[Lora Abbott]

Alright, I’m waving the white flag on these tight blind crosses on a wing! Video recommended using soft turn cues, which definitely didn’t work, so today I tried the tight turn verbal cue and being deliberate with the “fast forward, slow forward, rotate” set of cues for a tight turn, and other than the first rep I got the same result in that she kept going wider and wider as the session went on. It also feels like so much more work to change sides that way rather than rotate into the dog with that kind of approach angle.
So for the double crosses I switched to using a front and I think those went fairly well.

[Lora Abbott]

I set up the wing wrap cloverleaf exercise today. When I was setting up I thought I had plenty of room from the tunnel, then got done setting up and looked at it again and went “eh, kinda close, but let’s see” because I was too lazy to move 4 wings and a tripod again. First few reps I was definitely blocking her view of the wing. Sorry Beat. Also seemed like turning my shoulder so it was a more definitive throw back send helped too. Shoulders turned at the tunnel even the tiniest bit sent her there. Then trying to do the race track part nearly broke her little brain! (So proud of that last rep!) I haven’t done the discrimination exercise with her like the boys worked on from CAMP. The wing/tunnel discrimination exercise in Max Pup 2 was a disaster with her and muddling through it with the boys was all the energy I had (it’s still just not a skill I inherently ENJOY teaching, I like handling!) I guess it’s time to revisit.

[Lora Abbott]

Last training session for this course, and maybe, just maybe there’s light at the end of the proverbial tunnel? Worked the discriminations exercise with Roots and it was one of our most successful. I unintentionally set the start wrap jump where I barely had to move other than turn in a circle to get the jump or the tunnel. With where the sun was, I also couldn’t really see so it made my body language that much more ambiguous! The first rep the sun in my eyes surprised me so much I forgot words, and on another my toy throw was far less than ideal reward placement lol. When I switched to the “hup” side, I forgot that he still needs a little physical support on that one since it’s still a relatively new cue for him. Overall, I was very pleased with how he did, even with moving the obstacles pretty close together. It only took us the entire course to get him to figure out this ONE exercise, and I haven’t varied the setup at all or brought in weaves/a third obstacle. Who knows if he will still be able to do it when the obstacle positions are switched, when there’s more movement/in a sequence, or when another option is added, but hey THIS exercise he can do now lol. We taught the 9 year old dog at least one new trick! 🐶

Thanks for all the input and all the help! I think the biggest change I’ve been able to make from all this was your advice to treat myself like a student and it’s helped me stay more objective during a training session. Thank you so much!

[Lora Abbott]

Ok, so evening session tonight I did the same setup that I did with Pick the other day. I don’t think it was a lack of ability to carry out to the jump with the “go on go” but a lack of understanding of the cue stacking, and especially stacking “tight tight” on top of “go on go”. Turning tightly on a jump while approaching it straight on with a ton of extension… not a physical skill he finds easy and honestly, I’m not sure he understands what “tight tight” means any way. Maybe it just means turning towards me (since he doesn’t have much history with specific left/right tight turn cues) and not on any particular obstacle. I tried breaking it down, but I struggle on how to set appropriate criteria for this. Physically it’s hard for him to turn (he takes off early) so I try to base it off of whether he looks back immediately on the turn, but that’s so subjective. Thoughts?

[Lora Abbott]

“did you measure from the exit wing on each side, or from the takeoff spot?“
I do it from the center of the bar, can’t help myself, judge’s brain takes over! (Though I do walk the actual dog’s path, not the straight line). I suppose with wraps they aren’t going all the way to the center of the bar, but it was still a LOOOONG ways away with the slice.

“weaves are generally a forward cue“
Interesting, hadn’t really thought about the weave cue like that. At a recent trial there was a weave entry where they had to collect and turn on the previous jump to make the entry, and then I was rear crossing the poles. It wasn’t a hard entry but he blew right by it like he didn’t even see it. When I watched the video later he had locked on to the far end of the poles and I’m pretty sure that’s where he was headed, accelerating down towards them as I deceled to get the collection for the desired entry. Thinking about the verbal weave cue as a forward cue, that makes sense that he would do that.

“And if you set up the tunnel stuff before the DW goes in, try some of it with Beat to introduce her to some of those lines”
Interestingly, I did move the dogwalk and worked Pick on the “go straight out of the tunnel” exercise with the spare tunnel and the tunnel bags standing in for the visual barrier of the dogwalk. He was freaking perfect and required no posting of video to do any trouble shooting! I honestly think he’s my most verbal dog out of the 3 (4 if you include the almost 14 year old retired dog who was definitely never expected to do any difficult verbal discrimination work back then). If only he could keep his brain in his skull in stimulating trial environments and not turn feral!

[Lora Abbott]

So the other day (same day I had that one part of the course I couldn’t get with Roots) I tried doing some tunnel threadle work with Beat and we COULD NOT get it. No matter how easy I tried to make it (even turning the tunnel mouth so it was pointing down so I could reward just the tight turn around the wing, she still squeezed in!) she still was going in the wrong end. I never got around to posting that one. But she must have done some latent learning because the past two days she’s been like a pro at finding the tunnel threadle! This exercise I was intending on just increasing the distance on the one step send exercise, but since it had the same setup as the tunnel threadle exercise I threw them in and she nailed them! And since a few weeks ago she had struggled with some turns out of a tunnel, I gave those another shot and BINGO! She figured it out literally in her sleep! You were right about the sighthound latent learning thing.
To that end, how do you decide whether to just quit an exercise and try again another day vs keep trying to make it easier so they understand? Not talking about the whole “always end on a good rep” thing, I know that’s not really a thing. But those other sessions I wound up ending the session feeling like I never really got it broken down enough for her to learn anything. How do you know if they got anything out of it without a magic 8 ball?

[Lora Abbott]

“I couldn’t really see 20 relative to 19 but maybe the slice is better than the wrap there, in terms of being faster?“

When I walked the dogs line it was a solid 9-10’ longer to do the slice vs the wrap, plus it felt like a lot of lead changes, so I did the wrap.

“He had a question on 4-5 at 1:23 – I think it was a parallel line blooper.” I think I just didn’t give him much for turning cues on 4, so he landed already looking past 5, he went and took the end jump, not the weaves.

“Weaves: on the first run, he left the weaves right as you said tunnel but I think he might have been popping out anyway?”
Yes I do try to start the verbal/cues for the next thing while he is in the last few poles, so it’s not something he’s never seen, but sometimes if it’s not what he was expecting (or I got further away than he was expecting, or anything that surprises him) he will still pop out. He knew it was coming in subsequent reps so he was able to stay in.

“Other options to play with are:”
For 11, I was worried doing it as a threadle wrap was still slightly ambiguously cuing the incorrect side of 11. I felt like he needed a tiny bit more to make it super clear he needed to come through the gap. In hindsight, doing it with the BC and a push wrap might have been easier. I kinda needed to be LESS ahead for 13-15 so I could use more motion to power him past the wrong tunnel entrance. Since the shortie tunnel I had was quite recessed he could easily see the wrong one (and couldn’t see the right one really at all until he landed from 15, so I can see why he just assumed it was the other tunnel and that I was just being a crappy handler and telling him to go straight instead of turn on that jump) and wound up in that several times when I was trying some different things. When I had to go deep to that tunnel, I inherently had to decel sooner than I’d have liked in order to not trip over the other tunnel. I’d love to try it with a fresh dog who wasn’t already confused and trying to offer me different things, which is what I think I had by the end. It’s not still set up, had to break most of it apart to work on some tunnel things with the other two, but maybe I’ll rebuild it the next time I do some course work. What I might do to take one element out is build it so that the correct tunnel is more visible too, increase our chance of success. Thanks for the input!

[Lora Abbott]

One more course training weekend. This one I could NOT get. At least the one part, I think it’s the 16 jump. From the dog who I always say won’t turn out of a tunnel, it seemed like he wanted to do anything except go straight. I cut out a bunch of attempts of me trying to alter my path and timing, even putting out a preplaced toy, and nothing got him to reliably not turn to the weaves if I kept him dog on left. Some attempts he wound up in the wrong tunnel depending on what I tried for a path. I didn’t try dog on right and layering the dogwalk, but I don’t think he’d have the skill to tandem that jump after the dog walk or get the right tunnel entry (I used a 10’ tunnel as the straight one, so it was recessed on that side and not as visible as the 15’ slightly curved off course tunnel). I eventually worked out blind crossing 14, then rear crossing the tunnel as a bit more reliable but the timing had to be darn near effect for that to work.
Thoughts?

[Lora Abbott]

Interesting session working with the angled approaches to the teeter plank today. I learned that Gallican jumps have a right way and a wrong way to set them up to prop up a teeter! Whoopsie! (She didn’t seem all THAT bothered by that though). What did seem to bother her were the cavalettis poles I used to create the approach cone. She was like “I can’t get on with this in my way”. She’d stop right at the bottom of the plank and look at the poles like “how on earth do you expect me to work under these conditions?” Once past the bottom of the plank she happily charged up to the end, so I don’t think it was the height or the fall that was getting to her. It definitely helped if I was stationary as she loaded, and I could move once she got on no problem. Just wanted to get your thoughts that it was the poles guiding her that she had questions about, and to help her through, just keep my movement to a minimum until she’s happy with it? Or would you change the setup?

[Lora Abbott]

“The line went well at 2:35 and even better at 3:05 – did he miss the DW on those?“

From what I could see he only hit his first one, the one he turned the wrong way on the jump after the dog walk. The rest were misses.

“Did you originally teach it with a mat or something?”
His mat was on the dog walk for this. His dogwalk has been “retrained” several times, but nothing seems to stick. We’ve had so much else to fix that the dog walk misses haven’t been a big deal (though he missed 2 agility Q’s last weekend in RI to missed dog walks, so maybe we’re at a place that it’s worth fixing that up).

[Lora Abbott]

I took the weekend off from trialing (the FOMO of missing out on the Cup in Barto 2 years in a row is REALLY tough, but I picked up my new to me van this weekend so there’s that!)

So we did another course training. I had my comfy chair in the shade, a big bottle of ice cold lemon water, all ready to do mid training session video analysis!

This one felt really tight after I built it, especially the opening. Didn’t help that the pool limited my start line set up options. When I started building I thought I had plenty of room in that corner and built that part last, but then realized I was a little close to the pool. Since I usually set him up close to the jump, I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but the angle was also not quite right. But he really struggled with 1-2 with both ways that I tried handling it. Then the jump-dog walk, I had to really hang back and hold him, which made the push off the dog walk hard. I couldn’t figure out a way to run the other side of the dog walk to rear the jump after it. He missed a bunch of dog walks, but pushes are a weak spot for him, as is anything where I’m racing him, he’s much better if I just sort of jog. And if he really doesn’t know where he’s going after the dog walk, he will also miss, and this was sort of a hope and pray scenario. He found the jump each time, though turned the wrong way once.

He got the weave entry on the first attempt, but on subsequent attempts I had to stay dog on left and not rear cross until he was out of the tunnel under the dog walk. If I crossed before that, he entered at pole 2. It’s hard to tell from the angle, but the way I built it, the poles really were just a bit to the left of the tunnel exit so I really thought it would be better to cross (shallowly) before he went in so he would know not to come out turning right? I was surprised how much support he needed to take the jump after the a frame too.

[Lora Abbott]

Did some tunnel exit work this evening. Old dog was being extra in the way, he even demanded a turn in the tunnel! He’s often loose when I train, but is never this pushy. At his age he gets what he wants and she doesn’t seem bothered by him being around any more. It did affect my handler path on that first rep going the second direction at 0:44. And then we just couldn’t get it (not all failed reps included). I stopped the session to watch the video and troubleshoot (click, treat), and as I did the solution occurred to me to try starting more lateral and using some convergence to keep her going straight after the tunnel which worked great. And I think this was the first time I’ve ever rear crossed a tunnel with her and I could definitely see her slow down and think REAL HARD as she went in the tunnel… “WHAAAAT?” If only the camera had been set up to see her face!

[Lora Abbott]

That part where she was sniffing her butt is actually a wee bit sad. She’s been getting a little freaked out about things touching her hind end and belly, like long bits of grass or even water dripping off of her. I think she probably got stung by a bee in the past few weeks and now she’s worried there are bees everywhere! Well, not everywhere, but little ticklish things just give her the heebie jeebies now. She did have a rep before that one where she COULD NOT POSSIBLY WORK. Toys and play will get her to stop thinking about it so it’s not too bad, but a bit sad to see. 😔

[Lora Abbott]

Tried some serp work for the first time in a long while, probably not since max pup 2. This was a huge struggle for her before but she seems to be figuring it out! Once I added the jump wing I was hesitant to do much more than walk at first, but that made it hard to be in position. The second direction I got a little braver, ran a little faster and she did way better because I was in the correct position.

[Lora Abbott]

Thanks! Yes, it seems I was a little too quick in the walkthrough in the opening, then he seemed to catch up with me in the weaves (I even remember feeling like “whoops, gotta hustle” when he was weaving) then it seemed like we were pretty even. How smart of me to wear that hat for the walk through only!

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