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Owkey… so when you say reward more (I can see that is important, it has been told to me before) does that mean shorter sequences and then throw his lotus ball with food in it or can it also be verbal rewarding while running?
Also when you say I use his name too often, I can see that and I think it comes from having him loose focus or being eh “derailed” or something like that when there are things to see outside the ring so I started using his name to grab his attention. There will always be a cue with it as well like “vooruit” which means “forward” and which means take the jump in front of you and then the next until I give a cue for something else. But maybe there are other ways to keep his focus on the field?
About the use of Qesha… when we arrive at the hall and there are several dogs of my trainer around there is one dog Pasha goes for to play with immediately and that is Qesha, there are really fond of each other so I am sure there are no problems between them. I myself also like Qesha a lot (she can sit in my lap when in the bar and stuff like that – Pasha is to big for that but he is happy to let her jump on my lap so I think we are OK with “using” her)Then… week 2 of the course. I read and recognized some things (again) But could you explain more about how the slingshot works?
Pasha is stressed very easily and although he has a good stay at the start it is at that point (when he lies there on his own) I often loose his attention for the first time, which means extra verbal pressure on him from me to get him started and so I immediately stress about our run getting of badly so eveidently more bad “running” from me follows as I lost my confidence etc… We need to get rid of this so maybe this slingshot approach might do it or are there other suggestions?Ad yes I did train verbal independence with few obstacles but drills regarding that are always welcome 🙂
These are the two drills with equipment of week 2: In the first one I have no confidence myself due to the fat that I need to make really big turns (my bike + chair make large turns so we cannot change directions easily…) we need more space or less obstacles in our garden. With the second drill I just stood in the middle and dit not move. So I felt confident and… so did Pasha (I think) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xh8u_Ii-nk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAv2z8Bi4og
Hi Kim,
So first of all sorry for my absence. Pasha started flapping his ears about ten days ago and our vet found a small wound deep in his ear with a small infection so we had to treat that first. He is OK now 🙂 And also… as I am a very inexperienced handler myself I sort of struggled with the tips and the language. But I am determined to just ask more questions if things are not clear to me from now on.Then… here is some footage of us practicing or trialling in the past:
– May 2019, our first run at a trial where we came round flawless but… too slow and obviously distracted. However this was one of the clips we sent in to get selected to participate at PAWC for Belgium in 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHejuLWM3VM
– November 2019, this was a trial simulation in “our” training hall, so there were a lot of dogs around were we normally train alone. We jumped medium height as we were focussing on focus and speed (or we thought we were 😉 ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nedi9CAHVBoThese two clips and everything I trained up until late January 2020 was with a handbike where I had to move my arms more and had a really wide turn and could not really make a jump start with. As these things cost an awful lot of money I thought I had to learn to cope with these disadvantages but then I came across a second hand full electric handbike and we bought it just with “running” agility in our minds. So we started to train with that new bike but then in Belgium early march all classes got suspended and halls were closed due to corona.
– This was our first training post corona (June 2020) on a field behind the hall as indoor sports were not allowed yet at that time in Belgium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsbyjcLuA6E
– Here we were at our dog school again for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6j4-KXzRLs
– One week after that we went back to school with another volunteer trainer and these clips come from that class (I do not have someone filming us all the time, but that evening I had my husband with me): 1) warm up round and also the first time I saw the flapping of the ears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGSO8QZUjEo 2) midd class we had a really difficult part and we had to get it right before doing something else… we struggled and lost confidence here… and I myself at least felt really bad after some attempts trying to get it right, I wanted to get us running, riding, jumping… not standing still https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7g0QXkQXmI 3) last effort this class was meant to get our confidence back said our trainer, well… it did not really work out for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPAXSRTRQXwSo… these were some class videos from very recent classes. Now… my last indoor class I trained with Pasha and Qesha. I know I subscribed for Pasha but as I’ve become very good friends with the trainer indoor and when I was selected for PAWC I got to train with one of her dogs, named Qesha… I just put a clip of Pasha and Qesha during an indoor training: Pasha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTWkqbDBFFg and… Qesha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUjP2BSGZQU
The idea is behind training both dogs is that when Pasha sees me handling Qesha he gets excited so usually after I ran her he is faster as wel 😉
So… I hope this gives you some idea of how we do agility.
When I started working with this personal trainer our plan was to use verbals and distance handling a lot. We soon fount out that Pasha does not have really great confidence and is easily distracted (by a lot of things, you can see some in the videos but at trials it is people in the ring, judges sometimes, a dog barking next to the ring, a dog eying him outside the ring… he sees it all and stops or avoids running) so we got back to supporting him more. Sometimes at practice and at home (where I do not have a lot of space) I can see hem working at great distance and with more speed than let us say a year ago but… we are not there yet. PAWC is postponed to august 2021 due to the corona outbreak in Europe so… my plan is to compete there with Pasha and Qesha and I therefor I really need – and want – to work on our weak points. I have one very strong point: I love Pasha and do not want to give up ook him. Last year I doubted a lot if I was doing the right thing: making my dog do agility and compete as it was my dream to try all that, not his, but now we have made nice progress and he really gets excited when arriving at the hall and he also likes Qesha a lot so… I think we are going to be allright.OK… so I read the the pdf from week one and immediately recognized a lot of things. Yes, Pasha is very soft and easily impressed by tone of voice or disappointment shown by the handler – that is me 😉 – and yes I have been aiming too much for “do it right” and neglected speed. I can give you a couple of reasons for that, but then again that story of our past will not help Pasha move forward. We need to look into this speed thing more closely now and I am definitely willing to do that.
Today I set op drill#1 in our garden. I do not have a second tunnel for drill #2 so I might try and set this op at my training venue but will need to find a free spot in their schedule for that. Anyway… I started with #1 This video is our first attempt, I did not cut anything out of the video, so you see me filling the lotus ball as well 😉 And looking at the video myself… I have seen us go faster on other occasions. For me making shorter turns like this slows my own riding speed down but also my husband told me afterwards I sounded nervous… OK… that is possible as this is “class” right 😉 and then something inside me immediately “wants to do it good” apparently.
I use a lotus ball with food as reward. We never got to tug for real. Tried to but it does not work for us up until now.
Also… just after I took my phone down and stopped filming a dog walked by on the street pulling and barking in his leash… So Pasha got aroused by that and when I then again asked him to do the speed circle he was really fast!!! So my questions for now are these:
– how to get him more driven or aroused when we play agility (even when it is a class – or a competition – and thus I myself am nervous 🙂
– do we play this round drill #1 again a few times before Monday? and post every attempt?PS. yesterday I went to an agility class in my “dog school” where we had to repeat difficult parts over and over which was no fun, nevertheless we kept more drive than we would have had a year ago so there is some progress, is it OK to post videos of us as a team on other classes or events to ask for tips?
