Skills and Drills Agility

I love doing full courses in agility class, but surprisingly, I think our skills-filled class last night was one of the most fun classes I've ever had.

The first sequence (light-circled numbers) was a rear cross exercise.  We weren't allowed to talk to our dogs (except at the start and between 5 and 6) and instead had to rely on body movement alone.

I led out just past 1, post-turned around 2 and 3 (but made sure she avoided the tempting off course 6) , and rear crossed over 4.  Moved as soon as she committed to 4, up the line to 5.  After 5, I ran with my shoulders pointed almost towards the A-Frame, asked her to rear cross on the flat.  Reared again over 8, reared again over 9, held position to make sure she came back in for the threadle-ish 10.

Super fun sequence.  It was supposed to be hard.. but honestly, it wasn't that bad at all.  My rear crosses are just too good.

Second sequence (dark circled numbers) was an offside tunnel entry with a choice of either a front or rear cross between 5 and 6.  I went with the front... and I'm glad I did, because Marge and I both really need work.  My positioning is wrong and she doesn't read it at all.  I led out past 3 and used a lead out pivot to get her in to the tunnel.  I tried to do a landing side front after 5 but it took me quite a few tries to get it.  Rest of the sequence was pretty easy.

Due to the limited number of obstacles, I can definitely set this up at the training hall.. which is exciting, because I'm running out of ideas since we have a very limited number of jumps available there.

At the end of class, I worked my A-Frame contact a bit.  She hit it every single time and seems to be doing it more quickly rather than creeping.  Also, for the first time ever, I tried sending her away from me in to the tunnel under the A-Frame.  I see stuff like that a lot in AKC Excellent Standard.. so it's good to know that she was able to do it.

Didn't get any pictures or video, but I do have these shots from her zoomies episode on Monday night while I taught the Pet Agility class.

EDIT: Please e-mail me or leave a comment if you are having issues viewing my blog.  It appears to be being temperamental today..

Tuesday Training 22

Switching Contacts.. Again

After the rough run-through (in terms of A-Frame performance) in New Jersey and an equally bad attempt to try to teach the four-on-the-floor behavior (or even the beginnings of it) during my ring time, I decided that I'm going to give 2o2o one more push.

Aside from my lack of ambition, I had serious concerns about Marge not being able to to two different kinds of contacts on the Dog Walk and A-Frame, and also did not think she'd do well with going into a down on grass (she can get iffy about it - doesn't like getting wet). I really hadn't given the 2o2o a fair chance, I had maybe 2 private lessons to train it and the rest was in class. So, I'm going to focus on it these next few weeks and see where it goes.

Here is a compilation of some A-Frames from my ring time.. be as critical as you can, and take into consideration her body mechanics.. does it look like a huge stress on her body? I'm just baffled as to why it would be so bad for HER to do a 2o2o, yet I see dogs twice her size doing it without a problem. I don't know if I'm being too cautious or not cautious enough. I don't want her to hurt her front joints, but I also don't want to do a large amount of repetitions in teaching the modified running contact.

Louie seems to think that Marge's successes and failures in getting into 2o2o position have a lot to do with when I cue her. If I cue her once all four feet are on the down ramp, she misses it. If I cue her earlier, she usually hits it. I'm going to continue working on it and see what happens. I'm also going to do dog walk work in hopes that proofing the contact on the dog walk might help out the A-Frame situation.

Crates and Snarky Town

Marge hung out in a plain old wire crate for almost an hour between our private practice and our agility class. She did great - I sat right there with her and fed her little bits of treat often. Just as I was about to take her out, one of our newer classmates - a very happy, goofy - very large breed dog - came in and went right up to the crate she was in.. which Marge did NOT take well. I can't really blame her for it - she felt trapped and acted accordingly to try to remove the perceived thread. The door was closed, and I blocked as best I could, but the snark ensued. Nasty barks, growls, hackles up.. the whole shebang. I'm hoping it doesn't set us back - I had her wait in the crate for a few more minutes to calm down before I let her out.

She got all nutso when she saw him come in to the room to run his course during class, so I put her in the connected bathroom with the door half closed and stood by, ready to slam it shut in the event that he came over to say hello. I did wind up having to do it. I tried to play Look at That with her but she wasn't really interested.. don't know whether that means she really wasn't that uncomfortable with him or what. Those were her only snarks of the day, so on the whole, her behavior was quite good.

Another Indoor Class

The day's unseasonably warm temperatures did make me long for the big open agility field, but class inside was fun too.

The (silent) video.. there was lots of talking and it's more fun for me to recount the play- by-play here!:

• The opening was more offset jumps. Seems to be becoming a theme in this class! This week's jumps were much harder than lasts. Took me once or twice to get the first two down pat, but the two back crosses before jump 3 and before the A-Frame were not problematic at all. According to my awesome teacher, we have smokin' back crosses. You can practically see those lead changes in midair!
• I think I've spoken enough about the A-Frame, but Marge hit the contact more times than not while running this sequence. I think she missed it once out of four times.
• Her weaves continue to look beautiful.
• The jump after the weaves was interesting.. we started learning the new "backy-uppy", popular for threadle handling, and I'm so happy I finally got it because it worked out awesome in this situation.
• The next cross was the really hard front cross down the opening line of jumps.. I could get there, but Marge wasn't really turning into me. I think that's the one thing we left unfixed from the class.
• Teeter didn't look bad! I put treats on the end of the board and she ate them, didn't try to jump off or anything. Thinking about doing some teeter work next week during my ring time.
• Tunnel to the final line of jumps was interesting. Marge totally saved my butt on this one, because I got way too far out ahead of her but she still came into my side and took the three jumps. Other dogs opted to go up the A-Frame, take the weaves, etc. Thanks, Marge, for not letting your less-than-stellar handler get in the way!

Next week is our final week in agility class, maybe except for one possible drop-in in February. This doesn't mean we won't be doing agility anymore - even with college classes, I'll still be able to squeeze in a trip to the club every Monday from 2 to 3. Unfortunately, since class is later than that, I can't stick around. I'll also hopefully be able to have some private lessons and get back out to Jersey for another one of those run-throughs. We are NOT hibernating this winter!

Non-Agility Updates

I know these Tuesday posts are always really long, but I haven't brought up our other training endeavors in a while:

• Walks are continuing in some capacity. Night walks happen when I think it's quiet enough and/or cold enough out. She's been doing well.. had no problem with an ambulance being across the street from her on Monday night's walk. I thought for sure that she'd at least keep an eye on it.
• We had another visitor to our house, a 15 year old girl friend of my sister's. She was in her crate in the basement with me when the doorbell rang and didn't try to get up or anything. Very chilled out, very good. I went upstairs with her a short while later and she took to the girl immediately. I mean, 100% comfortable with her. Welcoming pets, trying to jump up and kiss her face. Awesomeness.
• She's been pretty good with my dad, too.. going up to him with full expectation of being petted (there is only so much I can tell him - he insists on petting her), jumps on him sometimes, bops him with her nose.. MUCH better than before. Don't want to jinx it, but the door situation has been managed pretty good as well. She's beginning to learn the default behavior of coming to find me and get her cookies (ie. move away from the door), especially when she knows its him coming home (his car makes a distinct beeping noise when he locks it - convenient for me, convenient for Marge).
• Planning on some Rally practice too, maybe even with other people around. We've got a trial to prepare for!

As you can see, we're keeping busy. I know the Tuesday Training posts are pretty technical in nature, but it's so important for me to log my progress. I recently went back and read some of my old blog posts, and the difference from month to month, sometimes even week to week, can be profound.

Stay tuned for a fun post in the coming days - MargeBlog is about to turn 1 year old!

To Jersey and Back

We had our practice session this morning in New Jersey. Unlike other times when we've gone to new places, Marge was actually quite confident when she got out of the car. (She did growl as a herd of Shelties came her way, but that's not too bad.) We met up with our friend from the club, which made Marge feel even better.

The place was really nice - indoors and spacious. The man running it was really nice and gave Marge some cookies. She took to him immediately. There turned out to be only three other handlers there - a very small group - which meant lots of time for practice.

This was the course (obviously property of whoever created it):

And, as usual, some notes (I'll keep it brief!):

We really had no problems running this course. Though it was an excellent level course, it was wide open and flowy.

• A-Frame, A-Frame, A-Frame. I've been practicing the down on the flat very often. She got it maybe 30% of the time. A couple of times she offered a 2o2o. I guess I'll just keep plugging at it... I'm REALLY hoping, though, that she's not going to get confused stopping on the dog walk and running to the bottom of the A-Frame. I don't want to mess up her contact criteria altogether!
• Hit her weaves perfectly. Pretty good because the entry was tough (required some distance from the handler) and it was the first time on this set of weaves. The set makes a difference.
• Oh.. the teeter. Marge went on it, banged it down, and then got terribly freaked by the squeaky noise it made as it popped back into position. She recovered, though, and was able to finish the course. I skipped the teeter in subsequent runs.. it was NOT worth her getting scared over.
• Table was a bit better. She jumped off once or twice, and all the other times plopped immediately into a down.
• Dog walk contact was pretty good. She kind of sputtered her way down the ramp a couple of times, but I'm really not looking to change it from a 2o2o especially since she's actually starting to get it.

Behaviorally, Marge was superb. Aside from one woof as one dog (our agility classmate) went bonkers on course, she was fine. That's a pretty big deal, considering she watched the runs of three totally strange dogs and was in the building with totally strange people.

My only complaint of the day came at the very end of our session.. the guy running it was demonstrating a contact training device to one of the other handlers, and it made a series of loud beeps. To me, it sounded like my smoke alarm, and I'm sure Marge felt the same way. She seemed to recover 100% though, as I took her through the tire and tunnel a couple more times just to make sure we ended on a good note.

On the way home, my dad (who so nicely drove me there) and I stopped for lunch. Marge waited in the car for a couple of minutes by herself. She was fine.. I gave her a cheese-stuffed Kong and she worked at that while we got our food. Then, she actually was calm enough to get out of the car and potty behind the building. It might sound funny, but all of that combined was probably the best part of the day. Even just a few months ago, that probably would have sent her into a frenzy.

Overall, we had a lot of fun and I wouldn't hesitate to go there again. I actually might go next month.

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

I figure I should use this post to bring up some other events that we'll hopefully be at this year.

I'm already thinking ahead to our first trials of the year. We're got two trials potentially set up for April.. one, an AKC (gasp) agility trial, the other, an APDT rally trial at our training building.

I'm still iffy on AKC, just because they're usually pretty big trials, but at the same time I think it's looking like a go.. it's at the same site as our fall NADAC trial, mixes now run in the same classes as purebreds and can get the same titles (statement here), and she's allowed to wear a collar (security blanket for me). Also, since it's very early in April, there's a chance it'll be a small(er) trial since the cold might scare some people away. I do have some concerns about the teeter, but we'll see what happens.. I'd be fine running her in only JWW and possibly FAST, if anything.

I'm REALLY excited for APDT rally. Since it's at our club, I really don't have too much concern about stress or anything like that. She's taken the rally course by storm lately. We're going to do some practice with friends from the club pretty soon. The last trial my club had was run SO smoothly and a lot of qualifying scores were given out. With some luck, I think we can finish our RL1 title this year. How cool would that be?

After that, we've potentially got a stretch of about 4 CPE trials and 3 NADAC trials. Those numbers sound really big considering the fact that we only did one trial last year, but, we'll take it by ear and see what happens.

I probably won't post tomorrow or Monday, so I hope all of you have a lovely weekend, and stay tuned for this Tuesday's training update after our agility class.

Tuesday Training 21

My internet issues have still not been fixed. A technician from Verizon is supposed to coming to my house on Wednesday morning, but I'm honestly finding it hard to be optimistic that the issue will be resolved then. My dad is adamant about not switching to a different service provider, so I'm hoping that this doesn't drag on forever (especially given the fact that school's coming back and I'm going to need internet access for that reason, too).

Basically - to sum it up - my upload speeds are quite high, running as usual. This is the reason I'm able to upload with no problem to Youtube and Photobucket. However, my download speeds make dial-up look like high speed internet. For you computer nerdies, if there are any of you out there, I'm getting an average 14 Kbps when downloading files. Youtube videos will not load, regardless of how long and complex they are. Some sites will not load simply because they time out. We've tried all of the usual stuff and Verizon has run a few tests, but they can't find the problem. It's not a computer or virus issue, as it's happening on two PCs and two laptops, all with different operating systems. I'm really hoping the answer lies somewhere within the wires that they'll be looking at tomorrow. If not, I'm just about ready to rip my hair out over this one.

To limit my frustration, I'll just blog about our agility news for this week's training update. There sure is enough of it!

A-Frame Contact Criteria

Well.. looks like we're going with a four on the floor. During our lesson, Marisa watched Marge run over the A-Frame a couple of times and she really has absolutely no contact performance. It is totally contingent on me being right there with her to tell her "zone" for the 2o2o - if I'm not there or I run past her, she doesn't get into position.

Since running contacts take a lot of work and a lot of repetition, I decided against them. Though I wouldn't have to worry about Marge slamming her shoulders into the ground, running the A-Frame so many times could be problematic itself. Marisa suggested four on the floor before I said anything about it - so, we're giving it a try.

Right now, I need to work on Marge dropping and downing at my side. She does it in heel position if we're going slow enough, but I need to gradually build up to speed. She sort of gets it and she's consistently in the yellow, so we're off to a good start. Many times she was crooked, but she is dropping into the down and hitting her contact. I know some people use poles as guides at the bottom of the A-Frame, so I could look into that as well - maybe do some back-chaining, starting with a down between the poles, then a down between the poles at the bottom of the A-Frame, then a down between the poles after going over the A-Frame. Hmm. Just a training musing.

Marisa said it may not be as 100% reliable as a 2o2o, but she said she really didn't think the 2o2o was going to work for her and also said that her stride shouldn't ever change so drastically that she totally misses the yellow. I brought up the possibility about Marge leaping from high up and still dropping into the down, but she said that if it happens, we'll worry about it when we get there.

I just got the idea into my head that maybe using a zone honor (as you'd do if you were training running contacts) in addition to the down might help solidify the criteria for Marge. Hmm. I'll have to ask about it next time.

Of course, if you have any experience training contacts this way, please, please, please, let me know! (Kathy, I'll be shooting you a message once this dang internet starts working again!)

Agility Class

Class was a LOT of fun. The course was really cool - it was flowy despite being pretty twisty-turny. Here's a (very) approximate course map.

Here is the video (thanks, Louie!):

Some notes:

• Allow me a brag.. I was the only one to run the opening sequence correctly on the first shot! We originally all walked the course with the jumps on our right hand side, but at the last minute I went back out and walked on the other side. I got out there and knew I had to be on the wall-side of the jumps. It worked. Marge did this absolutely wonderfully and her send-ahead to the dog walk was awesome.
• 2o2o on the dog walk was fine, she hits it pretty consistently. Like I said, it's pretty contingent on my motion, but I feel like I can correct that a bit easier on the dog walk then I can on the A-Frame.
• The table.. Marge still isn't "sticking" to the table. I worked on some sends to the table while I was waiting for my lesson to start, and she's just "eh" about it. She hops on and off sometimes, and others, she just releases herself (usually after getting a treat). I'm trying to make my obstacles a little bit more independent, so this is something I'll work on as well.
• The red tunnel was tricky.. I didn't get it right, initially. I had to bring her across my feet to get her into the tunnel and, at first, used the wrong hand. Over all, I thought we'd have a lot more trouble with it but Marge seemed to be paying perfect attention and knew where she had to go.
• Her weaves were BEAUTIFUL! Fast, accurate! I barely even looked to see if she made her entry because she was totally on the ball.

Okay, now, the second half.. what is up with that tunnel suck by the A-Frame? There were two reasons I didn't front cross in front of the A-Frame (which would have blocked the tunnel). One, I figured in a real trial, I wouldn't have the time to get there. Two, I wanted to be close to the A-Frame to enforce the contact. The only reasons I can think of for the tunnel-suck are either Marge not paying attention or me being ever-so-slightly in her path. What do you think?

• As you can see, her A-Frame is very much a work in progress.. on this run, she preferred bowing to downing. We'll work on it.
• Figuring out the last line of jumps was actually pretty difficult. I had to be in the perfect spot to ensure that she took the jump right next to the tunnel, but not far enough that she took a different jump. Then, I had to send her out to the triple but then decelerate and stay close to ensure that she didn't go barreling up the dog walk (which she did a few times). Once I figured out the mechanics of it, it was nice.

I'm really upset that we ran out of time and couldn't run the whole course. This was such an awesome course and Marge seemed absolutely thrilled to be running it.

Starting next week, I'm going to have an hour at the building all to myself before class. I anticipate that this will help me with the contact situation and also give me some time to practice with my instructor. In a few weeks, we won't be able to attend most of the classes anymore (at least 'til April) due to my college schedule, so I'm really happy that I got this time.