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Hi Anne,
I registered for it in late September so I know it is open to register. If you’re able to post here in the forum I think that means you are already registered, right? I don’t think the forum is visible until you do that.
Is it showing in your “My Courses” page for you?
Cindi
Thanks for that feedback on the grid exercise. Glad it didn’t look as bad to you as it did to me when I started reviewing the tape.
We worked on front and blind crosses from Week 2 today.
I thought he did well with these and seemed to read the side change pretty clearly.
We worked on the 1 stride grid today since he hasn’t done a ton of grid work.
I tried to set the 3 jump bounce to a 1 stride at the beginning, but I set the first rep up to be too long and so he put in 2 smaller strides. That was with it set around 14′ (and on his first rep, so not really striding out yet).
I closed it down to about 10′ and that would have been a nice 1 stride for him but I can see in the video that because he’s reaching for that 3rd bounce jump he’s landing too close to it and needing to extend to get this at 10′ (in the moment I couldn’t tell that the bounce was too wide).
I think if I’d had those 3 bounce jumps set up closer together he could have more easily bounced right through, landing and taking off in the center between each of them and then landing more comfortable in an arc after jump 3 (so not having to reach for that jump 4).
So, he was reaching to find his takeoff for jump 4 at 10′, then just looks like he extended out and reached more when I moved it out to 12′ on rep 2 (which I was thinking would be the point at which he would decide to collect for a tight 2 strides).
I moved it out to 15′ feeling sure that would give him a nice 2 strides but instead he just extended out and basically left out a stride to take it as a single stride (and that’s still with the bounce too wide so still reaching for jump 3). Ugh!!
So, I extended it out to 18′ and finally got him to put in the 2 strides.
He’s pretty athletic and rarely touches bars, so he’s getting away with this stuff, without severe consequences for him but I do think it would be more ideal if he was a little more fluent in reading distances and adjusting his stride accordingly.
P.S. Toy is a lotus ball with treats in it, is always on the ground and about 2 strides after the last jump.
We worked on Send and Go Pinwheels a bit. Moved the jumps onto the lawn since he wasn’t loving the dirt last session (or first thing this AM). It’s getting a bit hot, but windy so we kept the session short and he was shade seeking a bit between reps.
Here you’ve got 1st rep, 2 middle reps and last rep (I cut out 2 additional reps with Jump 2 closer but it looked about the same).
On rep 2 here I think I said Go as a cue to jump 3. But I cued after he had landed and was turning toward it already so looked like a Go at that point. I think ideally I’d be saying Come as he’s taking off for or landing from Jump 2. Since this is kind of a wide-spaced pinwheel for him I could theoretically see saying Come before he takes off for Jump 2 as signaling a tighter turn in the air but worry that could pull him off the path to Jump 3.
It’s kind of hard since his strides are so short and turning is so easy. I’m used to a bigger, long strided dog where I would really need to cue collection for this type of turn from 2 to 3 so end up overthinking it a bit.
We’re really far behind but plugging along. Just worked on rear crosses a bit.
It felt like he was so patterned to driving out ahead that he wasn’t really noticing/responding to my rear cross the way I would have anticipated. I ended up throwing in verbals to help turn him and help him find the jump once I had crossed.
It’s probably just that we’ve been doing a lot of verbal only/ignore my body/position stuff in the past few weeks. That’s due to the exercises I’ve chosen and probably driven by my Achilles tendonitis issue. So, anyway, probably just time to balance things up with more handler focus again. Not a horrible problem to have with this little guy since historically we’ve had an over-abundance of handler focus and not as much obstacle focus/drive.
Hi Diane,
We may need to duck out. Work has been crazy with COVID response projects.
We’ll try to retake this class in the future when things are a bit more settled.
If I can do any more work during the rest of the course I will.
Cindi
We did a bit of the threadle assignment and then did the tunnel jump commitment set the way you suggested backing up closer to the tunnel entrance and sending him ahead.
He hasn’t had any specific mechanical training on threadles and no verbal for that. So, I started out showing him the position and verbal cue “Close” and having him just come into my open arm and getting reinforced there at my front, then progressed to tossing his ball along the next part of his path and we worked our way up to the ball sitting on the slice line. We also moved from him being offset from the wing with a clear path to me, then a bit more in line with the wing, then behind the wing, then more in front of the jump so he had to come all the way around the wing to come into me.
He seemed to do pretty well on this today.
Hi Diane,
Sorry we’re kind of behind on the actual weekly schedule.
Work is crazy with a COVID related project and I had over-committed to online classes not realizing that would happen.
So we worked on Week 1 – Weaves Place assignment this past weekend when we rented our local agility venue (classes and shows canceled for now due to COVID).
We’ll move on to next exercises when our ground dries up a bit or when I next have the location available.
Also, can you clarify for the next part of these exercises which hand you think treat should be in. Here I was behind pole 3, so should have had the treat in my left hand I think (but had forgotten that by the time I got out there to do the exercises) and then you’re saying if/when we have exercises where I’m behind pole 2 I should have the treat in my right hand (makes sense, just making sure I’ve got it right for next time).
Hi Tracy,
Yes, historically I’ve used “Go” to mean take the single obstacle in front of you and “Go On” to basically mean continue along this line taking all obstacles in your path until told otherwise (or until you hit a tunnel or other obstacle that turns you or shapes your path). It’s made sense with my big long striding border collie in the past to let her know exactly how long she can expect to stay in extension. Not sure how much it does or should mean to this little guy and I may not be as consistent with him using it.
After we taped the last exercise we had rented out our local agility location for an hour (the next morning) so both of my dogs could play (since classes are canceled right now due to COVID-19).
I went ahead and set up and did the same exercise – commitment out of the tunnel – just because I’m trying to emphasize acceleration, extension, distance and confidence with this guy to keep things fun for him and try to build his overall confidence/optimism and enjoyment.
So, I taped this before I saw your comments above but am sharing it since it’s the only thing I have taped right now. Hopefully we’ll set something up this afternoon (between rain and a huge work project we’re a bit behind). I like your suggestion of balancing the tunnel exit being closer to the jumps and working back toward the tunnel exit and will try to set that up next if my field isn’t too soggy (or during this week’s rental session tomorrow).
We did a bit with finding a line – committing to going straight coming out of a tunnel.
We’ve been doing some find the single jump work when we’re at a local park (I set it about 30-50 feet away and send either this little one or my border collie out over it). So, he’s been seeing some distance without a lot of supporting motion when we do that (mostly because my Achilles is still a bit off and I’m avoiding running plus it’s really good for him to be brave and do things like that in new locations).
We did the exercises as shown but I kind of faked the running and tried to show just the picture of what I might look like if I was actually running (but not moving much to spare my tendon).
He seemed fine with this. Back in the day I used to do a lot of NADAC (when there were fewer venues/fewer shows) so I tend to incorporate quite a bit of distance stuff early on just of have that in our bag of tricks.
Sorry for the late start, work is crazy.
We just worked on the luring exercise for positions 12, 11 and 1.
Sorry for being absent for a week – work is crazy.
We worked on early serp training today. I’m not sure how much I’ve really broken this down for him before as far as coming into that open arm with me at a standstill so I worked it in stages, starting with rewarding from hand, then tossing his lotus ball, then having it on the ground.
So, he doesn’t wear a collar, wears a harness and would probably be horrified if I grabbed it. He’s not much of an opposition reflex guy.
It’s super windy out but we tried to get a quick training session in.
Go – I did try sending him out around a cone and then on to the jump and beyond with a Go. He’s actually pretty good at that stuff. Nice to have that in my pocket for times like now when I don’t want to have to run (Achilles issue still pretty bad).
Setpoint – We did a little bit of setpoint with the toy on the ground.
Mini Pinny- I thought I was remembering everything, then realized you wanted the original stage to be a bounce. So, I messed that part up since this was set as a traditional 180 degree pinwheel and ends up being 1 stride between each jump when he takes it on the innermost part (where the distance is the shortest).
