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Tracy
So, Zing and I tried to work the Masters 3 course yesterday, but she had just come into season. Needless to say she was not ready to work things so not even worth posting.
So, today I went out and was going to just do really easy stuff, see if I could train her to work through that whole hormonal issue. She was ON TASK. So, we started on the masters 3 course.
Here is our work. I broken it down into small sections so we could work some of the harder stuff. She did brilliantly, so happy with her commitment. Also learned something myself. I really like just working 4 obstacles (but not baby dog handling) at a time at this age. It helped me run her like an experienced adult, but keep my timing clean. It takes a while for a dog to learn to cover my sloppy timing LOL. I never want to run a dog like a baby and then change my handling when they get experience. They have to learn all over again what the handling is.
Weaves are still wide open.
Mary
HaHa, yes Zing loves her straight lines to tunnels. She will adore the AKC novice course (except for the table, which will probably be a running table). It is on my list to be working jumping skills. I just moved her up to 18″ the day before this vid so she is still trying to get it all sorted out. I wanted to wait and work the jumping skills until she actually had to “jump”.
We worked the threadles last night (kind of like your demo), but with a cone and bar. She totally cheats and doesn’t jump the bar LOL. But I worked them again this morning with a jump, but the bar low on the one side. I think this lowers the complexity of the task for her and her speed is much better. Once she got everything sorted out I put the bar low on the other side to get the tight exit wrap.
I will keep working Pinwheels, I love the wing wrap in the middle. That really helps.
Question for you. I looked through all the exercises and I would like to set up the Masters 3 course for Zing. I don’t expect to run it as a course, but I really like the setup. There are lots of skills for us to work and in a way that I can’t babysit. Do you mind if I skip to that?
Tracy
So Zing has been touring the west and we are just getting back to it. Here is our work on the exercises for connect/disconnect. We only worked through a couple. On the threadle I need to take a step back and work the basics again. We haven’t worked this for a bit. Then I saw your vid and like you ideas so we will work through those.
Also, here is vid of us still working the pinwheel for the past week’s work. I want to make sure that she looks good before we add complexity. She still seems to be thinking a bunch on the pinwheel into the left turn so I think I should work this more. Can I be more clear?
Sorry for the stay at the beginning. Zing was out of control before and during our break so I decided it was time to work a bit of that LOL.
Mary
Love this, you are a good dog trainer 🙂
On threadles I use the drop shoulder and hand more than the opposite hand. I tend to use the opposite hand when it is a “tight” turn to get on the correct line. Mostly this is my choice so I don’t have to do as much sideways running.
Do you always use the outside arm? If not,what point do you show them the drop shoulder/hand?
Mary
I have not said recently “You are brilliant”. I love the idea of how to train the 3-4-5. Thanks for that. So glad we didn’t get to work on this course this morning. Zing said “MaMa, I think we haven’t worked on self-control for a while, let’s do that” LOL.
Yes, I was noticing on this vid I am still late on my verbals. But, love a green dog, they totally tell you when you suck.
On the Masters 2 – I was thinking through this and trying to figure out verbals if either a) what if this was mid-course and I was behind (so no handling help) b) if the tunnel was a RDW. At this point Zing would not go out to #17 (I don’t think), but Hoot would. But at some point I suspect Zing will be like Hoot in her commitment to verbals. If the tunnel was a DW, I would *have* to make sure my handling influences her decisions. I teach them to run through boxes on a “go”. So I think that I would do tunnel-go-left and then when they are perhaps 5 feet out of the tunnel it would be left-left-left.
I am always on the look out for courses that present interesting verbal challenges.
M
Another question. On the master course #2 for this week. 1 through 4, what are your verbals and when do you deliver them? It is the jump tunnel jump jump sequence.
Tracy
Here is Zing and I working Masters course 1. It had some elements that I needed to work with her so we gave it a shot. This was our first try. Teeter low, channel weaves open.
Sorry the camera was so far away, I think I can get it better tomorrow.
M
OK, here I go and this is what I currently have. A couple of these are up for discussion. Tracy can guess why things are said in multiples, but for those who haven’t met Hoot, she barks through the whole course. Zing gets to put up with it.
Left/Right – 90 degree turn or softer. Motion clarifies. I use this for RC’s, jumps, weaves, teeter, and tunnels.
RightRightRight/LeftLeftLeft – Tighter than 90 degrees, motion clarifies. I use this for RC’s, jumps, weaves, teeter, and tunnels.
I am going to change my Left/Right for RCs but have no clue what I will use.
InInIn–threadle slice, only jumps. Used with Left/Right if called for
PushPushPush – threadle, wrap, only jumpsTunnelTunnelTunnel – tunnel
Come tunnel – end closest to me if there is a choice
Out Tunnel – By pass closest entrance (might change this but other things are higher priority to change)Out – further out or layer situation or Get Out if I need more emphasis (I use this in herding)
RoundRoundRound – backside wrap
RoundRoundRound, switch backside sliceHand (and pat the side of my leg) – come straight to me, no obstacles. Snooker.
I think that is it
Mary
Counting jumps, you are better than I. But I do pay attention to jumping vs non-jumping days at least.
Zing loves her tunnels, she is the dog right now who will take the off course tunnel over and over and over again.
I have not really trained the soft turn vs tight turn yet. I have used them, so if she knows them she gets extra points. I am wrestling with verbals and you make a great point about the delivery being different. I also have to change them for the RDW, but I can’t decide the words (arg, hardest part). Got any suggestions? I still haven’t learned R vs L so I struggle with that a bit. 🙂
I am with you, I walk around using them to decide sound, conflicts, too long to make them good.
Got it on the RCs.
Also, I need to do this same exercise, once she gets it on curved tunnels.
M
Tracy
Here is our work on tunnels. Super fun. I need to work on this a bit more, but I think she did fairly well. I have not worked tight turns like this before just because of age. But she is a big girl now and can stand the added work. BTW, her shoulders and elbows have been xrayed so I know that I am working with solid structure.
Also, I think that my wing probably wasn’t far enough away to cue timely. I will move that in our next session.
Mary
Tracy
It is fun to see the many ways to the same goal.
I have watched the targeting method for a bit. Different people put the target in different places on the wing. It is fairly popular to put it on the landing side in the middle of the wing. My opinion is firm on that one–hate it. Dogs do land with far greater impact on their shoulder. I have also seen it on the take off side (take the jump and wrap around to where you took off). I think that has good merit in terms of ease on the dog’s body. I settled on the side of the wing because I don’t want to shape a full wrap if I ultimately don’t want one.
I will be very watchful of the affects on Zing’s body when I start raising the bar. Zing is probably built fairly well for this exercise. Also, I have conditioning exercises that I started with before this “experiment”.
I do think that this method has value when you approach it as a conditioning exercise. Building the strength and muscle that it takes from those great turns and power out of them must be done, otherwise you are going to get muscle fatigue on some types of courses and perhaps injury. IMHO, it isn’t the Euro designs where you see this exclusively, sometimes it is super common on the USDAA/AKC designs. Two pinwheels on a course can give you a lot of that.
In terms of her shaping those turns. I am not opposed to that. It might add a bit of yardage, but a slightly more forgiving angle can allow the dog to stay in extension some and actually be faster. I know you have thoughts and perhaps data on this portion of this. What do you think?
Mary
Tracy
We moved on to the Novice 1 course. Before I ran it I felt like a couple of elements were above our pay grade. Guess what, those weren’t our problems!
Here is our 1st attempt and some footage of working out the problems.
Interested to hear your comments on why she had trouble committing to #6 the second time. She was following my motion, but her verbals are strong enough I would have expected her to at least second guess it.
Loved her commitment to the orange off course tunnel 🙂
Mary
OK, not shocked that timing was the topic of most of your comments, but super pleased that the adjective “tiny” was also included some LOL.
Keep hammering me on the timing. I want to get it perfect for her sooner than I got it correct for Hoot. (and then it will change again).
And yes! That wrap on the 2nd to last jump, noticed that too. Good girly.
Tracy
Here is what I am working on with Zing for head turns. Her success on today’s session was moderate. This was the first time I had asked her to hit the target on a full jump. We had worked just wing skills prior to this. When the video starts it looks like I am asking her for multi-wraps LOL, but I am not.
I have experimented a bit with where to place the target and this is the position that gets the best natural jumping skills.
What the end behavior with the target should be is: turn head-jump-hit target-continue motion. My current thinking is that the “touch the target” behavior will be super easy to fade. But if I notice lazy jumping skills we have a common language to get it back.
Let me know your thoughts on this.
Mary
