treat gizmo and I come over and give him even better treats from my pocket then I break out his special squeaky chicken that makes him mad with joy and I play with him for a bit. If he misses I mark it with a verbal 'no' as I've been doing all along and I go sit down on the sidelines for 20-30 seconds. This does cause him a small amount of stress, probably because he doesn't know what's going on and uncertainty is a stressor for him. He had a lot of lip licking going on and trotting around as a displacement behavior. I mostly ignored him while I sat, I did have some eye contact mostly because I wanted to see how he was responding. I'm not a fan of this type of thing and the original suggestion from the running contact seminar I went to was to take him by the collar and lead him back to the start of the dogwalk when he misses. I did this at the seminar and it took a lot of reps. for him to finally get a hit. I don't have it in me right now to try that in practice at home. It'll suck the fun right out of practice for the both of us and that's not what agility is supposed to be about. It may be bad dog training but a running dogwalk is not a necessary life skill and as such I'm not willing to start going down that road. So for now I'll stick to just ending the action for a bit. If nothing else the little break is good for breaking up a string of misses. Sometimes he gets into a groove of missing and I can't get him out of it short of ending the session. He didn't have any 2 misses in a row for yesterday's session, we'll see if it holds up for more sessions.
Stats for yesterday's session:
8/11 (73%)
5/8 hits (62%) were for full dogwalks, the other 3 were back chaining
Set-up was dogwalk-treat gizmo
He's focusing too much on the treat gizmo so I'm going to introduce a jump back in next time.
Went out to the training field this a.m. and unfortunately the dogwalk had blown over in yesterday's hurricane force winds (it was calm in the morning when we practiced). No way I could right that thing on my own so it may be a few days until I can get back to training. Guess it was a good idea to cancel yesterday afternoon's bike ride. It felt good to have a rest day anyway.
Today was weave pole/tunnel day. Strum did awesome with his weave entries, I was stunned. The only one he missed was coming out of a tunnel and the tunnel was very close to the weaves so he had to collect hard and early. It took him 4 tries even though I cued the weaves verbally while he was still in the tunnel. But he finally got it, what an awesome boy.
The exercises where from a Clean Run Backyard Dogs, I don't know which one, so I can't print them here but they were short and obvious enough you can see what's going on in the video. We added in the A-frame, what they hey, wanted to get some contact practice in. Strum missed the first one but I called it and had him redo it and he was perfect for the other reps.
Overall I could have gotten more collection in some places but I think we did a nice job and I remembered to keep my eye on him. Had a nice lateral send at the end of Exercise #3 and was able to get far enough ahead to put in a front cross after a tunnel-whee ha! I think maybe some of the seminar lessons actually sank in though I did have one botched forward send.
I finally looked at the video from yesterday's nightmare of a practice and on paper it doesn't sound as bad as I thought: 9/15 (60%). That's still bad but I thought it was more around 30%. Unfortunately the misses are on the full dogwalk while the hits are mostly back chaining of the down plank. I cut the video short, even I don't want to sit through 15 reps. You get the gist of what's happening. Set-up was jump-dogwalk-tunnel-treat gizmo.
Today I decided we needed some success so before handling practice I set up the treat gizmo at the end of the dogwalk for a couple reps. then replaced it with a jump for a couple more. I didn't put a jump in before the dogwalk. Technically he was 4/4 (100%) but two of the hits were high for my liking and sloppy looking. But it felt so good to have some success. I think the new plan will be to continue with the successful set-up for one more practice, start the next practice with the jump then after several good reps. replace the jump with the tunnel and see if he can maintain success.
I decided to replace my point and shoot camera because I was very sad not having a camera to take with me on the bike. I didn't want to spend a lot so I ended up buying a Panasonic Lumix for $120. It has an 8x zoom which was more than the typical cameras in that price range and other than that I didn't care about features, I figured they're all more or less the same. Plus it's red! I took it for a test drive on the Left Hand/Boulder Valley trails this afternoon.
Left Hand Trail
Hill up the Left Hand Trail
Left Hand Trail
Boulder Valley-it was windy today, look at those whitecaps
Lenticular cloud over the Flatirons (view from the Eagle Trail)
Somehow the photos look nicer on my computer than they do uploaded to Blogger, the blue sky looks so washed out. Oh well, that's not the camera's fault. I'm happy enough with the photos given the price of the thing and it's about half the size and weight of my old point and shoot. The only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't have a manual view finder, you have to use the digital screen on the back of the camera and it's pretty much impossible to see anything in it in bright sunshine which is where I plan on taking most of my photos. Not sure what to do about that.
It was colder than penguin snot Monday and Tuesday with a layer of ice over everything but today was sunny and 50's, great weather for a bike ride and some agility. It was windy but that just made for a better workout.
Strum's dogwalk practice this morning was depressing, the worse so far though I haven't reviewed the video. At least they were obvious misses that I didn't reward. The part that killed me was that he seemed to be trying so hard but he couldn't work out what he was supposed to do. If I back chained it and had him run down just the down ramp he was o.k. but he couldn't seem to put it together with a head of steam on the full dogwalk. Set-up again was jump-dogwalk-tunnel-treat gizmo. I straightened the tunnel out a bit so the treat gizmo wasn't next to the dogwalk as a distraction but it didn't matter. I don't want to go back to the table/plank thing because I've done that before and it doesn't help. He needs to learn how to manage that down plank at speed. I guess we keep plugging away but lately I only seem to be digging a deeper hole. I was sure I'd have this fixed by the April USDAA trial but now I don't know if I should enter. I'm not going to waste any money on Grand Prix that's for sure.
On a brighter note there was a course still set up from over the weekend. We gave it a bash and had a nice run, except for the dogwalk though he did finally get his contact on his second try.
This was an AKC Excellent course from some out of state trial. It was straight forward and much easier than the DOCNA courses I've been doing lately because the distances were so much closer together. I was ahead no problem for the whole course.
For laughs I tried a rear cross on the flat between 7 and 8 and it worked nicely, Strum had his eye on the table before he took the #8 jump. I was even able to get way ahead on the straight-ish line of jumps from 11 to 15 and got in a front cross before the #16 teeter. I also practiced that with a rear cross at the teeter but I liked the front better, got me further along the course and I didn't have to stop and wait for him to get on the teeter. Nothing else terribly interesting about this course but it was nice to run something and finally have some success. Handling felt much smoother than the other day and I remembered to keep my eye on Strum which is the main thing I'm focusing on right now.
More agility tomorrow morning and hopefully another bike ride then no training (or computer access) of any kind for 4 days. I'm thinking the break from all of it will do us all some good.
Those straight tunnels, they're killing me. So simple in concept yet so confounding in practice. Damn you to hell straight tunnels. My training partner feels my pain so we agreed on a straight tunnel exercise for last Friday's practice. The courses are from Kathy Keats and you can see them here.
I didn't help that I was tired. Masters swim practice was only a couple of hours before and by Friday I'd had nearly all of my weekly triathlon training behind me since I knew I'd be in a class all weekend and unable to get in any big workouts.
I hemmed and hawed about posting these videos. They might not be all that fun to watch. My brain is still chewing on the information from the seminar last month. You can almost see the smoke coming off my head in the videos as I try to puzzle through how to put it all together. Fluency will come at some point but for now it's not very pretty. Plus the part about being tired and it was cold and damp so Strum was fast and not tiring out. But it is what it is for now.
I'll start with Exercise #3. We used 12 weave poles instead of the specified 6 for all exercises and this added to the challenge.
Getting from #4 to the #5 weaves required some good snooker handling. At first I didn't respect the challenge enough and got the tunnel. Then I overhandled it and it worked but wasn't pretty. Finally Goldilocks got is just right. Or close enough for government work anyway. Next was the #7 tunnel to #8 jump. I didn't need to break out the calculus to figure out that there was no way I could beat Strum to the end of that tunnel let alone get ahead enough to cue that jump as a push with him on my left. All calculations lead to knee surgery so I decided to do a front cross on the flat in front of the tunnel and pull to 8. I was still behind and got a lot of head checking at 8-9. Getting to 10 was again another challenge that I first underhandled then overhandled. I keep forgetting that I can run forward but still turn my body to the side and keep eye contact.
4-6 was sort of a mirror image of the same issue from Exercise 3. I struggled even more with getting that #6 jump without a lot of head checking because I was so far behind. Even yelling 'Go Jump' while he was in the tunnel and again when he exited didn't seem to help. This was even more challenging for my training partner's dog who is also super fast but smaller so his stride didn't carry him quite as far out of the tunnel and she had to work even harder for that jump. Again, those 12 weave poles spread things out and we had a 20' tunnel so it was even more challenging than the course on the map. Since both of us struggled we're going to continue to work on sends out of a tunnel in future practices.
The challenge for me here was the rear cross between 4 and 5. Handling wise a better option might have been a front between 3 and 4 but I wanted to practice rear crosses. I went over my video on the rear cross exercises from the seminar and I had done decent job there but struggled in the context of a course. I kept trying to pull off a deceleration rear cross in part because I wanted to practice it but also because if I let him get too far ahead of me and then decelerated the cue was too late and he was already in extension when he committed to that #5 jump. I don't know if that's good handling logic and the struggle was with the execution (well, I know the struggle was with the execution) but it took some tries to pull it off. I think I edited out too much video for this exercise and exercise 2 as well. Not sure what happened.
I have also some dogwalk footage from Thursday.
He was 3/6 (50%). Sigh. I rewarded the 2nd and 3rd reps. even though they were misses so 4/6 (67%) for me. I knew #2 rep. was a miss the second I rewarded it. I was too far behind and spoke too soon. I didn't spot the #3 rep. as a miss until I saw the video.
I think the problem is that he needs to know where he's going. In the past I've practiced turns by putting the treat gizmo off to the side like it is here, signaled the turn and rewarded with the gizmo so it looked like at first he thought that's the game we were playing and I was so far behind on that 2nd rep. that I was in effect cueing a turn.
Today should be dogwalk practice day but there's a light dusting of snow and a coat of ice on everything so we may only get one day in this week. Once again I'm unable to train over the weekend so my schedule is running a bit feral this week.
