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<<<<And for the GO lines, you can totally get way ahead of her and see if she can still find the line of jumps.>>>>
So I should actually be running ahead of her and hoping she’ll follow by taking the jumps when I just want her to GO ahead? For some reason I thought I should be behind her sending her ahead of me on the GO line so that’s why I wasn’t moving much. Maybe I was getting too different exercises confused with one another.
<<<Your line of motion, connection, arms, and verbals were SUPER clear so she got the backsides.>>>
Thanks! I’ve been practicing backsides a lot since learning it. It’s fun to do and I like seeing my dogs understand it so well now. It really breaks up the monotony of taking the front side of jumps all the time. Plus I’m just really trying to cement it in my brain by practicing a ton. I’ve found that I can do sequences well but when I move onto a big course, I forget half the handling and just focus on getting the course done clean without applying any of the fancy handling tricks I learned from practicing sequences. This leads to sloppier handling than I’d like so I’m trying to make these handling tricks second nature so I don’t have to specifically think about each one while running a course.
<<<you can start the verbals and decel sooner, when she is halfway between the jumps. >>>>
I’m still trying to figure out this balance. I tried to exaggerate a decel between the jumps since it doesn’t seem like I do it very naturally and I pulled her off of the second jump. So I haven’t really figured out that sweet spot yet. I didn’t include that rep in the video but it was there.
<<<It is not a turn away with arms or anything like we did in the connection class>>>>
Oh. So this isn’t really a “switch” directions cue? That’s what I assumed it was but I guess the way you described it makes a little more sense now. How do you teach the dog which way to turn so they don’t spin after landing? I hate those spins. They seem to happen a lot in rear crosses. I was teaching my dogs left and right but I’m so bad at left and right that I figured I need to take the directionals out. I just confuse myself and confuse them because I can’t think and say it fast enough in the moment. I’d say they still know directionals for the most part but I just think it’s a bad idea for my brain.
Teeter Foundations. Kashia picked this up quickly. We’ve done a wobble board at training class before so I knew that uneven surface wouldn’t be a problem for her. I just didn’t know if she’d offer the behavior without a command. I had to give her some body motion a few times but otherwise she picked it up pretty well. It wasn’t the best makeshift wobble board but it worked.
The backing-up exercise did not go as smoothly. I couldn’t get her to offer the behavior. She’d only do it if I moved around and/or walked into her space. If I just stood there, we had a standstill contest. After several minutes of just standing there, not offering any behaviors, I stopped trying. The first several minutes she did well if I moved my body to assist her. After that, she either didn’t care, didn’t understand, or didn’t want to. In her defense, it was late at night after dinner that we were practicing. So perhaps she was just tired and her brain was off. I’ll try again tomorrow when she’s fresher. Also the “mat” or “board” I used for this was a thin dog bed. So she was being asked to move from a laminate surface to a dog bed surface. It was not a big dog bed that required her to pick up her back feet a lot. It was more of a crate mat type dog bed.
Next Level Look Ahead and Drive Ahead. I definitely was late to throw the toy a couple of times. I feel like I have quite a bit less motion than you. I’m not sure if it’s my set up is smaller or my dog is slower or if I’m just wrong. Either way, she started to look ahead so I was pleased.
Concept Transfer Straight Lines, Four Ways. I’m not entirely sure I did this entire exercise all correct but hopefully I got the concept at the very least. Kashia doesn’t have solid turn aways yet so I didn’t do those with her. I think my spacing was off because I once again didn’t have near the motion you do. I have a bigger arena than this one so I can spread them out if I’m supposed to do that.
Tomorrow I won’t jump her to give her body and brain a day off from jumping. I’m still trying to figure out what I can use to replicate a wobble board so hopefully I’ll start that one tomorrow and keep practicing the motion override game. She loves that one and is already better than yesterday.
I have never taught either of my dogs the skill of putting their back feet on something or offering that behavior. They know how to back up on command but that’s it. I’ll see if I can work on this based on your demo video. Seems easy enough.
Here is our second attempt at Next Level Pup Looking Ahead and first attempt at Contacts Foundation Motion Override. I’m not entirely sure I did Motion Override correctly because I forgot to break her before rewarding her. She actually knows how to do this but in an entirely different way. I taught her when I face her and she’s coming to me, there’s a command for stopping in motion and sitting or laying down immediately. Obviously much different than your exercise but slightly similar concept. Either way, it didn’t translate because she still looked just like your pup. I was fine with it. She seemed to really enjoy the game and I could tell she wanted to learn she just was unsure. I chopped up 3 different segments of the 4 minutes so you’ll basically see the beginning, middle, and end over 4 mins time.
On the Next Level sequence, I only measured the beginning jump at approximately 15-16 feet from the tunnel. The other two times I moved it were just guesstimates. I didn’t keep track of exactly how many feet. The camera is also at a bad angle because it’s hard to see how far I am from the jump. I tried to walk a straight line from the middle of the tunnel without creating too much lateral distance that would cause her to question the jump. We also worked on straight line lateral distance at the arena yesterday so that probably helped with this exercise. I forgot to bring her lotus ball out to the barn so I just threw treats instead. She seemed mostly good with that.
For the teeter game this week, I understand the wobble board exercise but I don’t really understand how I’m supposed to get Kashia to offer her hind legs onto the teeter? I feel like we will both just sit there super confused. I haven’t done the wobble board exercise yet but I watched the video and I’ve done that exercise prior to this class so I’m familiar. I’m just not familiar with how it’ll translate to the teeter. Your dog makes it look so obvious that you want her hind legs on the board but I don’t know if I’ll get that? I guess we need to see but I’m doubting my dog already.
I understand. I’ll give Kashia a few days off. Please don’t think I actually expect Kashia to be like my older dog. I definitely understand they are far different in maturity and skill levels. I was comparing them only to say I was surprised at how well Kashia knows the lazy game but that my older dog does not. And then quite the opposite in the next level sequence. I’ve been working on distance, layering, and going ahead a ton with my older dog though so I’d expect nothing less of her. I was more frustrated at not understanding how to get the result we wanted without throwing the toy immediately. I couldn’t really tell when she was actually looking at the jump so I just threw the toy as a fail safe, I guess. Anyway, I’ll give her some time to think about it. We did mostly contacts and tunnels today and she loved that. I’ll keep the jumps put away until mid week.
Are other classmates able to finish all the games for each week in the same week they are posted? That’s the only reason I was jumping her so much. I was trying to stay caught up with all the games but it’s honestly quite hard to do. It’s a good problem to have meaning there’s tons of helpful content but it’s also harder to stay on track. I feel like I’m falling behind if I don’t try out each game each week. And since I work full time, there’s only weekends where I could even try to get more than one training session in a day but I don’t usually get that.
<<< I have chilled out a lot in my old age here, thanks to the whippet LOL!!!!>>>
You are NOT old! I’m glad you’ve relaxed thanks to your experience level but definitely not old! The lady I learned from is 85 years old and still runs 3 Border Collies. The other 3 ladies in the group of us 5 are 65-72 years old…I’m more than half their ages cut in half. And I’m pretty sure you aren’t those ages either based on your videos. Or you just age extremely well!! lol I have noticed a large majority of agility folks are older ladies though. So interesting considering the running involved in the sport.
Anyway, thanks for the help. I’ll try to be more gracious with Kashia. I wasn’t upset at her. More so the process and myself. 🙂
Rather than doing the bonus sends again, I decided to try NextLevel Pup 1: Looking Ahead. It did not go well at all. I just can’t figure out how to have the same motion as you do in your videos when I have a slow slug speed dog. You’ll see in the beginning I was just walking. I just don’t know how to increase my motion without getting too far ahead of Kashia because she’s so painfully slow to start. Also, I don’t feel like she ever really looked at the jump until I threw the reward. I was frustrated trying to figure out that timing since Kashia still needs so much babysitting. I could not figure out when she was looking at it and when she was looking at me so to prevent the looking at me, I tried to just automatically throw the toy over the jump without knowing if she was actually looking that way. There were two times or so that I was too late in throwing it and she’d already started coming into me which made her bypass the jump to get the reward. That was when the jumps were the farthest out but even still, it didn’t feel like she ever really looked at the jump. Compared to my older dog who did it without ever looking at me until she landed.
I was so frustrated and annoying at the outcome of this drill that I decided to do the lazy game again to clear our minds of the last drill. It just didn’t feel good to me and I didn’t like Kashia’s performance. She aced the lazy game most of the way through. She still had some trouble taking the tunnel without any verbals but she got it several times so I was happy with her. To me, these two games are similar in the skills they are building. It feels like independence and lateral distance. So what’s weird to me is how well Kashia does the lazy game but didn’t do the next level pup game. And my older dog was the opposite. She absolutely aced the next level game but is still not strong at the lazy game. I’m developing some great distance with my older dog but apparently with that distance doesn’t come her independence of finding the jumps. It’s just confusing how opposite they are on each of the games and how similar the concepts of the games are.
Kashia and I did the bonus concept transfers tonight. Her energy level and/or enthusiasm was pretty depleted by the end despite not doing that many reps. I’m not sure if it was mental exhaustion or physical or what. Either way, nothing new for her but figured I’d point it out!
I think she did fairly well at these drills. The first video is the warm ups and the second video is the full course. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to send my dog without putting my arm up and pointing. It’s my natural habit apparently! I swear to goodness I try every single time and it just doesn’t happen. As soon as I slow or stop motion, my dogs question what I’m doing and what they should be doing. I also just can’t seem to grasp the mechanics! I understand it closes my shoulder off to the dogs but I can’t seem to find the sweet spot of using your arm as guidance and not as a barrier.
We had several bloopers. A couple I think I understand why they happened. There’s a couple I’m not sure. I will wait to see what you say.
<<<I moved to Virginia specifically for the weather LOL!!!!>>>
Ha ha I totally understand! I moved to Nashville for nicer weather (and college). It was amazing. Unfortunately, I moved back to Idaho when I went through some tragic deaths….still working on convincing my husband to move back to Nashville though!! It’s been 12 years so you can see how well that is working! HA! They get like 1 month of winter compared to like 9 months of winter where I live. UGH! If I didn’t have covered arenas I’d be in a world of hurt for practicing! Or I’d be forced to build a giant shop to practice in!
<<<And it takes adolescent dogs 3 times the length of time to bounce back to baseline (resilience) than an adult dog or even a puppy. >>>
Wow! That is really interesting! I had no idea! I mean it makes sense and I can think back to times of behavior that track with what you said. I just never thought of it that way. Although I have a friend who has an agility dog (much like Elektra except she’s Border Jack) with wild stress/arousal issues. She’s had to do so much more learning how to manage that. She said it can take days to get her back to normal. She has done all sorts of things and met with all sorts of doctors and behavioralists to help with that. I can’t imagine! Thankfully Kashia was fine once we got back in the house.
<<<I take them on a sniffy walk>>>
Makes sense. I’ll see what ideas I can come up with if that happens again. When it’s nearly 7pm, dark, raining, and cold, the last thing I want to do is spend more time outside “decompressing” my dog. Lol On workdays I practice agility at night after all my ranch chores are done and before we eat dinner. It’s a fine line of being tired and hungry but also motivated to practice and train together. Lol But I’m all about trying to make my girls better so I’ll see what I can come up with! Maybe kicking the soccer ball for her for 10 minutes would have helped bring her back to equilibrium.
<<One thing we do to help get the verbals really easy for us humans is to run the sequence without the dogs, saying the verbals.>>>
I actually do this! Maybe I need to do more repetitions because I still forget in the moment of training. Lol Left and right are just really hard for my brain!
<<<So you can run hard until she is maybe halfway between the pinwheel jump and the wrap jump, then slow down a bit (as you are saying the wrap verbal). >>>
There’s a fine line with this though, right? Because I’ve decelerated too much or maybe too soon and pulled my dog off the jump. I’ll work on this. To be honest, it’s never something I’ve consciously worked on, so I’ll be more intentional about it with these exercises!
<<<The last 2 runs here were front crosses – it is always good to try the FCs but in this sequence, the BCs seemed so much better!>>>
Was I not supposed to do front crosses? I thought you had some in your videos so that’s why I tried only those two reps at the end. They felt very funky and definitely not something I’d do in a course if it had a sequence like that. The blinds were way smoother.
My goodness! Seeing yours and other classmates videos make me wonder why in the heck I live where I do! No sunshine or green grass or sweatshirt weather where I live! I’m jealous of y’all!
Tonight’s session was a little frustrating for me. Only because Kashia got startled when a horse came in the barn (🤷🏼♀️) and from there on I completely lost her drive and excitement. The first lesson she was so happy and animated. She was doing wonderfully! After she got startled, she just lost all motivation. It doesn’t look as bad in the videos as it felt in the moment. I was so bummed too because Kashia was so engaged prior to that moment.
The first video is before she got startled. She did great! After watching it back, I should have used my verbals sooner. I felt that in the moment too but honestly, left and right directionals are so tough for me in split second moments that I get all screwed up when I try to remember which is which (my husband constantly makes fun of me but it’s legit something my brain can’t compute automatically). I think I’m better off just telling Kashia “tight tight” and not worrying about the directional. Even still, I think I could have warned her about “tight tight” sooner than I did. Otherwise, I thought she read it pretty well.
The second video is where I lost her. She got startled when I was working my other dog but for some reason never snapped out of that moment when it was her turn. I probably should have stopped training when I could see her interest level dropped dramatically but at that point I’d only done one lesson and it was 4 reps. I really wanted to get more in before being done. She’s still “cantering” if you will, but it’s much slower and much more reluctant-like. It looks better in the video than it felt, as I mentioned. I got my crosses screwed up a few times. I kept wanting to do like a double cross or something funky. I’m not used to turning to the outside with her. Assuming that was right? I’ll have to watch your videos again. I thought I did it the same as you but sometimes I’ll watch your demo right before and still space on the mechanics once I try it myself. There were plenty of times I forgot to give her the “tight tight” verbal. My brain and mouth couldn’t function simultaneously tonight. She read it right despite my lack of information. She only back jumped one rep which I left out only because I was trying to limit it to two minutes as best as I could and I knew exactly what I did to cause that.
Anyway, let me know what you think! My older dog loved these drills but it definitely tired her brain out quickly. One of my cats did too. He snuck in the tunnel a few times in between the dog’s reps… lol
<<<You can send to jump 2 and when you see her moving past you, stay connected and start moving to jump 3.>>>>
I’m not sure why I’m confused. So once I send her to jump 2 and she starts to go over it, I should be moving (walking) towards jump 3? Do I use any verbals or hand signals? I’m sure I’m over complicating this. I just couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do because the send was somewhat motionless and lazy game in general is very motionless so when it came to jump 3, my body didn’t know what to do. It seemed like you just said go and your dog knew to continue driving forward with you behind him which is kind of another send, I guess. That’s from video recollection anyway, I haven’t re-watched it this morning. I think I was trying to get jump 3 without any verbals, I guess, but I also was late on motioning towards jump 3 with my body, and maybe I was worried about being too far ahead of the dog? Or doing another send which wasn’t in the video? I don’t know. I’m rambling at this point. Maybe it’s not worth all this complication if you think she is ready to move to the next games. lol
<<< but the hand will be low (so she can see the connection) and try not to point ahead of her (that breaks connection too :))>>>
UGH!!!! This is like my achilles heel! I do it all the time even when I think about it and try so hard not to! I just like to point where to go! lol
<<< tunnel value by throwing rewards at the exit of the tunnel when she goes through it. She needed you to really be connected and move towards the tunnel a lot, so it would be great if she would go do it by herself the moment you said “tunnel” >>>
I was wondering about this. Tunnels still don’t hold a lot of value to her. Sometimes she loves them and sometimes she has to really think about whether she wants to go in. I will definitely be adding the treats so we can get more value! Thank you for the suggestion!
Good feedback! Super weird to want lots of connection but to play a game where we don’t necessarily want lots of connection. I understand the concepts. It just seems counter-intuitive in ways!
Is it Friday yet!? My goodness it’s been a week already! Dang work getting in the way of my agility practice, how dare it!
On Monday I took Kashia to the agility arena for our weekly practice session. I tried implanting some of the skills we’ve learned running a sequence of like 6 or so jumps. Kashia did so great! Specifically backsides. I’ve been really practicing those and she reads it perfectly every time. She’s doing so wonderful with just the basics we learned in MaxPup Winter Camp!
I was practicing at 9pm tonight so I only had time for the Lazy Game. I’m not entirely sure I did the part 2 correctly. Maybe my jumps were too far apart? Something just felt weird about it. I definitely don’t think I sent to the third jump correctly at all. I couldn’t figure out what kind of motion I should be in to get that third jump. I was conflicted on verbals and hands because the Lazy Game started out with neither so I wasn’t really sure how to accomplish the third jump the way you did. Maybe I’m just being confusing and analyzing it too much. If so, I apologize. Sometimes I struggle trying to duplicate what you do without watching the video 10 times. Ha ha This exercise just didn’t feel smooth to me, like I was doing something off.
The Lazy Game Part 3 went fairly well, I think, if I did it right. Kashia loved the speed. She had a few bloopers but otherwise seemed to pick up on it good. Was I running too close to the wings?
Thanks for your time!
Hello!!
<<<<it was fun seeing the horse audience behind you on the plank game LOL!>>>
Ha ha, sorry about that. It’s nearly impossible to not have some type of animal distraction at our ranch. Whether it’s a horse, cow, barn cat, or dog (sometimes her dad too). I do my best but sometimes they squeak in! Thankfully Kashia is able to work pretty well through all those distractions the majority of the time!
<<<Are you training an end position separately, like stopping in a 2on, 2off position?>>>
Do you mind if I get your opinion on this? With my older dog, she was so slow in the beginning that I didn’t want to waste anytime stopping her on the contacts. Since she didn’t have speed, she had zero tendencies to miss the contacts. She’s developed into much faster than she was back then but I still don’t make her stop. I’ll tell her slow to make sure she slows to hit the contact, but that’s all I’ve done with her. I hadn’t decided what to do with Kashia. Initially, I didn’t think I’d stop her either. Then when she all of a sudden was afraid of the contacts in January, I started making her stop and sit in the yellow as part of getting the target and waiting for the reward. However, I only did that on the dog walk and the teeter. She doesn’t have any issues with the A-frame. So I wouldn’t say we’ve really cemented any behavior in her little brain yet for the two other contacts. I’ve met so many people that do different things. I hadn’t really decided what was best to do with Kashia.
<<<It looks like she is is ready for you to add more distance between the jumps! You can move them apart another 3 or 4 feet and see how she does.>>>
I did this today and she did wonderfully!!! She got it nearly every time and was so animated the entire time! It was awesome! I was so proud of her! Definitely one of my favorite games so far!
<<<she would get a little bored if you were not running fast>>>
Don’t speak too soon! She started to get this way with the Wingin’ It game. I practiced it twice between chores, 3 mins each time. The first session she was animated and excited. The second session she was willing to participate but much less animated in her gait through the tunnel. Either way, I thought she did pretty well. I think I probably moved my feet more than the one step. It was kind of hard to remember in the moment. Like it was there in my brain but it didn’t really translate to my appendages. lol It was hard to narrow this video to 2 mins since the reps take a bit longer than some of the other games. So I cut several reps out but hopefully you can still get the gist of how it went for us and give me feedback on how I can be better. 🙂
I did the Teeter game again the way you said, 1 rep at a time. I took a video of each rep and combined them all together to show you. She was excellent! Super excited every time! In fact, the last second or two of the video I included a snippet of what she’d do any time I went back into the arena. She’d go straight over to the teeter and just sit on it and wait for me, even if we weren’t doing that exercise, or any agility at all. lol She was ready for that high value cream cheese! I did 1 rep at a time in between doing ranch chores. So I apologize that in one video some of my other dogs appear. I didn’t want to put them away for a 10-15 second rep and their “stay” command outside of the camera view didn’t work too well. lol
Thank you!!!
Thanks for the tip, Dixie! I appreciate it! My mom likes to thrift shop peruse, so I’ll ask her to keep an eye out. Thank you!
I like this lazy game. I can really see it making the dogs use their brains and think independently. I can’t say I’ve ever done a lesson that really feels like that. I like it. My older dog could really use this skill so it’s been awesome practicing with her too.
<<< I dropped the whole tin so he grabbed it, ran around with it, and ate about 10 Vienna sausages for one single rep. >>>
Ha ha that’s hilarious!!! What a great memory! I could see Kashia gobbling up the whole can as fast as possible if I did something like that.
<<< My next dog will be a whippet/malinois mix >>>
What an interesting combo! Can’t say I’ve ever see a Mal mixed with a Whippet! Sounds like a dog that will need definitely need a job or else it’ll be high maintenance! Mals are amazing working dogs but my goodness they don’t always have an off switch. At least police ones, that is.
<<< they just don’t have the same frantic movement that a lot of herding dogs>>>
My Brittanys are a cross between a sloth and a turtle compared to nearly every BC I’ve ever met…I would say they have polar opposite movements from herding dogs! We have an Australian Shepherd too so I’m familiar with the herding breeds to an extent. She’s my husband’s dog. She’s actually pretty chill except around my horses and cattle. Then she’s a piece of work.
The sun came out today so I moved some equipment to the grass to practice outside for a few days! Yay!
The plank game went fairly well. I probably started the elevation a little too much in the beginning as you’ll see her just jump over it several times. Once I showed her it was fine, she was all about it. I didn’t think it was that high off the ground but she was unsure of it. I haven’t made it wobbly yet. This was just an uneven plank attempt. So the side closest to the camera was higher than the other side but both had something underneath them. I’ve never even heard of those conditioning inflatables. I’ll see what I can find at Walmart. I’m a bargain shopper. Anyway, what do you think about her getting off the plank before she was at the end? Should I have allowed her to do that and rewarded it? I wasn’t really sure what to do there.
The lazy game went much much better this go around! Her little brain must have stewed on it over night or something! I only included a few reps on the right in the video because they all looked beautiful to me. On the left, her first couple of reps were perfect! She got every jump with no hesitation. On the third or fourth rep she skipped a couple jumps. Not sure where the confusion came from after doing some reps so well. Maybe I got too far away so the next reps I got closer and I did what you suggested, throwing the treat before she jumps. She figured that out super quickly.
These are both really fun games. I’m excited to keep practicing. They are easy for my brain but most importantly, the dogs seem to like them a lot. This is especially nice for Kashia so I don’t have to deal with boredom issues right off the bat!
<<< This game is a lot harder than it looks!!>>>
That game was much harder than I expected. Not so much for me, obviously, but for the dog to figure it out. Even my older dog was having to use a lot of thinking and deciphering. Interesting how it looks so simple but it’s really not!
When I was practicing, I didn’t even consider the heeling being more valuable. I didn’t think of that until later when I watched my video. It made total sense though! Heeling has been huge in what I call her “lifestyle” training prior to ever training agility. So it makes sense. I’ll practice mostly on the “off side” or right side to help her grasp the concept. She definitely understood that side so much better.
<<< Doing the reps one at a time like that will help her associate the teeter with the amazing reinforcement, so she will drive up it like a wild woman on that very first rep 🙂 >>>
This makes total sense!!! I would have never thought of that but it’s so simple! Thank you! Great suggestion! I obviously can’t have her afraid of the first rep since you only get 1 rep in AKC classes! lol I didn’t practice it today because I didn’t feel like I had any amazing reinforcements on hand. Hopefully tomorrow!
Ha ha ha I should have known most of the dogs had some Border Collie in them!!! It seems like everybody super involved in agility has some sort of BC mixed into their dogs if not a purebred. You definitely can’t deny their amazing talent when it comes to agility. I’m personally not a fan of BCs but the local trainer I learned from and still practice with has 4 of them. I’ve run two of hers. There’s no arguing their speed and ability is pretty fun to handle! A little crazy for me though! I’ll stick to my Brittanys. I’m a runner. I love running but I also love that my Brittanys are slow enough to allow me to make mistakes and still recover from them. Ha ha they are more forgiving because of their lack of speediness in comparison. You have quite the array of pups though! That’s so awesome!! I think it’s great! It shows how versatile you are too! 🙂
Here’s the plank game. I don’t have any fancy plank but I found some random board in the barn that seemed pretty close in shape and size. Kashia didn’t seem to have any issues with it! Unless I’m missing something, she seemed to pick it up well and go through the reps nicely. Let me know what you think!! She picks up the association of board and treats quite quickly and gets excited to get on the board for the treats! She kept repeating the exercise even when I was done practicing and cleaning up. lol I only did this exercise for 3 mins. I chopped up my video just because I didn’t think you’d need or want to see all the reps and I wanted to keep it at 2 mins per the instructions. 🙂 Otherwise, they all looked the same as what’s on the video.
Thanks so much!!
Yes! She needed those days off. It was also her first time staying in hotels so she was extra exhausted from that new environment.
Last night we did contact games and teeter games.
The Lazy Game did not go so well. Kashia’s behavior was confusing to me. I know Kashia is smart. I know she picks up things really fast as I’ve taught her a million tricks and she learns them all so quickly. This game though, not so much. I’m not sure if she just couldn’t figure it out, didn’t like it, or was confused. Afterward, I thought maybe she was thinking more about “I have to heel next to mom” than she was “take the jump next to mom” but I really don’t know. We’ve done a ton of heeling in her short life so that is a natural position for her now. But you’d also think she knows how to take a jump with as much basic agility as we’ve done. You tell me. Her clockwise reps were the first ones we did and she never got all three jumps in a row during all reps. You stressed no verbals and no hands so I tried just looking at her with normal connection and I tried walking close to the jumps. Her counterclockwise reps were nearly spot on every time. I know you’ve mentioned she clearly has a strong side so maybe that’s the case here? I did the exercise only once for under 3 minutes so I don’t think I overstressed it.
After the Lazy Game, we tried the Teeter Game with my much smaller teeter. A little back story. Kashia has been doing a teeter (and all other contacts) here and there since September-ish. She LOVED the teeter when I first introduced it in September. I wasn’t really even training her on it. I was training my other dog and Kashia would just copy it to get treats. She had no issues with it, my small teeter and the competition size teeter. We hadn’t done it for probably a couple of months until about January when I took her to the arena during a week they had all the contacts out. All of a sudden she was terrified of all the contacts. I was baffled but I recall reading something about puppies and young dogs going through phases of fear of things they once were not afraid of. So I choked this up to normal behavior? Anyway, long story short, we’ve been working on contacts a little more consistently since then. I only have a small teeter at home but when the contacts are out at the arena, I practice them. You’ll see the first rep how timid she is. That’s part of that fear still lingering in her little brain. By the end, she was trotting up it before I even asked her in anticipation of getting treats. She does this a lot during our teeter practice. First few reps she’ll be timid and then the rest she is doing them even when I’m not looking because she just wants the treat. That behavior is how she used to be in September. Where the fear comes from, I have no idea. She scales hay bales every day. She climbs up my giant haystack for my cows that’s at least 20 feet high. She’s not afraid of heights. Maybe it’s just the small platform that makes her nervous. Either way, there you go. I enjoyed seeing her fear turn to excitement after just a couple of reps.
By the way, I love that you have less common dog breeds as your agility dogs. That’s so wonderful to see and honestly makes it feel more credible for me who also doesn’t have a common agility breed. Although your little Electra, who is VERY animated btw, seems to be more on the Border Collie side. Super cute and spunky, nonetheless! But your big dogs aren’t the common ones I see in my area and I love that! What breed is Contraband (cool name by the way!)?
