Eevee updates

Well, in our hiatus, Eevee turned a year old.  And if I do say so myself I think she's grown up pretty well.  But I might be a little bit biased.  I'm also getting ahead of myself.

Shortly before I stopped blogging, I had started a new job for an amazing company.  We're allowed to bring our dogs to work with us!  This is, of course, beyond fun.  It also meant that I could keep up with Eevee's socialization.  She's the most friendly and outgoing dog ever.  She's never met a stranger (she's definitely never read the aussie breed standard).

She usually goes to work with me 2-3 days a week.  She has everyone wrapped around her little paws.

Unfortunately sometimes her manners suffer as some people let her get away with way more stuff than i let her get away with.

At the end of October I came home from work and found this on her. (The shiny white thing is a quarter for reference)

My best guess (watching her play outside with my other dogs a few weeks later) is that Shiner got a bit too grabby playing with her.  Took her to the vet the next day and they stapled her back together.  She had to wear a thundershirt for a while which turned her into a fluffybutt monster.

Going to work 5 days a week had her pretty tuckered out.  Once healed she resumed flyball training.

She started agility training in February.  She really wants to try all the things.  She's a lot of fun to work with, even if she barks constantly.  She's more fearless than Demo on contact obstacles.  I didn't think it was possible.

She turned one in mid-february.

She debuted in preflight in April.  Now we're just working on her boxturn as she has her first singles races in July!

I have no idea how this is comfortable.

Hiatus done

We're back!

I didn't expect to take such a long Hiatus, but it was needed.

Back in October Trophy was injured.  I thought it was his back.  He had chiropractic and massage care and some rest.  Unaware of the severity of the injury, we kept training.  He had an agility trial in December and did well, earning his Novice Standard Agility Title (NA).  We then had a flyball tournament the following weekend.  He threw up several times on Saturday so he was pulled from Sunday racing - i don't think this was related to his injury, but I have no idea.

Novice A Dog Done Right.  If we go back to agility
we'll be in Novice B now.

Then he started refusing contact equipment in agility class and I made the decision to pull him from everything.  We had x-rays done at our primary vet in January, and everything looked good.  It wasn't a back injury and he doesn't have hip dysplasia (yay!).  Fearing a soft tissue injury, he went on "bed rest" (I couldn't truly crate rest him, but he wasn't allowed to run or play) for almost 4 months when i finally booked him an appointment with a sports medicine vet.

While she believed that he had pulled an iliopsoas muscle, he also appears to have a degenerative nerve disease in his hind legs.  She said if it weren't for how active he is, I probably never would have known for several more years (he turned 6 in May).  It affects his right rear leg more than the left at the moment.   She didn't believe it warranted further testing at this point, and because I had crate rested him for so long, the iliopsoas strain had healed.

After being given a regime of stretches and exercises and being given the OK to *finally* return to being a dog and running around outside and playing with his siblings, we have slowly returned to flyball.  One sport at a time for my Trophy and we'll go as long as he's able.

After months off, he finally returned to the flyball lanes over Memorial Day.  He raced 3 heats each day and was *very* happy to be back.  He was running just slightly slower than before he was injured, so that was exciting news.  He is on the roster for the July tournament and will run a half spot, sharing with another dog.

While all of this was going on, I just didn't have the heart to talk about dog sports with my other dogs, but now that Trophy is doing better I'm much more in the mood to blog.

I think I'll save some updates on the other dogs for their own blog posts.  We'll see you soon!

Trophy's Second Agility Trial

Trophy's second Agility Trial is in the books.


He was extremely mellow yesterday, and his performance in Flyball practice was - well, let's just say horrid.  We got to the trial early and he was super distracted, not his usual calm and composed self.  Not exactly stressed but not himself either.


It showed in our first run.  The course was a FAST little jumpers course.  No crappy weave entry in the opening like our first trial.  However, he went around the second jump in the opening, a dropped bar and another refusal in the closing cost us the Q.


Got him adjusted with his chiropractor after his run and we went home to take a nap before his last run of the weekend.


Much better run in Standard.  The only error being my late cue into the weaves.  Everything else he rocked.  His contacts? Rocked.  All of them.  He's such a great dog, he really can't let me down.



The other MAJOR surprise of the weekend?

I took Demo up to get measured on Saturday after flyball practice.  I only had one measure slip filled out, i just KNEW that he was going to measure over 22 inches since he's about an inch taller than Trophy and Trophy's highest measurement was 21 5/8".  Well, apparently Demo was so completely out of sorts that he slouched so hard he measured 21 3/4".  My jaw dropped.

The only other measuring official there this weekend was one of the judges, and I didn't want to wait for the class to finish, so I brought him back this morning.  The judge measured him at a whopping 20.75".  I still can't believe he measured UNDER 21 inches.  Trophy didn't even measure under 21" for his height card!!!  I'm still blown away by this amazing chance of good luck.  We had been practicing with Demo jumping 24" and he clears it with EASE, but I can rest a little easier knowing in the long run I can save his joints a little by only making him jump 20".

And since we're talking about Demo.... I just entered both boys in a trial at the end of November.  Trophy for two days of JWW and Standard, and Demo for two days in JWW only.  I'm not ready for him to do contact equipment in a new location, I want his confidence up on the familiar equipment first... but i think he's ready to try a paw at some jumps. :)

P.S. CanAm is NEXT WEEKEND!!!!!! CAN'T WAIT!!!

Agility Updates and VIDEO!

I'm really quite mad at myself for not updating more than once last month, but I've had some big (like, gigantically big) life changes going on.  Namely I left my day job and found a new "big girl" job.  Currently I'm also still training for my former employer, but it's turning into extremely stressful LONG 12+hour days 3-4 days a week and I don't know how much longer I can keep that up.  But it's opened up a lot of options for me with my own person dogs - like i should be able to afford to compete in agility more, and I signed Eevee up for a beginner agility class.

Anyway, my instructor took video of our runs last Thursday.  First up is a compilation of all the work piecing together the course for Demo and our final full run at the end.  I'm really proud of everything i see in this video.  He's becoming really responsive and is (for the most part) reading my cues really well.  The tunnel to the jump not directly in front of the tunnel exit was really hard for him, but he's also only been in classes for 9ish months and this is a really advanced course.  His weaves are coming along, little bobbles.  I need to remember to make him lay down and SHUT UP before retrying weaves as once he starts barking he loses his brain and won't complete them (also my positioning for the front cross after the jump into the weaves was horrid, so it wasn't all him.

Tonight we are going to work on getting his speed back up over the dog walk if we have time as the last setup with the dog walk had him running into the dogs waiting their turn and the social pressure made him almost shut down to the point he would crawl down the end plank.  So no we have to get his speed and confidence back up.  I LOVE his contacts though, especially on the A-frame.

Excellent example of his distance work coming along in the full run when he took the 3 jumps in a row when i fell behind.







And just video of Trophy's full run.  Almost flawless, except again crappy positioning on the front cross into the weaves and rotating back into Trophy the second time into the tunnel which caused him to avert course.

I love this dog.  He really is such a good partner.



Trial on Sunday with Trophy!

Agility Progress Report

First,  I have entered our second agility trial with Trophy thanks to a sponsorship from a good agility friend.  New D-Day is set for Sunday, October 13.  One month from tomorrow.  I just sent off my registration so I haven't gotten any confirmation yet.  Wish I could do two days of the trial and try to move out of novice, but alas.

ETA: Got confirmation on 9/15/13 that I am IN for both runs on Sunday 10/13/13!

Tonight's agility class was built around a grid of jumps.  All contact equipment and a tunnel were around the edges of the building, and we worked on technical handling skills - reverse jumps, threadles, tricky jump sequences.  Stuff we haven't really worked on in a while, at least not this amount of technical stuff in one class.  It was a lot of fun.  Trophy (for the most part) remembered the command for taking the backside of a jump which was cool to use in class for the first time.  The hardest part of the whole course was the ending sequence of a stretched out serpentine.  Trophy and I ran that sequence 6 times before we finally managed to put all three jumps in the serpentine together.

Unfortunately, we were back to having some startline issues with Trophy not paying attention to me for his start cue again for his last run though, and he popped out of the weaves when I tried to front cross when he was weaving.

Demo's weaves are getting better.  He's going to be so damn fast when he finally understands that he can't skip a pole just because he's flying through them.  I love watching him fly over the 24" jumps.  He makes it look so effortless.  Need to work with him on  understanding taking the reverse of a jump.  He had never done that before.  Surprisingly the best part of his performance was the serpentine.  I'm really, really really happy with his a-frame contact.  He is exceptionally solid in it.  Because of where the dog walk is situated currently near the seating for the other dogs in class he is extremely worried about coming off the dogwalk straight into his 2o2o and I have to babysit him.  I'm hoping that won't be an issue when the dogwalk is moved.

Overall totally pleased with their performances tonight.  It was a fun course.

Going The Distance

I remember a few months ago we were working on a jump sequence in class that was basically a big 'U' around the perimeter of the building. It required a send to a jump on the 'bottom' of the 'U' so that with my fast dogs I could scramble to get ahead of them as the second jump after the send was an off set tire.

I remember that Trophy, of course, with his 18+ months of training nailed it perfectly... Demo on the other hand, not so much. Demo let me send him over the jump once... then refused to send the rest of the time. Forcing me to babysit that jump and never letting me get far enough ahead of him that I could get him through the tire without him spinning into me and back talking.

Then I compare that class to Demo now.

What a difference time makes. Demo is mastering the send, especially to tunnels and jumps and he's pretty good about sending to the dog walk consistently as long as there isn't a tunnel sucker right there.

He is so fast it really helps to be able to trust him to get out and do his job now. He has also learned that this is a team sport, and he checks in with me more for direction. Of course, he's also a lot more barky on course when he thinks I'm doing it wrong.

we even tried to send him to the teeter... however since I usually collect his royal barkyness and guide him onto the teeter, I think he took the send like it was the dog walk, despite having done the teeter already, and he almost flew off the end. Put him in again and he jumped off. Put him on again and he c.r.a.w.l.e.d. down it into 2o2o. Good boy.

Trophy was especially animated in class this week, I think he really liked the trial He was so enthusiastic about taking the course and ran the dog walk instead of poking along at the top like he usually does... until I had to crush his happy thought for walking out of his 2o2o on the dog walk AGAIN. It was still really nice to see his happy attitude especially since I almost dropped him from agility last year when he moped thru the class so much. Apparently we both like running agility together now. <3

Hearts On The Line

Can I just start by saying WE DID IT!

Trophy's first agility trial is in the books.

I could not be more proud of my boy.

The opening in Nov JWW sucked. Two jumps into a very tricky weave entry right next to an off course jump. After that it was smooth sailing... but on top of my first show nerves, I had tricky sequence nerves and Trophy read me like a book and missed the weave entry, but thankfully did not take the off course so we corrected and sailed through the rest. He looked to take a second off course, but turned to my call and we finished perfectly.

Q and First Place in Novice A JWW!

I cried. Cause I'm a sap like that and this dog is my world. :)

My agility instructor gave me the best compliment of my dog handling life, and I owe her for everything I've accomplished with my boy in this sport thus far (which isn't much, yet, lol.)

long wait before our standard run.  Watched an awesome Master/Excellent JWW course most of the day.




Finally time for Trophy's Standard run.  I had a plan in my head and as I'm trying to execute it during the walk through and seeing all these other people running the course to babysit their dogs (which was necessary for some of them, watching the runs) I just shook my head at myself for the breif second I thought "should I dumb this down?" and ran the opening like it was a much more difficult course in class.  I worked my contacts to get into position, I used distance and the fact my dog knows his job in the tunnel to do a really pretty front cross over a jump to prevent an off course up the A-frame and take the teeter instead.

Q and Second Place in Novice A Standard!

We had our issues which cost us the first place.... like stopping on top of the A-frame, walking off his dog walk contact to sniff at the rubber pellets, and a very almost off course back into the tunnel....



But there was SO much more there I am absolutely beaming over.  Like his weave entrance.  His A-frame contact once he came down from the top.  And god I am still beaming over the broad jump, tunnel, front cross on the landing of the double I mentioned earlier.  I was the scariest and most rewarding thing Trophy and I have ever done together.

I love this dog.

One week to go...

Trophy's agility debut is one week away.

I know I have been quiet for the month of July, but everything has been going really, really well.

I feel like our handling has really come together.  His obstacle discrimination is really nice.  We did this sequence two weeks ago.

Demo has a ton of problems with this (wheeeeeeeee tunnel!), but Trophy executed it perfectly every time.

I had been having trouble with him popping out of the last weave pole or two if I tried to get some distance with him, but tonight was no problem with that.

He still doesn't have a truly independent Stopped Contact.  He knows 2o2o, but if i don't stop and turn into him he won't stop.  Tried this tonight when I tried to get a head of him on the dog walk.  If I kept moving, so did he despite whatever cue I gave him.

All in all he is totally ready for our debut next weekend, I just have to keep myself together.

Tonight Demo really shined on course.  It wasn't an extremely challenging course, there was a couple handling moves to be executed, but other than an extremely tricky weave entry, it was pretty straight forward.  Demo really nailed it tonight, better than I feel he had been getting handling cues.  I was especially impressed with his ability to suddenly take jumps at a distance, something we really struggled with at the beginning of the month.

I feel like the light bulb is finally turning on in his head with weaves, and with his contacts.  It's less mindless following of a treat and he's starting to understand the behaviors more.

Although we need to revisit turns on the flat...

The Countdown Begins Again

I finally did it.

It's official.

I entered Trophy in an agility trial.

August 9th.

To cement the deal his official height card even arrived in the mail yesterday.

Only entered him Friday because the rest of the weekend is reserved for purebreds only and my fantastic boy is a mix. Which is part of why i hate AKC. Yes, let's fill our greedy pockets by accepting mix breed into their own special program, but still give everyone the option to exclude them whenever they feel inclined to do so. Granted it's not as bad as the original proprosal when they were thinking of starting the Canine Partners program where everything was to be "seperate but equal" (glad they took a look at the history books and how well that did NOT turn out in the civil rights movement)... but it still sucks. Especially since AKC is the most accessable agility venue where i live. Trust me, didnt really want to register him with the AKC, but, i'll pay for my sins elsewhere i suppose.

Now i have to get him refocused on his contacts, which he has been blowing off lately. I mean, he's not jumping over them, but he's definitely not stopping in 2o2o like he is supposed to. He steps off the aframe (his most skipped contact) stands at the bottom and looks at me. If i glare at him he will backup into position, but im trying to get away from that as it will get us NQ'd in the ring. I need to teach him to target touch for his contacts like i did for Demo, but between teaching Eevee life skills and working on Demo's contacts i havent worked with Trophy much recently. Goals for saturday while i have a day off i suppose!

The good thing is he has been much more focused on *ME* lately. We had been having a problem where he is head over heels in love with a classmate of mine who has run him a couple times, brings things like steak and ham chunks for her dogs class rewards, and always gives him a goodie at the very end of class.

Well, it got to the point where with 20 minutes left in class he would stop on the down side of the dog walk or teeter to turn around and look at her. Or he would stop on top of the aframe to look at her. And if he was on the table god help me if she said ANYTHING because even if im trying to release him to run the course with me, as soon as he heard her voice he would light off like a fire cracker to run to her. Shitheaded dog! Two weeks ago i took a crate, moved it so he wouldnt be able to see her if i put him in it, and proceded like normal until he wouldnt focus on me and then i grabbed him by the scruff of the neck (he runs naked) walked him allllll the way back to my chair from the other side of the building and threw him in the kennel. He paid much better attention the rest of the class.

Now, she was sick last week, so he was excellent for me, we will see how he does today.

You only get one Novice A dog, so i really hope he doesnt let me down!

UPDATE: got confirmation today (6.27.13) that he is #18 and #19 on the waitlist for his JWW and Standard runs, so looks pretty good that we will get into that trial! Woohoo!

Demo and the Grown Up Agility Course

So... crazy things have happened.

The biggest thing, with the biggest impact to this blog is that Pan has been pulled from agility.  I'm sad about this for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that I got into agility because it was what my sister always wanted to do.  So to get her doing something with Pan I tracked down the agility instructor she started with with Koda way back when and signed up with Trophy in the same class.  Secondly, Pan has been doing better in agility than Trophy lately.

However, my sister still has some pretty major health concerns, the least of which being she may have to have a 5th surgery and her health insurance runs out in January if she doesn't find a "big girl" job before then...  SO.  We decided to pull Pan.  The look on Pan's face when my sister drove away with her in the car while I walked Trophy and Demo into the practice building was excruciating.  But, there's always Flyball for her.

So, now that a spot opened up and Demo is doing so well in his beginners class, we moved Demo up to fill Pan's spot.

He started running Grown Up agility courses Thursday night.  Now, if my head had been more in the game and less on my sister's health and pulling Pan, etc, we probably would have had an awesome run of it... instead I was foggy and slow to get my signals out.

But, Demo did very, very, very well for being a very green dog running basically a Master/Excellent level course.

Trophy did well, but not as well as I would have liked.  I hope it's because he was picking up on my mood.

We will see next week.

Agility Wrapup

The kids have been doing really well in agility lately, even Pan!  She's still a bit of a spaz, but slowly -ever so slowly - she is getting her head screwed on correctly.  A few weeks ago she refused to focus on me at the start line and totally pushed my buttons in all the wrong ways, something that she had never managed to do before. I walked her off the course to prevent running the progress we are fighting for. My instructor took her at the end of class to prevent leaving on a bad note and she did well. Every week she has fewer and fewer shut down moments. This past Thursday she only sniffed the ground once and only for a few seconds and then she immediately refocused on me.

Trophy is suddenly having problems stopping in his 2o2o lately, but only on one obstacle at a time. Last week it was the dog wall, this week it was the a-frame.I don't know what his deal is. In general he is doing well. I'm pretty impressed by his weave entrances lately. Not perfect, but I'm baby sitting him less.  My biggest problem with him is thathe is in love with a classmate because she brings things like meatballs and ham. If she says his name he takes off to her and couldn't care less that we were in the middle of a course. At least I know if I ever can't run him he will do backflips for the chance to run for her.

Demo is doing really well.  My instructor says he has "contacts to die for". Unfortunately, despite me finally trusting in my dog to not kill himself and relaxing when I run him, I have inadvertently slowed down his performance. Not that he is slow by any means. Now we are working on getting him weaned off his target discs and to hold his contacts no matter what I do until he is released.  He is so much fun to work with. He's on the fast track to move out of his beginners class. He basically ran a full course last week, with a little help on the teeter. Have I mentioned how much fun he is? I'm hoping to get our a-frame out of long term storage and work on contacts at home.

Eevee (bet you weren't expecting to see agility updates about her) is learning to go through tunnels already. And I borrowed my instructor's babydog teeter board. She has once again proved her fearlessness as she ran across it several times without blinking. Then we started started working on hitting her contacts. She is one smart cookie.

I got to run my instructor's sheltie in a practice run too. That was fun. She ran him first so I got to see where his problem spots are. Then I ran him twice, the final run being pretty good, the only error being where he turned right and took an off course jump instead of heading left into the tunnel I was cuing. His mom was sitting to the right so I didn't take it personally.  It's neat running a dog who totally understands his job on course (not having to baby sit weaves at all, for example) and gives you time to set up the next obstacle, but will show you where all your handling errors are.

Always so much to learn.

Photoshop Agility

So a friend video taped two runs of the same course at class, and of course both runs were major disasters with small highlights in each.

SO....

I edited together the good stuff. :)

Enjoy!

What The Hell Am I Doing Here?

Tonight's blog title brought to you by "Creep", the cover done by Glee, which has been stuck in my head almost all day long.  It really has no other bearing on tonight's blog post, other than I got lost a few times on the course tonight. haha.

Before we dive in to the break down I'd like to say hi to my agility instructor who is reading tonight.

HI!

And then, my promised video comparison of Trophy Versus Demo on the dog walk.  I felt that Demo was more controlled than he has been, which could be due to the dog walk being at full height for the first time, but you can still very clearly see how different he is from Trophy. Trophy was in the middle of a run and has some momentum while Demo was starting from a standstill.  We have decided, after viewing this, that I'm going to try to teach Trophy to run for a target/reward so he has more drive across the dog walk.



Ok, now on to the class break down.  Due to storms and Pan's thunderphobia, I left her at home tonight.  So it was just me and the boys at class.  Trophy's class had a really fun course with some interesting and challenging jump sequences.

The drawing tonight is especially sketchy, and absolutely not drawn to scale.  I'm imagining my agility instructor cringing and rolling her eyes at me, and probably threatening to beat me when she sees me next or something...

So you are coming into what I labeled 1 from the weaves, so dog is on the right at 1, front cross on the landing into 2.  Fun 360type post turny move at 3-5, front cross into dog on right for 6.  Then came the really fun part: distance!  My dogs are learning distance and I'm super proud of how Trophy handled this as I *know* I'm going to need to know how to do lots of this for Demo.  So my path was to cut from 6 to the landing side of 9 where I would front cross into 10 while pushing Trophy out and around 7 and 8.  He did this SO FREAKING BEAUTIFULLY the first time... and then we pulled out the video camera and it all went straight to hell.  But anyway... I freaking love that feeling when we are so connected and working in sync   I love my dog, have I mentioned that?  No one else tried to add the distance, but I went for it.  What's my agility catch phrase lately?  That's right, Balls Out. lol. :)

9 through 11 is pretty easy, dog on the left. Slightly tricky entry into the tunnel, as Trophy did it correctly once, and then went into the wrong side of the tunnel.  First time he went into the wrong side I was calling here and totally signalling forward motion.. Second time as I'm trying to keep  up with him I'm leaning back to try to signal collection, but yeah, still moving forward, so he still entered wrong.  So third time, totally over exaggerated ALL SYSTEMS STOP, and he turned and went in the correct side of the tunnel.  Of course it works when you listen to your instructor (no, I'm not really sucking up here, promise. maybe.)

So I really did enjoy working through that sequence.

Then on to Demo's class.  Like I said earlier, I really felt like he was much calmer and collected tonight.  We worked on a small sequence with the A-frame and a turn on the flat.

I'm waiting for some bad-agility-course-drawing-police to come arrest me. Seriously.

As this was our first sequence, baby-dog was a bit bonkers the first run through, so we did it again right away and it was slightly better.  After everyone ran through it and we attempted it a third time I really felt him settle in, we were connected, he waited for my directions, and I didn't feel like he was crazy-dogging it.  Now, it could be that he just learned the pattern I wanted, but I'm going to try to make myself feel better and say it was team work.

After that we went to the dog walk, which you can see on the video above.  This was their first time running it at full height.  Demo was slightly slower and more collected than before, but I'm ok with that, really.  Then we did a small sequence, tire jump at a perpendicular angle to the entry of the dog walk so we kind of had to shape their entry, which is difficult with wild man, but he still did it well.  Then we did the opposite on the way back, with us running between the dog walk and the wall.  On the second run through of this sequence we added a front cross after the dog walk before the tire jump.  On that last run through I opted to not use treats in Demo's target lids,  it worked the way out (tire, dogwalk), but I should have given him something while i tried to do the front cross as he broke his contact for the first time in a while.

All in all, very happy with how everything went tonight.  Pan will be back next week, so get ready for some crazy antics from her!

Remember To Breathe

In agility last night i learned an important lesson: keep breathing. But we'll get to that in a second.

First in Trophy and Pan's class, we worked on a really interesting course made up of lots of perpendicular jumps. The first half of the class was pretty straightforward but with a tricky lead out over a jump and into the weaves. Pan is still improving on her weaves, despite not having practiced them at home in a few weeks. She didn't need a food lure last night, although she's not yet fluid or controlled, and in fact sometimes i think she still has no idea what she's doing.

Green Star indicates where the turn on the flat was.  And as usual, not to any scale what-so-ever.

However, instead of shutting down today, despite me losing my own focus and showing more disappointment in her than i should, she got the zoomies on the course. She ran through the tunnel under the dogwalk twice and then took off, ignoring my direction, and bypassed the course to zoom through the tunnel in the corner a few times. My instructor and I both agreed, i would rather have the silly setter zoomies than a meltdown. At least she was having FUN.

The second half of the course involved a much trickier maneuver followed by a wild ride around the ring. First (obstacles 8 through 14) involved a 3 jump pinwheel back into a tunnel in the corner, over the last jump in the pinwheel again and to the a-frame. We spent several minutes talking about our options for running this sequence and how to take jump 11 and be in position for a good A-frame entry after 13), and i ultimately decided to (listen to my instructor) and stay on the inside of the pinwheel, do a turn on the flat after the third jump (green star) to send Trophy to the tunnel and stay on the a-frame side of the jump to call him back to me and then wrap him around my body to give him a straighter entry to the a-frame. It worked really well for Trophy, i had to try twice with Pan since she's so much faster and less methodical than Trophy.

After the a-frame was our wild ride around all of the jumps in a big 'U' shape around the ring (15-20). It was insane, but other than losing Trophy up the dogwalk instead of having him follow me to the last jump, i actually managed to keep up with him. Pan was similar, but the tunnel under the dog walk sucked her in.

All in all it was a interesting challenge tonight, and i survived day 2 of running both dogs.

Now on to Demo's class and breathing lessons.

Last week it was suggested i try teaching him a nose target behavior to teach him a more independent stop into his 2o2o. So all week we worked on that, first teaching him to touch a lid, then longer touches, then off the couch into 2o2o with nose touches, then down the stairs into 2o2o with nose touches. (It worked REALLY well for him and he picked up it right away on both the dogwalk and the a-frame!)

We once again split up the class. We were on the dog walk first, twice on leash then once off leash to practice contacts. Then we worked on a mini sequence. Double jump to the table, then to the dog walk.

This is where i need to breathe.

Demo is so fullspeedahead!! it scares me and I'm super tense and i stop breathing when i get to the line with him. I really need to take a video of him next week so i can try to convey some of my terror. Trophy trots calmly down the dog walk, Pan sometimes trots, sometimes has a slow controlled lope down the dog walk.... Demo? Demo RUNS (flyball style) down the damn thing and it freaking scares me to death. He does slow down on the descent, and he is hitting and holding his contacts, but it makes me crazy nervous. One wrong footfall and he's flying off into the wall.

When we switched, we worked on the a-frame. 2 reps on leash, one off leash, then mini sequences. This time it was jump, a-frame, tunnel and then the reverse. He doesn't scare me nearly as much on the a-frame as he does on the dog walk.

Lastly we finished up with some handling over jumps, pinwheels and pinwheel into a front cross.

Phew.

I Survived!

Yesterday was my first night running all 3 of my dogs without my sister in class (she is doing well after her surgery and is settling in for a looong recovery). I have been petsitting since Saturday so i was expecting the dogs to be crazy, having not really spent time with me since Saturday (i did pick Trophy and Pan up in the morning and took them to work so they wouldnt be totally wired), but they all did very well.

The course setup for Trophy and Pan was delightful. It was just challenging enough that i could really settle in and run the dogs without having to worry about any tricky handling spots. I could have done without both Trophy and Pan trying to run the teeter like it was the dogwalk with no reasonable explaination (i even told Pan to ease up, but she still ploughed right on through and went flying). Luckily neither was really phased by it, and while i didnt keep my head enough to cheer, i didnt gasp or do anything to make the event tragic in their little brains.

When we put the course together Trophy ran clean in a really nice run. I love love love running my boy. Pan's run was also nice, except she backed out of the tunnel...twice...in a row. She's so weird. Otherwise her run was really nice. Still working on her weaves, but they are coming along nicely and i'm happy with her progress, when her head is screwed on right she's so much fun to run.

Demo's class was also really good! I finally felt like we clicked. We worked on the dog walk some more, changing our training plan with him on the contact obsticles, going to add a target for him to nosetouch at the end to teach him to stop since i can not get ahead of him on the dog walk.

Then worked some sequencing, jump to a curved tunnel then another jump. Easy. Worked on startline stays, front crosses and blind crosses. Finally felt like he looked to me for a little bit of direction, success in that if nothing else. Then we worked on the a-frame, which i can get ahead of him on, that was much better. He was getting tired (resting his head on my lap while waiting for our turn) and i could definitely see him looking to me instead of just charging ahead.

As my instructor said, "he's having fun!" Lol.

Totally love my kids, so very lucky to have them.

Tomorrow starts our Intro to Flyball Class, really excited for it! Putting the finishing touches on my class plan tonight, then heading to bed early.

Nothing Middle Of The Road About Pan

Agility on Thursday was the same set up as last week with one change, the teeter was in the opposite direction. The first half of our course was jump, dogwalk, down to the evil jump that made Pan fall apart last week. if she was going to repeat last weeks performance it was going to happen early, but she was a total rockstar! From there we did the teeter to the near side of the tunnel under the dog walk, jump to the tunnel, jump, weaves, a-frame.

I wanted to do a front cross on the landing side of the jump after the second tunnel. i was able to get some distance on Pan and really send her from the first tunnel over the jump and to the second tunnel, but when she stuttered before taking the second tunnel i pulled up in anticipation of having to get closer and redirect her and then she took the tunnel anyway and while she still took the jump after the tunnel i was not in the right position to complete the cross and we almost collided.

It was so beautiful and fun! Oh i wish we had been able to pull it off! I tried again, but once she got the pattern she was waay faster than me even as i was cutting through the course and pushing her around the outside!

Trophy did well, although he was slower than usual. i couldnt watch most of his run because if we accidently make eyecontact he loses his connection with Tasha (but that wont be a problem next week as i'm running all the dogs by myself). Trophy had, in a very unusual act, counter surfed the night before, and truly horriffic diarrhea before class. I took him out after his slow run and three poo bags worth of diarrhea later, he was a bit faster. (He also threw up a thick rubberband, the kind that comes on raw broccoli, early Friday morning and was truly miserable all day. He layed around and moped all day long. He was perkier this morning).

In Demo's class things got hairy. We split the class up and half of us worked on sequences with the dog walk, and the other half sequences with the a-frame.

We worked the a-frame first. It was a disaster. Mainly, i think, because Demo (really most of the dogs) couldn't see our helper who was in position to reward our dogs when they hit their contacts in time to really stop and understand the exercise. We did a sequence of tunnel - jump - a-frame. The first time i just did it, Demo totally blew off his contact as he was moving so damn fast over the a-frame. Didnt even blink at her. So the second time i did a Reverse flow pivioty move to collect him before the A-frame, and i tried to lure him over more and stop him in the 2o2o... but apparently that wasnt the point of the exercise (? That's how i taught Trophy and he's doing awesome?). We didnt get to try again and i didnt get to clarify why we are doing it differently.

When we switched to the dog walk, we did one rep of just the dog walk in either direction with the dogs still on leash (to keep them slower and controlled) then we did dogwalk to a jump and lastly jump dogwalk. I was terrified of Demo killing himself. Our instructor was again in position to "catch" him in the 2o2o at the end of the dogwalk, it worked much better (IMHO) because the dogs could see her before stopping. I almost fainted, especially on the second rep of jump to the dogwalk as Demo totally RAN the dog walk, but he got the contact thanks to our instructor being there.

There's so much that is different between Trophy/Pan's beginner class and this class, it's hard for me to figure some things out. I feel like i'm not in control of Demo at all... i feel like even though we've done sequencing and some handling, i'm not really feeling like I'm HANDLING him. The team work isnt there yet.

We have much to learn.

Agility: Of Demo Drama And Panda's Meltdown

I think it is an understatement to tell you that my last two weeks have been bad. With two of our owners on vacation at work, right after they hired 3 new people (who weren't anywhere near fully trained), not to mention firing someone right before they left, the schedule had us *barely* staffed correctly. Then add onto that a coworker with the flu, and another who is pregnant, and no one on call to help out if anything happened. Oh, and what felt like a billion dogs in the building two different days last week, and i worked 6 days in a row instead of 5.

To say that i was stressed was an understatement. Thursday was a culmination of all things bad. I was looking forward to agility and my weekend (I'm usually off Fridays and Saturdays).

My sister has been off on Thursdays for the past several months, so i take Trophy and Pan to work with me, and then she brings Demo up with her since he's not comfortable with strange dogs enough to go to work with me any more.

So we meet in the small lobby of the building about 10 minutes before the previous class gets out. Demo is always super excited to see me, and he lets out his high pitched excited yip. Next thing we know a black dog from the class before ours comes tearing out of the agility room, teeth bared, snarling, and makes a beeline right for Demo. Tasha still has Demo's leash, she's spinning trying to not get bit while trying to get Demo out of the way and somehow grab the other dog, I'm screaming and trying to keep Trophy and Pan out of it, so I literally can't do anything to help, then the dog's owner flies in and full body tackles his dog. Luckily Dem didn't have a scratch on him, just some slobber.

My sister said that this same dog lunged at Demo before in passing one day when I was running late. My instructor said the dog is in play groups all the time and has never shown any aggression before, there is just clearly something about Demo he/she/it doesn't like.

So after my horribly stressful week, I now have two hours of agility where I'm afraid my already not dog-friendly Demodog might go off the deep end if anything gets in his space. I kenneled him for the first hour to relax.

Then I had to suffer through the biggest Panda Meltdown to date. The first half of the course was deceptively easy*- all the obstacles around the outside of the room (1-9) with one front cross after the A-frame. Pan ran this part really well, except she blew off her 2o2o.  I knew the first half was too good to be true and the second half was going to be torture - it was.

once again, NOT DRAWN TO ANY SCALE WHATSOEVER. :)

From the weaves we went into this extremely demotivating loop: (10-15) jump, tire, teeter - circle, back to the first jump and the tire again then straight to the next jump. After the teeter we had to send the dogs to that first jump again and cross to be on the outside of the tire. While trying to get my cross in the right place with help from my instructor (i always cross to close to the obstacle the dog is taking instead of giving myself room by making the cross closer to the next obstacle in the sequence) Pan's brain fell off the deep end. Something about that first jump (3/10/13) just melted her fragile mind. My instructor couldn't get her to run, Tasha couldn't get her to run, she just shut down and went into avoidance behavior overdrive.

Probably a lot of it was having to do it over and over so I could try to get my cross right, but even after we got her doing some jumps at the other side of the room if she went back down in that corner as soon as I cued that jump she wouldn't take it and she would go back into shut down mode.  UGH!  I was so discouraged by the end of it that we just stopped running her for the day as I wasn't able to give her the positive feedback she needed.

Next week is another day to try again, and that's all I can say at this point as I don't know what else to do... and work on my handling skills with Trophy while working on just Pan's skills with Pan.

I guess in that aspect I'm looking forward to my sister being off for a few months so I can work both dogs.  I can get my handling down with Trophy and then help Pan's motivation separately.  It's going to kick my ass, but if running 3 dogs in agility and 3 dogs in flyball doesn't help me get skinny by fall I don't know what will. ;)

Now, as for Demo, he actually did really well in class.  I put a gate up between us and the dog next to us as she is very sweet but almost too friendly and she always wants to come see what everyone else is doing.  Demo had no problems focusing on me.  Thank goodness for THAT single trait in him, or whatever training I did to get him there!!

In class we worked a bit on weaves, and contacts on a low a-frame and low dog walk.  Then the second half of class we worked some sequencing and crosses.  Demo refused the tunnel at first, so I had to warm him up to that.  And of course the little stinker is so darn FAST that it is very hard to get a front cross when I have to guide him into the tunnel and then try to beat him to the other side for the cross.   Hopefully next week will be better as i did a few reps of sending to a tunnel at flyball practice.  Even set a box up next to the tunnel for some discrimination and he got it.  Went to the tunnel every time and I was able to send him from about 15 feet.  WOO!  Hope we do crosses with the tunnel again next week, I bet it will be a lot better!

Weekend Update- All About Foot Work

Yesterday we worked on boxwork and getting snappier turns off the box.

I'm really, really happy with Demo's turn.  It's coming together really nicely.  He needs a faster box, but that's beyond my control at the moment.


Sunday after work I worked on hind end awareness skills with the Agility dogs.  Trophy is working on advanced skills of trying to place each foot individually on a fitpaws paw pod, but I didn't take video or get photos.

Also, I have to apologize for the quality of these photos.  I had to take cellphone photos as my short focal length lens is broken, and my zoom lens on my good camera has an extremely long focal length (the dogs have to be about 10 feet away to get them to focus).

Hind end awareness is beneficial in so many ways, especially for dog sports.  Many dogs don't think about where they put their back feet.  In flyball this can be the difference between a good push off the box and a dangerous turn.  In agility it can help primarily with contacts, and footing on the dog-walk and teeter.  Finally, it can turn into many funny tricks.

So how do I start?  With Shaping.  I want the dog to offer shifting weight back to one hind foot.  I want to click for the same rear foot all the time at first.  I have found that my dogs are very front foot oriented so they try to spin around and walk down whatever prop I'm using, so I rig up an xpen into a chute so the dog can't turn, and can only move forward and backup.  I place a book on the floor at the back of the xpen and start upping my criteria to the dog placing the back foot on the book.

When the dog is offering that consistently I place a few more books or a shoe box to raise the height and wait for the dog to offer it again.  If I wanted to teach an independent rear leg lift I would continue on in this fashion, continuing to raise and raise and raise the height of the props to get the proper height of the leg lift, and then slowly remove props while keeping my high leg lift criteria for the reward.

However,  my goal for this training session is more about a contact behavior, so after Demo was very readily offering back feet on the boxes I switched out the boxes for my flyball jump board.

Then I continued rewarding for standing and backing up the board.  I also slowly opened up xpen so he had more options of directions and I could proof the backing up.

We had to trouble shoot with Pan, who wanted to only offer laying down and crawling forward.  Since I was using the xpen and my weave poles are sitting in the living room, I used them to block her from laying down. After she was reliably understanding that I wanted her to back up, not lay down, I set one pole on the ground under her.  Next session I will try to remove that.

Pan also did this hilarious crazy foot dance when working on the board.  I took a video (and you can see the new position of the "don't lay down" tube).  It's crazy wobbly as I was trying to hold my phone steady and click and reward all at the same time.  My criteria at this point is to wait for her to take another step backward on the board, but for the most part she's just picking up her feet and setting them back down in the same spot in this crazy-flaily dance.   have I mentioned I love her?




Well, next time I work on this I hope to get a video of the whole progress... and one that's not so shaky...

Pan's Agility Drama OR Silly Setter Syndrome

Tonight's agility class was much better.

My sister's medical problems aren't cleared up yet and she will be undergoing another surgery. Since Pan lost so much time and is having trouble picking up where she left off (and my sister gets super frustraited with her when things get hairy) we decided to keep her going while my sister recovers (which will take somewhere around 6 months...minimum). This means my Thursday nights are going to be EXHAUSTING as i run 3 dogs in 2 hours, but i'm oddly looking forward to it.

In prep for this, and because Pan's agility class was worse than Trophy's last week, my sister and I are trading dogs until she has to drop out.

If Pan thinks she has done something wrong she shuts down. Mainly she does this by no longer paying attenting and instead going off and sniffing the floor. So my plan for her is as follows:

1. Try to make sure that if I screw up a sequence or handling move i do not let Pan know (cheering off course jumps instead of stomping my foot because my position was the problem, for example).
2. If she sniffs, get her to sit and watch me to soothe and recollect her
3. If she continues to sniff around or if she shows more signs of shutting down, take her off course with lots of praise.

When her brain is screwed on right and she's connected she is so beautiful to watch and she is so fun to run. She works great from a distance especially over jump patterns, and her silly setter mannerisms just make me love her even more.

Tonight our course was a more novice course, so lots of space between some obstacles. I find this much more difficult than the higher level courses we usually work on in class. Anyway. My first run through with Pan on the first half of the course was brilliant, even her startline stay! Then each subsequent run got a little fuzzier. The second half of the course we needed to do a front cross after a jump with a long stretch into another jump that was perpendicular to the previous jump and then into a tunnel. The front cross was difficult as i really had to run to get into position and i am really bad at giving myself enough room to front cross (i want to be close to the landing of the jump when i need to angle myself out more and make the cross more evenly between the two jumps).

That cross and the jump were the first cause of Pan's stress tonight. I didnt like the position i was in, it felt messy. Even though she made the jump, because i verbalized my dislike of *my* performance and pulled up to retry it again, Pan felt she had done it wrong and started the sniffing. When i got her into the tunnel where we then did a post turn to dog walk, i got her eyes out of the tunnel and i took my eyes off her to turn to the dogwalk yet we lost connection and she jumped up behind me onto the middle of the dog walk ramp. Managed to finish the run, but when our "put it all together" run also wasnt pretty the whole thing nearly fell apart. I had her sit and i petted her and i gave her a cookie, and we continued on, we pulled it together, but there's a lot to work on still.

The good news is that I adore her quirks, and she doesn't frustraite me like she does Tasha. (Her abismal startline stays annoy me more than anything else).

The one truly bright light is that i actually saw improvement in Pan's weaves tonight! Up to this point we have had to lure her entirely though the weaves (treat in front of the nose all the time) today she was able to let me stay on one side of the weaves and point her through to lure her back. She didnt have to have the cookie the whole time, i didnt have to akwardly weave my armpit out of the weaves, it was awesome! Babysteps!

Since Demo has started agility training my instructor and i were talking breifly about the dogs switching from flyball (an *extremely* independent sport where the dog works at great distance from the handler over a course that changes minimally between runs) to agility (a sport baised in communication between handler and dog where the courses change drastically between runs). Even though Trophy also started in flyball, he and I have a great working relationship from so many tricks and random training with him that he looks to me anyway for direction despite flyball. Pan and Demo on the other hand haven't had as much work on handler focus at home, so they try to think independently on the agility course to undesireable results.

Demo's class is going well, he's calming down around the other dogs. We were learning front crosses and post turns today. He is living up to expectations and wants to be way out in front of me over jumps, he is trying to stay with me, but he understands jumping ahead of me, not next to me.

All in all a really good two hours of class. I quite enjoyed it. :)

I've Got Those Agility Blues

I dont want to talk about Trophy's agility class from Thursday.

It was bad. We were very disconnected. I dont know if it's because of the final member of the class being there tonight (a dog with some issues dealing with other dogs, who is afraid of most everything, and Trophy is very sensitive and not forgiving to unbalanced dogs after an incident a few years ago). Or it's because i didnt want Demo sitting next to said dog (i kenneled Dem in another room) but he was screaming/whailing and that might have thrown Trophy off too.

Trophy is sensitive to his siblings presence. When Pan and Tasha dropped out for a while Trophy was visibly mopey without Pan around and it took him a while to get back in the swing of things by himself.

Also, sometimes i dont know if i'm put into situations to learn from others or to help others. Until i figure it out it's going to be challenging.

And then i keep being reminded that i "need" to start trialing Trophy soon. Well, I can't. Plans for Trophy's agility debut had to be put on hold when two other pets became very ill and my money went to the vet.

Not to mention from the begining i've said two things
1. Flyball comes first
2. I don't care if i never trial with Trophy.

Ending my mini rant now. No flyball today, maybe i'll have something more beneficial to update on tomorrow.