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.

It's All About Therapy

It's not violence, it's therapy. 

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.

A Noob's Guide to Flyball: Chapter 3: Letting Him Fly a guest blog by Matty

The hardest part for anyone running a dog in flyball is trusting your dog to do his job.  This can be twice as challenging (i imagine) if you haven't participated in or witnessed the training process and are running someone else's dog.

Ok so for the third installment of my noob's guide the executive decision was made (Lex) that I should talk about “letting Dem fly” … which is still something I have to actively think about during tournaments. In a nutshell what this consists of is that while I am lining up with Demo and waiting for my cue to send him on his way, I hold him by the hips. It’s the easiest spot to hold the kid for how he lines up. What my horrible habit is with this is that when I let him go I don’t just let him go, I push him a little bit too.

Now the initial thought here is one of a push start, like an extra boost for him. Bueno, right? WRONG. What it does in all actuality is it slows him down because while I AM pushing him forward I am also holding onto him that much longer than I should be and that in turn slows him down and adds time on to our starts. No bueno.

One of the peeps on the team, Lori, told me I was doing this and told me how to release Dem properly. Essentially it was as simple as actively thinking about what I was doing while I let him go. I wasn't supposed to be pushing him, but just pulling my arms away from him so I could “let him fly” as she said.  So its something I have to constantly work on whenever I get the chance to with him.  It’s one of those things I have to mentally check myself on every time we race (one of many) and if I push him then either Lori and/or Lex will for sure call me out on it. I don’t think I've ever had a race where one of them wasn't present.

That’s a shot of me letting him fly,  and as you can see Demo is a good 7-8 feet away from me already and I’m taking off at my jog/sprint after him. Zoom zoom.  

I wish I had a picture of me pushing him from when I starting this addiction but I didn't have anyone to take pictures then and I really don’t want to have to push him on purpose just for photo’s sake.

For those of you who are proponents of the “push” method and not the “fly” method, please consider this. You wouldn't push a car while the driver is flooring the gas pedal would you? And yes, Demo IS that fast… I mean his name is Demolition for a reason, come on.

Eevee's Death Wish

Thursday July 25 started out normal enough,  took Eevee to work with me.  Tasha was going to drop off Demo and Trophy for me before agility and take Eevee home.  Well, she made plans with a friend so my Dad brought up the boys and I sent Eevee home with him.

At 11 or 11:30pm she started trying to throw up and couldn't bring anything up.

I took her outside and she peed, then she refused the treat I gave her for coming inside.  Eevee never refuses treats.  I picked her up and that's when I felt how absolutely bloated she was.  Her chest was puffed out and everything inside her rib cage felt like it was about to burst.  Her abdomen wasn't as bloated, but she was definitely feeling stuffed.

I freaked out.

I woke up my mom, I woke up my sister and we rushed her to the emergency vet.

She tried 6 times to vomit on the way to the vet and couldn't bring anything up.

The vet took her back to get some x-rays and this is what we found:

The red circled area is her stomach. You can see it literally trying to squeeze out between her ribs.

It turns out that despite already having fed E dinner at work, but my father took the Kong Wobbler I have and FILLED IT TO THE BRIM with dog food (it holds about 3 cups) and gave it to Eevee to go to town... and didn't tell me.

OMFG I was so mad.  $300 emergency vet bill because no one can stop feeding the puppy.  She weighs 22 pounds!  She only eats 1 cup of food TOTAL a day!!

My sister volunteered to stay up all night with E.  Good thing too, as she started vomiting up food after we got home... and of course the pig would IMMEDIATELY try to gobble everything back down if you didn't clean it up instantly.

I took over at 8am.  This is what her night looked like, let me just say it wasn't much better for me all day until about 6pm:

It was hell.

Now, Eevee is fine and appears to have no long term ill affects... other than she is ALWAYS HUNGRY AND SCAVENGING FOR ANYTHING THAT MIGHT POSSIBLY SORT-OF RESEMBLE FOOD.

On Wednesday she climbed up onto the table in the sun room to chow down on cat food.

Thursday night she was outside for 5 minutes, came inside and puked up a large amount of DIRT.

This kid is going to kill herself........and now I have to go invest in a basket muzzle for her to wear any time she's not IN HER FREAKING KENNEL.

Ugh.

It is a damn good thing she's so freaking cute.

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...