[Barb VanEseltine]

Happy Tuesday,

Another ridiculously hot training session — I didn’t insist on a clean run for the second JWW course. We got all the parts and had a pretty good plan, so I’m calling that a win.

The whole running time of this session was only 6 minutes and 39 seconds; so I’m moving in the correct direction. Of course, the temperature was 85 degrees in bright sun.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how this went; there was some shouting LEFT, LEFT when I wanted RIGHT (and vice versa) but mostly I communicated what I wanted.

Here’s where this course got me:
– Enzo read the line 5-6-7 as 5-6-23; I did a little zoom there and my motion clearly sent him to 23
– I had trouble with the turn from 10 to 11; I didn’t want to run and decel, so I was stuck with an (often late) verbal.
– For #18, I knew I could do it as a push from the landing side but I wondered about doing it as a call and send. Eventually, I managed to make that work.
As you will clearly see, my handling is getting less motion based and more verbal. I haven’t shown my dog since March (we have our only local trial this weekend—hurray!), so I’m not sure what my handling will look like when I get back to it on a routine basis.

Then on the final run we didn’t get 11, 12, 13 which is usually an easy skill for us. After video review, the handler failed to support the turn away to the weaves. <grin>

Fun courses!!

Thanks, Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Again,

Well it certainly looks nice and I do wish I didn’t have to deal with mowing. It’s not that I mind the mowing part, I mind the mow and move everything and mow some more part.

Thanks for explaining!
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Good morning, Tracy!

We had a hellacious thunderstorm last night and we’re all a tad short on sleep. Then, the training yard was covered with 12 to 18 inch bits of trees which blew in from the neighbor’s place. And, naturally, the course I built yesterday needed some repair. So we didn’t get off to the start I hoped. It is hot out, that’s the one thing I knew was going to happen. So we ran the first course and now we’re enjoying the A/C. Second course later.

Here is Enzo running the first JWW course. I think his biggest problem was his handler not remembering the course. And there were a couple of surprises.
– I didn’t appreciate that #7 would require an IN
– For some reason, my body wanted to insert a FC between 8 and 9; this is NOT a good plan but it took 3 tries to get rid of it
– I thought the BC between 14 and 15 would be hard but it wasn’t (how nice).

We are TRYING to adopt the less is more philosophy, so we only ran it 3 times. Not coincidentally, it took 3 tries to have a clean run. <grin>

Thanks,
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Denise,

Your dog looked great to me but my eyes got trapped by the surface! What are you are running on? How does it work for you?

Thanks,
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Tracy,

First, thank you for acknowledging that every dog doesn’t need to sit with laser focus on the first jump! I think Casper might be willing to do that (eventually) but Enzo never has. He still knows where it is and how to take it.

I think my VIDEO strategy for this summer is going to be: let Casper do anything he CAN do with reasonable success. Let Enzo take over. At home, I’ll probably work both on both, within reason. <grin>

Also, thanks for the 5 minutes per day instead of per lesson or per week.

Here is Casper working on some of the Lead Out Hot Topic. Both Enzo and Casper have seen this before and are reasonably good at it. As you will see, Casper has lots of other issues (bars, way wide, loves tunnels) but he is pretty good at this.

I was pretty careless about running the course you designed; I bungled #1 and maybe another one. Oops, sorry. In my defense, I was focusing on the object of the lesson. <grin>

The only one I had lead-out trouble with was Sequence 4. When I led out too close to #3, he looked over the wrong shoulder (so I couldn’t direct him properly to the jump). I fixed that by moving him to a shallower position (“slicier”).

Thanks,
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

I forgot to mention: a million thanks for posting the courses on Sunday mornings. This makes a big difference to me as far as course building.

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Tracy,

I think the best thing to say is that I’m glad you have a much sharper eye than I do. I’ll try to get in some more training tomorrow and see if I can follow your advice!

Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Tracy,

I haven’t taught either the 180 RC or the treadle wrap with connection. I usually teach them as a specific behavior with a cue.

But I’m up to try it. As you can see I wasn’t wildly successful.
This video is too long, I just couldn’t figure out how to cut it and still show you what happened. Maybe glance through and pick places to help me. Sorry.

Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Great feedback – thanks again for all the time and careful attention you put into your critiques!

I will be very careful to have as much Diane as possible on my sends. <grin — first funny typo I’ve found>

More later, I hope!

Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Tracy,

Slippery roads means class canceled means time to train my own dogs! You will notice that I start out with the long line on Casper. Then the line goes on the toy. At the end, they were both free for a while. I am trying very, very hard not to make a mistake and have to walk him down. The line does, however, sometimes cause jumps and bars to come down.

Regarding serpentines: I have put in seemingly endless hours working serps with previous dogs. I will say, however, that I am a bit nervous about them in competition. It seems to me that I am ALWAYS way behind praying that Enzo recognizes the pattern. I expect I will need to get Casper even more familiarity with them, since he is faster. Comment?

In that light, I did get impatient and included some complete serpentines. 🙂
I put a map video before the serp one; numbers start at 5 — it just shows an example of how I can get so far behind.
At the very end I put in a bit of show-off stuff. 😉

Here is my work from pack 2.

Thanks!
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Here is my sending video from pack 2.

As you can see, Casper sends beautifully but drifts around the turn, especially turning left. I tried a few things to tighten them up without very good success. (Why do I bend over when trying to communicate something?) Ideas? Maybe I should place the toy on the tight return line? I thought I had tried strong counter motion but I couldn’t find it on the video. (As we used to say in the pharmaceutical industry: “not documented = not done”.)

Also, we (Jen Pinder and I) have decided that we really, REALLY need to get a handle on this “no recall” thing. I am doing a lot of “work for breakfast” exercises (touch, stay, sit at a distance, sit/down while I approach) while he is on a long line. For these exercises, that got really old, so I put the line on the toy for a while. I did discover, however, that a dog who hasn’t had breakfast yet will work for dog food. <grin>

Then I tried the next part (with the FC or BC on the far side of the two jumps). I really feel that the only reason I could get the cross in was because of how long he went over the first jump. Possibly shouldn’t have continued before fixing the initial error with the drifty sends. <sigh> Although you might be pleased to see that the errors on the FC and the errors on the BC were about the same.

Thanks,
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Tracy,
Alas, I was last to send in any video. Maybe I’ll start to catch up this weekend — I’m NOT going to a trial!
This video is just the very first week, first exercise. 🙂

(I was just today talking about the importance of connection with my students. And they are supposed to be Masters/Premier students. Oh well.)

Thanks,
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Tracy,

Here we go on the next bit. While I was working on your sequences, I was also working on trying to get Casper’s preferred toy out of my hands. I tried to let you see where it is. At the end, I had it in the middle and that seemed to work well. I HATE having a toy in my hand (pocket is ok). Not sure why, maybe left from obedience…?

I thought it went rather well. At the end, I played around with the BC versus FC. This is exactly the kind of situation where I don’t understand the BC. I am already facing my dog, why isn’t the FC easier. You have to rotate through over 180 degrees to get the BC and hardly any to get the FC. (This sounds argumentative but it is a real question.)

The bar at the top of the pinwheel came down a lot. (It came down for Enzo, too, when I let him work this series.) Clearly, it is something I’m doing…

After a while we got tired of setting up and just started wherever.

Thanks for the feedback on length of training. In my mind, I know better than to train to depletion. In the obedience days, I used to set a timer for young dogs (I like training fronts and finishes; most dogs don’t). I may have to start doing that for Casper.

Here is our video: https://youtu.be/dhyXSzYKv2E

Thanks,
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

Hi Tracy,

My first reaction is: thank you so much for such a detailed review! I can see what you are saying but it is hard for me to see how I could have seen these things myself. <sigh>

Also, I am pretty darn reluctant to us a BC on such a young dog, since he might go anywhere…! I hope to have time to play with it more later today or tomorrow.

I tried to leave a toy on the ground (not on the line but for after the run) but he had a really hard time ignoring it. We will work on it but for now, I’m sticking with throwing it. At least he brings it back in my barn. Still working on it at Mark’s place (Highest Hope Dog Sports) where I take lessons from Jen Pinder.

Interesting thing that I’d like your feedback on: Casper will work well and willingly for about 15 minutes. That includes actual work plus toy fetching and some tugging. BUT, when he is done, he is done. Yesterday, we played a bit and I threw the toy and we played a bit and I had the toy; then when I asked him to line up for another rep, he just didn’t. It looked like playing keep away but without a toy involved. Of course, no recall. After a bit of BS, I got a couple more reps on the A-frame and got ready to leave. He was totally on board with that, no problem with recall or anything: he met me at the door, I put on the leash and we walked up to the house. Of course, IRL, you never need more than 60 seconds of work, so that’s not a big deal there. But I would like to train (with breaks and so on) for more than 15 minutes. Ideas?
(aside: I have not done much with working Enzo and Casper alternately because the non-working dog SCREAMS. My only solution has been to drive the van down to the barn and crate the non-working dog in the van. I suppose I could just plan on that every time.)

I will try to take your advice for the next section as far as trusting him on the lines.

Thanks!
Barb

[Barb VanEseltine]

HI Tracy,

Alas, I am running behind (again; as always…).

Here is Casper on the first part of the exercises. Except for not knowing a toss-back at all, he did pretty well. I can thank Jen Crank for the RC (he learned it in one session at her place using a tunnel).

Barb

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