Tangle's First Trial

Wow, is it that time already?

When I first started training Tangle I had no intentions of having him in the ring so soon. I wanted to take my time training him and enjoy the ride. Funny thing is, I did take my time AND am enjoying the ride. Tangle was just so quick to pick up on his training and I think with the third dog I am a better trainer.

So, here he is, first trial! Our goals were simple, have fun and keep everything motivating! I didn't care about Q's, wrong courses, dropped bars, just make sure it was fun!

I signed Tangle up for all the runs, figuring I would only run him each day until his novice brain exploded. After all, first time in the ring you never know exactly when that is. Never did explode! Tangle was mentally in the game the whole weekend. I am still amazed. Actually, he came home and still wanted to play.

Tangle ran jumpers, standard, gamblers, snakes and ladders (game with tunnels, weaves, and contacts), and North American Challenge. He was not the fastest dog out there, but he knew his job for sure! He stayed at the start line, stayed on course, and kept all the bars up! Good boy! We had several sequences that we had never done before, but he handled them beautifully! He has never turned into a tunnel from a contact, he had never turned from a tunnel to a contact, and has never had to cross one end of a tunnel to take the opposite end.





So, what do we need to work on? He had several occasions where he didn't fully go into a 2o2o at the end of the dog walk, he leaped the AFrame once, and he was cautious always trying to do the right thing. I am not concerned about the contacts, he does know his job, we just need to proof a couple of other things in terms of contacts.

What I want most for Tangle is that he gets to the point where the game is so addictingly fun! That is what we will work on!

p.s. His stats for the weekend were 9 runs, 9 Q's, several firsts, and qualified in the Intern class for DOCNA Nationals next year in Denver.

Cynosport 2012 a.k.a. USDAA Nationals

Since my foot kept me from participating in this year's Nationals, I will begin to look forward to next year. USDAA Nationals will be in Denver next year! That will be awesome, right in my own backyard.

I am already starting to think, which dogs do I want to qualify, in what events, how will I achieve those goals etc...

Nationals will be in October, outdoors at Dick's Sporting Good's Park. Of course that time of year the weather comes to mind, after all it is Colorado! We have been known to have snow one day and be 70 degrees (21 c) the next day. This weekend, it was sunny and warm Friday, cold and snowing (nothing stuck to the ground) on Saturday, partly sunny but cool on Sunday. Today, Oct 10th, it was an almost perfect 60 degree sunny day!

I went back and looked at the last 10 years, what was the weather like on Oct. 10th, the starting day of Nationals.


For the most part, we didn't have any precipitation the week of October 10th. So, if history repeats itself, it could be fairly nice. We don't have a history of being hot this time of year, so the dogs and handlers should be pleased to run in the cooler temps.

If you plan on attending the Nationals next year, one thing is for sure. Bring layers. This time of year Colorado always has cool mornings and the temps can swing 30 to 40 degrees in a day.

Whenever I go to trials out of state I always try to search maps, and google for information about the surrounding area. I want to know where I can walk my dog off leash, eat where I can park in the shade, find near by stores, and stay in hotels that are nice, but dog friendly. Since I live in the area, I am thinking about blogging from time to time though out the year with helpful information for those who will be attending USDAA Nationals from out of state. Perhaps things like dog friendly places, dealing with the altitude, hikes with dogs, not sure what else. If you have suggestions, leave a comment!

USDAA P-ADCH Tip!!

Course by Sandra Katzen
Tip was already my Champion agility dog, but now she has the title to prove it!

Tip, my first agility dog, the one that tolerated me learning, re-learning, changing my handling style, my frustrations, and our success. We did it all together!

I could write probably write a novel about our journey, but I won't, at least not right now. I will say Split and Tangle owe her BIG!

I entered just one day of a USDAA trial. I was fairly sure that my foot won't tolerate a whole weekend, but figured I would try one day. I entered Split and Tip, 8 runs in total. OK, 8 runs was probably too much, but I would do it again in a heart beat. Split and I had only trialed together 1 time in 10 months (first his injury, then mine), I wanted to run my boy. Both dogs were wild at the beginning of the day, just glad to be out. Tip's first run looked like a "yard sale" and when I told her that on course, the judge cracked up! As the excess energy was expended, things calmed down for both dogs. Much better runs!

All I needed for Tip's title was one more Super Q in snooker. Snooker isn't generally our strongest game. Your dog must listen, do only as directed, and keep a level head. Some days that does not describe Tip :) The course seemed kind of nasty on paper. I couldn't figure out a good path that would get us enough points for a SQ, but not blow Tip's head when I asked for too much control. Couldn't find it on paper, walked the course, couldn't find it then either. I tell you, I walked to the start line just thinking "this would not be the day".

Tip listened AMAZINGLY well, she got a first and her Championship title!!

Here is the course and the path that I ran. Several people ran different courses, with more opening points, but not many made it all the way through the closing.

Our run

Training becomes harder

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. To me, a puppy is very easy to train and to set goals for. You want the puppy to sit. You have very concrete measures of success for a sit. You want your young agility dog to learn the weaves. They go through all the poles, they know how to weave. (I know, not quite that clear cut, but close).

Tangle now knows all of his obstacles, he is very clear right now what the criteria is for success. So, how do you set your goals and how do you measure them now?

My goals for Tangle are to gain confidence, speed and more passion for the game. He also needs mileage or experience. My challenge is how do I measure progress and what is my criteria? More esoteric for sure. What does "mileage" really mean? And how do you put "mileage" on a dog with the least amoung of repetition and stress on their bodies?

I am starting with developing pictures in my head of what a confident, passionate, and speedy runs would look like. (Mileage is something I am still trying to define.) I look for examples among my other dogs, and I look for examples among many, many videos of other people's runs. OK, now that I have a few examples, I am setting my mind to defining concretely why the run looks confident, speedy, and passionate.

One of the challenges is defining milestones of success and knowing when we have arrived. I can break it down in many ways, just deciding which is the best is the trick. Do I break it down by obstacle? For example, the weave performance goes from 2 seconds down to 1.3 seconds? Do I break it down by body language? No stress on the startline, eyes engaged. Full strides, head down (it's a border collie thing) where he is capable or is he reserving energy (ie, hesitant) still?

I think that my answer lies with both of these types of measurement. I don't want to stress too much any individual obstacle at this point and the "body language" indicator is very hard to measure.

Stay tuned!

Weave Entries

20/20 hind sight is a beautiful thing!

Tangle has been struggling with his weave entries over the last several weeks. Not sure what happened since they were AWESOME before my injury. I say "before my injury" since I suspect that my injury had it's impact on Tangle. The weaves being one of the casualties.

Before the injury I was able to move with Tangle, meet him at the end, and have a huge game of tug. I didn't do this all the time, but obviously enough that it made it really fun and worth the challenge to hit entries. While my motion was still very limited, just throwing a toy at the end didn't seem to be enough for him.

So, over the past week, I went back to just 4 poles, worked entries, threw a HUGE party if they were correct! When I first started this approach, Tangle was getting his entries but thinking way too much. Slow, methodical, and not having a ton of fun! I am not sure what made me realize this, but I started to tug with him at the end of the weaves and I saw a dramatic shift in his motivation to hit the entry and to drive through the weaves! Sometimes you don't realize what you are doing to motivate the dog. You have to retrace your steps, examine every motion and figure it out.

All of dogs have switched from time to time what motivates them. It takes me a day or two, but eventually I catch up and realize that I must shift the reward to the "reward of the day". This is exactly what was going on with Tangle's weaves. This morning Tangle was back to being "on fire", hitting his entries, driving with passion through the weaves and tugging for his reward.

When given the proper motivation it is amazing the speed at which Tangle can hit his entries and drive through the weaves!

Carrie Jones and fun runs

Tangle and I attended a seminar with Carrie Jones this past weekend. We attended a "Contacts and Weaves" session and a "Novice Handling" session. Since I have been training Tangle pretty much on my own my goal was to start getting other eyes on Tangle and get those problems identified early on in his career.

The sessions went really well. Tangle tends to be a little reserved in new places (which I already knew, but reinforced once again) so his speed was not what I want to see. He is a thinker and really wants to do the right thing. And, he did! In general I would say that Carrie's feedback was that she wants me to get him hyped up to the point of naughty. She wants to see him more excited and it is OK if he makes some mistakes because of that.

Also, I have been examining his A-Frame, trying to decide if it is exactly what I want or if we need more work. Tangle ran the A-Frame for Carrie many times, each time, she was pleased. In the end, she thought he had an excellent A-Frame. So, several professional eyes have been on Tangle's A-Frame, I think I can rest a little for the moment, it is fine!

Also, last night Tangle and I went to a fun run. My second time at a fun run with him, but first time with a standard course. The standard course was a excellent level course. Carrie said that when her young dogs enter the ring she wants to see only a couple of things. 1. They must hold their startline 2. All their contacts must meet criteria. Tangle did both of those flawlessly. I tested his startline and contacts a little, but my goal was to KEEP IT FUN and KEEP HIM SUCCESSFUL because I wanted to encourage his speed and keep him from thinking so much. Tangle was back to his normal speed thankfully and very happy all evening. By the way, I was thrilled to be running him again and my foot lasted the evening!


















The things that I have learned over the past couple of days are priceless for me. I learned exactly what my goals should be over the next month or two with him.

• More ring experience that is positive and fun.


• I suck at rear crosses with him and need to work on those. I am late!


• Serpentine entries into weaves are tough for Tangle. Now that is on our "To-Do" list. I think that it is because the "collection" cues are minimal for the weave entry


• I have absoltely no instincts with how my dog will handle the course. We have no mileage on us as a team and that is how you develop those instincts. We need mileage. I will say that I spent a lot of time saying "I trained him to do this" and that is how he ran it. That felt good.


• I need to ramp up Tangle "target" so that it is crazy fast and wild. I will use this to get him driving even faster to the end of his contacts!

Things that went well for us:

• Handling the course. He read front crosses, lateral and forward sends really well


• His jumping skills were awesome


• All the errors in the past couple of days were mine!


• Our tire training is paying off. He jumped it beautifully and did not touch the tire


• He is an amazing dog when it comes to walking through a crowd of dogs


• He was not stressed waiting his turn in line


• My foot felt great and I am on the right track for increasing my speed again

Tangle and I had a fun 10 minutes!

With my foot injury I have not been able to move very much. I have been able to run the older dogs working on things that don't require much motion. They both put up with that effort and went along for the ride. No worse for the wear.

I learned that a green dog is a different story. Tangle got a little confused when I would take him out to work and I really wasn't moving. You could see his little wheels turn. Is this really what we are doing today? So, I decided the best thing for Tangle was to stop training him. It is easier to fix a rusty dog then to fix a dog who is completely confused!

It has been about 3 weeks!

Tonight I decided my foot was feeling good enough that I afforded myself 10 minutes of training with Tangle. We did things that didn't take a ton of motion, but I wasn't limiting myself either. We spent our 10 minutes just catching up on fun things and enjoying each others company. We worked weaves, A-Frames, serpentines, boxes, and even threw in a threadle ( he did great with that BTW).

He was so happy to be out in the agility field playing with mom and I was thrilled to be running my little boy again!