Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
You are exactly right about me being extremely late on my blinds. I just honestly don’t think I will ever be able to do them. Even if I had a slow dog.
I did try again here and while she did sort of read the blind, my timing and position were still bad.
So we moved on to the next exercise. 😀
I was really impressed with her on this set up. Of course we are at the stage where one day she is brilliant and the next day she is less than brilliant. LOL.
I did think about trying the blind on the landing side of 3 and just couldn’t do it.
And in on rep, I was going to try and get a blind in after 7 and failed miserably.
I thought she handled 5 well both with the front and with the rear.
This was fun!
Thanks for the feedback. I am seeing her push more on her start line stays. So I’m going to have to start reinforcing those more.
I’m still so far behind on most of these exercises and on her foundation work in general. 😒.
I worked a little on teeter last weekend. Didn’t get to working on angled entries because it got too hot and I ran out of dog. But I am happy with her confidence this far with very limited exposure. I do wonder what my next step would be if the teeter doesn’t lower.
Tonight we also worked on one of this weeks games. I struggled with the set up in my space. And I wonder if my placement of the jump by the tunnel made my blinds harder. Or if it is just because I can’t do blinds. But we really struggled there. I also don’t know what a throwback is and made something up. 🤣
I’m still working on serpentines and we are still struggling a bit. I’m so inconsistent with my arms. And bad habits are hard to break or unlearn. But I’m going to keep trying.
Today we took a break and worked on the lead out exercises. I am not good with blinds or fronts. So this work is more for me than it is for her! She seems to be doing well with her start line stays. I do randomly reward them but she actually seems annoyed by that. In this session I did try throwing the toy back to her but she didn’t seem to understand that either.
I also did a rear cross because that is my default behavior. LOL.
What you are saying about deceleration makes total sense. But I guess I felt like I needed to get ahead because I’m assuming on a real course, I would want to leave her and get ahead to the next obstacle. But I guess I have to be patient and not take off until she has committed to the jump? Or would there be a time when she is confident enough that we could do this with speed and she would understand to do the wrap?
Today we worked on serpentines. We have already done some foundation with this just with 3 jumps. So I was anxious to see how she handled this concept with the tunnel. Overall she did well. At .58 there is an example of her focusing on the frisbee. It didn’t help that I was flinging it in her face. LOL. I will start mixing in tugs as rewards that I can hide better than the frisbee.
I was happy with her confidence. I also let her watch and listen as my other dog did the full teeter so she could hear it bang. She definitely noticed the bang but it didn’t scare her. We will see how things progress.
I made some more attempts at threadle wraps yesterday and today. Still struggling a bit. I did have an epiphany today after watching some of the video. She gets pretty distracted when she sees the frisbee. I can put it down my pants but then the reward is delayed. I tried using a tug but she isn’t nearly as excited about the tug. But this something I will need to work on.
This video is all from yesterday. Today, on the few reps where we were successful, her wraps were a little tighter. Yesterday, she was going WAY wide.
That makes a lot of sense. We will try this again later today hopefully.
This morning we worked on the teeter. I don’t have one so this work is very sporadic. This was the second time we tried mountain climber. So her first rep was pretty tentative. But she got more confident after that.
I then intended to switch to working on just the bottom with some movement. But she had other ideas. And since the movement didn’t terrify her, I decided to go with it.
Well, I’m not sure her response to my arm cue is very reliable yet. We tried threadle wraps and it didn’t go as well.
We were okay with the baby part. But once I added the tunnel and some speed, it fell apart. She did one with the tunnel but we could not replicate it. And I’m not sure what I was doing wrong or if her baby brain can’t process things at speed yet.
Thanks for the feedback. We added the tunnel today. Too hot for many reps but she did well on the little bit we did. And I know the goal here isn’t to do too much in one session.
Please ignore the bucket – there was a huge ant bed there! When is summer going to be over??!!!
Good idea to try this without verbals. And I will keep working on the RC. I’m not fully understanding how to set the line before the jump that is before the RC jump.
I started working on tandem turns. I’m embarrassed to say that we have not done any “just wing” exercises. We did some baby stuff with cones but not wings. So she was a bit confused at first. I also struggle a little with just wing exercises because sometimes I can’t “see” the big picture without the whole jump.
So I didn’t include anything with the tunnel yet and just tried to increase our distance slightly with just the wing. Will try to add more distance and the tunnel in the coming days (if we don’t melt or combust).
As usual with these classes,
I have fallen behind. We have been working some and I just get lazy about editing and posting. 😒Here are some edited clips of the jumps 4 ways and rear cross work.
I haven’t really taught her backsides yet. So for those, I pretty much pushed her there.
On the go line work, I did it several times and then realized that we were essentially doing a wrap because I was staying back and she was coming back for the reward. So I tried again with throwing the toy to get her to keep going. I have also worked on this with just a straight line of jumps and sending her to a dead toy. Is that kind of exercise helpful?
On the rear crosses, I included a blooper that happened a bunch. Where she would turn right before the jump. We couldn’t get past that for many reps. So I walked away and tried again another day. And then she did pretty good. My timing with rears isn’t great and many times it is because I am too far behind and rely heavily on verbals.
Thanks for this feedback and analysis! I have used off arm in the past and just didn’t think about for her. I tried it today and it did work well.
Now, I have to tell you that I HATE blinds. I cannot do them. I have a mental block and I am scared to try them in real life.
But I did make some attempts. We failed a lot. The last clip here was actually our first try and it was our best attempt. It went downhill from there.
Great suggestion about the start line. I did work on that and will continue to do so. Just didn’t include any of that in the video.
I spread the jumps out. I don’t have a ton of room in my odd shaped yard. The tunnel is still slightly offset and she did have some issues with that on some of the reps.
We worked on timing and connection and started working the wrap exercises.
I admit that I have always struggled with connection. It is especially hard for me when running a whole course at full speed. So this is something I know I need to work on.
Here is a little bit of plank work. My plank is pretty small. 😒. So turning on it probably isn’t as productive as it would be on a normal size plank.
Thanks for your thoughts on plank and teeter work. I am currently not emotionally committed enough to agility to justify buying a teeter. I have lost some of my passion for agility over the last couple of years. Trying to find my joy and motivation again.
I moved the middle jump out twice in this sequence and I don’t think she had any issues with that. You might see something I don’t.
