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Hello Kim,
When I went to do the opening speed circle with Loa today, on the way over to the first jump she thought we were doing LBG and eagerly took everything more or less along our path!I am assuming that it is Ok to include other obstacles (tunnels, weaves) in this game, not just jumps? I have also noticed that Loa is getting very creative, seeking out patterns that she knows like taking backsides, or even, if there is not something relatively close ahead of us, looking behind us and taking something back there. I have rewarded the couple of times she has done that, but am not sure if I should be!
I finally started the LBG with Loa today, on an unbelievably warm afternoon for January. I think it took me seeing the Week 4 video for me to really understand what it was all about. I hope I am doing it right! In the moment I realized I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to praise as I threw the treat (or praise so effusively…); when I went back later to watch your video again, I saw that you did seem to praise at least some of the time but more “lazily” :-D.
Little piggie Loa caught on rather quickly and I suspect this will be a favorite game for her!Hello Kim,
Glad that was what you meant about shortening the course! I do have the map—is there a link on the site somewhere that I can use to send it to you by email?As to reinforcement, Loa certainly loves food, but she also really loves her frisbee now. With the mulch in my local training space, on the food front I’d need to use very large chunks of cheese (so it would be visible and could be consumed neatly), so would be limited in how much rewarding I could do at once.
Many thanks for the weave tips–I’ll look forward to seeing more in Week 6!
Here is that Premier JWW course converted to a speed circle:
Even though she seemed pretty ramped up at the start, Loa was not as speedy as I thought she might be with this, which is one of the reasons why I thought she was perhaps discombobulated by it. I kept looking back to try to maintain connection while running ahead and cheering her on, but even on the ending line, which she would normally do more quickly, she was fairly slow. But again, adopting this strategy may have been helpful for her performance on the following day.
I tend to do lots of blind crosses in general, and I hate seeing wrap scenarios on courses where there don’t seem to be good alternative handling strategies, because I know that will really slow down both of my dogs (you really see that with Loa right after the teeter in the falling-down run; I do a blind right after, but it seems the “damage” has already been done with the first wrap). In terms of training involving handling, wraps are probably what I have been trying to work on the most recently, just to see if I can come up with strategies to speed things up; how can I keep myself moving and “ahead” while wrapping, for example?
At the same time, even though I have traditionally done lots of blinds, when I stop to think about I realize that I am probably doing them a lot less with Loa now than with Emma. On the one hand, I think with Loa’s “troubles” I have been concerned with making my handling very clear and “legible” for her, so that her stress is not provoked by not knowing what I want, and in some scenarios fronts do seem more precise. On the other, precisely because Loa had slowed down so much at trials, in places on the same courses where I would blind with Emma, I would front with Loa just because I had “plenty of time” to do so. But I had no clue that fronts could also put more pressure on the dog–nobody had ever mentioned that to me before! So, hmmmm.
Yep, I am definitely late on that front cross!
Loa can get distracted the minute I sit her and start to move away, if there is a bit of activity going on adjacent to us. If she is ramped up enough prior to that, she won’t get up and go over to the fence, but she will look over there rather than at me.
I have enough 2×2 for 6 weaves (ie, three sets). I am not sure if that is enough to work on increasing speed throughout. Could I do one set of normally positioned six poles, and then the 2x2s in channel formation (ie, angled–correct?) after then? Or would that be too confusing?So I was really happy with Loa’s performance at the trial just before the New Year (it was our only event between the Invitational and the very end of this month; we are now on a January hiatus). It was three days, with four runs a day (Masters St and JWW, and Premier St and JWW), so pretty intensive. Overall, Loa double Q’d on two of the days, and just missed doing so on the third because in the JWW run our trainer’s assistant (who Loa loves) was working as a videographer just adjacent to the poles, and Loa popped out when she smelled/saw her there. She also Q’d on two of the three Premier Standard runs (on Days 2 and 3). Her Premier JWW runs were the last event of each long day, and that is definitely the most challenging event for Loa to make time anyway. On Day 1 she was correct but very pokey with the PJWW course, so on Day 2 I decided to do a speed circle in that event rather than the course. I felt that she was a bit confused by that (“why is this course so easy?”), but I might just be projecting. 🙂 I will try to get video of that run to post for you. But I also felt she came back on Day 3 with good energy and enthusiasm, so it is hard to know if that is because I decided to end her on an easy/positive note the day prior.
Here is her Premier Standard run from Day 2 (early morning). A shade pokey through some of the intricate stuff at the beginning after the teeter. But it is kinda funny to see what subsequently seems to motivate her! (I was completely out of breath because I had just run my older dog on that same course. I usually have a bit more time between dogs.)
I’ve been advised not to adopt this as a regular motivation technique!
Hi Kim,
I have one more Week 2 exercise 2 video, now with the half speed circle and and then front crossing to come back:Unfortunately I set Loa up just out of frame left so you can see me but not her at the startline. On a couple of occasions (not in the video) when I set her up on the startline and she is initially really ramped up like she is here, if someone is in the large adjacent parking lot and garbage bin area she will then look over at them and break her focus on me/the toy. This is maybe similar to what goes on in the ring when she gets distracted with judges/ring crew? I’m not sure how to handle it in this training situation. (I think that when I just running with her rather than starting with a stay she is less inclined to be distracted in this way).
With the forward focus exercise, I realized that I needed to be farther away (laterally) from Loa in order to see where she was looking while I was looking ahead. So we are working on that, and I am also starting to incorporate the opposition reflex. (Tried to video that today but my phone mysteriously claimed it was out of battery when it wasn’t.)
To answer some of your questions above… At trials Loa actually seems really happy everywhere outside the ring. Each trial day I try to spend some time just sitting in the stands with her; she loves to be in my lap and people/dog watch, or watch the agility in the ring. When she is doing the latter she will sometimes get very excited at faster dogs (especially BCs) and let out some barks (so I have to make sure I am a good distance away so as not to bother/distract others).
I have a cooler that I have always taken to lessons and to our training ring but left in the car at trials. I am now leaving it ringside to emphasize for Loa that all of the good stuff comes from there. I’ve been continuing to play with the frisbee with her all the way from crate to ringside, and stash it in the cooler just before the run. But after the run, when she runs to the cooler, she is no longer interested in the toy–just wants her treats, which I dole out with lots of praise for a long time. Should I try to incorporate the toy into her routine before she goes back to rest? Or is it OK for the toy to be her pre-run routine and treats only to be her post-run routine?
Both my dogs learned weaves using the 2×2 methodology, but with Loa we also used a methodology I’ve only seen my main trainer using, where you stand a pole or two (or more) in the weaves, throw a treat so the dog runs away from the weaves, and then call them in to you and guide with your hand if needed/reward for correct entry. Similar to the around the clock in the 2×2, you can throw the treat around the clock to get the dog to learn hard entries. In retrospect, I feel like both methodologies produce dogs who are very confident in finding the entry (which both mine are). But they don’t really do anything to produce speed once they are in the poles. So now I am wondering if it might have been better to combine them with the guidewire (or channel?) methodology (neither of which I’ve used) that just lets them zip through quickly.
Will post a run + comments from the last trial a bit later! Thanks!!
So this is week 2 drill 2. Before I ran across this Agility University course, I had actually read about doing speed circles so have had the field set up with them throughout the fall (one reason why the dogwalk is “out of the way” in the center of the field, making week 2 drill 1 harder to set up). But I realize now I haven’t had a clear focus with how to use the speed circles, nor have I necessarily done them at the very beginning and very end of training sessions, which I’m trying to do now.
I forgot about running ahead and prompting Loa to chase me when I did this! I instead threw the frisbee ahead and tried to incorporate the chase into the post sequence play. But when I do this again I’ll try to be more ahead of her and also move to the next phase by throwing in the handling.
So this video shows Loa’s most nervous-looking run at the Invitational. She clearly looks at the audience in the stands/people walking by/judge when she is on the teeter, on the A-frame, and heading into the tunnel. Even so, she keeps going, and although she is slower, she is not molasses slow. (Ironically, Loa was the only Icie to do well on this course. I made a handling error with my super-consistent older dog Emma, pushing her into an incorrect backside when I tried to slice the jump before the tunnel too much.)
I was super happy with how Loa did at the Invitational. In the time before we left for Orlando I adopted some of your suggestions. We had very short training sessions and I tried to do the 70-30 percentages. I only used one toy, her leather frisbee, and tried to build a ton of drive for that. I didn’t try to fine tune any skills, I was really more focused on having her run with enthusiasm. Then at the Invitational, just before her run when I went to take her out to pee, I let her see that I had the frisbee in my treat bag, and she was super excited about that, jumping up a bit on me. After she peed I would get her keyed up about the toy again and we did a really brief but vigorous tugging session. And then went ringside where I would find a quiet-ish spot to tug, and then pretty much tugged nearly all the way into the ring (while seeking not to disturb any other dogs). In the past when I have tried a strategy like this it has only tended to work for one run, but this worked on every single run at the Invitational. She was fired up at the beginning of each run and even when she got nervous/distracted by the judge or the audience it is as if that energy helped her to work through it and keep going. I will post two videos. The standard run is my very favorite: though she glanced up and saw the crowd in the stands as she entered the weave poles and then popped right out, when I put her back in the poles she powered her way through them and then on to the end of the run. (In the first run earlier that same day, she started drifting out of the poles halfway through, and I made the strategic decision just to get her back in where she was rather than take her back to the beginning; that turned that run into a 0 unfortunately, but I felt that for her confidence that was the best thing. On this run I just had the feeling that she would be Ok with starting over, and she had popped out so early in the poles. She was temporarily discombobulated but quicky regained her bearings.)
Hello Kim! After a long silence I will be posting three videos (I may not be able to upload those til tomorrow morning). Two will be from the Invitational, and the third will be my first exercise video, for forward focus. After attempting that exercise, I did have a question. I tried it a couple of times before the video you will see, and it was initially difficult to get Loa to look forward rather than at the toy. And then I realized that I wasn’t sure where *I* should be looking. I ended up doing quick glances back and forth between her or the toy, and looking ahead myself, so that I could perhaps encourage her to look ahead while being able to check back for any changes in her gaze. We were lucky that a neighbor in an adjacent yard came out into her backyard so that prompted Loa to look forward, and I was able to reward a couple of times so she could start to see the pattern. She is usually a quick study so I imagine she will eventually get the hang of it!
