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Just popping in about iMovie. The newest version you do have to pick “Share Video” and then should have the option to “Save Video” which saves it to your camera roll as a regular video. Then you can upload to YouTube. Here are some screenshots of what to pick. If your device shows something different when you get to the third screenshot in this you should be able to “Edit Actions” at that step and add “Save Video”.
Oh my god! You want spins, I’ve got spins!
I think I might have gotten a little spin crazy. This spacing just felt so tight. I adjusted the jumps as much as I could for this particular sequence but it still felt like all the spins were the best way to give him the info. he needed.
Full disclosure, I rarely do spins on course – in training or in trials. They often don’t occur to me or feel counterintuitive, so this is good practice for me to see places I might consider them and how he responds to them.
Dang! Nothing like a 4 foot long tunnel and teacup agility spacing to help clean up timing with a big border collie.
We worked on the first couple of sequences from the last live that we missed.
On the last sequence I kept forgetting to have him take the final jump tunnel and it was getting hot so just reinforced after the left hand turn.
He actually does rest nicely between runs. I am a bit over the top about protecting his mental state at trials (maybe not surprising 🤣).
He does not like it when other dogs come right up into his space when he is confined and especially doesn’t like hard eye contact or any kind of menacing movement/barking when he is confined. He doesn’t totally lose it but will just react (with good rebound, but still). So, I never crate him anywhere near an agility ring or the pop-ups people have around the rings. I crate him out of my little camper van RV and create a little shaded yard with a pop-up and tent attachment +/- fabric x-pens with visual barriers and usually traffic cones to set a perimeter around that to prevent dogs from coming right up to his enclosure (especially in public places where “normal” people might be out walking with their dogs).
I like for him to have options/choices. He has access to both outdoor and indoor spaces with this set-up and I usually try to use existing structures at the location to give him more of a space buffer or park away from where most folks have their RVs even if it means we can’t watch the ring from our set-up or have a longer walk to get to the ring. He’s gotten quite tolerant of closer neighbors when we haven’t had a choice lately but my preference is still to try to give him that space. Typically he’ll divide his time between sleeping on the king bed in the RV or on his cot in the little yard I create.
Even at West Coast Open last year where we rented a stall I was pleasantly surprised to find him sound asleep on his big cot every time I checked on him.
We also use a white noise machine at night to keep out sudden environmental contrast like intermittent barks/people noises so we can both sleep well and often for multi-day trials I give him a low dose of Trazodone before we go to bed just to help him come down from the day and get a good night’s sleep. I don’t think he really needs that as nights I forget he seems to sleep just fine (and we both sleep in as late as possible nicely at shows that let us do that) but I feel it’s a do-no-harm mild anti-anxiety to help him rest well (like the Diphenhydramine and Melatonin I take myself a lot of the time).
He’s also an amazing traveler and sleeps soundly throughout all of our road trips (most are 2-6 hours in 1 day). On road trips we stop every 2-3 hours for a little hike and limit travel to 6 hours a day with an overnight stop if we are going to Washington state/Argus/Run Wild since that’s 12 hours away.
At the trial we have a routine for our warm-ups, runs and cool downs and his after run routine of playing in the hose (I bring it everywhere we go) and doing an after-run snuffle mat back at our RV. I also put a chair and his mat just away from the ring so we have our “home-base” until a few dogs before his turn and for his reinforcement stash after the run so he has a place to go when he’s still all excited and aroused. We do lots of little routines and pattern games before each run also. He has his nice go get your leash and bring it to me at the end of his runs which has worked great to prevent him from coming in and yelling at me when we finish the run.
Before and after the trial (or during long breaks) we’ll go for little loose leash walks, off-leash play if there’s a safe secluded spot or hikes if the place is amenable to that. But, we also don’t over due that and they are no goal walks where he can stop and sniff, roll around as much as he wants (not trying to run-walk or meet step goals).
We also spend lots of time in the RV binging Netflix during down-time during the day, at the end of the day and go to bed early. I spend some time hanging out ring side with friends but not really too much. I like my friends but I feel like shows are really mommy and me time for me and Rip and I can only do so much run analyzing without it feeling not as fun.
So, I feel like we do a good job of balancing both of our arousal levels.
Here’s a montage of some of our set-ups – no laughing!
Okay, great I’ll use the mini tunnel and work on those.
Here’s our final run of the 3 day West Coast Cup. This was Masters Series agility. Bill Pinder course.
I think this trial there was quite a bit more mental management needed as it was a bigger event (actually both UKI West Coast Cup and an AKC show were happening on the same field). 2 rings of UKI and 2 rings of AKC. 3 of the classes from the weekend were run with the 2nd UKI ring shut down so that we were all competing in the same ring (vs running in our groups the way we did for other classes).
That meant basically all the UKI competitors were watching that 1 ring (and it was kind of a social event with everyone hanging out) plus folks from the AKC show if they were bored on their side. LOTS of folks I consider big names from our area and lots who flew in. So, a bit of pressure knowing folks like Nancy Gyes, Jessica Ajoux, Perry Dewitt, Dudley Sumate, Sally Connell, Dave Grubel, Megan Miller, Taner Dogan, etc. plus all of our other amazing Northern CA folks (many of whom are my friends but still lots of respect for them so feelings of not wanting them to think me and the pup are crappy), plus lots of bigger name CA folks from down south.So, anyway, I did have to remind myself to be a good partner for Rip and not worry too much about what folks thought. This video is of our last run of the show – end of day 3 – and was really fun with no issues except a bar at the end. This one we were 10th out of 54 or so dogs (would have been 2nd if we hadn’t dropped that bar). I’ll find some of our more problematic ones for your feedback from over the weekend. I’d say every run we did had some amazing parts. Some had some weird craziness but mostly issues with some more challenging bits. Often we had issues with the same parts really experienced dogs and handlers had problems with but we also had lots of runs where we didn’t have issues where most did.
He does still struggle with sitting on the start line after the 1st or 2nd class of a show and I’m gauging when and how much of a start line stay/lead out to ask for while we continue to work on that issue.
Hi Tracy,
Footing on my field is still not good and the last time I had him out there he abraded another paw pad. Will probably need to have new substrate brought in for $5-$10K so need to put some research into that and see if I can swing it.
I’ve been setting up some mini sequences on my small grass yard and got a Clean Run mini tunnel (4 feet long) to have the concept of a tunnel in a small space. I’ll go through the exercises I had waited on while I was having my footing worked on and see if I can tease out some elements to work on in a small space.
We had West Coast Cup this past weekend. Wondering if I could post some of my runs here for feedback? I’m waiting on 4LeggedFlix versions but have my personal phone videos already.
Cindi
Refund is fine if that’s okay. Credit works to if that’s easier since you know I’ll be signing up for more stuff but I just don’t have anything to apply it to right now.
Gotcha on the cue before tunnel. I seriously know that, no idea why I was delayed. Yeah, I really need to work out my timing on these 1-2 stride turning sequences.
I continued this set of courses with the next 2 variations this AM and tried to be a little harder driving and get those cues in. I hosed him off partway through this video. It’s not super hot out but I want to keep him in a little more trial-like frame of mind so hosing helps keep his arousal in that sweeter spot.
I’m also adding some sending behind my back to get him started instead of boring sit stays all the time. There are times I’d like that in a resend situation to keep his energy up and not let him get annoyed with me.
Finally back to posting. Rip had a paw pad injury that I think was caused by my agility field footing being way too hard packed and having rocks. So, we had to wait for both paw to heal and surface to be reworked a bit.
We did a short session of RYG Challenge from Packet 2, Part 1.
Thanks for all of this feedback and advice Tracy. It makes a lot of sense. I do think in the background there was also some stress (work stuff and the night before I had just found out my wife had COVID and trying to figure out a plan for when I got home from the show) that kind of exaggerated some feelings of not doing a great job training that day and letting Ripley down.
I did also catch up on the Zoom recordings.
Lots to think about.
I have been using music during some walk throughs but with a specific group’s playlist. I found Outskrts when I was looking for motivating music for an online conference I was organizing for animal shelter workers. I found their “Let’s Do This” song by literally googling those words as lyrics. You know it’s a good pump up jam when you can listen to it for hours on end for weeks while you’re creating a promo video and still want to play it for yourself during walk-thrus on the weekend.
I ended up creating a playlist with only that group’s songs (they seem to specialize in pump up type songs). I’ll share it here with the caveat that I’m not quite as into winning as these songs focus on but just like how they kind of motivate me to do our best, push ourselves a little and run a little more aggressively (almost all of our “flow” runs were ones where we took some risks but were just super in synch).
I’ve added a couple of other bands’ songs in now. I’m creating single song playlists after hearing the last Zoom and am going to try single song walk-thrus just for fun (and maybe rub some apple pie scented Vicks under my nose 🤣).
We’re definitely going to have to catch up a bit in the weeks to come. I’m back from my conference but Rip and I leave for Oregon on Sunday so likely not able to work/post until we’re back 10 days later.
In this session we didn’t really have any off-course issues but did have some bars. A couple look like tail grabs on these light jumps. He has a bit of a monkey tail that grabs uprights sometimes, especially when he’s turning in the air.
A couple look like just disorganized jumping (even at 16”). I do think the ground is a little slippery now that it’s dried out. I’ll see if we can drag it a bit to loosen it up. We typically train/show on loose dirt or grass.
Fun Zoom class last night.
Yesterday morning we had worked on RYG challenge Sequence 1 and 2. I cut the session short because I could feel some of my work stress was affecting me a bit and I didn’t want to end up with any yucky feelings from Ripley.
I felt like he was dealing with the handling and sequence stuff well, but we were getting quite a few bars down. I wanted to stop and review the video before we did any more to see if I could tease out where the problem(s) might be.
After class I re-ran the last sequence we did on Zoom and tried to drop a lot of the verbals to see how he felt about that.
Looking forward to your feedback and advice.
I’ll be at a conference (doing 8 HOURS of presenting) until Monday PM so won’t be working/posting again until later next week.
Yes, that’s our huge challenge now, timing of cues. It’s a balance between commitment to the first thing before I can cue the 2nd thing, 3rd thing, etc.
Huge challenge here to get that timing right doing Week 3 Challenge 6 Sequence 5, especially with the tight spacing on the setup and the yard.
He’s such a good boy. He’s definitey trying really hard to deal with all of my crazy verbals. We did take a sniff break (mostly for me to get my sh#$t together) after a couple of reps. 😊
Okay, we give up again and are back in the front yard. I’ll see if I can do something out by the camels to get more space since the ground is so saturated I don’t see my real field being usable anytime soon. I already moved my aframe out there so will see what we can do. I think it amuses the camels, horse and donkeys to watch him train and it’s great distraction proofing.
So this is Week 3 Challenge 6 working on sequences 1, 2, 3, 4. He hasn’t seen the flip since that first session where we trained it a few weeks ago so I backchained it again to make sure he remembered.
Good lord with the rain already. I’m planning to set up the next exercise tomorrow. Today I’m forcing Ripley to take the day off. We had a fun USDAA show this weekend fun runs Friday at the show then 2 days of trialing.
We did see quite a few jump tunnel discriminations and some jump weave discriminations (almost as hard for him since he LOVES his weave poles.
I did some FEO even though I’m not always sure he appreciates stopping his flow to celebrate, but he seemed to take it in stride. Took a Snookers run as FEO to get in a tunnel call off and LOTS of wraps after seeing the Biathlon Jumpers course was very wrappy. Paid off and he had awesome Biathlon runs (last 2 classes of the show) and came in 3rd overall in Biathlon.
I’ll post some more as soon as ground is dry enough.
I thought of and quoted you yesterday. Was putting on an online animal sheltering Summit event. 1,600 registered attendees with 700 in the room live at a time and our latest atmospheric river (wind gusts to 60 MPH) kept causing my Zoom to freeze while I was hosting/running the webinar event.
Thanks to all of our MaxPup and AU Zoom shenanigans I scrambled to give all of my co-hosts and panelists the juice to play the partially recorded sessions before we started, let attendees know I was counting on them to “pray to the Zoom gods” and was able to quickly tag co-hosts in when I started getting low bandwidth messages.
The Zoom gods did listen, we survived, folks loved it AND amy power didn’t completely go out until 20 minutes after the event ended. 🤣
