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Continual Improvement August 15, 2008 The thing I love about agility is that there are
so many aspects and so many details that can always lead to improvement. With times getting tighter and tighter and
training improving I am always looking for ways to improve my dogs understanding to create tighter and faster lines.
The great thing about having a handling system is that you can rely on your dog understanding where they are going at all
times, or at least you could if your dogs read the rule book. I
have been experimenting allot with my dogs (and students dogs) and really seeing if the dogs understand the system as well
as the handlers and much to my surprise there is allot of room for improvement. Within Greg's system the dog should
be chasing the handlers blind cross body line (BCBL) while taking all active obstacles in their path in order to get into
the handlers reinforcement zone (RZ). The RZ should act like a very strong magnet which is always trying to pull the
dog in, therefore creating tight turns. The problem with most dogs is that the obstacles are much more valuable than
the handlers reinforcement zone so instead of always trying to drive to RZ the dogs just stay out on their lines and wait
for the BCBL to be altered. This is probably because people do much more sequencing and obstacle work than flat work
and there is more reinforcement for obstacles than the handler. The system is strongly based on positional cues but
the funny thing is that allot of dogs running in the system have no clue about positional cue. If the dogs do not understand
position then they really have no idea where they are going until the BCBL is changed and if they are waiting for the BCBL
to change then they have no time to alter their stride to get a tight turn. If you want to test your dogs understanding
of the system try thee exercise below. Leave dog at the start line and try leading out to each lead out position.
When you release your dog at each position fight the urge to front cross as they commit to the jump and just stand perfectly
still.
If the dog has a good understanding of Greg's system they will collect
before take off to get a tight turn based on your position. Most dogs understand not to continue driving forward if
handler is standing still but the part of the manual the dogs didn't read is "drive to reinforcement zone".
If the dogs don't want to drive as fast as they can to the handler then that is where they are losing time not only on
lead outs but also on the rest of the course. With my dogs I found they did collect and turn nicely over the bar but
then they immediately slowed down when they saw I remained stationary after they had landed. Although this isn't
a huge deal for a mini dog, a large strided dog needs to understand "take all active obstacles then DRIVE to reinforcement
zone". So we have been working on some games to fix this issue and they have resulted not only in better lines
but also more power off the start line which I have never gotten with Chase and Bounder. One big example of understanding positional cue was in the steeplechase round one at the nationals:
So if the dog has read the rule book they know that is handler has no motion
at #3 jump they should power off the start line, alter stride as commitment to #2 then drive hard to get to reinforcement
zone. There weren't that many people that did their lead-out at #3 but of those that did allot of dogs were thinking
"poles!" until their handlers BCBL was altered at commitment to #2. None of the dogs bit the poles but if
they were not planning on driving hard to RZ then they would not be altering their stride and would then end up taking off
earlier and on a straight line to the poles instead of collecting and turning over the bar. Up until now I have never
really trained positional cue (except for circle work) I have just tried to be consistent and hope the dog figures it out
after doing lots of double box and jumping drills, but with my next dog I will make it a priority before we do any sequencing.
If you have any thoughts on the subject send me an e-mail!
AAC Nationals 2008 August
15, 2008 This years nationals was by far one of the best. Everything
ran so smoothly and the level of competition is growing every year. All the dogs ran well and had a great time touring
around New Brunswick. The accommodations at Bethany Bible Collage were great and we found that with six people, nine
dogs and a four month old baby there was still plenty of room. We stayed an extra day after the competition to go touring
around the province and spend some time at the beach. Preston made his
debut at a national level in round one of the steeplechase and I was so pleased with his attitude and speed. His weaves
and frames were great and he would have made it to the next round but he went around a jump on my lead out pivot. Riot was one hundred times better than last year, she didn't leave the ring, she kept
her head and even had some placements in individual rounds. She made it into the steeplechase finals and finished in
second place just one tenth of a second behind the winner. Chase had an
amazing jumpers round on Sunday with only one other dog in the competition beating his time and a great standard round on
Saturday. He had a bar and a refusal that kept us out of the final placements but I was still very pleased. Bounder had some great competition this year and ended up finishing in third place overall
due to a refusal in the second standard round. This year was very exciting as we had to push for speed in every round
as we were neck and neck with our friend and training partner Roxanne with her schnauzer Bella. Bounder also made it
into the steeplechase finals and won first place. We now have a month
left before our trip to Finland and we still have lots to work on. Chases running a-frame fell apart so I am now going
back and taking my time to fade the box so that it is consistent for our runs at worlds. Bounder continues to get faster
and faster but you can never have too much speed at the world championships so our main focus for the next month will be motivation
and speeding up her see saw. As for Preston and Riot they will be put on the back burner for a while as the other two
prepare for our fifth world championship.
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| Dog's getting a massage before final day of competition |
Home Again.... I am
back and unpacked from my travels and had a great time. I caught up with some old friends and made some new ones, saw
allot of very talented dogs and great handlers. Both seminars were filled with people who had a great understanding
of Greg Darrett's system so we got to do lots of challenging sequences along with some skills training. All my dogs were happy and healthy when I returned home but I think their brains may have
gone a bit mushy. They were happy to be back to working and playing more often and we have been cramming allot
of training in whenever possible to get ready for nationals. We have a big CKC trial this weekend in Calgary and then
we are back off to New Brunswick for the AAC Nationals. Chase, Bounder and Riot are entered and Preston gets to come
along for the steeplechase event. Unfortunately our USDAA local
qualifier event was cancelled so I have no way of getting my Q's to get to the regional in California and then of course
the national. So I had to cancel my flights as I didn't see much point in going all that way just to run in team.
I guess next year I will have to plan some trips earlier in the year to make sure I qualify. But the good news is I
will save allot of money and be able to go to Seattle this fall for some Greg Darrett workshops.
Another Adventure Awaits
July
8th, 2008
I'm very excited to be traveling for the next couple of weeks. I will
be teaching some seminars in New Brunswick then going to Norway for four more days of teaching. The dogs are all staying
home and enjoying the fresh mountain air in Canmore with my mom and hopefully staying in shape. This is the start of
a busy couple of months with both US regionals and Canadian nationals. I have one chance to qualify for the USDAA Bay
Team regional in Calgary one day after flying back from Norway so hopefully everyone remembers their job! I am hoping
to qualify Chase, Bounder and Riot for Grand Prix and Steeplechase and then in DAM team at the regional. I will try
to post some updates while abroad but I might be kinda busy!
Success at the 2008 Regional!
June 23rd, 2008
We survived the 30 degree heat on Saturday and the pouring
rain all day Sunday and came out on top. After 6 cumulative rounds of competition as well as the steeplechase challenge
we came home with lots to brag about.
Bounder had two fast, clean jumpers runs and two fast, clean standard rounds.
She got lots of points in her gamblers runs but didn't get the main gamble in the first run of the weekend. She
had great competition this year which really put pressure on us to go for speed. At the end of the weekend she managed
to pull off her seventh year win by just a few points! Bounder has now competed in 8 regional competitions (7 Canadian
and 1 American) and has won each and every one of them. Bounder also made it into the steeplechase finals
with two clean runs and came in second in the finals. She is such a great little dog and only continues to show improvement.
I am so happy that she was able to run this year and work very hard to defend her title.
Chase also had an amazing weekend,
he started it off with getting the fastest time out of all dogs in round one of steeplechase which helped make up his 5 faults
for a missed a-frame contact. Chase won the "Top Jumpers Dog" award out of all dogs competing and had a great
standard run on sunday but with a missed a-frame contact. Overall he came in second place with the most amount of points
he has earned in his career. Though his running a-frame was only 50% Chase didn't drop a single bar all weekend
until the steeplechase finals.
Riot was the super star of the weekend
going clean in all jumper and standard runs. She won the "Top Standard Dog" award out of all dogs competing
and ultimately won her height division. Riot also made it into the steeplechase finals and won the 16' division.
Her contacts and weaves were great and she listened very well.
Preston got to run in his first ever trial in the
steeplechase competition. He measured over size so I ran him 16" FEO. His a-frames were amazing and he got
some tough weave pole entrances. He would have made it into the finals if he wasn't running FEO. I think he
will go back into training for a while now until he has better skills but I got a good idea of what I need to work on.
Here is a video of a few of Chase and Riot's runs, unfortunately
I didn't get any footage of Bounder or Preston.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sby7SmpyN7Q
One Week Left...
June 14th,
2008
After being lame for a week Bounder finally got to go see the chiropractor and she is doing much better. We
are just working on speed and drive mostly on the flat and we will see if she is alright to run at regionals. She
has a bye into nationals because she won the 2007 nationals so there is no need to run her if she is not 100%.
Riot
has made huge progress on her running contact training; we almost have the plank up to full height in just 2 weeks.
With Silvia's method you are supposed to go slow and get in many successful repetitions but we stayed at each height until
we had 80% success in two consecutive sessions. I am tempted to try the whole dogwalk but I think I will wait until
regionals is over with to avoid any confusion.
Preston ran his first ever course this week (just in time for regionals) and we are going to set up another one today.
We are just working on steeplechase right now and his weaves and a-frame are holding up nicely. We are still working
on lots of jump grids and trying to get those turns a bit tighter but I think he will be ready for the steeplechase at regionals
next week.
Rogue will be back with us this week and we will be working on proofing her and Preston's weave poles.
Rogue's running a-frame is amazing, she has had nearly 100% in all the proofing and sequencing. She gets four feet
in the yellow every time and it is totally independent. I am very pleased with the method we used.
Two new
videos of Riot's running contact plank:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwXkSvT1e4s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hYh-6xr49U
Two More weeks!
June 6th,
2008
Ok, these running contacts are taking
over my life! I have started to retrain Riot's contacts a few times before but I am determined to follow through
this time. My plan was to also re-train Bounder with Silvia's method just for fun, all my dogs seem to love running
to a bowl of food so it's not like they mind all the repetition. Bounder did not catch on as quickly as Riot, probably
because she has been re-trained way too many times but Bounder has been limping for about 5 days now so she hasn’t been
able to practice. I'm not sure what she did, just jumped off the couch and is favoring her right front. She
went to the chiropractor a few days ago and her shoulder was out but she still looks pretty bad. I am giving her some
time off to heal and depending on how she feels in a couple weeks I may pull her from regionals. I don’t want
to put her in regional is she hasn’t done any physical activity for a while as I don’t want to risk making it
worse. Bounder doesn’t seem bothered, she is getting lots of attention and learning some new tricks which she
really enjoys.
Running Contacts
June 2, 2008
Roxanne's
kelpie Rogue (aka pirogue) is here for a couple of days and our goal is to get her running a-frame trained so that when Roxanne
gets back she will be ready for her first trial at the Alberta/NWT AAC regionals. Roxanne trained Rachael Sander’s
method with the PVC box, Rogue hasn’t done many sessions on an a-frame because Roxanne doesn’t have regular access
to contact equipment but she is doing very well. We put the a-frame to full height yesterday and today I did one session
with the box faded. Here is a video of our session today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILnlPJuGJd0
Agility League 2008
June
1, 2008
Edmonton's agility club PACE is once again organizing a summer agility league.
This is the second year and already there are two different clubs participating. The league is a 6 week competition
that meets on Tuesday nights where teams of four agility dogs compete for points. Each week there is a standard course
and a games course, the goal is to run fast and clean to accumulate as many points for your team as possible. The top
three scores of each team are taken and scores are tallied each week and accumulated over the six weeks of competition.
This year Sherwood Barks has joined and will have their own seven teams competing against each other and the other PACE teams.
I am running Bounder, Chase and Riot on teams with Sherwood Barks and I am finding it is a great opportunity to push my handling
and training in a competitive atmosphere.
Last Tuesday was the first night and unfortunately Chase and Bounder could
not run because they were sore from getting their rabies vaccine. Riot did great and ended up with two clean, fast
runs which helped put her team in 10th place overall (16 teams total). For detailed team results: http://www.paceagility.org/standings.html
Contact Training
May 27,
2008
Today was Preston's thirds session on the teeter, we started to back chain this
week and I am very pleased so far. You can definitely see how all those tricks helped with his body awareness.
We have been working through a few issues with the nose targeting:
1. His cue to target somehow became me stopping,
so if I started to move away he would look at me, then as soon as I stopped he would target, so we have been working on that
lately.
2. The first session I did with Preston I just put the full height teeter in sequence and said target as he was
getting on, he was very surprised that it moved and flew off another 5 times before I put him away and thought about what
I was doing. I realized that we have been doing so many reps of our running dogwalk this month that he has learned to
accelerate with full speed up the dogwalk which looks allot like the teeter :) So now I had a dog who was fearful of
the teeter. We went back to teeter games for a while to build up more confidence before starting to back chain again.
He is still a bit hesitant on the teeter but I don't think it will take too long to get the speed back.
Walking in the Woods
May
7, 2008
Just some pictures from our walk today
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