[julia_knetzer]

Thanks, Tracy! We probably won’t get any more video in since it’s VERY rainy here today. But we appreciate all your feedback and look forward to continuing in MaxPup 3!

Speak soon,
Julia & Keeper

[julia_knetzer]

Backside Challenges were hard. I think we sort of figured it out, but will definitely need to work on this one some more:

And here’s The Accordion with all jumps 6 ft apart to start, moving them at 6 ft increments, and third bar set at 10 in:

[julia_knetzer]

Here’s a first attempt at Lateral Lead Outs:

It felt like it was going well, so we tried some of the Advanced stuff a little later on as well:

Here’s another try at the Get Out with a leash marking a line on the ground:

And a little more work on the Turn Aways:

[julia_knetzer]

Here’s the Accordion with 5.5 ft between jumps at first set up and moving the third jump at 6 ft increments:

And another try at Mission: Transition with more space:

[julia_knetzer]

Here’s some work on the Turn Aways:

• This reply was modified 4 days, 9 hours ago by julia_knetzer.

[julia_knetzer]

Here are a few games from the past couple of days. I’ve been having trouble uploading to youtube, but think I got around it.

Here are the Zig Zags with shorter bars:

A first try at Mission: Transition. I’ll try to get a better camera angle next time, and I think I need to work this in a larger space – I didn’t realize how much we’d opened up the space between the wing and jump since the last time I’d worked back here, and I need to give Keeper more room to land on the other side of the jump, especially during the “Go” reps.

Another try at Layering Foundations, and I think you were spot on about me pulling him off the line when I was having to go too far in to get him around the wing and then stepped back. He does go into the tunnel once here, but I think the class distraction has a lot to do with that one.

[julia_knetzer]

I am still roughly at around 4.5 ft, (maybe closer to 5 ft, but not at 5 ft) for jumps 1 and 2. I can try 5.5 and see how it looks?

[julia_knetzer]

Here’s The Accordion with the moving target. In between reps 3 and 4 he got a visit from Phire’s mom, plus the class was going on on the other field, so he might have been extra amped up.

• This reply was modified 1 week ago by julia_knetzer.

[julia_knetzer]

Hi, thanks for the feedback. Yes, I hear you on doing too much and limiting train time. I got carried away with having the weekend and wanting to get as much in as possible before class time is up. And I am likely misreading his speed/effort at times – on the Smiley Face / Tunnel Threadles I figured he was going slow because I was going slow, which I think was a tip from the video, but that may not have been the case.

On The Accordion, yes, stationary food reward for this first session. Will work with moving target next.

Thanks!

[julia_knetzer]

Hi! Keeper turns 1 today, by the way!

Here’s a little more of The Diamond:

A first attempt at Concept Transfer: Rear Crosses:

A first attempt at The Accordion:

And Tunnel Threadles:

[julia_knetzer]

More Rear Crosses and Backside Wraps. Once I actually thought to do it, I think my quieter verbals helped on the rear crosses.

More Layering Foundations. No problems on the first side, but the second side was something else, which surprised me after yesterday’s session.

The Diamond, Baby Level:

Zig Zag Part 2 with no gaps:

[julia_knetzer]

Here’s a little more of the Tunnel Exit Turns trying for better timed verbals. Watching this back, I realized that all of my verbals were shouted, so will work more on different volumes for different cues. So many things to think about!

More Strike a Pose / serp vs. threadle work + trying out our treat hugger, which he really seemed to love – flying cheese! I think this may be the cause of that one broken stay.:

Layering Foundations. OK, I might have done this one completely wrong because I was going from memory and didn’t review the video/instructions beforehand. I thought it was going well in the moment, but I skipped a few steps and wasn’t really using the Go verbal…

He was really amped up for this! And tonight I used a different toy for each exercise, which I think helped keep him really interested. This one was the squishy ball.

[julia_knetzer]

>He seemed to have an easier time of it here in terms of ignoring the class. If the distractions are really hard, you can use a ball reward.>

I think that might be a slight misrepresentation due to editing for time. I cut out a fair amount of the distraction. It was an international skills class, and the other dogs were moving fast and pretty high energy and barky, so it was actually really hard for him. He rounded behind the tunnel to the fence line a couple of times to try to get involved. I was happy when I was able to get him back and working, but it definitely seemed harder than the other night and we took longer breaks in between reps when activity level was especially high on the other field and just worked on not getting involved in the excitement. It did seem like it got easier as the night went on. The class was still going on during the Serp Proofing, and you can see him looking over, but I was more easily able to get his attention back on the game.

I began our session with toys, but one thing I’ve noticed is that when other dogs are around and he is really stimulated he starts losing interest in the toys, but he seems to be pretty responsive to cheese, so I started using that more toward the end.

>On the first side, you used dog-side arm and the 2nd side you used opposite arm. The dog-side arm is generally easier to run with (less twisting for us humans LOL)>

I tried the opposite arm on the second side because I thought it might help him to have a different visual cue than the serp – it seemed like it helped, but then I tried one more time with the opposite arm on the first side after I turned the video off, and he still wanted to come over the jump instead of to the inside. He did well with the MaxPup 1 serp/threadle game, but that was with no movement and the positioning on the jump helped a lot. I’m curious, when running, is it just the verbal that cues the threadle if the arms are the same?

[julia_knetzer]

Tonight we worked on Advanced Level Tunnel Exit Turns:

Advanced Level Find the Jump (Again with class distraction – though this one was a bit more distracting for him.):

Another try at Serp Proofing with more / faster motion, and I threw in some threadle tries at the end, but especially on the first side this was not coming back to him right away. I may need to look back at the MaxPup 1 game before we try again.

[julia_knetzer]

> One suggestion for the rear cross:
Use GO verbal for the straight line only, not the left or right turns – if you say GO then left/right, it delays the info for the turn and he will go straight. >

I only realized I was doing this once I watched the video back! Will definitely try to reserve “Go” for straight ahead. And setting a timer is a good idea. I got caught up in trying to figure it out.

Will work a bit more on Rear Crosses and Backside Wraps and move to next steps on Find the Jump and Serp Proofing.

In the meantime, we worked on The Get Out:

And the Zig Zag Part 2:

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