End Of Summer Slam 2013 And The Amazing Squeewok!

Ermagherd! Flyball!

Two weekends ago was the End of Summer Slam tournament held in Monroe, Michigan. This marked 2 years in the sport for Pan as she debuted in singles and pairs at Monroe two years ago before her team debut at CanAm. This year we debuted Cocoa in singles, pairs, and we even gave her some points with 3 heats in our last race Sunday after she finally settled into her job and quit scaring us about crossing over!

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw

I suppose I should back up.

Saturday Cocoa ran singles against another dog on our team, Hershey. She did awesome! Posted mostly 6.5 seconds after she remembered that the jumps are important and should be all taken in order. Lol.

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw
WHERE IS YOUR BALL, COCOA??

Then she moved on to pairs. We ran Trophy and Cocoa together and called it SWAT Secret Weapon. We were running against two little terriers and for some reason Cocoa did NOT like the little JRT she was running against and she crossed twice to chase. She has never before shown interest at practice at chasing, so we decided to hold back and let her run after the Jack, named 'Shorty' was finished so to not encourage chasing in the lanes and to not scare the dickens out of Shorty. No more errors. She ran about 7 seconds passing.

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw

Fast forward to Sunday. Ran pairs against our team first, so again no errors in crossing over. Then we have singles against... Shorty. Of course. Since Cocoa was still really interested in Shorty we let shorty run then we ran Cocoa. A judge, who is notoriously mean to certain members of our team and can be a bit... overbearing... shall we say? Approached us outside later to lecture us on why we should have pulled her from singles and put cocoa back in preflight and didn't understand (since he hadn't been there on the pervious day to watch racing) that Cocoa does just fine with our team in the other lane And in preflight you can only have your team in the other lane! The crossing is new and to prevent ruining the confidence of another new dog we held her. I don't regret this decision.

Paris against Shorty and a whippet was next. Talked to the team about their order. Shorty was running first against Trophy and the whippet's owner said her dog is also having some crossing issues, so to just run Cocoa and it would be fine, her whippet was not aggressive to other dogs. Did I mention that the judge who talked to us outside put himself on our race? So it was a little bit of pressure. Whatever, we are SWAT. We've got SWAGR. lets do it. Shorty was having problems completing. Shorty stopped halfway down the lane. Trophy ran and we let Cocoa go..... and she didn't cross!!! 4 good heats!

Cocoa's last pairs race was also against Shorty and she didn't cross there either! Good girl Cocoa!

So we decided to let her have her team debut since she appeared to get her crossing under control and she was focused.

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw

First heat we had a bad pass by our second dog, she reran but i think our final time was over 35 seconds, so no points.

Second heat Cocoa dropped her ball just before the last jump, we didn't rerun her.

Third heat - CLEAN!  25 points for Cocoa!

The best thing about the weekend was watching everyone else's reactions to Cocoa running.  So many people stopped to watch her run. So many people asked to pet her and see her because she's so small and fluffy.

Cocoa then proceded to practically die on the way home.  She was so tired she sprawled out on Jbiz's lap and didn't move.  We even poked her and she didn't move.  She was beat after two days of a lot of racing for a 5 pound ragamuffin!

As for the other teams:
Variety was seeded in division 1. Demo and Jbiz laid down some good start times for her first time running him.  Pan and I running third on that team after Malley eventually dialed in our passes, Bandy running anchor.  We banged out a couple 18.9's with that line up, which is that fastest time we have posted while any of my dogs have been running with this team.  If we had had a knowledgeable pass caller all the time we may have managed a few low 18's but, really, we run to run clean and rack up the points.  We don't want to lose the points on bad passing.

Our Standard team came in first place, but they ran against mostly pick up teams which couldn't place. We don't run for the placements anyway!

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw

shoulder parrot/backseat driver

I was most proud of Demo this weekend as not only did he have different people handling him (Jbiz ran him most of the weekend, and then a teammate's husband ran him in the last race while Jbiz was running Cocoa) but he also stopped double hitting on the box.  his turn looks pretty darn good right now.

Pan and Demo earned their next titles, which i wasn't expecting, so that was an added bonus!!

On to CanAm!!!

We've Got S.W.A.G.R.

Gosh, I don't even know where to being on this weekend.

Tournament in Sandusky.  Camped with my besties: Jbiz, Matty, and my sister. First day was nice, started out super humid but cooled by the afternoon and light sprinkles at the end of the day really helped cool things down... only after racing was done and Jbiz and I went to shower it started to DOWNPOUR.  We had to walk through water above our ankles to get back to base camp.  Then the path we all walked in teh grass to our tent turned into a mud slide.  and water seeped between the tarp and the bottom of the tent.

We moved Tash and Pan into the back of the Vue for the night (it eventually stopped raining) and Matt took Demo into the bed of the truck.  Jbiz and I kept the rest of the crated dogs in the tent because we both have cots to sleep on.

It was just... hell.  My hell is not on fire, it's flooded and muddy.

We had to carry the dogs in and out of the tent to prevent them from getting mud every were.

And in the process I got a cut on my big toe by the nail that I believe is infected from walking thru the muck for two hours in bare feet.

Ok, now on to the dog's performances.

Had problems with the box on Friday and all the dogs bobbling.  Slowed down the mechanism, and they did slightly better.

Starts with Pan were pretty good.  Had some bad ones, but for the most part I kept it under .050 split.  We did get our second perfect start today... but since I saw it and I screamed in celebration Matt (who was box loading) looked at the clock and didn't load a ball for Trophy... lost it on a no finish. oh silly greenie boxloaders. :)

Tasha got some pretty good starts with Pan today too when the lights started making more sense to her.  As did Matt with Demo, although Demo started losing his concentration on the recalls and either couldn't find Matt or was blowing him off.  Not sure which, but it concerns me.

Trophy was his awesomely consistent self, even if Jbiz couldn't get her passes together.

Cocoa debuted in Preflight and totally ROCKED it.  It was pretty hilarious as we got her officially measured and the judge said he would give her 3 inch jumps if he could, lol!  We started working thru her not bringing the ball back over all 4 jumps and not dropping early.  Worked with another dog in the other lane (but not running at the same time, doing box turns while cocoa was running or alternating runs).  Cocoa was slightly distracted, but quickly refocused.  by the 4th preflight run today she was doing full runs and holding the ball all the way thru the end over 7inch jumps (we forgot to take them down to 6 and she'll have to jump 7 anyway for NAFA).

There were just enough wacky problems in the lanes, combined with severe pain today, a sun burn, crankiness from the flood, and sunburn today just sucked and for the first time ever I was really, really really glad to put this flyball weekend in the books.

Flyball: Of Demo Drama and Lexi Meltdowns

I was lucky enough to have two flyball practices this weekend.  First up was our normal team practice Saturday.  I was not really looking forward to this practice as it felt like I was pulling teeth trying to get people there.  We had 4 people there, and a boxloader, which was really nice.  Got some good boxwork done with Trophy.  But then Demo's turn was all double hits on the box.  This is bad because it really slows him down.  If I'm going to speed him up his turn MUST get better.

So I was really happy when I got invited to a practice with some people from a fast team from Michigan who would be able to help me out with this.  It also helps to give me more stuff to work on in this upcoming class so I can help students if they stick through enough to actually run with us (and I'm pretty much like MUST.LEARN.ALL.THE.THINGS!).

Broken Collie.

But before we get there... Saturday night Demo slid after a tennis ball on the carpet in the living room and skinned both his back feet.  I was like, you've just got to be kidding me.  I have never wrapped his back feet at practice, and he didn't do this until HOURS after we got home.... and on CARPET?!  I bandaged his feet with some antiseptic so they wouldn't get muddy outside, then I unwrapped them overnight, and rewrapped them Sunday morning so we could make it to the practice.  Luckily his feet didn't bother him... although since I had to run to work right after I haven't unwrapped them yet, so who knows what they look like.

At practice we started with Demo and trying to find the right combination of props to help him.  They tried several different things, but nothing really seemed to help.  They said it was a striding issue, but also that he "is weird" and they hadn't quite nailed down the issue yet.

Fast forward to his second time in the ring, he was taking off too soon for the jumps and that was where the issue was coming from.  We put a 3 inch wide slat from the jumps across the lane at the 4 foot mark (and they said you can even put one at 14 feet out)  to essentially gear him up into a 10 foot stride before he even hits the jumps (6 feet from first jump to the start line, plus 4 feet to make another 10 feet).

Once we did that his box issues basically disappeared.

And then he pooped in the lane. >_<

Trophy was another story...  We worked more on getting him to pop off the box faster (I need to start calling him WAAAAAAAAY earlier than I do - when he lands after the 4th jump before the box, not when he takes off for the box).

I also learned that while he has a pretty turn with no ball, he also takes off for the box from too far back, and while his two footed turn isn't perfect, he's pivoting enough that it shouldn't be dangerous.

So I'm really not doing much harm by continuing to run him... although I think I'm going to try to get him to turn nicely without props while still taking the ball with up close work and slowly moving him back to speed (versus their method of alwaysalwaysalwaysalways use props unless it's an official heat) and see what we get.

All in all it was an awesome weekend.  I'm so thankful for all my dogs give me.

Now we just have to heal the Broken Collie before Agility on Thursday....

Woe is the Broken Collie.

(BTW, despite all her issues in agility, Pan rocks at flyball, and I have nothing to report on her because she's practically perfect.)

Productivity?

Only 4 people showed up for flyball practice this morning... it made running lineups for next weekend extremely difficult to say the least since someone had to load. *sigh*.

It wasn't a waste though,  Had a teammate run Demo while I boxloaded.  He didn't care one bit, and it was really cool to see his turn up close and personal at speed!  I kind of want to see if my other dogs will let me load and watch their turns.  Hehe.  Took my video camera... even took the battery charger........forgot the memory card. >_<  oy story of my life!

Didn't really do anything that was on my agenda... but there's always next time... unless people just stop coming. :(

Anyway.

Got home and took a wonderful nap snuggled with the pups.  Later worked on weaving with Demo, Trophy and Pan.

Still trying to teach 2x2 weaves to Dem and Pan.  I don't know if I'm trying to move to quickly again or if I just don't understand the system enough... but i don't think it's working.  I start tipping the weaves and they do great, and then it all falls apart.  Going to try to do my instructor's "old school weave-purist" ways and just lure them through.

I'm torn on this is so many ways.

1. I really believe that the dogs understand it better shaping it piece by piece
2. I haven't been training on a schedule... but i feel like we should have a little more progress made that we have in 2x2.
3. Trophy, who is my most clicker-savvy dog, was taught by luring .. and he is currently weaving extremely well.  But... it's taken over a year.

BAH. I don't know what to do. :(

Speaking of Trophy's weaves,  at home he will let me front and rear cross on him while he is weaving.  SO MUCH INDEPENDENCE!  He even correctly weaved back to me when i sent him through the weaves but didn't follow at all - just once, but he is really starting to understand entries!  His biggest "fail" in weaving right now is skipping the first pole and entering at the second, but at least it's on the correct side (and it's rare).  He wouldn't let me cross in class yet, but we are trying to warm up every class with the weaves.

And lastly, today I started shaping Trophy to go to the backside of a jump and jump back towards me.  My agility instructor said only one student has successfully taught it to her dog, so CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.  Started with part of my weaves set with only one pole in and taught him to wrap around that in the correct direction (that was the hardest part, he wanted to do it like he would be taking the jump and wrapping the pole to come back to me).  Once we figured that out I added a second pole so he had, essentially, two jump uprights and he could still go to the back of the "jump" and then come back.  Finally I added a low 12inch jump... and he did it twice before going "weeee we are jumping!" and I called it quits.

I'm going to call this behavior "Reversing a Jump" and the cue is "reverse".  So, yeah.  More to work on.

I'm trying (really, really hard, actually)  to try to give my dogs a more consistent working at home schedule.  It's really hard since I'm in such a funk right now and I can't fall asleep until like 2am, and I can't wake up before 9:30 and I don't get home till 8 or later (when my next round of classes start I will be teaching until 9pm M,T,W and then I have agility until 10pm on Thurs).

The weave poles are currently sitting in the living room as a reminder.

Tournament Videos!

I've been having MAJOR difficulty uploading these to Youtube!

The one good video I got of Demo (from the race he crossed over twice and I pulled him) was of his warmup.  He doesn't get a clean push off the box, he kind of gets hung up on the prop, but the 3 strides off the box is awesome.




then we have Trophy's incredibly frustrating boxturn... the "I'm going to put my back feet on the box but NOT use them to push off" approach to flyball...


I will have a team video to post tomorrow... for now I am STILL sick and going to bed.

Flyball Hangover

Another great weekend of Flyball!  Despite the fact that I am once again sick. :(  Woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat, and I'm surprised I have any voice right now.

My dogs did great, however.  Trophy once again was running with my friend and future housemate, Megan, handling him.  Not only did she get her first Perfect Start with Trophy this weekend (and at her second tournament, first one running in start position!) but Trophy ran his new personal best time with her of 4.653!!

I really don't know how he's pulling off more speed, since the video I have his turn is abysmal :( yet he keeps shaving off tenths.

Pan was spectacular, my starts with her less so.  I think I like the NAFA lights and timing better.  the extra .2 seconds totally threw me for a loop.  I either false started or had huge split times. If I had anything consistently under .09 it was a fluke.  BUT Pan is a mere 145 points behind the top pointed English Setter in UFLI!  With at least 2 more UFLI tournaments scheduled this year we are aiming for #1!

Demo is coming into his own, and I'm super proud of him.  He racked up 945 points and earned his first 3 U-FLI titles.  He would have made the 1,000 mark if he hadn't taken two bad bobbles and crossed over during one race.  I pulled him from the next 3 heats that race.  He was fine the rest of the weekend, except for one more BAD bobble that flew up behind the barrier and he refused to come back down the lane without his ball.  Luckily he chose to come back down the correct lane, but I was so pissed the judge didn't whistle the heat dead sooner so the boxloaders could have prevented my dog trying to kill himself over a ball. >_<  His turn improved all weekend.  He was running average 4.6's. I know we can go faster as soon as he gains confidence (if Trophy can shave off 1.8 seconds off his time since starting flyball, I'm sure Demo can hit that magic sub 4!).

All three dogs' teams took second place in their respective divisions.

Videos are uploading to youtube, I will share them ASAP!  For now, I'm going to potty the dogs and then pour my sore, sick body into bed.  Another long work week starts tomorrow... and I still have a Flyball Hangover!

New Year: New Goals

Finally a real post!

I've been crazy busy at work recently due to a high number of board and trains going on at the same time.  Thankfully, they've all gone home now and life is returning to normal.  Flyball has a new twice a month schedule that started last weekend, Demo is starting Agility in a few weeks, the flyball tournaments are already lining up, Qwill will be restarting Rally eventually, Trophy and Qwill will hopefully start volunteering as Therapy dogs (that deserves it's own post), and I some how need to reschedule Trophy's Agility Debut in the rest of the mess.

It's going to be a crazy year, that's for sure!

I want to start by talking about last week's flyball practice.  We joined up with another Ohio team, F^2 (F squared, formally known as Frenzied Flyers).  They have an amazing practice space with two full lanes with plenty of runback and lights.  It was great fun.  Since my dogs are the only young dogs on the team that won't be double running at our tournament in Euclid in 3 weeks I'm starting all 3 teams.  I haven't started U-Fli in a long time, so it's going to be interesting and I was VERY glad for the practice with U-FLI timed lights.

Trophy is becoming a mystery for me in flyball.  He's continuing to speed up (he was running 4.7's with nothing higher than a 5.0) yet his butt is not up on the box at all.  I'm worried that he's going to injure his shoulders, but we're already signed up to run in Jan and again in Feb with a busy schedule ahead (tournaments already scheduled in March, April, June, and July we are considering).  I know the only way to fix this is to pull him and practice good turns EVERY DAY until we have 3 million GOOD repetitions  then return him to a tournament and pull him again if everything goes south, but we're so close to our next NAFA title that I'm being selfish and I don't want to pull him..

Trophy's got such a high sense of self preservation (if her hurts in agility, he stops performing for me) that I'm torn between thinking everything must be ok if he's continuing to run faster on his own (he's not a super fast dog to begin with, he's not hitting the box with that much force) and worrying that his turn is hurting him regardless of what else i think and somehow i'm just blind to it.

So I don't know what to do about him.

Demo's turn started out messy, but he settled down into it with the prop in.  I'm worried about losing his turn since he *IS* a faster dog (although he was running mid-high 4's at practice, but he was sick for 3 weeks and he's probably out of top condition).

Pan, well, Pan just kicks butt at flyball.  She's consistent  has a good 3 footed turn, and I'm really proud of the job i did training her. :)

Well, back to real life, more updates coming soon!

Well, That Escalated Quickly...

We flyballed this past weekend in York, Pennsylvania.  A short 6.5 hour drive through (literally) the mountains east, facing highway robbery (holy crap the tolls!  I could have filled the Vue with gas for what I pain in tolls!), and very few gas stations (it was kind of scary, actually), and we arrived at our destination.

My regular flyball crew was supplemented by my friend Megan and her Aussie, Rowdy. Only 2 of my teammates wanted to go to the tournament, and while I have the dogs to fill out a team we needed another person to run a dog, that's where Megan came in.  She did phenomenally well for her first tournament!

We stopped off at the hotel first, unloaded some of our paltry human belongings, then headed off to the tournament site to set up the crates.  There was no good way out of the hotel to get onto the street we needed to be on.  The 3 vehicles in our caravan ended up taking different streets.  At one point we ended up passing Kris and the whole thing felt like a scene out of a cartoon where there is a room full of doors and when you go in one door you end up in the same room coming out of another door.  

When we got to the fairgrounds, we all drove in circles trying to find the building.... or heck someone with a dog!  We finally did find it and got our boxes, balls, and ball shagger unloaded.  Then we set up our crating area.  We actually had quite a bit of room considering we were only running one team and we had 4 dogs with us not on the team roster!  I got to use the RV mat I won in Davisburg as our floor covering.  The x-pen covers I ordered didn't come in before I left (they arrived about 90 minutes after, grr!) so instead we stacked the crates which worked out pretty well.   

They had informal singles racing going on (it's a NAFA tournament) so Megan and I hung out and watched for a bit so I could kind of show her the flow of the race since she'd never been to a tournament and we don't have full runback to practice in.  Then we headed back to the hotel where a guy had his boxer off leash running around behind the hotel.  I asked him to hold his dog so I can get mine out of the car.  "Oh, she's friendly"  Well, mine are not, especially towards boxers. >_<  Luckily we didn't see them again.

Trophy was his usual jerky self the first night in the hotel.  I crated him, and Rowdy was crated as well since he had some diarrhea.  So, as per usual, i didn't get a good night's sleep.  Trophy's getting better, I get more sleep every night we stay in the hotel, but I still MUCH prefer camping.

So we had 5 races each day.  My plan was to run Pan in 3 and Demo 2 each day.  My goal was also to work on my starting abilities, as I sucked.  Our very first race the opposing team was a mess.  I'm pretty sure they false started every single heat.  The third heat in Pan was getting pissy after their third false start.  She very clearly looked over at their start dog, and exploded down the lanes in her very own false start. Ha. She was having an absolute ball running in start and her times all weekend were extremely consistent 4.6's.  The absolute highlight of my day was getting my starts dialed in.  I got running .05 splits and less, and then it happened.  Let Pan run and i cringed because I was sure it was early.  Stand up and the screen flashes .000 - I thought I broke it!  It took a few seconds to realize what happened and that we got our very first perfect start!

Demo ran his two races, but was pretty slow, running in the upper 4's.  It looked like his boxturn wasn't clean either.  He got his FDCh in his first race, and we accomplished our goal for the weekend and I decided I wasn't going to run him Sunday unless Pan was having a problem.

Saturday night in the hotel was better.  I didn't kennel Trophy, he slept on the bed with everyone, but he was trembling almost the whole night.  He's just wound up too tight and too stressed in the hotel.  My poor boy. :(  He did eventually fall asleep curled up with Pan.

I felt like I got much more sleep that night, but when Sunday dawned I felt like I had been run over by a truck.  It was really hard to get going.

Rowdy learning to chill (compare to first picture of him above!)

Our first race Sunday was a hot mess. The race before ours went really fast.  I had just gotten their boots on when we were in! Almost missed our warmup, didn't get to do a full run through. Second heat pan tried to launch early and ended up with a .2 second start after I tried to quickly reset her. Next heat the other team false started and Pan decided to not wait and reran herself  >_<  After that exertion, she was so slow coming back at the actual start of the heat Trophy bad passed into her.  Trophy did run a 5.0 on a clean heat, so there was some positives i guess.

I went up to watch some of the host club's races.  Mainly, to watch Steve from http://www.underdogged.net/

When I went back to our crating area they told me Demo had thrown up twice.  I didn't think much of it at the time, even though it is really odd for him to get sick at a tournament.  Then I went up and learned how to line judge (OMG WAS IT SCARY!  I did 3 division 1 teams in a row, and even though they were slower than division 1 teams in our region it was TERRIFYING. I was so tense!)  When I went back to our crating area Demo threw up again.

We finished out racing on Sunday with nothing major happening, packed up the cars, and settled in for awards.

BrokenButt's Total Annihilation FDCh!

Tournament Swag, I love ribbons!

Then we started the journey home. we stopped around 9pm for some sleep as I couldn't keep my eyes open.  1am I'm awoken by Demo getting ready to throw up again.  Finally made it home at 5am where Demo threw up again.  Fell asleep woke up at noon... to Demo throwing up again.  At this point I figured he was hungry since he hadn't eaten since 6am Sunday.  Fed him breakfast and he was fine.  Fed him dinner, he  was fine.  11:30pm he is fast asleep on the floor and then the next thing I know he is projectile vomiting all over the place.

Dropped him off at the vet Tuesday morning along with my cat who is peeing outside of the litterbox.  $300 in tests later for both of them, and nothing is wrong with either.  OH MY FREAKING GOD.  This is the story of my life with my pets.  Something is clearly wrong, since one is vomiting and one isn't using the litterbox, but all tests are normal.  UGH!  Demo is doing better today.  Surviving on rice, but not throwing up.

Kept Trophy home from Agility since I didn't know if this was contagious or not... unfortunately due to my large vet bill, looks like Trophy's agility debut will be pushed back.  Just can't afford it right now. 

Twice is Nice!

Was lucky enough to have not one, but TWO flyball practices yesterday!

First, our normal Saturday morning practice with our team.  My friend Megan, who is going to be traveling with us to the tournament in York, PA in December and running Trophy for me came to learn how to pass.  Now, this is a really difficult task considering our building is not tournament length and so she's going to have to relearn on the fly at the tournament, but she needed to start getting the overall flow of running a dog down.  Eventually she's going to be bringing her Aussie back to practice with us, so she needs to learn it anyway.

I've been working with a client's dog for several months to get him out of the hosue and work his little brain in adition to giving him extra exercise.  We're starting to have a break through with him.  He has already chained the jumps and loves to do jumping.  Now we are working on box work and taking a ball off the box while maintaining a nice turn.  I took some video for him mom to see since she can't be in the building while I work with him (he used to be able to work for me, but suddenly because worried/protective of her).  I've been working on boxturns for months, and finally got him to do a nice turn off the box with no ball (using his butt on the box and not being lazy) so now we're trying to add taking the ball off the box.  This dog is going to be a ball spitter, I can just see it, but that's another issue (chasing is also going to be another big concern of mine with him, but one problem at a time!)



Demo was getting some pretty crazy turns in and coming up high off the box.  I didn't take my video camera, so I can't replay it and see what was going on.  Pan was awesome, as usual, and since I had a prop in the whole time Trophy's turns were nice.  which brings me to my second flyball practice, which I'm calling "remedial box turn practice".


Remedial Flyball practice was held at another facility slightly closer to my house (by like 5 minutes) with a woman who runs her dogs on a team from Michigan.  Her dogs are amazing and fast, so I took Trophy to get a second opinion and some ideas on how to re-re-fix his boxturn and get him to engage his butt on the box.  He's gaining speed while his turn is getting worse. If I can fix his turn I just might have another dog who can run under 5 seconds and not retire early with shoulder issues (the latter being my primary concern).  She gave me an exercise to work with him to 1. build confidence taking the ball and 2, get him to lower his turn slightly on the box without using a jump board (as it's high with a prop and non existent without a prop).

I also took Demo along to analyze his turn and brainstorm what he was doing in the morning practice, which of course he wouldn't replicate.  Practicing at another facility was good for him though and instead we worked on getting his turn off the box to be snappier and also worked on making it tighter since he's such a looong bodied dog.

And in a non flyball related news, here is a picture of my Foster dog, MACaroni. Ain't he a handsome dude?  He has a shoulder injury we're still trying to figure out, so no flyball in his future, unfortunately.

Lots of Updates

I was going to split these up and do several smaller updates, but I don't care anymore.  My desktop computer is not connecting to the internet, and my netbook is a total P.O.S. and makes typing difficult to say the least as the cursor likes to jump around randomly when I'm not touching the touchpad AT ALL.  So that is why updates have not been happening. Because, trust me, the dog sporting goodness has been fantastic lately.

September 22-23 Flyball Tournament in Monroe (U-FLI)

So this tournament was slated to be Demo's big debut in Flyball.  I was going to run him in singles and pairs and then have him on a warm up spot so if he warmed up well I could pull Pan and put him in a race or two.

Only problem was that he was still *totally* not getting his boxturn down, more on this in a moment.  So I pulled him from everything except the warm spot.  Trophy and Pan did their usual awesomeness.  Trophy was on two teams, full time on one and part time on the other.  By Sunday night he was pretty tired.  I watched his boxturn get pretty sucktacular by the end of the last race, but he had to fill in a lot more than we had planned.

Both dogs earned their next titles.  Trophy now has his TFE-I (4,000points) and Pan earned her TFE (2,500points).

Agility Practice September 25.

I didn't get Trophy in to the Chiropractor on Monday like I had wanted (he went the day after agility) but honestly, I couldn't tell. He was on fire tonight.  The ring had two big pinwheels, and our course had 5 different pinwheel sections in it as well as weaves and two tunnels.  Did I mention Trophy totally rocked this course?  My handling is the only thing slowing him down, but we're working on staying positive and having fun.  Since this course was so jump-centered, and since a classmate's dog is having jump-phobia issues, I let her run Trophy at the end of class. It was amazing.  I wish I had been videoing it.  His weaves were FAST - the fastest I've ever seen him weave.  It was like watching a high end sports car traverse a race track watching him go around the pinwheels.  Beautiful.  I invited her to show Trophy any time she wanted that didn't conflict with flyball. :)

Flyball Practice September 28 and 29.

Ok, back to Demo's box turn issues.  In the flyball tournament the prior week, I took Dem out to warm up twice on Sunday.  Both times with no props he was doing PERFECT turns off the box and coming back for his tug.  It was amazing.



However, in practice he would not turn on the box if there was a ball in the box.  After some major brainstorming with friends we figured that since he will take a ball off the practice board, the ball shooting at him was the problem.  So we devised a way to make the box not trigger so Demo had to manually get the ball.  Then it was a small matter of backing up and re-luring him through the turn for a few days and BINGO.  he got it.



After two days of practicing with a "dead" ball his hang time on the box was getting worse, so i switched him to a live ball and we've never looked back.

Flyball Practice October 6.

Last practice before CANAM!  And Demo rocked it!  I did a few full runs with him by himself with a live ball and he didn't hesitate.  His turn is a bit lower than I would like, but he was also on a new box, so I believe that had something to do with it as well.

Then we practiced passing with Trophy and Pan.  He didn't care at all.  He didn't even look at them.  So we brought out the dogs that would be running on his team at CanAm if I pulled Pan to run Demo. Again, no hesitation.  In fact, he started watching the dog tun off the box and get into his playbow "ready" position all on his own in anticipation of my signal!  It was awesome!  So Demo is going to run at CanAm, and my dream is going to come true!



.... Well provided he stops trying to eat the cats, because I just might have to drown him in the bathtub if he touches the cat again.

Demo Update

I will save a Trophy agility update for later this week after I see how we do after some major changes to our game plan.

In flyball, Demo and I had an extremely (understatement) discouraging practice last weekend.  One step forward two steps back.  Scratch that. One step forward eight steps back some weeks with that boy. Two weeks ago we were practicing at home and he was doing awesome, then we went to practice and it all completely fell apart.  He stopped driving to the practice board and he completely lost his boxturn again when the ball was introduced.  I think everyone was trying to help, but in doing so we were changing entirely too much. Demo was frustrated.  I was really frustrated.  It was bad.

I only got one short chance to work with him last week. So I didn't know what to expect when we got to practice this weekend.  I handed him off to some teammates so I could go potty Josh, a papillon mix I'm training for a client from work.  And when I came back he was doing really well - driving down to the practice board and finding his jump after.  We completely omited the ball for him this practice.  So his second session I worked on extending the number of jumps before and after the box turn.  He was doing extremely well, so I had a teammate bring out Trophy.  We did full runs witha  boxturn (off the actual box!) both with Trophy passing him and passing into Trophy.  I'm extremely happy with his focus running with dogs in his lane.  Next time (no practice this weekend) my goal is to have a dog before him, a dog after him, and a dog in the other lane.

At this point I'm not going to worry about him taking a ball as long as he maintains good form on the box.

CanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAm :)

So Close, I can Taste It!

No agility practice again this week due to astronomical temperatures.

Flyball practice yesterday went really well.  I didn't have nearly enough time to work with my dogs like I wanted to.  I think I've reached my limit of number of dogs I can train: 4.  4 is my limit of dogs in flyball.  I'm so thankful that I'm 100% happy with how Trophy's boxturn was retrained and I'm fine with Pan's 3 footed turn, so I don't feel the need to work with them nearly as much and infact I have been using them more with training Demo than running lineups with the team.  And I'm ok with that!

Yesterday at Practice we worked on Demo's focus on his lane while other dogs ran in the other lane.  There were gates up down the middle, but I had several large open gaps for him to watch the action.  He never crossed over once.  I went from running him dead last (when the last dog in the other lane was just about back to his handler all the way up to sending him down seconds after their start dog left the line.  He is definitely watching the other lane on the way back (which is slowing him way down) BUT he refocuses on me instantaneously as I talk to him.  SO *I* need to remember to call him more on the way back and I think we'll be ok.

Today I brought in the jump board and worked on his boxturn.  I was able to send him from 20 feet away down to the practice board and call him back for his tug.  Adjusted the props until I liked where his feet were hitting, then I took a leap of faith and duct taped a ball on the board.

Two feet on the box, retreived ball, lots of tugging reward (before he wouldn't even touch the board for the ball).  same result a second time.

Then, we had 3 feet on the board,  and then we had 4 feet in a perfect little turn and he retrieved the ball!!!

PARTY!!

I'm so excited this is coming together!!  Next U-FLI tournament is in September followed closely by CanAm in October.  If we just do singles and pairs in September I'll be ok with that, but I *NEEEEED* him to be ready by CanAm!!! :)

Broken Foot Does Agility

Trophy was pretty awesome at agilities tonight, if I do say so myself.  It was nothing spectacular (except this one part where he saved my butt on a serpentine jump sequence by swerving to take the second jump even though I had passed it and did NOT cue it at all), but we were connected and working together, and he was excited to play the game.

Our usual class set up is thus:  one big 18 obstacle course that we break down in half. So we walk then run through the first 8 obstacles, run them through again to fix major handling errors, then walk and run the second half twice, and then put everything together.  Trophy made it through 4 of the 5 run thus before he came up lame, and it was totally my fault. I spoke with my instructor prior to class starting and we decided to skip the A-frame completely for him, see how he did on the other contact obstacles, and have him just jump 12inches.  I was going to skip the A-frame, I was, but then I cued it in sequence and he, being the awesome partner he was tonight, took the A-frame.  The next run after that (despite me walking him around the A-frame) he starting stutter stepping and was ever-so-slightly lame on that foot (of course he injures his dominant foot, the one he primarily leads and lands on, right?).

He is showing no residual lameness once I got him home, and was trying to convince me to bring out the laser pointer by pinning fireflies to the grass and pointing at them.  Goober dog.

Training plans for him now are to wrap his feet (to get him used to it) at flyball and run him out over jumps.  MAYBE do some isolated boxturns, but like only 5.  Next week at agility I will again run him 12 inch jumps and no A-frame (I don't have any deadlines for him, so i'm not going to push it), and then that weekend do a few full runs with him at flyball and see how his foot holds up.

I had him to the chiropractor yesterday.  His lower neck and middle of his back were out, but his shoulders were fine despite the major hobbling around he was doing last week.  I'm going to try to have him adjusted again before the tournament, but we'll see if I have time to squeeze it in.

Broken Trophy

Trophy really did break himself this time.

Saturday I was waking up from a post-flyball practice nap (hey - running Demo is EXHAUSTING) when my mom runs upstairs and tells me Trophy is bleeding profusely dad is holding him and I need to go RIGHT.NOW.

He had caught himself on the kennel below as he jumped out of his penthouse suite and ripped out his entire nail from the outside toe on his left foot.  I'm not talking broke it off at the base, I'm talking tore the entire thing out of his foot.

So off to my totally awesome vet.  It's a half hour away, but the prices are awesome and the Doctor is awesome and they will always write me a prescription to be filled at Giant Eagle which saves me a TON on antibiotics (since they are FREE!).  So we got him cleaned up and bandaged up and on heavy doses of pain killers.  She said there is some cuticle left, so his nail will most likely grow back.

This is not a staged photo.  He would not look while I upwrapped and then rebandaged his foot today.  Poor baby is squeamish.

So he's laid up for a week. I can unwrap his foot tonight, but since I just rewrapped it this morning to check on the swelling I will probably leave it wrapped until tomorrow.  Then I have to start twice daily cleaning which I am really not looking forward to.

I might be a blessing in disguise to have him take a week off agility.  Last week he was so.not.into.it.  He did everything I asked him to, but at a snail's pace.  I don't know if he was still worn out from the flyball tournament or what, but I'm not terribly upset by him missing class this week.

 Speaking of flyball, our next tournament is in a little over 4 weeks (for some reason I was thinking closer to 3).  He should be able to return to practice two weeks from this past Saturday.  We will bandage his front feet as well as using his booties to help protect that toe and we will see how he does.  If he loses his boxturn in practice I'm going to pull him. He did so well at the tournament two weeks ago with maintaining that I would hate to lose ANOTHER 9 months into re-retraining. 

One of the blogs I read said something about how difficult it is when you have goals for your dogs.  It's so heart breaking when something happens to interrupt those goals.  That's where I'm at right now.  Trophy is my everything dog (until I get Demo up and running), and my stomach drops every time because all of my dreams rest on him.  He's really close to being ready to start competing in agility (just have to nail weave entries and get a little bit better at weaves in general), he's finally putting his heart and soul into flyball racing, and we are hoping to start dockdiving this summer (looking into sponsorships right now).  But my poor dude is such a klutz!  If anything happened to Qwill, Shiner, or Baxter of course I'd be upset, but they are already my "broken" dogs, dogs that I have no major goals with above shower with love daily, so no big deal in the long run if one of them were to lose a toenail or be laid up for a week...

Sometimes dreams and goals suck.



... just realized i should not use phrases like "need to nail our weaves" when my dog has lost a toe nail... ugh. lol.

And small update on Demo's flyball progress, we started teaching him how to pass Saturday.  he's so focused on the tug he didn't care at all (but we also used Trophy and Pan passing into him, so we will see... we will see.)  He only contemplated turning and chasing one time, but that was the first time Pan passed him, he stopped, looked at her and then came right to his tug.  good boy!

Trophy the Start Dog

Trophy's Start Dog Video and his fastest line to line time in the second heat of 4.885!

 

Flyball Dog Champion-GOLD

What an awesomely amazing flyball weekend!

Our club took 4 teams to the tournament in Sandusky this weekend.  Pan was running one full time spot and sharing a spot on a second team, while Trophy was running full time on one team and was a backup on a second (he when in one race for 5 heats on his backup team).

I could not be more proud of their performances this weekend, not only did both dogs earn their FDCh-G titles (2,500points), but both dogs put up amazing personal best team times. Pan with a 4.4 seconds over 11 inch jumps, and Trophy with a 4.9.  Trophy even started one race, but i forgot to look at what his line-to-line times were, so I'll let you know once I hear back.

The most exciting news was that not only did Trophy run a 4.9 once, but that he was running consistent 5.0-5.2s.  WHY?  BECAUSE HE  WAS FINALLY PUTTING HIS REAR FEET ON THE BOX!!!!

Trophy has shaved 1.5 seconds off his time since he debuted last July, and half a second was just from learning to push off the box! YAY!

I also got him to tug a little bit out in the lanes!

I started the weekend having completely forgotten how to pass.  Our first few races saw me with either 10 foot passes, or with early passes.  It did not help that the dog I passed with Trophy has an EXTREMELY wide turn off the box (so wide I seriously don't know how she finds the jumps again, but she does) so it took a lot of dialing in to get that pass, but I did it, gosh darn it! By the end of the weekend I was pretty consistently running 1 and 2 foot passes with the occasional wide pass (hey, I'm NOT perfect) with both dogs.

Pan has decided that she LOVES running second.  She lines up next to our start dog and quietly stares that dog down.  When the start dog takes off she scrambles to get into the lane and I frantically get her positioned just in time to let her go.  She gets very angry when she has to run third, but the good thing is that if she runs second I'm no longer worried about her tearing me to pieces with her nails as at least she has learned to wait till the first dog goes before getting excited.  I also was able to back her up a few feet to 43 feet back from the line after trying to cross over and slamming into Harley back at the NYE tournament when I had to move her up to 20 feet.

The weekend was HOT.  A lot hotter than last Monday's forecast of 75 degrees would have us believe.  I'm so thankful that the Kool Coats I ordered from Clean Run came in, they were lifesavers for my dogs, and Demo was nice enough to share his coat with Harley since Demo isn't running yet.

Speaking of Demo, I had him off leash playing ball and returning for a tug even with other dogs walking around all the racing noise from the building. Good boy!

*UPDATE*
Got confirmation of Trophy's time for the race he started, he ran a 4.8 second heat in start!!!!
4 heats in start:
5.094
4.885
5.160
4.941
WOW!! and I had a 4.9 and several 5.0 and 5.1s while passing, so my passes were tight! yippie!!
My goal was to get him to run under 5 seconds and I've done it! 

Busy Wrap Up

Shhhh. No, it hasn't been nearly two weeks since my last update. :)  Life got a bit hectic on me!  I decided I was pushing Trophy too much in weave practice, so we took a break.  Hoping to bring the poles out again this week after we both have a chance to recover from this weekend.  I canceled teaching class all week due to work being a busy nightmare. yay!

This weekend was our first flyball tournament since New Years Eve.  4 long months I've been drilling box turns and drilling box turns and drilling box turns.... and it didn't matter.  First two races of the day he was doing 3 footed turns and then he went right back to total disengagement of his butt.  He would once again hit straight on with his front feet let the momentum carry his but to be sideways in front of the jump and then push off the floor.  Not pretty.  Not good for his body.  Last tournament his turn would improve as the day went on, not this time.  Had him massaged Friday and Saturday as he wasn't stretching the left side of his body as nicely as his right and he was much better after each time.   Sometimes I wonder if flyball just isn't his thing and maybe I should give up... and then again I live for fixing his training issues, right? Right? Is this thing on?

We missed Pan dearly this weekend.  Trophy was on both teams for today's racing to back up and give Dodger a break.  He ran a total of 6 races for I don't know how many heats - a lot.  Only one race went 3 and out, most went to 5 heats.

He was bobbling the ball a lot on Friday, his stride was off.  I tried moving him around in the line to find a better release point.  Luckily we didn't have to worry about making tight passes to make time, we ran consistently at 20.5-21.5  some times slightly more, always under 24 seconds, so I could play around a bit.  We had only one bad pass the today.  Very good, clean racing.  Trophy's main team, Tactics, came in 3rd in our division both days and our Variety team, Special Ops, the team I box loaded for Friday (and Trophy backed up and ran on today) got 1st in their division both days.

Now, for some rest and recuperation.  I work at 5am tomorrow morning.

Balls to the Wall

I forgot my tripod today, so no videos of my dogs at practice today.

Since Trophy was so off at agility Tuesday, I did just a few (maybe 10) boxturns down and back over one jump with him and one boxturn down over one jump with a full run back.  He felt off when i was restraining/revving him, but he didn't look tweaked.

I did full runs with Pan with a few other dogs in the team.  First full run she blows out the last jump and runs completely though the tunnel in the corner of the room.  Um, wtf?  That's a first...  Then she continued to blow out the last jump unless I ran her in anchor...  very weird behavior for her, but our junior handler was helping run a dog so our already small runback was very crowded.  I'm going to chalk it up to that and hope she does better at our next practice since it'll be the last one before our next tournament.

Then my Demo, my awesome Demo flyball prodigy.  We worked on running over jumps past stationary experienced dogs with everyone on leash.  He was very good despite the other two new dogs constantly trying to run up into his face.  I need to do a lot more desensitizing with him.  He's very good at focusing on me, but I'm really afraid that if we have a dog cross over on him there's going to be bloodshed.  He's very uncomfortable with strange dogs crowding him.

Since that's my worry, next I worked on the exact same drill we did with him last week, two ungated jumps, two gated jumps to a ball on the floor and back.  This week he refused to stay in the jumps, so we need to work on that.  I think I've relied too much on gates in his limited practices, so next week I'm going to work only on his boxturn and recalls over ungated jumps until he understands he has to go through the jumps always.  I digress, so I'm sending him to a ball, as soon as he gets the ball i'm having a teammate recall Trophy over four jumps in an ungated lane.  Demo chased him twice, the first time I barely got his attention.  The second time I screamed UH-UH just as he blew out the ungated jump to chase Trophy (his favorite game) and he dropped to the floor like i shot him.  He didn't chase Trophy again, he stayed in our lane even though he still blew out the ungated jumps.  yay!

So we put Trophy up and I worked on his boxturn.  No fear transferring from the jump board to the box.  No fear of the noise or motion of the box, then we introduced a ball and his turn went to crap.  Ok, have to work on retrieving a stationary ball from the board.  Next week we will work more on the box.

Overall I am very happy with his progress!  He is driving SO well down for his ball it's almost hard to hold him back and he is driving equally hard for his tug back to me (as in I need to invest in gloves, like, now).

I wish we had practice twice a week because I'm so ready to get him running full runs!! :)

Handstands and Boxturns

Yesterday I worked early, took a wonderful nap curled up with my puppies afterwards, and spent the evening training the dogs.  I'm working on Pan, Shiner, Trophy and Demo to teach them handstands, or the "Circus" Trick as I will eventually call it.

Pan needs more work with hind end awareness, and since my sister won't work with her, I am training her on this since it will also help with flyball (hopefully?).  I didn't work with Pan for this video, however.  I'm always trying out new tricks with Trophy, who picks up on new behaviors VERY quickly and he seems to be quite enjoying this one.

I'm using this currently as foundation 2 on 2 off work with Demo with full intentions of turning it into a handstand eventually.

And Shiner?  Anyone who knows Shiner personally and knows his extreme aversion to anything resembling work has to be asking how Shiner got roped into this... well, Shiner loves freeshaping, and I've gotten him to do a few fun tricks.  Quite honestly the thought of Shiner doing a handstand amuses the snot out of me, so I decided to teach it to him.  I don't know if his body will let him do it in the end, but we're trying anyway.

So I started teaching this several weeks ago.  Trophy knows exactly what I want, but he doesn't have the muscle to quite do it yet.  I'm working on just holding the position over and over with him and occasionally asking him to offer it without the prop board (like when I show people at work what we're working on).

Trophy's part starts at 2:40 and Demo at 4:45.  Also, I messed up the dates in the video, they were all taped on 3.12.12.



Also, sorry for all the dog butt in the video, It was hard to get a good angle.


Now, today was my day off.  I worked Demo on his boxturns again.  I'm SO thrilled with his progress in this one session!!



I think the video speaks for itself.

I WOULD have a video of Trophy working on 2x2 weaves, but Trophy's brain decided to take the day off.  We went outside, he pottied, he took some treats and he chased one "warm up" ball... and then he wouldn't pick his nose off the ground to even try to run through the weaves.

I'm just hoping that whatever is wrong with him isn't going to affect our agility class tonight as we are leaving in half an hour...

Sunny Sunday Practice

With work being crazy swamped with requests for training consults I didn't think I was every going to get home today.  3 hours of work then 2 new client assessments and my first in home session with a new client.  It was awesome, but I left home at 7am and didn't get home until 4:30pm.

Despite daylight savings meaning I had an hour less sleep last night, It did mean that I had plenty of daylight to get some training and videos done.  Which is good cause I needed to film some demonstrations for my CTDI (Certified Trick Dog Instructor) certification.  When I got that done (which took forever and 4 different dogs to complete) I pulled out the weaves and the practice board for some weave practice with Trophy and box turn learning with Demo.

I've been putting off really delving into weave training because (other than my lack of time) it's recommended that you use toys to train 2x2 weaves and Trophy is just not toy motivated.  However, yesterday at flyball practice I had an epiphany.  I already taught Trophy to retrieve a ball for a cookie... why wouldn't that work for teaching the weaves?  So I throw the ball to get him moving away from me quickly, and he brings it back for his ultimate reward: FOOD.

My other big concern is over working him.  Trophy loses focus VERY quickly. especially when working outside and when toys are involved... so I did 5 minutes and quit on a good note.  It was very hard for me not to keep working on it, but I just have to remind myself that, in the long run, more SHORT sessions will be better. :)



Then I moved on to Demo's box turn.  He catches on so darn fast!!  Several things I noticed to yell at myself for: 1. pick a word and go with it!  I'm telling him hup, box, and ball.  I catch myself doing this with my trained dogs too.  Some times it's ready box, sometimes ready go, and mostly (i think?) Ready ball.  Bad dog trainer, bad.  2. Make sure to keep an eye on how much the board is sliding down.

Last is something that I couldn't see at the time because my back was turned, but I need to bring home the jump board as as soon as I took the front box prob makeshift thing away he cheated his way off the board without doing a nice tight turn.

Over all, very very happy with his performance.