Current Successes

It isn't often that I have an opportunity to write about an awesome trail with one of my dogs. Tip and I had an awesome trial today! We have more and more great runs, but we don't often come together for an entire day!

I will just take a moment to reflect so that I can look back on this day!

Tip and I did a NADAC trial today. We had 6 runs, 5 Q's and all of the placements given were first with one second! But more importantly than statistics is how we felt. We were a team today! We both read each other well, where Tip was unclear she glanced at me for clarity, but most of the time I held up my end of the deal and gave her the information before she needed it. We trusted each other today!

Days like this are even sweeter because of the journey it took to arrive here. When you feel great like this, it feels good to reflect on the tears and frustrations along the way. We both learned from each other and arrived upon today!



Another success this weekend was training with Tangle. You know, really, I always enjoy training with Tangle and we haven't had too many frustrations and all of them have paled in comparison to Tip's and my learning curve.

My husband helped us do restrained recalls on the teeter this weekend. It was just the tool that I needed! I wanted to turn the teeter into a game and this was the ticket! Here is the video of our training. His speed and love for the teeter up until this practice session was equivalent to the first teeter on the film. Not bad at all, but he is thinking too much. Yes, I want a thinking dog, but I do not want a worrier. To my eye, the speed and drive for the toy only increased with each teeter. It is this love and drive that will keep Tangle from thinking too much on the teeter and get into the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx_Qpbz-Nm0

Not to leave Split out of the mix today. He is doing great. Still in rehab for his hip flexor pull, but starting to return to activity. I currently have him doing 6 jumps at 12 inches, a few weaves, a few dog walks and really low A-Frames!

Grand Prix inspired

Tip needs another Grand Prix Q to qualify for Nationals so I decided to work on Grand Prix courses. Here is a course that was inspired by a Frank Holik course. Frank will be the judge at the Rocky Mountain Regionals so why not study up?

The start of the course was actually fairly fun, I started with Tip by standing in between #1 and #3 and then front crossing (FC) #2. The sequence 3-4-5-6 was fairly straight forward. However once the dog comes out of the tunnel you have to make a decision which side of #8 to pick them up. I tried both sides, but ended up liking the inside closest to the tunnel. It was much clearer to cue Tip that she was turning. This does make it a rear cross (RC) over a triple, but Tip handled it great.

The next trouble spot was 15-16-17. This is because the spacing of 16 to 17 was a bounce jump for Tip. Typically I don't set up something that is a bounce jump, but once in a while it is really good to practice different jumping skills. That is, scope out what is coming and what adjustments in the jump style does she have to make in order to not knock the bar.

On the Tangle front, we had a great lesson today. We worked on his teeter. We were working on his speed across the teeter. The suggestion was to do restrained recalls over the teeter. Also, have the toy low to the teeter, about in the middle when released, and run to the end. By the end of his teeter session he was driving faster.

Interesting little factoid was that Tangle had about a 100 percent failure rate during the lesson on the dog walk. Since we are about 100 percent success rate at home it tells me that we need to go on a dog walk tour. That is, visit a lot of dog walks around town and show him that his performance should be the same on all of them.

P.S. I will still probably move his dog walk to a 2o2o

Pack recalls

Spring has sprung in our area. It has been fairly wet for the last week and this morning was too icy to work much. I decided to work pack recalls.

I train the individual recalls like this because it comes in handy for so many things:

• Self control


• Being able to train one dog, but have the others handy on the field


• Safety, I have had to call one dog past a coyote and need the other to stay


• Run, then lie down is handy and good for snooker too

As I reviewed the video I find once again inconsistencies in myself. It is so hard to be completely consistent!! I have found that in raising my child and again in training my dogs. My goal is to be consistent in my training and with each passing day I do get better. Honestly, I know I won't reach my goal, but better is always great!

"Technically", I only need to say the dogs name and that will release them from their stay. I also included the word "come". "Technically", if I use only the word "come", all three dogs should release to me. As you can see Split wanted his specialized invitation.

Video of Pack Recalls

Discriminations

We had fun this week designing this course. Again, we started with discussion and exercises from Developing Handling Skills and organically developed this course.

We ended up running several variations, but here are a couple that were most notable.

(First course) These days I am running these with Tip since Split is injured. The first discrimination (AFrame, Tunnel, or jump) was actually a little challenging. Your timing and your cues have to be very precise. We practiced getting all three and studying the differences in how to cue them. My next challenge on this course since Tip has a running AFrame was to get ahead so that I could use lateral motion cueing 5-6. If you are behind, your forward motion cues the off course pin wheel. Very hard to cue the AFrame and then get the heck out of there to be ahead. Fun challenge for sure!!

(second course) This course introduced layering (yes, it is in DHS). Not too hard to get with Tip from the table. I could be ahead cue extension and use forward motion (and stay in the inside of the serp). The hard part was 15-16-17. These compressed and elongated pin wheels are getting popular with the judges, they are harder to cue and harder to get tight turns. I used a send to 16, and backward motion to the tunnel to bring her over 17 (I try not to do classic post turns). She fancied the DW, but was a good girl and followed my motion.

Love to know how people handle these...

The first full teeter

This was kind of a fun day for us. We have been working on many differrent skills that lead up to performing a teeter and today we got to put it all together.

The journey begins with wobble boards, running planks, sit/stay, the "bang it" game, progressed to learning just the 2o2o behavior on planks and then contact trainers. Then Tangle got to learn the 2o2 on the actual teeter. First barely moving, and then we gradually raised it. Today, we put ALL the skills together into one behavior.

I was so proud of my boy. His stays at the end of the plank were fabulous (even throwing chicken on the ground). He did have a few issues, but really first time out of the gate, I am very happy!

Tip in Performance Speed Jumping

I need to take a moment to say how proud I am of my girl. It is moments like this that make me stop and say how proud I am of my girl, recognize and appreciate the journey that we have been on. Tip is an amazing dog who has taught me so much. The dogs that I have trained after her certainly own her.

Tip ran Steeplechase last weekend. She won both days. The second day she had the fastest time of all dogs at any jump height. Her ground speed isn't the absolute fastest, but her turns are to die for. She has turned in some amazing times because she can cut a jump amazingly tight.


Video of the run

(Yes, her time was the fastest even with the weave bobble)

Running contact update

Tangle and I took a week or so off of running contacts. We were stalled in our progress so I wanted to give it a break and give myself time to think through what my response should be. I went from thinking about scraping the running contacts to having confidence that I could figure this out. (For the record, I am still not in love with the idea of how a running contact is trained.)

This morning we started on our adventure again. I decided that practicing being stuck wasn't a good idea, so I set up our next logical progression. jump-dog walk-jump.

Today's setup



Long story short--we were back up at our 80% range. You know, I have no idea why these things work in training, but they do. Maybe one theory is, if I change something, the dog has to go back to thinking and things improve! Would love to hear thoughts on this.

On other fronts we have worked more seriously on the teeter and Tangle is learning weave entrances! He is doing stellar at both!