Out of the comfort zone!

One of the things that I learned as a musician was that if you want to improve you have to practice at the extremes of your ability.

I am not the person who sits in her comfort zone for too long.

The day has come when I have decided to step COMPLETELY outside my comfort zone and do something in agility to really push myself.  I am going to try out for AKC's European Open World Team with Tangle (now 2.5 years old).  I am going this year as a demo dog which means that I have zero chance of making the team, but for me this year isn't about making the team.  It is about pushing myself to improve and this is an experience that will do that.  It is about learning to play successfully with the "big boys".

This already has been a totally new experience for me and will continue to be for months to come. 

How do you prepare yourself and your dog for this challenge?  I have thought about physical preparation for both of us, and mental preparation for both of us. 

Physically - Tangle normally jumps 22", I have to move him up to 26", and get the muscles built.  Along the way, I have been working to keep his confidence intact (he is only 2) and increase the fun factor for him.  I have had adjustments in my timing and how much space to physically allow him on course.  I have to enter him in some competitions at the new jump height.

For myself, I am working hard to get my pulled muscles recovered, keep from pulling more and just develop a solid base condition.

Mentally - It is very important to me that Tangle enjoys this experience.  Sure, he loves running the courses, but there is so much more.  Tangle stresses when he is surrounded by stressed people/dogs.  Hum, there might be a couple of those (including me) at this competition.  I am working hard at training all sorts of "fun" tricks that we can pull out of our bag when the need arises.  I don't want to push myself at the expense of my dog.  It is a journey for both of us.  One of my goals is to keep Tangle's stress at a minimum.

For me, I need to remain mentally attuned to the challenges that each moment will bring.  What are my measurable goals for this trial?  When we have our "practice" run what will my objective be?  How do I use my time now to sharpen my mental game?  As a demo dog, I will be the first in the running order, I want to come to the start line with the confidence that I have in a local trial, how do I do that?  I have so little time to prepare (made my decision to go late), how do I prioritize and make the most of my time?  Don't let your confidence get shaken by those around you.

I have read the rules and know the specifications for the equipment.  I am not normally a rule reader I just follow the customs around me.  But, this is so different. 

There are several pieces of equipment Tangle hasn't seen before--wall jump and the "Euro" double (two singles placed 18-22" apart in ascending order).  Made those and trained on those.

I am studying course maps.  Lots of the obstacles are the same, but the approaches that they give you to those obstacles are totally different than what we encounter at any US venue.  Setting up exercises that allow us to practice those items.

Lessons learned so far:
Prepare your family, this will be an obsessive effort and will invade life as you know it.
It takes more than a month to prepare for this type of competition (given my experience base)
Talk to everyone you can who has actually done what you are going to do to limit the surprises along the way.
When the weather doesn't cooperate, you have to still figure out how to be productive

So, for me, this is a fairly steep hill to climb: really young, but talented dog, physical and mental preparedness, building my team, making equipment, researching courses, connecting with people, etc.

I know, you say "dah?" of course you have to do all this.  I would too if this was actually a goal of mine 3 months ago!

Practice April 9th! - Restrained sends to a tunnel

P.S. of course this is the spring where it has to snow every 4 days as well!  Thankful for the water, but it isn't helping my preparedness :)

Course this week!

I set up a course today that was based on a USDAA Grand Prix course. I had to tweak it a little due to course size and I still don't have my chute completed sadly.

I choose this course for two reasons, 1) it allowed good speed from the dogs 2) there was a spot with speed and then a tight turn.

I am trying to run Tangle on courses that allow for nice speed. He is a large strided dog and I am trying to build his experience base to open up and run. He has to either bouce jump if there is a short distance or take a shorten stride. A shorter strided dog can just take a full stride.

With Split, now that he has hit a new level of confidence he needs work on watching me for turns.

In general the course ran really nicely. Fast with a few handling challenges. The same challenge was present with both Split and Tangle. The most challenging sequence was 7-8-9-10. The speed starts at #5. You and the dog are racing through the course, the last thing the dog sees before going into the #7 tunnel is full extension cues (ie, you running your ars off), and then you need to ask for collection at #8.

I tried three different handling strategies with this sequence. When the dog came out of the tunnel, I called the dog's name and used my outside hand to cue the turn, decelerated to get the collection and a turn. Then I set the line to #9 and the teeter. This worked fairly well. The next strategy I tried was getting ahead of the dog but cutting the line almost hugging the weaves, FC on the landing side of #8 and then set the line to the teeter. The bar came down with Tangle. Finally I cut the line on the inside of the weaves, decelerated, got the dog turned on #8 and was ahead to show the line to the teeter. This was the most successful, but I have to say I am not sure that I would be brave enough to try this in a trial.

I am actually very pleased that neither dog took the dog walk. Right now that is heavily rewarded for Split since he has such a spetacular running DW last weekend (he should have a 2o2o).

IHC Standard Course

This course is based off of a course we ran last weekend at the Utah 4-star. The course was designed by Tim Laubach. I had to modify it a little since I didn't have enough tunnels or a chute. #18 was a chute, and #10/#14 was a tunnel. I am sure my changes made it harder.

On the real course Tip did a fairly good job, except she broke her start line (which amazingly didn't set up off course and she had another off course (can't remember where, ops).

Today I focused on running the beginning sequence 1-2-3-4 and 4-5-6-7-8-9. I wanted to play with the different ways to cue the beginning sequence with Tip, who is obstacle focused (this makes cuing easier some times) and Split who is handler focused and if not told to do something, won't do it.

With Tip I could lead out to the landing side of 3, face her and do a cross on the flat to get #3. With Split I had to stay on the landing side of #2 and then move forward to get my cross on the flat for 3. After Split ran the course once, I could cue the same as Tip.

Next I played with how to cue 8 to 9. Tip did this fine in the trial, but I was still curious if it could be done differently. The two ways that worked were jumping her to the outside of 8, bring her to side through the gap and then cue the weaves. The other was to backup through the gap and then to cue 9. I prefer to bring her to side since it was easier for me, but this was risky with some dogs.

Tangle just got to work on individual obstacles. We worked on more introduction of the tire (no you can't touch it when jumping it).

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

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...

Course Analysis

I am hoping that this will be a continual blog.

I feel like I have struggled with reading agility courses. I don't identify well when and where to place front crosses, when to rear cross, when to slow motion, when to rfp, etc.. In almost every seminar that I attend I bring it up and the answer is always the same--it is experience. I buy that answer to a degree, but there has to be knowledge in the brain for the experience to connect too! It is not as simple as when you put your hand in hot water and it hurts--don't do that again. Every segment of the course has several things going on at once. Which action was it that caused the problem? Was it the handler's motion, lack of motion, hand, feet pointed wrong. Or was it the dog not knowing what you told them, a missing fundamental? It is not as easy as "I front crossed and the dog took the off course" You don't conclude, the front cross was late? It could have been in the wrong place, but nicely executed.

I guess I am beginning to believe it is experience, but exposure to the right things help you gain that experience quicker.

One of the guidelines that I used this weekend (July 2009) was where is it MOST important for me to be. Then back into "how do I get there". I did this on the performance speed jumping course and it worked really well for me. First Place and a Q--yeah Tip.

I have searched for resources to help me really understand this topic and their just aren't any. I want to start to compile successful elements of course analysis.

So, to start this off, this is what Liz's answer was:

1. She always starts by walking the dogs path. Or rather the path that she WANTS (important distinction there). She wants to see what the dog will see.
2. Then, she looks at where she wants the dog to land
3. She always has a plan A and a plan B.

Walk the desired path

Reasoning: you can see what the dog will see. If they see something that is not on course, you have an opportunity to either handle it differently so that they don't look at that off course (like a tunnel). Or, plan how you will get their attention at the very least.

I still believe in this and activily practice it. It really help me with three things: 1) where do I have to be in order for them to see me and my lateral movement 2) seeing the off courses 3) where and when do I have to be pointed in a certain direction in order to get the dog to follow me

Where will the dog land

I will probably come back to this one. I need to think about it and work with it to truly understand it. Is it so that you can get your dog land to set the next trajectory? Land so that they don't stare an off course in the face?

After messing with this a bit, yes I think that you do want to set the next trajectory. How do you want them to approach the next obsticle. Do I want the dog to slice the jump so she sees the next obsticle and not the off course tunnel? Those are the types of questions to be asking yourself.

I would add the comments now (create again given to Liz), you want to cue them three obsticles ahead. So you are thinking about where you want them to land, but also and more importantly creating the current path for them to get there. Thinking about where the dog will land is almost too myopic in itself. The whole thought is "what is the path"

Plan A and Plan B

she does this because she has multi dogs and she can't walk it for each dog. she also does it in case she miss judges something. Probably a good idea, but right now it allows me to chicken out of trying something that I am not sure I can get (but it would be a really great way to run if I could get it)

Now that Split is getting more experienced I don't have the trouble that I use too. Split and Tip will run somewhat the same, although Split has a longer stride and will run faster. This is not as bad as someone who has super velcro and super distance dog (like I once had).

Other concepts that I would add now are along the lines of Linda Mecklenburg's system.

• Think about your motion cues (or no motion cues)
• Using lateral motion cues.