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Great! Excited to hear how it goes! Please keep me posted!!! I agree, I see lots of great stuff here with regards to your partnership 🙂
Hi Melanie!!!
This looks FANTASTIC!!! She looks so happy and you both are MOVING!!! Great work and I am so excited for you!!!Hi Susan!
First video: this was really good! I think Raven really likes the start line gamble and even caught a glimpse of a tail wag as you were “sneaking” out!!! Meaning that Raven is having FUN!!!
Second Video: again, this looks good! If you feel that “break” is poisoned, you certainly can change it, but in the video it looked good to me (I realize I am seeing a tiny glimpse into what happens). It is easy to change a cue, more difficult to use one that’s been poisoned and creates stress.
Thank you for sharing with me. I think you are not alone in that department at all!!! There are many components in agility and the mental game is one of the biggest! I think it is totally normal to go through all the emotions you experience. Putting yourself out there with an animal that has their own mind and feelings is challenging for anyone. My last trial before COVID hit was in early March. Me, the person who had just had a very successful 2019, went to the local trial with my daughters dog. I already mentioned what happened to Pepper and my other bc Keen had come up lame a couple weeks before, so I was running my daughter’s dog who’s young and inexperienced in the ring. Well, he ran around the ring looking for her the whole time and I was lucky to get him to do 2-4 obstacles!!! Was it embarrassing? SURE!!! Did I wish I had a different dog? YOU BET! But I think the thing I learned with Pepper is that SHE was struggling and needed MY support. So back to my daughters dog, same thing. I had to forget about all those people watching and BE the trainer Rocket needed me to be! We worked on 1-4 jumps in a row and speed circles only.
You are doing a great job with Raven and I for an outsider seeing videos, I can tell you two have a special relationship. Take THAT to the ring with you and your classes!!! When I step to the line at a big event, I literally close my eyes and imagine the course I am running is sitting in my back yard and I am there all alone. I also take some very deep breaths and remember it’s just another trial/class. Years ago, I worked for a very popular cutting horse trainer and used to get his horses ready for the big events. It was my first event and I was FREAKING out!!! He very calmly put his hand on my shoulder, looked me right in the eye and said “Kim, at the end of the day, it’s just another cutting”! Just as he was about the ride into the finals of one of the biggest events of the year! That was HUGE for me! Kudos to you for taking care of your health, take those things to the ring with you and build on that self esteem!!!Daaaang!!! This was fun to watch! Especially the first part!!! Prue is REALLY trying very hard!!! Her backsides are looking much better. For the threadle slice, I would open your shoulder more (I drop mine back). I think this will help take the pressure off of her and not push on her bubble.
I am tempted to set this up when I get home! Lots of great skills to work here and I like the lines! Nice work and I can see a difference in her speed and your handling!Hi Margaret,
Yes! I would move her up to 16″. Keep in mind with the jump heights, if I am training a new skill, I will lower the height, then raise it when the dog becomes more confident. My dogs run at all different heights. The nice thing for you now is that if you notice Kelsie slowing down or over thinking, that is a great tool in your toolbox for taking the pressure off.
I think a trial is great!!! If it’s just 1-2 runs, I don’t think it will matter what height you run her at, I would just practice them beforehand 🙂
Have fun and I look forward to seeing her run!
Hi Margaret!
WOW!!! This was super nice!!! You know what I noticed the most, it how connected Kelsie was with you and how much she was working for that engagement/reinforcement!!! There was that time around :38 that she sniffed, but guess what??? She’s a dog and they do that sometimes 😉 I would not worry about that at all especially considering the fact that she does SUCH a nice job everywhere else!!!
As far as being late, our dogs have to learn to cope with that. The best way to do that is to reinforce when you make a mistake! You both did a super job moving through this!!!
As far as the engagement, you are worried about keeping her engaged in this situation, but go back and look at your video to SEE just HOW engaged she is with you!!! This is SUPER! A couple things you can do are you can put her on a leash, put her in a stay, or simply feed her when she is engaged (as she is here).
Overall, this was a very good session! She was very fast and engaged overall!!! I loved it! What was the feedback from your friends (since they had seen her before, but hadn’t seen her until now)?Hi Susan,
If he keep looking at your hand, I would wait him out. This is an easy exercise to do away from agility and really perfect it there, then move it to the agility equipment.
The first video was FANTASTIC!!! This looked really good!!! Nice work! He was fast and happy and you kept handling! Loved it!
Second run. This was really good too, I would just watch your “whoops” tone when you make a mistake. Of course our dogs don’t speak english, but they do understand tone. Notice how when you cue the “hup” your voice is high pitch and up beat? When you made the mistake, your tone was low and not so exciting? This has a tendency to really affect the dog and what they may or may not percieve as a mistake. Does that make sense? You did reward which was good, but we really want to create a clear reward system.
One more thing that I want to point out is to be sure that when you reward Raven with the toy, that the cookie comes from the pouch itself. You do it a few times, but if you throw the toy, just be sure that when he runs to it, the cookie comes from it. Does that make sense? If we throw the toy, then the dog runs to it and we end up rewarding from us, we are reinforcing handler focus instead of forward focus.
Overall, I was SUPER pleased with the work from Raven AND YOU!!! I thought you both did very well and I loved his excitement! He was tired towards the end, but I can see some VERY nice improvement in his speed! Nice work!Hi Margaret,
I did not recieve the course map….? I checked my junk mail and spam.I am looking forward to seeing the video!
So glad the $100 idea hits the mark! I think for more thoughtful dogs it helps with confidence and takes the question out of things! And I find it more FUN!!!
Hi Margaret!
So first of all, I want to say that Kelsie’s engagement and excitement is so EXCITING!!! She really is WAY more engaged with you and ready for more! Yes, I would like to see what you are talking about when she leaves the scene. I suspect it is her just “needing a mental break”, but I would like to see it.Yes, please send the map via email at aussiesandbcs@gmail.com and I will have a look at it. YES! Regarding classes, that is exactly what I would do. I would make sure your sequences are short and you are rewarding often. I would be very surprised if you have an instructor that would not allow one of thier students to do this (I am over the moon when I can get my students to do this 🙂 ). So the idea is short and sweet and reward often. You can add longer sequences when she starts to keep her speed up for longer periods of time. But keep the motivation up and excitement up!
Regarding your video, I thought everything looked really really good! I would drive a little harder into your tunnels. She does send to them, but I think you will get better results if you drive harder into them. I am going to share Pepper’s video from Cynosports 2019. We were 4th place in Steeplechase with a missed aframe contact. My point with that is that in the finals, I was the ONLY person who did the blind cross before the tunnel. Everyone else did a rear into the tunnel. I believe this is where we made up a lot of time because of how hard we were driving down the line and how hard she was working to chase me. The run in the video I am talking about is where is starts at 3:07. If you watch the whole video, you can certainly see where when I ran Pepper tenativley, she was tenative. If I ran her aggressive, she was more aggressive. Have fun watching!!! https://youtu.be/XEU84waUV2E
Wow! Wow! WOW!!! Your handling was amazing!!! Your rotations were early and you were handling more aggressively!!! There was the one turn around 1:40 where he thought he was going to the weaves, but you sent him to the jump and there was a wide turn, but the rest was fantastic!!! He really likes this and he is so responsive to it! Weaves looked great and I LOVED the reward system! Great work here!
That’s awesome!!! I love Amy’s work and actually did some private consults with her early on in Pepper’s career!!! She does some amazing work!
Hi Margaret,
This looked really good! Regarding handling, I would like to see you rotate quicker on your front crosses. To me, the start of your session looked great, your energy was great and her focus was better. Then it seemed both of you got a little tired? I am very happy with the progress overall. I would start with toys and move to food. I would also use the lotus balls when you can too. This will help with the sniffing. Does that make sense?
