[Cindi Delany]

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.

[Cindi Delany]

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 🤣).

https://music.amazon.com/user-playlists/5f422d9a49e844d2b02fd9fe85b1c2cesune?ref=dm_sh_MsIJGb127KLTAkxUo2qut6Ad6

[Cindi Delany]

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.

[Cindi Delany]

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.

[Cindi Delany]

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. 😊

[Cindi Delany]

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.

[Cindi Delany]

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.

[Cindi Delany]

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. 🤣

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Cindi Delany.

[Cindi Delany]

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.

[Cindi Delany]

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.

[Cindi Delany]

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 😁)

[Cindi Delany]

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.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Cindi Delany. Reason: Adding session from this morning
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Cindi Delany.

[Cindi Delany]

Yay for class extension. Thank you!

If I can get work to cooperate a Thursday live chat would be great.

[Cindi Delany]

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.

[Cindi Delany]

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.

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