Agility Updates

Three weeks of Agility updates? GO:

My sister has been sick so I've had both dogs for Agility.
Three weeks ago (8/21) My instructor ran Pan.  She did REALLY good, despite taking a sudden obsession with the teeter (ala Trophy style-TEETER!MUST.CLIMB!)  which is so WEIRD because up to this week she has been doing the teeter, but obviously nervous about the sudden loss of gravity.  We were doing a sequence that had a jump and she needed to bypass the teeter to go to a tunnel that started at the other side of the teeter, she climbed the teeter probably 12 times before she did it right.  And she was HAPPY about the teeter. lol.

My instructor's only two comments were: "man, she really does have Unicorns in her head, doesn't she!?"  and "SOMEONE TEACH THIS DOG SOME FREAKING WEAVES."  To which i respond, I'm going to order her a Mad Dog Metalworks tag that says "I do what the butterfly-eating, rainbow-shitting unicorns in my head tell me to do"  and second, not my dog, not my weave problem.

Trophy was awesome.  I'm relaxing while running him, he's not trying to blind cross behind me randomly anymore.  We're totally syncing as a team!

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The following week we did not have class.

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This week (9/2)  I ran both dogs.  Yeah, agility kicked my butt.  BUT Pan's normal problem of losing focus and avoiding work by sniffing around the course only happened once - the rest of the time she was totally engaged in agility, she was just running her own damn course!  She was all: JUMP! THIS JUMP OVER HERE! TEETER! OMFG A-FRAME!!!!!!  It was hilarious, really.  I actually got her to do some sorta-weaves with a cheese stick in my hand, but she has no idea what she's doing, she's just flailing through the poles trying to get to the cheese in my hand.

We worked a sequence again that had a jump curled around under the a-frame, so the dog sees TUNNEL-A-FRAME-TUNNEL  (yeah, just like that).  Pan did really well, surprisingly, with obstacle discrimination.  Trophy, otoh, was like TUNNEL!  At one point, he took off for the left tunnel (when i am cuing him CLIMBIT)  I uh-uhed him so he backed out, told him to climb it, he went to the right side of the tunnel (next to where i'm standing)  I uh-uhed again, and cued climbit, and we had a bit of a stare down, and then the little shit ran through the tunnel anyway.  jerk.

Other than that, he was having some release problems again, both at the start line and off the table.  Like he doesn't believe that i really do want him to get moving.  No problem with other contact obstacle releases. so weird.

Trophy's going to be an Agility dog after all!

Trophy had an AMAZING class tonight!   His weaves still need a little work, but he was really picking up speed.  He was so HAPPY to be on the course, everyone said how excited he looked.  Maybe the cooler weather was agreeing with him?  Even his jump sequences were rockin'!  The fact that almost every run had a teeter was just icing on the cake for Trophy. Haha :)

Tonight my instructor asked if I was ever planning on trialing with him.

Yes, I answered. Do you think he's ready?

Her response was something like  "psshhhyeah". lol!

So, we are planning his agility Debut for January as I will be taking a break from Flyball tournaments this winter, so I will have the money to enter a trial or three. :)

I'm really excited with this change in attitude with the addition of hotdogs to his training program. :)

Only downside is that the trial she wants me to enter is an AKC trial... I was hoping to NOT ever give the AKC money... BUT  it means I can aim for a MACH with him...  haha... yeah right.  :)

Trophy's New Game Plan

Last week I was seriously considering pulling Trophy from Agility.

Between his recurring back issues where he's had pinched nerves in his spine from several vertebrae that are frequently moving out of alignment and causing issues and the fact that he has been so darn pokey and uninterested on course I was ready to throw in the towel and call it quits.  He wasn't having fun so I wasn't having fun so he was having even less fun... it was a vicious cycle.

So my instructor ran him for a bit and really got him revved up and really into the game again.  His back was still out (didn't have time to take him in to the Chiro until yesterday) so he wasn't in top form, but for the first time in a long time we were having fun.  A fellow student gave us some hot dogs to up the rewards (Zukes apparently isn't good enough for agility) and both Pan and Trophy got into it more.

Fast forward to today.  Took a huge container of hot dogs with us.  Took a deep breath.  Promised Trophy we'd have FUN.  and off we went.  The course today was really fun and challenging without being frustrating. Started with a jump to Trophy's favorite obstacle - the teeter which I'm sure helped him - to the table and then a tricky set up where the dogs needed to NOT get sucked into a tunnel while we did a front cross in front of the second jump to the weaves.  I think Trophy and I were the only team who really nailed front cross correctly.  Also, his weaves were really, really good!

His sends out to jumps was also very good.

I'm really happy with how today went.  One week at a time with him.  Maybe we'll actually get to a trial yet. :)

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!!! :)

Demo, Super-Awesome Flyball Dog In The Making

This weekend can best be summed up in one word: HOT.

Heat index climbed well above 100 degrees on Saturday with no clouds in the sky and a pathetic breeze.  Racing, the humans, and the dogs, got so hot that we took a 2 hour break from 3pm to 5pm to cool down.

Thank goodness Sunday cooled down significantly (if you can call 80 "cool").

Pan and Trophy earned their next titles, Pan got to try her paw as Start Dog (and loved it!), and Demo debuted in preflight and totally rocked it.  His focus was SPOT ON and AMAZING with the comotion in the race building from the main ring.

My dogs and I managed to run clean the vast majority of the weekend.  The only blemishes being a bad pass by Pan on Malley because Malley bobbled the ball the same instant I released Pan, so I literally couldn't do anything to stop it, and the second being a random, and very out-of-character, early dropped ball by Trophy.

Due to the heat and the ability of our teams to easily run under 24.999 seconds (in order to earn 25 points per heat)  I didn't even bother trying to push close passes.  Most of my passes this weekend we around 8 feet wide.  We didn't have a pass caller either, but no one wanted to rerun dogs on Saturday, the wider the better as long as we were making time!

At one point the head table told our times keeper to let us know our passes were all like 8 feet, and she promptly told them we don't care today as long as we run clean. :)

Pan earned 900+ points and Trophy 800, so I'm happy.  Trophy's foot held up great even though he had to suffer through the torture of having his feet encased in vet wrap all weekend.

The big star of the weekend, for me anyway, was Demo.  Talk about cool as a cucumber.  When he hit the lanes he had a two track mind:  1. BALL, 2. TUG!  He was so focused, confident, and fast despite the temperature.  His fastest time was a 4.636, and he averaged 5.1's and that was with him taking a ball off the floor and me too tried to run with him as much as I need to to keep him motivated and pouring on the speed.  We will get there!

You don't have to jump so high, BabyDog, they're only 8 inch jumps!

I am SO GLAD I don't have to get up tomorrow, the sun gave my body a beating, I am so drained!  However, the Neutrogena sunscreen I bought (SPF100) is pretty amazing.  I managed to walk away with only a burned left shoulder. :)

Trophy's Flyball Hangover in the car on the way home Sunday.

About to get my flyball on!

There hasn't been much to blog about the past few weeks.  Trophy returned to agility the week after class was canceled due to heat.  I jumped him at 16 inches and no A-frame.  We did pretty well together, and we made it through the whole class.  This past week we returned to our normal 20 inch jumps, and other than a little motivation issues, I think we did well.

This weekend is the July flyball tournament in Sandusky.  I'm super excited as this tournament marks one year of competing for me and Trophy!!  I can't believe it's already been a year!!  It's a U-FLI tournament and we're hoping to walk away with at least Pan's TF-III (1,000points) and Trophy's TFE (2,500 points).

Not really looking forward to running in the heat tomorrow.  I finished packing my car 10:30 and I was COVERED in dripping sweat.  10:30pm should NEVER be this hot and humid.  I thought I moved home from Texas to get out of that nasty stuff?!

I'm as ready as I'll ever be for the heat.  4 gallons of water just for the dogs, cooling coats, 2 big box fans and 2 smaller battery operated fans.  I'm as good as I'll ever be, I guess.  Not to mention the million rolls of vet wrap I crammed in my bag to wrap Trophy's feet with.

I also, after much debate, decided not to camp tomorrow night at the grounds and instead will be driving home to enjoy a cold shower and my own bed before getting up early and trucking out.  (Let's hope I don't get a ticket on the way home like I did last year, however.  We don't have to make EVERYTHING a tradition.)

Ok, time to take a quick shower, throw some extra clothes in a bag (cause I'm sure I'm going to sweat through them all) and hop into bed.  Tomorrow morning will be here before I know it.

Also,

yeah, fast asleep. hehe

Demo is making his preflight debut tomorrow!  * excited*.  No box turn, no expectations, just getting him on the lanes with other dogs running in a separate ring.  Experience, he needs it.  Can't wait to see some of his times, even without the box turn.  Boy is mighty fast.