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Fake spring is here for the week so we took advantage today. We revisited the accordion grid. First 3 bars are set at 8″ and the 4th bar is 20″. We had 6’3″ between the first couple of jumps then increased the distance for the last jump from 12, 15, 18, 21. I will say I do think in the past she had a hard time on this grid so definitely looks improved.
So I went back and reviewed my sessions from the seminar this weekend – I actually don’t think I had problems on soft turns! Yay! It was all related to backside wraps. Here are some examples from the first session that we struggled with. I did struggle with a backside wrap on the second session but that one I can see I’m completely on her line over and over again and rushing. I was able to fix it once I let her do her job do that isn’t included in this video.
Oh and are you familiar with the “Jump into Shape” program with Leslie Eide? I was thinking I’d do that with Lu this spring.
<finding lines with you very close and moving fast on low bars (high speed lazy game)>
Would I do this on a curve or straight line or both?
<work on striding into a 20″ bar with an accordion grid (3 or 4 jumps, with the first bars low like at 8″ and 6 feet apart, and the last bar 20″ and changing distance from 12 to 15 to 18 to 21 feet)>
I’m pretty positive we’ve done this grid before so I’ll look my notes up on this one. Would you add motion to this one too?
<When and where is the trial? Who is the judge?>
The trial is the weekend before the Invitational – March 22-23. It’s at Canine Sports Zone. The course designer is Laura Grosser from Germany. I’m not familiar with her but I figured she’s from Germany so hopefully she’s good lol. Actual judge will be Loretta Zich.
We did a seminar this past weekend with Karen Childs. Main points where we had trouble were backside wraps and soft turns. I ran her at 16″ which was much better. During the seminar, I started using left and right and it seemed to help for her soft turns (or I was just handling them better). As for the backsides, I think it was a mixture of her setting up her jumping and me being in a rush. We did lower one side of the bar to like 8 or 12 and that helped her a lot – plus I slowed down. Definitely adding to my list of things for myself and her to work on! I did get everything on video. I made a highlight reel but I need to go back and make a struggle reel so I can post here LOL.
Here is jumping. I struggled on what I even wanted to do on for training in this run. I thought 3-4 would be too hard for us right now so I tried looking for something else. So we did a wrap at 15 to the #6 tunnel with the intent of working a turn out of a straight tunnel with a placed toy after it. I didn’t feel like she really even turned with the toy and Jen Weaver said I was being too picky. To end the run, I wanted to do 12-5-6-4-3-2-1 out the ring. But the turn out of tunnel to take jump 4 became impossible. I didn’t think it was a hard turn which is why I tried it but that was obviously incorrect.
I think this week was just overall frustrating because I’m not sure how to fix this issue. I have her signed up for an ISC trial (jumpers only which I was going to FEO and move her back down to 16″) but I’m leaning towards just pulling her for now. I’m struggling with the fact we don’t have training space to work on things, yet I want to do something that is productive during the winter. But maybe I just need to say screw it and wait until we can really focus on things like this during the spring/summer instead of rehearsing bad habits. Or maybe I’m just being overly critical. I’d love to hear your input.
Here is our speedstakes run. I was going to try to run the course as numbered but it just fell apart. This was her first time at 20″ in a competition. The timers threw her off the first time into the tunnel (which was pretty cute) so we restarted. 1-3 was great. But then she just ran around everything. My friends were yelling at me to reward her for something, but I felt like she was just running and not taking anything until the end when I reset her.
Hi Tracy,
I figured I’d give a recap of this past week/weekend since it was a pretty big one. On Friday we had the seminar with Casey Keller. I did really like her. She had a lot of good take-aways for me. I think the biggest one is I have to handle Lu’s line. If I get really ambitious I might edit some of the videos from there to see if there were any trends like we talked about at last night’s live. There was one section that she definitely was struggling with going around the jumps. I had started her at 20″ but then moved her down for the rest of the seminar and that really seemed to help. We did not have class after the seminar like I said we were going to in a previous post – but if we would have, I would have skipped it anyway as we were both tired.
Saturday we had some training time. We did not do grids but just focused on little stuff. With it being so cold, it’s been pretty impossible to go on any walks so this was her only outing for the day. We just did little sessions of some forward focus, RDW mat work, and backing up on the dogwalk plank.
Sunday we had two NFC runs – one speedstakes and one jumpers. I was planning on running speedstakes for real but I think the courses were above our pay grade. I’ll post each in a separate post. We did sneak in a little walk after the trial for about a mile but it was deathly cold and not really enjoyable (for me anyway lol).
I was not really planning on doing much this week, but because of the cold all my dogs were seriously driving me nuts. We can’t really even go outside for more than a couple of minutes to go potty so walking the yard has been out. So, I brought Lu to class on Tuesday instead of Emmie so she could do something. I was just going to practice weaves only but then decided to do a little part of the sequence that was set. Weaves went great. I brought her guides and she was able to get some really good reps in. I wish I would have just stopped there and didn’t do the sequence at all. I didn’t get video but I ended up feeling pretty terrible about the whole session. I’ve added the course map in the link. No matter what I did, she just could not get jump 5. She went around it to the tunnel every time. She was jumping 20″ but I moved it down to 18″. She was doing great on 1-3 although she did miss 3 and 4 a few times too. On a good note she, she held her startlines when I asked for them. I just felt like a crappy trainer because I was getting frustrated. And then to top it off, when I did leave the ring, I looked at that line to the jump from a different angle, and it was a hard line – especially for Lu. :-/
Here’s the grid with me jogging. We have some more training time scheduled this weekend that I was going to set up the grid again and have it slightly off her line. We do have a fairly big weekend this week. Friday we have a seminar with Casey Keller and then that evening we have the skills class again. Saturday we have our scheduled training session. And on Sunday we are entered in a UKI trial. She’ll be running in Speedstakes and Jumping. I was thinking, depending on the course, that I would run Speedstakes for real and NFC jumping (skipping the weaves for now). I might have to schedule in a walk during one of those days too for some decompression.
This past weekend I was also able to work the jump grids that you mentioned above. We set up a 3 jump grid with jumps at a height of 8″ and 6′ in between each jump initially (12′ from tunnel entrance). The grid was directly on her line out of the tunnel. We did a couple sessions throughout the day on this. We started with back-chaining from tunnel and then sending to tunnel. I started walking first and eventually added jogging. When we moved to jogging with the tunnel send, we moved the distance between jumps to 6’5″ instead.
Here’s turn two taking the jump instead of the tunnel. I was VERY surprised we got this on the first try.
Hi!
Here are some clips from last week’s skills class. We’ve been running at 18″ in class so I decided to try out 20″ for the first time. I thought her jumping looked great. Thoughts? We had two turns and were working discriminations. We ran the same sequence both turns except the first turn we take a tunnel and the second we take a jump instead. Here is our first turn taking the tunnel. One item I took away from this sequence is she’s always looking for more information on where we are going next. We worked a wrap back into the tunnel and I had to leave earlier than what I thought otherwise she assumed she was going straight.
<Separately from sequences, set up a really easy jump grid right past the tunnel exit – anything that she is experienced with and has super low bars, like a 3 jump balance grid (bars at 8 inches and jumps 6 feet apart, starting about 12 feet from the tunnel exit). I bet that will be challenging! You will be moving the whole time, even if you are walking or slow jogging to start .>
For this, would you set the grid just off the line like it was in class or actually on her line?
<So a few ideas for you! You will see that none of these ideas involve you being stationary or you adding lateral distance, because yes she might take the jump but neither will help her understand how to take it when you are running past it.>
This is the exact piece we are missing – yes I can add more distance, yes I can be stationary to help her, etc…but it doesn’t address the problem. I will definitely work on your suggestions.
<Separately from sequences, set up a really easy jump grid right past the tunnel exit – anything that she is experienced with and has super low bars, like a 3 jump balance grid (bars at 8 inches and jumps 6 feet apart, starting about 12 feet from the tunnel exit). I bet that will be challenging! You will be moving the whole time, even if you are walking or slow jogging to start .>
For this, would you set the grid just off the line like it was in class or actually on her line?
<You can try using TONS of toy placement on the landing side of the jump after the tunnel, but I am not sure if that will help while you are running >
I feel like this is something I’ve been doing for a while, but like you said i don’t think it will help when running.
<One more thought – Remember not to reward passing by things by stopping and giving her the toy. Yes, we want to reward for effort but keep going til she gets something rewardable (like the next jump). She was not getting rewarded for skipping the jump after the tunnel here, but she kept passing the bar on the backside jump and getting rewarded. That can dilute her understanding of the backside cue so be careful of that as you were problem solving the other stuff.>
OK – thanks for calling it out. I was trying to be diligent not rewarding the missed the jump, but yes I need to follow through the rest of it too. Keep keeping me honest 🙂 I appreciate the call outs!
