Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I like the “treat myself like a student” thing. It goes beyond just the rote “be kind to yourself”, which just doesn’t feel genuine. But to treat myself like a student is to acknowledge that I do know things (the teacher side), AND I’m still learning things! Again with the badly needed inspiration!
My goal is to run courses twice a month, July was odd that there wasn’t a chance to do any. Leaving a course for a whole month is tough because I have to move everything to mow any way, at least up until about this point in the summer. From here forward the grass isn’t growing as much and I can mow around the big stuff. Usually July I can get down to mowing less too, but this year was quite wet and we’ve had fast growth throughout. I think it’s slowing now finally. I’ve got one more trial I’m entered in this weekend, then up in the air about any more for August.
In other news Pick’s home fell through, so once I sort out my feelings about that (sooo much inner conflict lol) he may return to some agility training as well.
Files sent! Thanks for doing that!
The terriers certainly don’t go by the “no killing things” rule here- rodents are FAIR GAME! Would make my life pretty stressful trying to stop that! But there is a “no leaving work for critters” rule- crittering is either done during off hours or when cued! Off hours, I can’t really control (ugh, I once found Kraft picking baby bunnies out a similar nest in the yard, walking 20-30’ away to quietly crunch on it in the shade, then wandering back for his next victim, totally non-chalant as if he was just snacking on donuts he found in the work break room!) I think the babies don’t have that much scent to them, he was way more interested in the momma’s chunks of hair. But he certainly knew that hole was INTERESTING!
The mental things are certainly what get to me with Roots. In a training session, I tend to get one thing wrong and then spiral into thinking we are terrible! Or that I’m overtraining and not getting any where. At 9, I’m trying to learn to be smart about repetitions and stop and look at video more (and feel like I should be doing this their entire lives but the guilt of doing too many reps is stronger when they are older, sorry bout that blind cross on a wing session Beat). Maybe one of the things I lost/changed when I stopped taking in person classes? I used to watch video between my turns so I could see what went wrong and what to change. So maybe I’ll try to emulate that aspect of in person group classes. I’ll even plan it into the session, have a comfy chair ready (instead of the ground) and a cold beverage and maybe a snack. Yay inspiration!
As far as how often I run full courses? Not very often. I trial about two weekends a month (July was pretty heavy at 3, plus being away camping for July 4 weekend, so no agility then). During the week I do small skills usually before work (rotating dogs throughout the week), Friday afternoons I mow the agility yard and build a course if we aren’t going to trial that weekend, then run it one of the days of the weekend, and take the other day to do something not agility related (but will squeak in some agility if I can). I’d worry about running full courses before work with wet, dewy grass, but could try to do course work on some afternoons? I got away from doing full course work very often because it felt like we were lacking so many smaller skills 😔
First off, I’m so sorry about Voodoo 😔
We kinda have hit a plateau with these blinds on a wing, especially going from right side to left side. Very last rep I tried putting the toy in the right hand to force myself to connect more, and it still wasn’t great.
Roots and I earned some major click/treats on today’s session! I did one of the agility courses from package 2. I videoed my walk through (click/treat #1 for me), haven’t watched it side by side yet (I’ll probably have to use two devices). I ATTEMPTED to use a bunch of verbals he doesn’t know yet, slapping them on (click/treat #2). I wasn’t perfect in actually saying the right ones when running, but I tried. He’s probably never gonna actually learn them, but at least I still moved well enough to cue the things physically, something I struggle doing successfully in trials (splitting brain power between using verbals and moving well). Click/treat #3 I guess?
We hit a little snag (ok, it had the potential to be a HUGE snag). As I was walking him out to the course, he discovered a nest of baby bunnies RIGHT WHERE THE START LINE WAS. I left that part in the video in fast forward. Since we’ve had some struggles with mental distractions on start lines lately (a timer that started by itself breaking my focus, and on another run a dog having a meltdown screeching right outside the ring scaring the crap out of Roots) I decided to see if he and I could recover and keep focused on the course. I panicked slightly for the safety of the babies when he broke his stay while I put his leash aside, but we both recovered relatively well! (Click/treat for us both!)
Only mistake on our first try was the wrong side of the threadle wrap. Click/treat to me for not losing it and feeling like a failure for messing that up! Another click/treat for me STOPPING THE VIDEO and going to sit in the shade and actually watching it back before attempting the whole course a second time. Pretty sure it was my feet turning towards the front of the bar that cued the front side. Then I removed the bunnies from the nest and put them in a box outside the fence in the shade. He had already shown he could deal with that distraction once, he didn’t need to do it again. And I didn’t really want to feel guilty for dead bunnies! Second try, I was trying to get him to be more clear about focusing on jump 1 before releasing, to me it looked liked he was looking at jump 2, but he self released and took 1 any way, probably because he DID know which jump it was and was like “get on with it, I know where we’re going”. Next attempt I never really gave him turning cues on 5, I was still saying go on go to cue going straight after the a frame to the jump, never gave a verbal or physical turn cue really. I was trying to think of the verbal cues for the next two jumps, one spot where the verbals did affect my physical handling. (No click/treat there, but I AM trying!) Last try, nailed the whole thing, though with a bunch of wrong verbals on some things at the end of the course, but again, still handled decently. (Click/treat for me, pool time for Roots!)
Another session I thought went very well, other than nearly breaking herself at the end. Grass was wet with the rain last night, but it was gloriously cool. I was even in a sweatshirt!
I was especially impressed with her practically fixing herself on the wrap that she pulled off of. I didn’t do much other than shift my gaze back to the wing (where I should have been looking any way) and she was like “oh yeah, that”. Didn’t have to show any motion back towards the wing, bit of a big girl moment in my eyes.As far as Roots having an “extensive history”, well I’ve tried teaching this a bunch before, starting when verbals were starting to be a thing when he was 4 or 5. It never really gets better, or maybe nominally better once I realized that he needed to hear the word before being presented with any visual cues (which includes being able to see the obstacles). And so far Beat does not do much better at this. Her success with the wing vs tunnel game is still pretty low. While, I haven’t done this sort of thing with agility training much with Pick, he’s probably the most verbal of the 3, as I’ve done other auditory discrimination games as a stepping stone for some of his other behavioral issues (prey drive and arousal related things where I need him to respond to verbal cues even if he cannot break visual contact with what he’s hyper focused on).
That said, in today’s session I helped Roots a LOT and it went much better. I was actually impressed that he just didn’t do anything on “hup” since he doesn’t actually know what that is yet, just been slapping it on in trial situations, haven’t even had any trainings at home to play with it. Pretty sure since my arm was sort of up at my hip/bait bag he was like “you want me to walk beside you?” As soon as I dropped it down he was able to take the jump.
Since I feel like I’ve already tried “fading my movement” and making it more neutral, and he just gets more and more in tune with the nuance of where my feet and chest are pointed etc, how about if within a session or over the course of sessions I just move the obstacles closer and closer until the motion really could be cuing either one and the verbal cue becomes the more helpful cue? I really can’t remove my motion altogether without sitting down or standing still, and even then he might use my feet or chest laser as a cue. I can’t think of another way to make the verbal cue the most salient thing.
Super busy couple of weeks and the boys haven’t gotten much training in. Hopefully I’ve got some work life balance back and we will be trialing a bit less the next few weeks.
And in other news, Pick may have a fabulous new home soon! So I may work just Roots going forward unless it falls through.
This was the exercise I was dreading. I already knew doing it with no motion at all and from a stay or a restrain would be a huge failure. I thought the show and throw start would be better so he’d hear the word before seeing the motion, but not in this instance. This dog is NINE years old (literally, today is his birthday, happy birthday buddy you get to do discriminations!) and this exercise never gets any better than this no matter how hard we try. He’s just cuing off my feet I think. I’m also not sure how to approach the other side since he doesn’t actually “know” “hup” as a cue, I’ve just been “slapping it on” but that doesn’t feel fair to expect him to know it in the context of a discrimination? This whole exercise just seems like something to test how well he knows the verbal cues, but I already know he doesn’t know them and I don’t know how to actually teach him. I thought I’d taught him tunnel vs jump cues well enough to be passable at this level, but clearly not.
Here were some wing wraps and I think this one went well, other than her mistaking the cue for the wrap from a standstill for the cue to go around my back. Can’t blame her, those do look similar and I do use an around the back start sometimes.
I felt like this was a very messy session and the left wraps were really a struggle and those are usually her good side. And this girl does love her pool! She was given breaks to go play in the pool during the session, but I guess she wanted a few more!
Reattempted these this morning. My neck isn’t doing so hot, can barely turn to the right, so I think that affected those blinds on my right and caused that bar at the end. Having her turn the wrong way on that jump with the blind didn’t have so much to do with the neck and more to do with the fact that it was harder to get across the bar like you suggested than I thought it would be.
I cut out several of our first reps. She slipped in the tunnel on the first rep we did and I stopped her (or rather gave her the toy without continuing the sequence) checked that she was ok and started over. And the next few reps we just had weird things like her not going out to the jump (maybe because I acted weird on the first one, or the slip really did rattle her, who knows?) then she knocked a weird bar and I worried she WAS broken, but everything checked out and she seems fine, and I’m still more broken than she is, so all good lol. Being worried about whether she was broken did make it hard to concentrate on the right timing so I think I still wasn’t perfect but better.
Got in some sequencing this morning, these are definitely the longest she’s done and she seems to be saying bring on more! With where the tunnel was already set, I only had about 17-18’ between jumps which is of course way shorter than what she will see on real courses. Further apart would have been easier for sure as these felt very rapid fire. But probably good practice for what it’s going to feel like when she’s running faster and jumping full height.
The front crosses all probably were a little late as the turns weren’t super. Struggled most with the tight wrap after the blind as she kept wanting to turn the wrong way. First time I thought I just didn’t have enough exit line connection after the blind, so tried to fix that on the second, but still turned the wrong way. So took out the spin, still wrong way. Then tried just sending her to the tight wrap with that angle of approach, rewarded and then she was able to get it. Might have never really sent her to a wrap from that shallow of an angle?I tend to not use unstable surfaces very much in my fitness work with my dogs. If I do, it’s for core strengthening and my goal is that they don’t let the thing wobble! So I keep it low arousal. I have some exercises for challenging their proprioception though with stable surfaces. Basically I make it HARD to get on the stable prop by putting things in the way. I haven’t done it yet with her, but I can video when I do. And I generally add movement into this game gradually, which I suppose adds some arousal, but with what you’ve been teaching I will probably try to add even more arousal with tugging and play.
Got in a bit more sequencing with Pick after the trial. He was much more into the game than yesterday, I had his highest value toy (which was buried in the agility trial bag in the car yesterday) and it was slightly before prime bunny time. Had to swap the camera view though since it was right at the sun which had already gone down further yesterday. Yes, that’s Beat screaming in the background. I thought it was because I had the dogs in kennels in the car parked closer to the agility yard than usual and even covered she could hear more. Turns out she had diarrhea in her kennel! Whoops, sorry kiddo.
Repeated that first sequence trying to get off his line 2-3. Roots would need some intentional shaping of the line there or he would slice it, so I did it with Pick too yesterday. I realized after the fact that it was silly to do, Pick turns easier (he’s slower but I think even at the same speed he turns better) and with jumping a whopping 8” shaping lines is just dumb! He got the backside at 5, but watching it back I realize I helped way too much over the bar and his line was wonky after that (see third sequence).
Second sequence went fine.
Third sequence, first attempt I aborted because I realized how badly I was getting in his way AND saying all the wrong words! But then we were back to not being able to get him to take that backside after the tunnel without me having to take steps in the wrong direction to get him to come in. I tried breaking it down (not shown) and rewarding him by dropping the toy for taking the jump a few times, but realized when I tried to run the rest of the sequence how badly I was coming off the line to help him over the bar.A bit of plank work this morning. Beginning part went fine, I thought she pretty quickly shifted her eyes off of me and was looking ahead nicely, better one direction than the other strangely. Gave a break in the middle to play with a toy, and I knew her coordination and ability to stay on the board would be affected but didn’t realize how much! Do more of this with frequent play breaks to keep the arousal up so she learns to do it in arousal?
