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First video is from 3 short sessions today playing with the shifting connection exercises. These were fun. Second video is a fast, line from a UKI skills workshop that Sly and I went to. Thought you’d like it. I was very proud of my fast running, complete with pumping arms and keeping my connection 😊
We also played with some Exit Line connection today. I noticed when editing that I didn’t hold the toy as tight to my body and started to lean and not stand up as straight….???
Interesting….I hadn’t noticed the extra stride. I’ll have to pay more attention to that in the upcoming exercises.
Run like hell, pumping arms, keep connection. No problem for Sly! I had to work harder to keep the connection and not switch to just run like hell. I’ve recently changed my question to my students when they are trying to get to a spot for a front or blind from “Were you running as fast as you can? to “Were you running as fast as you could while staying connected to your dog?” That’s a lot harder! 🤪
Just posted in the “regular” Camp feed but forgot something that I really wanted to share with you…. loved the two Power Patterns presentations. For me it’s GREAT to review things from previous presentations you and Bobbie have done. With each one, my “fluencey” gets a little stronger….. I don’t have to say HPA axis, what it that? anymore 🙂 And then continue to build.
When Sly was young we had this game that developed from crate games, mat training and some verbals foundation stuff where he’d come out of his crate on either a mat cue or a with me cue and we’d mix them up and sometimes we’d do mat and then with me before scoot, scoot which is his go in the crate cue. Anyway….crating in a trial/class environment is still hard (crate out of the car as much as possible) and although Sly has gotten much more comfortable doing it especially when I give him long breaks in the car, it’s something that I want to be able to continue to help him with. Not sure exactly why I thought do this on Friday but before a run when I got him out of the crate, I decided to do some scoot/scoot and with me (didn’t have a mat with me) game and after 3 or 4 reps he was so much more relaxed than normal when we headed downstairs to get in line. Not sure it’s truly a pattern game but it’s definitely going to get added to our prerun routine. 🙂 Thanks again, have a great day!
Good Sunday Morning!
Not sure where the last week went…..damn when life gets in the way of my agility training 🙂 Not sure when Camp officially ends but we’re headed out in a couple of days for another vacation/motorhome trip, several days around the Finger Lakes of New York.Thanks again for all you do to put Camp together. This year was especially timely for Sly and I, the agility skills were just right for what we were ready to tackle, especially the layering. And the mental management has truly been a bit of a game changer for me 🙂 So much good stuff there, but I think that the biggest has been the tools/”approval” to be able to not get sucked into negative conversations at a trial (and God love us but we agility folks really LOVE our negative conversations! Better to be had at dinner with adult beverages though!) and better yet to walk away gracefully when it does happen and just how much it was impacting my ability to focus on the important stuff and Sly.
Here’s my graduation brag! Ran AKC Friday at AK9C – judge that usually has really nice courses within the constraints of AKC design and the size at AK9C. Courses were “good” and some different challenges than what we normally see, although he did have a couple of not normal for him kinda yucky spots. A friend and I got into a discussion about some of the challenges, mostly how they were different than “the norm” and how that was nice, but it eventually lead to the inevitable discussions of AKC course design limitations, then to her saying “I think c-shaped tunnels should not be allowed”, me saying “Be careful, if we keep outlawing equipment we’ll be just like NADAC running with bars on the ground”….. you can see where this is going 🙁 She said something, I said I’m OK with C’s with good entries and lots of bags, she said something and I said you know we should agree to just disagree on this one and I’m in my happy place right now and want to stay there so I’m going to go take Mags for a walk and walked away. Felt a little brusk, but she wasn’t going to let it go and neither was I 🙁 The best part, when we ran into each other later in the parking lot she thanked me!!! And we had a great time talking about her soon to arrive puppy 🙂 And Sly and I went 4 for 4 – winning 3 classes and we would’ve won the 4th except I got to dance with the judge when I went for an aggressive blind cross. We chatted later and he apologized for being in the way, he said he never expected anyone to go for a cross where I had 🙂 That sort of really made my day 🙂 Our DW contact was to die for 🙂 and we layered a jump on the way to it. Fun day……
Thanks again, look forward to continuing to improve our game with whatever you’ve got coming up at AgilityU
Take care.
To paraphrase Robbie the Robot ” Danger, Danger, Tracy Skelnar!” Big brain dump coming!!!
Listened to Monday’s Zoom on my drive to AK9C for a 4 hour workshop with Daisy Peel – definitely a potentially stressful situation…have never worked with Daisy, want her to like my dog, want to be able to keep my brain together, afraid we might be overfaced with the subject matter, concerned that because I don’t have a BC or a Sheltie….. there were probably a couple of others. The agility training was great….didn’t hurt to relieve my “stress” that on the first sequence there was a big loop of 3 jumps to a tunnel where you layered a set of poles and Sly did it like he’d been doing it his whole life!! Thank you CAMP!! And I got a compliment on a fairly tricky blind 🙂 Certainly helped me “start” at a good place.
Interesting bunch of additional mental challenges that came up over the course of the 4 hours that I was much better able to handle because of this class. I just smiled and walked away from a conversation that went into the “she said she was going to set a timer and she’s not doing that” by saying I’d had too much coffee and needed to go pee. I’m sure that in the past I’d have gotten sucked into the conversation, in this case probably agreeing because it was true and I was one of the participants that didn’t use as much time as some others. But as I left the conversation, I talked to myself about did I get what I wanted/needed from the seminar so far and it was a yes….. metal note it’s not about the time you get it’s about the quality of the time!!!
Harder one that I was better at handling than I might have been in the past but would like to get better, maybe it’s just about practice. Friend whose one of those folks that focuses just on their turn and then chats a lot during the rest of folks turns. I had attempted to crate “away” from the group (and this friend) – Sly really does do better when I crate in an area that minimizes the dog traffic going by and I figured it would make it easier for me to focus on stuff and not get “drug into distractions” Great idea, didn’t work that well though as 3 other people, one of them the chatty friend came down and decided to crate in that area as well, actually all 3 of them chatters and friends. Can’t remember who Daisy was working with but they were discussing training basics – placement of reward, reward markers, consistency…… da, da, da, da . Just before Daisy starts talking with this person, I got into a conversation about really cute dog fabrics for making toys with “the chatter friend”….. and I just couldn’t figure out how to get out of it so I’m trying to hear what Daisy is saying and not offending the person who’s flipping through pictures of fabric on her phone.. I guess I just could’ve nicely said something like I’d like to hear what Daisy is saying to… but I didn’t. Concerned about the reaction from the friend? And friend is friend but not close friend. Hmmm….could use some ideas on this as it does happen and is one of those things that happens at trials. I’m pretty good at being able to tell close friends that I need to do something else, not good at all at it with just friend, friends.
3rd significant mental event. Last (3rd) sequence of the afternoon…..has 2 skills in it that aren’t our strongest – long leadout and a rear cross at weaves. In our walk through I really focused on all the aspects of my handling for the rear, even visualized where I was when I saw Sly drive ahead, enter, make the 2nd turn and I fell in behind him – and we got it!!! Yeah!!! But with the leadout – I did the same planning but as I was setting Sly up on line, my last words to Daisy were “this is a really hard one for us” and I lead out like I was walking on egg shells and of course Sly got up and wandered a bit – that’s his way of saying “who the hell is this person and what did you do with my Mama”. Daisy was great and said “you know it’s near the end of the day, he’s done so well, can you do this without a leadout?” and the answer was “Hell yeah” – Sly was slightly hesitant with his sit (another sign that he’s a little concerned”, but with only a couple of steps leadout he came off the line nicely and we worked the rest of the sequence and he was able to play and tug. Huge mental win for him!!!
So many good things mentally and agilitywise for both of us…..and a couple of new agility challenges…..finding a set of weaves when they are sort of hidden in a sea of jumps and you need to layer one of those jumps, and weaving into the middle of a c shaped tunnel with the tunnel openings really close to the exit of the poles. Mentalwise…same thing…some really good stuff, not so much any new challenges, but still not able to deal with the old ones and not have it effect my mental game. Going to take some time to digest and think about yesterday in the context of the home work for moving forward – what my 3 go to tools are/were and what ones will be most beneficial moving forward in situations like yesterday.
Thanks as always and I love the idea of a Mental Management Transition to Trials Class – count us in and if you are looking for ideas for some 4 week winter skills workshops let me know and I’ll send you the map of the sequence that had the poles surrounded by jumps that we don’t have the skills to do. Daisy’s answer was “this is one of the reasons that verbals are becoming so important” and she did give me some ideas of how she’d go about working on that particular sequence.
See ya!
Package 5, the 1st RYG Sequence. Damn…..that first Threadle Wrap was a bit of a mess! Watched the video, walked just that section again focusing on slowing me down, pause and see him actually turn towards the jump. Practiced one and then ran the sequence again.
I did video the whole walkthrough. Here’s a side x side of the last walk and the 2nd run (figured that was a better comparison than the first run with the messed up Threadle Wrap). Again, start off pretty close and as the walk goes on I get further and further ahead. I watched the side x side in slow motion and the walk through really starts to get ahead at the Threadle Wrap. Hmmmmm, I’m thinking that might be indicative of why I messed it up the first time? Needed to plan that section a bit more thoroughly in the walk, which would have slowed my walk down a bit there? Does that question make sense?
Thanks Tracy. All your comments make perfect sense. This set of sequences was so interesting. I know the focus of this package is on the planning, the walk through and the one and done execution. Don’t keep running again and again to get “perfection”. But, I’m really curious how much time I can shave off by making the two changes you suggested. Think I’ll run this one more time and make those changes. It’ll be fun to side x side the two runs. Geekery at its finest ☺️
The 3rd RYG Sequence from Package 4. I don’t have enough room to do #6 as a backside so did it as a frontside. 3 Videos….the first one is my walkthrough, 2nd one is the last walk and our first run side x side – couldn’t figure out how to overlay them but progress! I was able to get them in the same video 🙂 Last video is our runs – 2 full runs + 2 partials where we work through “running by” #6.
I was totally surprised that he missed 6 in the first run, didn’t see that at all when I walked it. Looked at the video a bunch of times and figured I needed more connection and a slightly different handler path to cue it more clearly. Again, I totally didn’t see this when I walked it, I figured he’d pick that jump up as “on path”, especially where we’d done this layer in Sequence 2 without any problems?
There’s a lot of video here and I know you are away…..no hurries, we’ve got stuff going on all day tomorrow and Monday is my long teaching day. Hope the trial continues to go well!
My walk through
Side x Side of my last “at speed” walk through and our first run. It looks like I again walked faster than the actual run ran.
And then the runs
OMG! The struggle is real! Did battle with the Japanese beetles on our plum trees this morning before the rain – and then planned to walk, run this 2nd sequence, spend the rainy afternoon learning how to do overlays. No hurries, all good, perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon. Was careful to not use the timer on my phone so it wouldn’t shutoff the video if I went a little long… who knew that futzing around to set the timer on my watch would shutoff the video on the phone. At least I think that’s what happened – technology!!! So no video of the walk through 🙁
Anyway…..here’s the run with Sly. Again, not sure where the first few seconds went….first time I rushed the slice at 2 and he took the front side and I knew it the instant I did it so went back and started over. In the rep you see first, he breaks his stay, my bad! I should’ve given him a toy and played a few seconds before starting over. Startlines are hard and if his confidence gets rattled at all he struggles to hold them, especially with this much of a leadout and with me a bit in my head 🙁 30 second or so break, a couple of ball tosses and we tried again. This time, one and done.
I did play with threadle wrap and threadle slice in the same sequence as you suggested – nailed it!!!! 🙂 But I do have to REALLY focus on the handling pieces, not fluent. I haven’t looked at it yet but I’ve now got RYG Package 4 setup, I’ll have to see if I can make up a sequence with it that I can do with a threadle wrap and slice. Practice, practice, practice……
Below are 2 videos for Package 4, RYG, Sequence 1. First video is my entire walk through. Boy that is hard and there’s definitely a “pressure” element that happens when I’m videoing that doesn’t happen when I’m not. 2nd video is 2 reps of running the sequence. First rep had a dropped bar at 7. Before I watched the video I “assumed” that I had probably given my backside verbal for 8 when he was over the bar at 7. But that wasn’t the case. I’m not sure but I in Rep 2 I kept a little stronger connection, planned to give the verbal back when he was committed to 7 and to adjust my direction of motion from 7 to 8. In the first rep I gave the backside verbal upon landing of 6 and I kinda wondered if that was a bit early, ie, did he waonder for an instant that it was a backside at 7 not 8? I also saw that I drove a bit straighter to 7 and maybe he wasn’t clear about the turn? Or maybe he just fixed it because he’d done it once?
I tried to put together the last walk through and the last rep in an overlay. Couldn’t quite figure it out, need to spend a little more time with a couple of YouTube “how to” videos. But I REALLY want to see the two in overlay!!!
We’re headed “upta camp” for the weekend so I’m printing out all the pdfs to take with me. No internet at the camp, great time to read 🙂 I didn’t find one for the Spock Challenge – is there one? Thanks!
Listened to Monday night’s Zoom on my way to class with Lo today. Had planned to catch up on the rest of the lessons on my way home. Instead, I went down the rabbit hole of my playlists in search of my perfect song. 🙂 It was a GREAT ride home and I narrowed it down to 3 – Jimmy Cliff, I Can See Clearly Now, Break My Stride (which I now know was done by someone named Matthew Wilder) and my #1 – From Scrooged – Al Green and Annie Lennox doing Put a Little Love in Your Heart 🙂 And then I practiced visualizing with a really kickass run from class with a threadle wrap, threadle slice and lots of GO tunnels 🙂 The visualization was HARD but the drive home was a blast 🙂
Thank you!!!! You know how you have ahhhaa moments? Your feedback on the dropped bar was one of those for me. I’m really good at which wing for backside 360 wraps or the OMD German Turns, but for some reason I had it in my head that my goal for anything going back more or less the same way that I wanted to position myself in center of the bar. Suspect that was the way most of us were originally taught? Anyway….. played with this a bit yesterday. Jumps at 12 as I wanted to do quite a few reps – takes a few for me to get it!
Later in the day….Sequence 3. I didn’t have room to blind and go down the right side of the tunnel to finish so I put in a front and came back to the middle jump. Figured if I could get there for a front that I could get there for a blind. I REALLY enjoyed this series of games!!! On to Package 4….and to get caught up with the Mind Set info!
