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I watched that video when I saw it posted on another forum thread and it was an eye opener for me. I am guilty of giving little treats, which work really well when we are doing activities like fitness and conditioning, which she loves. After watching, I switched to using pieces of real meat in a bowl for her to drive to and she is now racing towards the dish more often than not (and when she does I give her extra). So many things you have said – keeping training sessions short, ending with them wanting more, using larger treats that she actually loves, rewarding for speed, not necessarily correctness, not feeling like I have to do everything, and relieving pressure have made more of a difference than I would ever have believed in such a short time.
The other thing that I absolutely love and find very helpful about this course is that it is the first online class I have taken (and I have taken many….) where the sequences are run by true students with their dogs, mistakes and instruction included. It makes me feel like my dogs and I are capable of working on them, not so far out of the realm of world team dogs that we ought not to even try.
I can’t thank you enough!
This class is just what I hoped it would be! I have seen great changes in the enthusiasm of both my dogs already!
I have a question about the opposition reflex game. Myra is VERY soft. I have worked a lot over the past couple of months to encourage her to come into my space more, but she is still hesitant. When we are playing ball, either after training or away from training, she is very forward, and will challenge me for the ball, allow me to push back on her and “tease” her with it, but if I try to incorporate that into a training session, she totally shuts down. I would really like to work to a place where I can use that to help get her “jazzed up” when I am looking for more energy, but I am not sure whether or not to continue working on it now, or if she would be better served if we focus on other games/activities to bring her confidence up first and then revisit oppositional reflex later. Unfortunately Myra’s initial training as a puppy was with a trainer who insisted she play with toys, and being new to the sport, I went along with trying to force her to play while not reinforcing her in ways meaningful to her- which I now know is one of the huge reasons we are where we are, but you have given me real hope that we CAN play agility together happily!We did our first speed circles this evening. Myra usually jumps 12”, so I set the bars at 8”, leaving as much space between jumps as I could to encourage her to really run. I wanted it to be simple and easy for her. We did the circle 2 times in each direction with a food dish after the last jump as her reward. Her times were 18 seconds, 15, 15 and 13 on the final run. It was wonderful to see her run with such joy! I know that I have created a lot of her stress by trying to make toys be her reward. She likes to play and I hold out hope that one day she might find toys rewarding, but it relieves a lot of pressure on me (and subsequently on her) to be able to use food and not feel badly about it. I think this class may be the one that gives us the instruction we have been searching for!
