Tag Archives: agility training

Training x2

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Agility = good! Dyl’s seesaw is looking great after our confidence building sessions. I’ve lost the stop on the end but I don’t really care, Dylan isn’t brave enough to fly it and it’s faster. If we need it back later we can work on it, I’m sure. I also worked on 180 pull-thrus, because I hate training them.

I’ve also realised I have a tendency to choose exercises where the dog is on my right. I’m right handed so that’s not really a surprise, but I should try and plan exercises and courses for the left as it’s becoming a weakness.

Flyball = good! The girls were both a bit bonkers; Mollie did a few re-runs that she shouldn’t and Kim has apparently decided she should always run lead, as every time I turned around she’d lined herself up at 25ft, very pointedly ignoring the dogs behind her. Dyl actually looked good over 14″, he did run lead and his striding was excellent. We put a regulator in approaching the box to make him extend into his turn which worked really well, I’ve got to get back to doing that more regularly.

Long Summer

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Excellent flyball training this past weekend, all the dogs worked extremely hard. Dylan still isn’t comfortable running with Norah but she’s not in his team this weekend so I am hopeful that he’ll be relaxed and happy about being in the ring.

Our official complaint to the BFA regarding the incident at Swallownest has been upheld. I’m not comfortable blogging about it really, except to say I’m extremely grateful to everyone who supported us through the decision to log the complaint, and to the BFA Disciplinary Committee for their prompt and decisive action. Although I’m relieved, I’m also a bit sad that it came to this. The dog belongs to a team we have respected and enjoyed racing against for years, and have had a good relationship with in the past. I hope they are able to acknowledge that this wasn’t a personal attack or similar. I also hope that the dog is not as stressed and afraid in the future.

Time to move on.

We took the dogs to Digley for a swim on Sunday, it was too hot to walk and Mollie was exhausted following her hard training on Saturday. I was prepared for once and took an empty plastic bottle with me to throw for them (fill it 1/4 with water and it’s brilliant), so they got a really good workout but stayed cool. We even managed to persuade Kim to swim a couple of metres! She still flails around quite a lot but she’s not as panicked as she used to be.

It was far too hot on Monday to do anything, so we’ve had a quiet week. Agility training as usual (I’ll blog about that seperately!) and we’re planning a long walk this morning which includes going somewhere completely new, and meeting a tiny puppy!

Kim gets her photo on this post because she does not get to meet the puppy. Her tolerance for puppies is currently hovering at -47, with likelihood to drop to -368 on actually meeting a puppy.

Weaves

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We had fun with weaves at training this week. He did so well on the Wicked Weaves course at the weekend, but there were no really difficult entries and I was able to stay with him the whole time, but it reminded me that we did need to work a bit more on our weaves!

Offside entries are still weaker than nearside, he can hit nearside entries from any angle (including distance 180s, whoo!).

I still have to work on running on ahead as this does cause him to pop sometimes in competitions, but it’s a hard thing to train as he feels confident at training about being left behind. It’s actually really tough trying to make him pop in training!

The word “no” is banned at training but I use other verbal NRMs. (It’s usually “what a cheat!” although I use “that’s not a wait!” quite a lot these days as well). I had a discussion with one of our other handlers on verbal markers and it made me really listen to what I was doing! Of course, Dyl gets 2 chances at something and if we get it wrong the second time, we make it easier, so it’s not like he hears a lot of NRMs anyway. Especially compared to the amount of RMs!

Sticky Summer

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Very humid at training this week. Always intended this week to be an “easy” week, confidence boosting for dogs and handlers. We did short, easy sequences (6-8 obstacles) on a one-shot basis (you get one go, and then on to the next sequence). This is brilliant for G1-3 dogs, or for G5 dogs who need to get their confidence back, or other G5 dogs who are coming back from injury and need to get back in tune with their handlers. Everyone comes away feeling positive, and it helps to stop people obsessing over negatives. We talked a lot about being able to run a course, discussing what happened, and then letting it go before running the next course. Taking away things to work on is important, but seeing the next course as a fresh and seperate challenge is also important.

I need to work on this as well.

Dylan was brilliant. We had fun, it was smooth and easy and Dyl was floating over everything with big, powerful jumps. No worries. We’ll see how it goes at the weekend when we’re working with dogs he doesn’t know. Bakewell is normally good to us.

Busy Busy

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Seesaw work this week. Some improvement but I have a list of things still left to work on.

I’ve also been working on introducing tighter turns, ala Silvia Trkman. We’ve done lots of work at home (and on walks, etc etc) but Dyl actually had a lot of the basic skills already, it was just refining what was there, adding a command and changing my reward position. The difficult bit with Dyl has always been the jumping, I think because he has a tendency to jump from his front end and because he is over-cautious about poles. That means he generally doesn’t turn in the air, he turns before or after the jump (yes, also down to my training I’m sure!). We’re currently working on 25cm height and it looks good, but the challenge will really be when we get to 45cm+ I think, that seems to be when he begins to struggle.

I have also, hesitantly, decided to use just one command for turning tight both ways (kip). This is based on my weaknesses and not Dylan’s! I already have a tendency to confuse myself with lefts and rights (not my strongest point), particularly when I’m thinking on my feet, and I don’t want Dylan to get confused by what the command means because I’m inept. So I’m going to rely on body language for direction and the command for the action of turning tight to the wing. Silvia does mention this very briefly in her DVD and says it’s ok to do that, so we’ll see how it works.