Tag Archives: contacts

Contact Training

  By Leanne | August 11, 2008 - 6:00 pm | Agility, Dylan, Kim, Mollie, Training
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Had another fun session with Dylan on the mini dogwalk today, I’m really pleased with how he’s working. No creeping or stuttering, just driving forward to his 2o2o and then away on the release. Super confident and fast, exactly what I want to see. No self-releases today either! We did work on some quick releases which went well. We’ve been working on proofing the release word as sometimes Dylan does get a bit sticky on the contacts, but he did nicely today.

He’s still working better with me in front or at the side, but his forward drive is improving whilst I’m still behind. We still need to transfer all this onto a proper full sized dogwalk but I’m feeling more confident about it now.

I used the cone that he has mangled as his toy today, which also went down well. I know I shouldn’t encourage him but he’s already destroyed it, and they’ve only a couple of £’s each.

I did a little bit with Kim, just working out the best way to get that running contact from her. If I’m in front she jumps without fail, but she’s always been a chaser on course. If I’m behind she never jumps, perfect running contact hit with all four paws. Unfortunately I know that if I’m too far behind she’ll stop and wait for me, so I’m going to have to work on getting the timing right. If we can get it right she’ll have a smooth and fast dogwalk, which has so far eluded us in her agility career!

Crazy Dylan

  By Leanne | August 8, 2008 - 2:05 pm | Agility, Dylan, Kim, Mollie
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Dylan is slowly beginning to go crazy! I’m beginning to get an insight into why people don’t recommend Border Collies to “normal” people, and I also didn’t realise how much like a normal Border Collie Dylan really is. I’ve always thought he was very laid-back and relaxed for a Border Collie, but then again ever since we’ve had him he’s been working on tricks, learning flyball, learning agility, and more recently competing at. Take away all those things and he reverts into crazy-land.

Yesterday he found the cone-pile. My dad and sister coach athletics, so we have a lot of these. Dylan thinks it is a pile of cones stacked up for his amusement. He spent two and a half hours on Wednesday playing with one of these cones. (Note: it no longer resembles in anyway a cone.)

So yesterday I got the mini-dogwalk out, thinking we could maybe work on fixing that creepy contact business. The craziness transferred, and we didn’t just get non-creepy contacts, we got “let’s clear the dogwalk in one stride and nail the 2o2o most times but not every time because I’m really really excited and sometimes my legs just get away from me”. I’m not used to highly-motivated dogs, somebody send help!

We actually had a very productive session, once those self-releases had been corrected. One or two were a little creepy but it seems to be relative to my position to the final contact. If I’m alongside there’s no problem, or recalling directly over (but how often do you get to do that in a competition!?), but if I’m too far behind and haven’t left a toy in front he does have a tendency to get a little creepy on the way down. Must work on this!

Creepy Contacts

  By Leanne | May 22, 2008 - 4:17 pm | Dylan
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I should have known something would go wrong at some point! Dylan has been so good and so consistent with his contacts until now that I should have been suspicious, nothing is ever that easy.

At the weekend at EMDAC he was playing in the practise ring with me and he was abruptly very slow and stalky on the downplank of his Aframe and Dogwalk. I did think it might have been the rain; he’s a cautious boy and he hasn’t worked on equipment in the rain before, so it was a bit more slippy than he’s used to. But at training again on Tuesday he was still creeping!

I’ll admit I’m stumped. Kim has never been a creepy creepy dog. Kim’s style was always to launch herself wildly from the highest point, which presents whole other training challenges. Mollie’s style is just to run and hope that eventually you give her a ball, which sometimes includes the reckless leaping but mostly just involves running. So Dylan’s creepiness is a new one for me, and I’m not sure what to do. He is hitting his 2o2o perfectly, and I don’t know how to reward the 2o2o without rewarding the creeping.

We tried a variety of things at training. I tried throwing the toy as he was coming down the downplank, which slowed him down. Great proofing for the contact though! I tried having someone calling him down, which kind of worked but not really because he was looking to me for direction and pretty much ignoring the other person. Again, great that he isn’t getting distracted by the person shouting him but not so great with the creeping, which didn’t go away. I also tried playing tuggy with him on the contact, which did speed up the creeping but it was still creeping, which I’m not happy about.

The general concensus on RuffDogs was to try doing some quick releases with him, which I will try but I’m worried about losing the 2o2o, and apart from that everyone was equally as stumped as me. I’m also going to try lowering the Aframe to see if that encourages him to stride out a bit more, and probably go back to food rewards on the contacts rather than a play after the release. If anybody has any other suggestions I’d be very appreciative!

Dylan’s Blog: Sunday Training

  By Leanne | January 28, 2008 - 4:00 pm | Agility, Dylan's Blog
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Sunday was a mixed bag at training. I didn’t take Kim with me because I figured she needed a week off, we had a pretty hectic January. So just me and the tall boy!

We started off really well, working on the 12 channel weaves about 1″ apart, and on a basic flick-flack. Flick-flacks are not my strong point with Kim, and I hadn’t tried them with Dylan until now, but he was fantastic! Really responsive to his left/right commands, letting me cross in front and behind, and actually watching for the next obstacle rather than concentrating too much on me. I also figured I give the tyre another go, since it was out and nobody was using it. I had been hoping that the last incident was just a bit of a off moment, and apparently it was because today the tyre was not scary at all. We had a lot of fun with it actually, with Dyl working it with me a long way behind or infront, from a wait, from a full out sprint, and with a few left/right rear crosses thrown in for good measure.

Second exercise was a really simple Aframe with a couple of jumps. Now, for whatever reason, Dylan just threw his wait out of the window. I think I have another Aframe crazy dog; he loves it, it’s like a magnet that suckers him up from whatever else he should be doing. So I wasn’t happy about that! And then when we actually got to the Aframe, Dylan just wanted to do a 2o/2off. I’m not sure why because I have a completely different command that he usually foolproof on. I kept demanding a touch behaviour but he was just doing the 2on/2off and then the touch, and so now I’m really not sure what to do. I wanted to avoid the 2on/2off on the Aframe because I hate the shoulder impact, but Dylan is performing the 2o/2o faultlessly, it’s obviously something he understands and feels comfortable with. So I’m not sure whether to keep demanding the touch until we get it, or just let him do what he’s happy with and work around the problem from a different angle.

Best laid plans, eh! Any suggestions very much welcome though, Dylan is having to suffer being my first properly trained agility dog, which means he has to try and overcome my experiments and mistakes. Poor lad!

Dylan’s See Saw

  By Leanne | November 27, 2007 - 8:42 pm | Agility, Dylan, Dylan's Blog
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Dylan went to Wakefield this weekend on his own, which was a very enlightening experience! He definitely doesn’t get as worked up when he’s training on his own, but he still finds the whole thing quite exciting. It was definitely an afternoon of ups and downs – the weaves and the seesaw went brilliantly, but we lost some of the basics.

Positives? I had several comments on how well Dyl was working the weaves , and I was generally very pleased. Twelve channel weaves, starting off at about 4″ apart, then narrowed to 2/3″. We had a couple of pop-outs but it wasn’t his fault. I’m hoping I might be able to borrow Katie‘s set of channels and hopefully get him going through the standard set by the New Year.

We did a bit of the seesaw last time, but Dylan and the seesaw didn’t exactly get off to a flying start. I was kind of preparing myself to have another couple of weeks of very slow introduction, coaxing him to the end until he gets his confidence up. We started in a very similar way on Sunday, with fewer people, and me holding his collar. A few repetitions and then back onto some jumping exercises. Towards the end I managed to get another couple of minutes on the seesaw, and the tall boy managed to surprise me! I had no-one helping me the second time, so I held the seesaw myself, lowering it when he got onto the contact. After a couple of careful attempts, Dylan suddenly clicked and started completely ignoring the movement and me, only interested in the treats! On his final go I was barely slowing the seesaw at all, and I left it at that. Very pleased! I was planning on going with a 4-on for the seesaw, but Dylan wanted to do a 2o/2o and so I’ll do that instead since he’s obviously happy with it, and he’s adjusting for any bounce-back off the impact which negates any worries I had.

His dogwalk and Aframe contacts were pretty good. Had a few creepy bits on the Aframe but nothing I’m overly worried about.

Negatives: Well, after happily doing the tyre all session he completely freaked out on the last go, for no reason that I (or anybody else) could see. We finally got him back through it, and hopefully it will all be forgotten by next time (too optimistic on my part!?) but it had me worried. He also took a random dislike to one of the jumps for a while and kept going under the pole, definitely not a habit I want to encourage. He cured himself of that later by deciding it would be nice to take it on the way to the dogwalk, at a steep angle, and cleared it beautifully.

He’s in for a busy weekend, coming to Wyre at Myerscough with Kim on Saturday, and possibly to Doncaster with his favourite girl Jet on Sunday.