[Cindi Delany]

Here’s that other video. Not sure what was going on today but YouTube went back to making all new videos Private again (for a while it was asking about Unlisted when I would upload and now it stopped). Also, not sure why it’s putting link text instead of the actual video into my post since I did it the same as always and it’s been embedding them. I also don’t have my edit options in the post box the way I normally do.

I’ll try clearing my cache next time I come in and see if it’s something to do with that.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Cindi Delany.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Cindi Delany.

[Cindi Delany]

Hi Tracy,

We are still battling mud on our agility field and so I tried using an indoor training place yesterday. He’s been here a few times for Puppy Manners class when he was 8-12 weeks old, but not since then. We are in CA so indoor training is pretty uncommon and none of our shows are indoors.

I’ve avoided using this location for his agility stuff because when I’ve seen more experienced dogs training here I notice they really have to slow down because the floor is slippery for them.

And, it was slippery for him. So, as soon as I saw he was slipping I tried to tone things down a bit and not push him for a lot of speed. He had a lot of fun and his focus was really nice for a place he hasn’t really trained in (and especially considering 2 sexy little girl border collies came in just after we arrived and were training on the other side of the barriers I set up). I had a list of a bunch of games to try – mostly for MaxPup but also a couple of things for his IRL class with Nancy.

In his real life class this week he struggled with 2 things (well 3 if you include the fact that the little girl BC we were training with seemed to be coming into heat – at least according to Ripley). 1 was tunnel threadles. We were using the same set up you have us doing, dog on inside parallel to tunnel and sent to entrance where they have to turn away. I did not notice in the moment in class (I call it the Nancy Gyes effect that I lose about 50% of my brain when I train with her) but the difference was she had us using a threadle arm/tandem turn arm with the verbal send to the tunnel entrance. When I’ve done these so far I’ve just said the verbal no tandem turn arm. We’ve only trained tandem turn arm on the flat to his prop so far. In class when I did that beyond about 4′ from the entrance to the tunnel he literally turned and looked at me like I was an idiot and then jumped up onto the tunnel turned 180 degrees and hopped off on the other side. It was funny/frustrating/embarrassing in the moment but after the fact I realized he was completely doing what he thought I was asking based on what I’d taught him – when you see my arm do this, turn 180 and go the other way. He 100% is a concept dog.

The other issue we had was when she had us work on tunnel commitment (not distance, he’s seen that) but with any pressure on his line as he went into a tunnel (like approaching a rear cross) or a front cross visual as he was entering. Again, he just hasn’t seen this yet and we’ve only done straight tunnels in class before. So, I tried a little of the side and backward send to the tunnel during this session to start to show him what that will look similar to how we’ve been doing barrels.

We ended up doing about 2 minutes of each exercise and about 10 different exercises with calm settle on the mat or in his crate between every 4-5 minutes of training (while I pretended to read on my iPad and had him chew on a long-lasting chew).

I feel like my mechanics are a bit dirty here just because I got a little scattered trying to do so much in 1 session on new equipment in a new place, but he was really good and his focus was surprisingly good.

Here’s what you’ve got:

Tunnels (lots of slipping, made me pretty nervous asking him to go fast)

Turn N Burn, Rocking Horses, Running Contact Mat Work and Serpentines

Resting between Games and Outs (yes, I did forget to not send him out and I’m not always on camera 😝)

Parallel Path and Startline Stays

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Cindi Delany.

[Cindi Delany]

Thanks for your feedback on that last post. I’ll incorporate it during our next barrel session.

Weather here is still challenging – our agility field (which is normally dirt) is very deep, sloshy mud, I can’t even walk a few steps out there without becoming 3-4″ taller as the mud cakes on my shoes. Front yard is also pretty slick and sloshy and I worry about him slipping (growth plate worries mostly).

So, we tried just working in our actual driveway (by driveway I mean really large asphalt coming up and around the drive of our 5 acres. I’ve never actually worked him out here – we’ve just used it to get in and out of the car on leash because we live on a country highway with lots of traffic plus have the livestock (draft horse, 3 miniature donkeys and 2 bactrian camels) at the far end of the drive a bit across some grass and I don’t want him to bug them. I was worried he would be too distracted but with the front gate closed to make it safe figured I would give it a try and put him on a long line if needed. He did great (helps that the camels are down at the far end of their pasture right now).

So, here’s some “Out” to target in a new location and adding some lateral distance. I’m not asking for a ton of speed here since I don’t want him to abrade his paw pads but they are pretty toughened up so not a huge issue.

P.S. Sorry I’m out of frame from about 0:35 to 1:20. I thought I was good until I saw the video.

[Cindi Delany]

Merry Christmas! Hope you got to enjoy the day.

1. No, I was not able to tire him out. This rain and mud is definitely testing his patience. 🤣

2. Today we did a couple of sessions on Rocking Horses.

I’m trying to incorporate your feedback – switched to toy, trying had to give “bite” get the toy LSM first and then the praise chatter (better but not always doing it).

Trying to really get that rotation in sooner and adding some distance to the sends to build his commitment.

First session felt really good but when I watched it I saw I wasn’t turning as early as I thought and I wasn’t opening up the connection after the FC immediately after the forward send so that he would see that kind of side/backward send as he passed me. I really had been thinking about it but it wasn’t showing. I think partly it was due to the toy in my hand.

Second session a couple of hours later I really tried to just focus on the little dance move in the middle of step forward, step back and open up into that backward send picture. At the end of that session I tried to add in a little accel/decel picture but still get the forward send cross in quickly. It’s harder than I thought to get all of this in.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Cindi Delany.

[Cindi Delany]

Merry Christmas MaxPuppers! 🐶❤️🎄

[Cindi Delany]

Fun class last night.

It was cold and raining all day and I worked till pretty late so Ripley was VERY bored. I left my furniture cleared out to be able to do more indoor training until the weather gets better.

So, we worked on all 3 games from last night working up to more advanced levels from the games where he was ready. This was a longer session than normal since I’m kind of trying to tire him out but only about 3 minutes per game.

This is:
1. Rocking horse – forward sends with more distance, then rotated sends, then rotated sends leaving earlier. My other 3 dogs are all in the sunken part of the living room so he’s a little distracted by them but I want him to be able to work through that so just kept the ROR high for working. We did focus more on mechanics and ignoring distractions not speed or getting too amped up since that makes the other dogs a bit louder and then he loses his focus more. We’ll use toys and up speed and arousal another session.

2. Out to prop.

3. Serp application trying to use our Pet Tutor. We haven’t really used it in training before (he’s only seen it to play the game where the Kong Wobble toy triggers it to dispense food as a game). It’s jamming a bit and not always delivering food (I think I used semi-moist and kibble and it’s not thrilled). So, sometimes I’m clicking it a 2nd time to get it to dispense. I’ll find a better treat mixture before we use it again.

[Cindi Delany]

Thanks for all of the feedback on those last 2 videos. Sorry to post so much at once that time.

Here’s a quick session of tandem turn to prop from tonight.

P.s. I do actually wear different clothes everyday, I just always throw on this grey dog training sweatshirt (or the black one) with tons of pockets when it’s time to train and it’s cold out. Plus, I always wear one of my pairs of my many pocketed cargo scrub pants during the winter when I have a puppy. Looking back at my videos I see I’m looking slightly lacking in clothing variety. 🤣

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Cindi Delany.

[Cindi Delany]

I’m a few days behind on posting just not having time to edit and post what we’ve been doing. So, here’s a couple of days of work on – running contacts mat and box, Startline stays, retrieve and tandem turn.

We have intermittently worked on baby level of running contacts working up to a rubberized plastic target mat for that so I’m using that here (so he doesn’t think I want a lie down settle on something bigger). I think he’s only seen the PVC box prop in 1 session before if that (I can’t remember).

I can do some of the bring me the thing retrieve to hand if you want to see that but we did do that a few months ago starting with dropping items into a bowl.

Running Contacts Early Work

Startline, Retrieve, Tandem Turn

[Cindi Delany]

Okay, we were able to get that covered ring for 1/2 hour today. I wrote down some things to work on, but not all the details, so some of this is probably a little rough.

We worked on tunnels – on-side send and across my body threadle send (for MaxPup and also since it was introduced in his real life class last week – just a slightly different set up). We also did a little turn and burn and a little handling combos. We also did some week 5 commitment (I used an 8” jump since that’s what I have him doing in his regular real life class – I just forgot to put the bar on the ground and they didn’t have jump bumps – sorry about that) and some week 5 rotated sends.

[Cindi Delany]

Thanks for this feedback. I’ll incorporate in our next sessions.

I was able to get a covered ring for a little bit tomorrow afternoon. I’ll try and figure out which exercises most need some space and preferentially do those.

I’m thinking Tunnels homework for sure (since what we did over the weekend was before I’d read and watched the actual homework). I’ll see what comes out for tomorrow and pick the things needing more space.

Cindi

[Cindi Delany]

I totally agree. It was such an awesome opportunity for a puppy to get to actually play in the ring in that environment with a lot less stress. I knew he was probably ready for the Puppy Garten side (even with the noise, people, dogs and a tunnelers run happening on the other side of a ring divider on the right of the screen) but also knew he really wasn’t ready for a full Tunnelers course. We just haven’t run enough sequences for me to know how fast he is or what his tendencies are the way I’ve known my older dogs before something like this. I was trying just to read him every step of the way and adjust – asking questions as we went. Can you walk around here and focus on me? Can you do your normal on leash behaviors on cue with minimal latency and accurately? Can you deal with being in a line with other dogs and people? Can you enter the ring and focus on me? Can you play with a toy in the ring? Can you focus on me with your leash off? Can you wait on the Startline (we actually didn’t do a startline wait his first run, I just played and ran him off the line)? Can you take a tunnel and come back to me? Can you play with a toy after doing a tunnel?

That’s about as far as I had imagined. I didn’t want to expect too much and pressure him or be disappointed in him. It’s always so hard when you are starting a baby dog. Especially if you’ve had some really good dogs in the past and people have expectations of you. I’m sure you’ve felt some of that. Anyway, I was just blown away when he was like “tell me what’s next” in a tunnel sequence.

I really wish there were more opportunities like this out there for young and baby dogs to play with low stakes to get used to everything about agility beyond just obstacle and handling skills. I try to remember to train the bits and pieces along the way but there’s nothing quite like an actual trial scenario and entering the ring alone.

Anyway, here’s a bit of lap turn and rear cross on the flat. It is VERY rainy here so not sure when we’ll be able to get outside on our agility field at home. I’ll try to get some indoor ring time (but CA not many options for that).

[Cindi Delany]

Sounds good on next steps on ladder work at home.

One of our local agility clubs, where lots of trials are held and where I’ve spent many weekends taking Ripley out to watch trials and practice some skills in that environment, held a Christmas party yesterday. Part of it was a NADAC style tunnels course (about 2/3 of the ring) and the other side was a “Puppy Garten” with puppy equipment.

We did the Puppy Garten side and just for fun I signed him up for some tunnelers runs. I had planned to just go in the ring and play with a toy and maybe send him through 1 or 2 tunnels or maybe do the shorter inner loop of tunnels in a nice flow sequence.

We have done a lot of playing and training out here during shows. We’ve tugged and played toy races and reverse retrieve a lot in the area where dogs line up to go in during walk throughs and at one fun match we even went into the ring and tugged and had toy races and reverse retrieve while they were walking their courses.

He ended up being super focused, able to play and ready to work when I asked him and so we ended up doing the full little sequence of 12 tunnels. He has done single tunnels in our training but I don’t have them set up sequenced tunnel to tunnel, so it was a little mind blowing for him but he did pretty amazing.

Anyway, here’s a little video of our Puppy Garten work there – small wobble board, big wobble board, ladder, low teeter, low wide dog walk, tunnel and some start line stays. Then at the end his little Tunnelers course run. I know there was a lot here that wasn’t perfect (and that I need to learn to run faster and get some distance verbals in there) but I was so proud of how well he did and how much fun he had. Plus, not horrible speed for a baby just learning (12 tunnel sequence in 19.7 seconds 😁).

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Cindi Delany.

[Cindi Delany]

Yep, he enjoyed Leg Bumps, just took advantage of me being slurp level.

Here’s a short ladders clip from yesterday.

We’re heading to an agility group Christmas party this morning. He might get to do a little bit of a tunnelers game or puppy play area they plan to have out. 😆

[Cindi Delany]

Thank you for the feedback on that last session. 😊

“yes” is my move to food hand and take food LSM so that part is probably okay.

The udder tugger is a toy I’m trying to build more value for. It’s just so much easier to stick in my pocket. It’s working okay for tugging when it’s in my hand but looks like it doesn’t yet have great value as a dead toy. So, I’ll keep working on that and next session sub in his hollee roller on fleece tug. I also have a couple of udder tuggers on fleece or other handle coming from clean run hoping they are better for him and easier for me (the plain ones get really slippery as we play 😝).

Here’s some leg bumps for your amusement. 😁 I’ll go brave my muddy agility area to get our ladder later today if I can break off work for a bit. Training a puppy does horrible things to my work ethic. 🤣

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Cindi Delany.

[Cindi Delany]

Here’s a little bit of “Strike a Pose” this morning. Just using kibble as treats since he has in person class tonight and indoors since it’s a bit wet out.

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