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On that last video I was seriously thinking hard about showing him basically the same handling and seeing how much he could process the verbals. I liked in the demo video how you did that because I do think that’s often the issue on courses, our handling can look very similar for these tricks and that verbal becomes pretty important. I would love to also work on adding in any handling to help him when we are faced with these challenges for real – in arousal, at speed, in a setting where he and I might both have some impulses control issues.
We started back with Challenge 5 in this session and then moved on to the Bonus sequences right after that in the content. I’m trying to get better about using some handling to show him that push wrap and I like how some people drop the opposite arm/hand on the side of the bar the dog should be jumping toward to confirm it’s really a full 360 degree wrap. Looking at the video I can see that often he can’t see that off arm due to my body blocking it so I want to figure out how to show him a clearer physical cue for this skill so he doesn’t read it as a slice. I think I need to show him the full physical cue sooner and count on him to read it and do it instead of trying to show him part of the physical cue and then the rest once I see him start the behavior. Same on his threadle wrap “look look”. I’ve been starting to show him the beginnings of the cue and then waiting until he gets to the backside to finish it with the swirl and he’s often too committed to a slice to see or respond to the wrappy part. He’s super smart and I know he can be given a cue early and then execute so I’m trying to show him the full 2 arm swirl for look look and move away before he even gets to the backside and trust him to finish his job.
Would love your thoughts and advice on this, but with Rip the sooner he knows what he needs to do the better, and if he doesn’t have all the info he’s likely to make an assumption OR drop a bar trying to adjust at the last minute for the late portion of my cue. Either of which is not a dog error, but a handler error in my mind.
Field is still under water so we’re on the front lawn again, no real room to open up yet.
We worked on Week 3 Challenge 5. This is definitely the kind of thing that has bitten us before.
He had 1 wrong obstacle – tunnel instead of backside of jump at the very beginning and then was fine. This is definitely something we’ll have to refresh regularly and add speed coming into since with speed and chasing the momma he definitely loses the ability to finely distinguish verbals.
Butting in here – yep, need a full thyroid panel to know if he is truly hypothyroid or not. And, sounds unlikely Addison’s if electrolytes aren’t super wacky. If no real thyroid or other medical issue found, then conditioning for heat tolerance and stamina slowly over time and if possible playing in the hose (or spraying him down) before and intermittently during training can help cool off and give the benefit of evaporative cooling. Coming from Texas and living in CA it’s been super helpful to have taught Ripley to love the hose. I use it before his runs and after each run as reinforcement during the warmer months. I carry a hose with me to all shows (plus a collapsible kiddie pool) and have a portable battery powered hose that can pull from a bucket if no hose bib near my set-up plus a misting fan.
Cindi (DVM 😁)
Weather still crazy, still cramming into the front yard (but glad to have options on our property).
We worked on Week 2 Challenge 4. This was yesterday morning so I hadn’t seen your tips on setting that threadle wrap yet. I did add a threadle wrap in to the sequence to work on it with him wrapping to his right (last exercise was him wrapping left).
Popping back in to add this morning’s session of Week 3 Turn Away (I use flip for sharp turn away from me, listen for next info and continue parallel to me with a layer or distance). But, I have not really trained this with him. I’ve occasionally thrown the cue at him at the bottom of a contact when there is a tunnel entrance for a tunnel under the obstacle on the side away from me (you can see that in some of the older venues like CPE and I think NADAC does some of that). But, as of last week I realized I haven’t really trained the verbal or behavior very much since we haven’t been focusing on those venues. So, a little bit of backchaining at the beginning of each side here.
I’m really hoping to keep working on these skills since they’ve bitten us so much lately.
Yay for class extension. Thank you!
If I can get work to cooperate a Thursday live chat would be great.
Okay. I’ll circle back to that last exercise and keep that stuff in mind. I gave up on my muddy field and my wife kindly let me turn our front yard into a mini agility course so we didn’t have to give up training.
We worked on Week 2 Handling Challenge 3 during a break in the rain. This is all 1 quick session. Lighting changes are just clouds passing. We’ve been having some inconsistently in threadle slices and threadle wraps and it’s been on my list to work on so I took some time to backchain that piece and do balance reps to help us both figure out how to show the difference. I think the 2 low hands and swirl plus early feet turning in the new direction is helping and I just need to get more consistent.
I haven’t had my coffee yet so want to make sure I understand about the line for my movement. When you said “parallel to the tunnel” do you mean parallel to the length of it to stay laterally away or do you mean like perpendicular to the tunnel entrance so no going past the entrance in that plane? And, for the jump “move past the outer wing” are you thinking move parallel to the jump on the tunnel sends so that I end up closer to the middle of the jump bar? And on the front side of the jump or the backside?
I’m about to drink my coffee so all may become clear, but just in case it doesn’t let me know if I’m picturing any of this correctly. I’ll also go back to your videos for this and see if that shows what we’re talking about.
Right after our session a pretty decent storm and rain hit (like 5 minutes later 😝). So, I’ll have to check field conditions to see what we can do.
Our field is just a little muddy but usable in the center and a storm is quickly blowing in so we did a quick session of Round the Clock from Week 2.
Ugh! The weather is NOT cooperating and my agility field is basically under water/thick deep sticky mud that gets between his toes and hurts him.
I’m hoping for some dry weather and will see if I can pull a tunnel out of the mud and set it up somewhere on higher/drier ground.
AND super tough UKI course this weekend with exactly the challenge we’re trying to master (we haven’t yet since we’re still building to that).
Good news is layered challenge from your course trends paid off huge on that same course – distance weave send with layered dogwalk 😁.
Feeling some FOMO so I’ll post that run. It was a Masters Series class and definitely above our pay grade (since he’s only in Beginner at that venue) but amid the errors we had some amazing moments of brilliance.
Okay, we just did a short session of those same challenges but instead of a more distance send and go for the wing wraps I ran into the wing with him to put myself behind and rushed like you suggested.
Left in a blooper where he slammed onto and rolled my ankle, then showed very little regard for my injury. 🤣
We’ll move on to week 2 Round the Clock unless you want us to revisit anything from Week 1.
We worked on Week 1 Handling Challenge 1 but I kind of screwed up the order. I started with Position 2, then 1, then 3, then 4 (disconnect) but from Position 2.
I think I was also supposed to be really running or fake running on 1,2, 3, but somehow had your disconnected no running example in mind for all positions.
Sorry, long stressful work week and my brain is a little fried.
Let me know if you think we should redo this before moving on.
Busy work week so here’s our first session for class. We just did no motion send to single obstacle (apologies a couple of reps I’m just out of the shot but I promise I just stood still and gave the verbal).
Then some standing verbal only discrimination between jump and tunnel from each side and then from between my legs.
