[Julia]

Thanks so much for all the detailed feedback, I really appreciate it.
I’ve started writing each point in a notebook and over Summer I’m going to try and design some short sequences to work through each point, as well as work some skills in isolation too.
This has been perfect for us.

The weather has been crazy here, hot and wet so not too much training but we managed to work through the sequences from the last package.
This is 3 really short sessions over 3 days in the one video, hope that’s OK – wanted to get them up before I run out of time to submit.

First day we worked the first 2 sequences with different handling for the second one. I forgot the Blind Cross at the end of the first one, so on day 2 I repeated that first.
Day 2 was especially hot even early morning, so that session was super short.
On Day 3 we tried to put the whole thing together and she did it first time so I stopped.
Not sure what was going on in this one with her turn at 10, she was actually running towards the fence to a jump wing that was there, and I had to call her to continue on the right path. Not sure if she thought the tight turn verbal meant she was going to wrap the wing or not.

Overall though I am so happy with how she is working. She does seem to have become more thoughtful over the past few weeks. The tight turns will be a work in progress for a bit but I’m OK with that.

We have no more trials coming up here for a bit so a bit of a forced break which is good to work on things. The great news in my state though is a new local rule coming into play for next year. NFC runs here have been up to individual clubs to offer and the majority of trials don’t have them. New rule is that NFC has to be offered in every class at every trial next year which will be wonderful. I will definitely mix up these runs with ‘for real’ runs rather than only getting to do NFC when I go interstate or very rarely here.

Planning on trying some of the games from this package when I get a chance, I’ll try and get video up. Love the look of the 10 tunnels game. Would it be good to do this and then ask for a tight turn on a jump immediately afterwards?

[Julia]

Sonnet is all healed and very happy to be back!

These are the last sequences for Package 3.
It was very hot here this afternoon and I was in a hurry to set up so I think my jumps may have been a little off but I tried to tweak them slightly as we went.
The rear cross was a bit hairy but we got there.
I was too much of a chicken to cut across her line for a serp on the next one so I stayed lateral and did a threadle slice with 2 hands to cue some collection instead.
On the last collection at jump 5 sequence I was really pleased with her. This is probably my nightmare scenario – collection on a line of straight jumps at speed. I have been removing the bar and just using a wing or a very low bar on these in sequence and this was the first time in a few months she has seen the bar at full height on these. The first time she pulled off which I was also happy with as her usual M O would be to ignore me and blast past at full speed.
I know her turn could be tighter on the next one and I could cue it a bit better but I’m still super happy with what she did. 6 months ago her turn would almost have been off the video screen and now we seem to have the beginning of some decel.

[Julia]

Thanks for the feedback, I will definitely try to get closer to the jump for the backside, I agree that could have been tighter.
Sonnet tore her paw pad a week or so ago so we are having a couple of weeks off. She has an appointment on Friday to check everything out so hopefully next week we can get back to it.
We’ve been playing some variations of remote reinforcement game around the house using a toy. No video but she is really enjoying that so looking forward to getting it out on the field when we get back to it.

[Julia]

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I was thinking that a K Turn/Spin on the first jump may have tightened her turn a little. I’m not a huge fan of throwing these in on course just to tighten turns but for her I think maybe that is something worth exploring in some scenarios?

Playing catch up a bit as I had my dogs at a seminar last week. Sonnet did well in novice – the course was way above her pay grade lol but she tried so hard. There was a big emphasis on straight tunnels followed by tight wrap away/rear cross and she was actually adding strides which hasn’t been a thing for her before so very happy.

We had a go at the first few sequences of end of course – she loves this as she really knows the joy of driving forward with no turns.

I probably needed to call her while she was in the tunnel on the last sequence to try and get a tighter turn out of the tunnel but she was a good girl.

I’m interested to really up the game for the remote reinforcement out on the field so we might try that next.

[Julia]

Thanks Tracy
LOL damn toy obsessed BCs with inbuilt sonar detection devices for every potential place they may be hidden. Yes for sure when food is offered in the context of agility she is a lot more excited to eat it.

We had a try at the tunnel threadle sequences. I’m not going to lie, these have pretty much disappeared from courses here (although I’ve seen twice this year with visiting NZ judges) so I haven’t trained them in a very long time -After having worked through these sequences with all 3 of my dogs I can see the value in working on timing with them though as I found it hard to get it right with different dogs running them one after the other.
Sonnet was a good girl, I wasn’t sure if she would remember but she actually did.

[Julia]

This is so helpful again and I can see what you mean watching the video back.
Timing is definitely a big goal at the moment with her – just when I think I have it worked out she finds another gear lol. I will keep trying to be more timely with cues as I know she needs and I want to get it right with her.

We had a go at the remote reinforcement with both food and toy plus a quick find my face on the agility area with obstacles.
She is pretty good generally with not having reinforcement on me. The food tries were interesting. I took a toy out earlier and hid it under a box so that I could film both together. She didn’t see me hide the toy and I put it in a place where I haven’t ever put it before but she seemed to know it was there. On the video she keeps glancing over exactly where it is which made me laugh watching it back. She is definitely one toy obsessed BC

[Julia]

We had a quick go at the mid course sequences today.
The rear cross on the second one messed with my mind, lol. I ran it with Groove first and he is so experienced all I had to do was give him his rear cross verbal and move off and he had it covered. I forget at times that Sonnet is still a baby and needs more support with my body as well as verbals.
I’m literally just standing there and expecting her to do it, poor girl.
Even though she got it the second time, it was very late and she was intending to go the other way and then responded to the verbal. We will keep working on doing rear crosses from different angles as that is probably a hole in my training as well.
She had a lot of fun on these.

[Julia]

Great feedback again and I definitely agree with all of it.
We are working on all the tweaks bit by bit.
We had a go at the first part of find my face today.
Sonnet was happy to work with food and I think she enjoyed herself too.

We will try it outside later in the week.

[Julia]

Thanks again for all your feedback. I’m definitely making a list to break down and work through bit by bit.
Here are very brief attempts at sequence 4 and 5. It’s hot here today and I wanted to work some single jump skills following this so didn’t do too much. Plus sequence 4 did my head in so I thought I’d wait for feedback before I try again.
On the turn from 3 to 4 I just couldn’t get spatial awareness of where I should be. I think I’m just thinking so much about her turning that it’s messing with me moving off early enough. I only did the front cross once, but felt like I was facing her too long without rotating through the turn early enough.
Also couldn’t decide if it was better if I stayed close to the bar on 3 to control the turn or to cue and move early for her to chase like you mentioned before.
The blind cross also felt strange although I think for her it might be the better choice. I repeated that one as the first one felt like I was really off my line. On the first rep of blind cross she dropped the last bar which didn’t bother me at all and in fact reviewing my videos this is the only bar she dropped on any sequence so I’m super happy with that.
I don’t mark bars as a rule as I feel like it’s me most of the time but on the video I’m commenting that the bar came down which I didn’t even know I’d said. Pretty sure she didn’t take it as mark though as that would not be my intention. It’s become a bit of a flavour of the month here – many are marking every bar and yelling at dogs to lie down every time it happens which I don’t want to do.
We only did sequence 5 once as again I find it better to wait for feedback than to repeat something I could be improving on.

[Julia]

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback, this is fantastic.
I will sit down and really digest it all when I get a chance but I wanted to have a quick session today as rain is forecast for the next few days here.
This is sequence 3 and a couple of little tweaks from 1 and 2.

I started waiting a bit longer on the look cue at the start of sequence 3, she broke the first time but was good after that. I will work on this plus releasing from more movement as a separate skill.

Sequence 3 she was wide from 3 to 4 but 6 months ago she would have been out near the white jump on the turn, lol, so we have made some progress. I have a loose turn cue but only use it when I want a turn that’s not that tight so I have started introducing an ‘easy’ cue as well which is not so much based on the degree of turn but more ‘slow the f*** down’ and don’t land so long. We need to do a lot more work on this as slowing down is not a thing for her most of the time. I’m not sure if it was the best cue to use here but to be fair to her it’s definitely a work in progress and not trained as much as I want yet. We will to continue to work on it on a couple of jumps.

I tried sequence 2 with the spin, just wanted to check that what I did here was what you meant.

In the first sequence I just realised I had jump 4 set up incorrectly.It lined up with the landing side of jump 3 instead of more with the take off side so I mistakenly cued a front cross on the landing side instead of a decel front cross on the take off side. (Hope that makes sense) This is one of the things she struggles with a lot if I’m not right on top of the bar so I have taken the bar off here to try and work on it with a little distance and encourage her to stay tight. I also moved jump 4 to the correct position and just worked with the tunnel and following jumps. We are working decel front cross away from sequences with just one jump and a lower bar than her jump height, plus a toy on the ground to encourage her to stay tight. When I work one in a sequence I currently remove the bar like here so she doesn’t get to rehearse the big wide turns.

[Julia]

Here are our first 2 sequences.
This is pretty much the whole of our session, apart from warm up and some wing wraps at the start.
I always try and keep sessions short with her as I feel that when she starts to get tired the bars start to come down.
We’ll get the others done later this week.

I’ve been working on a look cue at the first jump so that I can lead out laterally and was really happy with how she did this here.
These distances are a lot closer than what we usually get at trials- it differs very much from judge to judge but we’re starting to get more European style courses in the state where I live I love these, but there’s a bit of a teething stage where a lot of novice courses now have 9 and 10 metres in a straight line and a lot of straight tunnels which require tight turns after. Makes it super hard to get there. I’m not complaining as I welcome the change and the more modern style courses but I find the masters courses are getting it right more than the novice at the moment.

I included a quick video of her startline at the end as I wanted you to see what she does with repositioning her front paws and for your input. Recently I’ve done seminars with a couple of different presenters and one had no problem with it but one did. My general feeling is that I’m fine with it – if she breaks we go back and reset. I tried to experiment with a down for a bit but found that while she then kept her front feet still, she broke the stay more often. I don’t want to be fighting her on the startline over something that doesn’t really bother me but if it’s likely to become an issue I’ll see if I can fix it.

[Julia]

Thanks Tracy
I tried the volume game as part of my warm up when trialling yesterday.
The first run we did it in a quieter place away from the ring and as that went well the second time we did it right outside the ring.
I didn’t manage video unfortunately but she loved it and we had 2 super runs following this. No bars down in either.
Novice Jumping we were clear until the last obstacle which required a blind cross at the end of a straight tunnel and was never going to happen. I got stuck on the wrong side of the tunnel and she ran past the last jump. Novice agility I ran NFC. First tine on a dogwalk outside home and she nailed it
so very happy with our trial day.
I’ll get to the sequences over the next few days and we’ll keep up the games as well.

[Julia]

Thanks for the feedback. I really find your comments about food very helpful as they make total sense and help me get my own thoughts in better order if that also makes sense.
The pairing of the food and the toy is similar to how I built more value into taking food and we will definitely go back and play more of this game.
She will take food at a trial after she has run so we usually have a very brief tug when she comes out of the ring and then switch to food for the cool down She will also take food before she goes in if it’s high value enough, but prefers the toy.
I’m happy with her focus at a trial but I just feel that I need another set of eyes on what I am doing now as I’m sure there are always gaps and at 2 I think it’s a good time to address any.

Here is our volume game.

[Julia]

Here are our first pattern games.
I wasn’t sure how we would go with these as Sonnet isn’t food motivated at all. I’ve worked on this since she was a puppy as I like to be able to use food as well as toys but it’s been a long hard slog at times.
Toy is definitely the bomb for her and I have to pick my times to be able to use food.
I did these early morning before I fed her so she would be hungry at least.
I also had a pretty big distraction without realising at the time. A toy belonging to one of my other dogs was on a shelf just out of picture and I had no idea. She obviously did though, as soon as we finished she went racing up to the shelf and tried to grab it so pretty happy she managed to work through that for the food as I don’t think she even looked towards the shelf at all.

[Author]

Posts