Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Fantastic, Kim. I had been wondering about how much I should enter Loa in the spring season that begins the end of January, so I will work on this shortening the course strategy. We also have one “regular” local trial at the end of December she is already entered in that I can try this on.
I assume that judges won’t say anything about this (or that if we get whistled off we will be mostly done anyway and can just continue on to the exit! 😀 )
Jumping in here–such an interesting thread (and Sara, so funny about your dog not liking the dirt on his toy! I feel the same way, but my dogs don’t!). Kim, about the “quit before they want to quit” rule… do you literally take the toy from them, leash them up, and head on to something else? I think I’ve always felt torn about this; if I take the toy away then is that ending on a “less happy” note?
Clip 126 is probably 5-6 weeks after the first run in which we started seeing these behaviors (running over to me/refusing obstacles). Yes, at a minimum she is very distracted–if not full-on worried–at the start line in that run, something she definitely does more now than before (to the point where I often just run with her from the start or do minimal lead-outs; she had always had a beautiful start line stay but I have mostly given up on longer lead-outs because of the anxiety). I have tried to encourage her to be more revved up at the start line, thinking that would distract her from the anxiety. So you can see on the most recent run above from this November, she is barking (usually a sign of enthusiasm in her) and looking at me rather than looking around on the start line. But then within just the first couple of obstacles she dramatically slows down. I am seeing that quite a lot now too: an initial focus and excitement, which very very quickly disappears.
In general a pattern that has emerged over the months is that I’ll try out a new strategy (playing with a toy right outside the entry gate; carrying her into the ring and running right away; etc.) and though it may work quite well the first time I do it, when I repeat the exact same thing again on a subsequent run, it doesn’t work at all.
And just a note as I mentioned in my introduction posted on the other page, these behaviors are only seen in trials. Loa remains super enthusiastic and much much faster in class/private lessons/at-home training (except when we are purposely trying to “worry” her and attempt to help her work through it).
Over the course of the spring, I managed to train Loa not to run over to me by doing very short sequences and throwing a treat toy ahead to reward her. But I think I “trained that out” only to have Loa express her anxiety more clearly in another way, by slowing down even further. (Her YPS have plummeted.) Now it is rare for her to refuse an obstacle–she will usually be completely “correct” on courses–but she will often be slow as molasses; she has even NQ’d due to time on standard courses. And the easier the course the worse it seems; it’s sometimes the case that she Q’s in Premier but not in Masters.
She also occasionally pops out of the weaves (weaves were always something she did confidently and with gusto).
Here is a very recent run showing those issues.. and the “classic” speeding up at the end that so many others have mentioned! (Apologies for the less great image quality):
This is a run from early 2019, from Loa’s first trial day back after the testing/PT/rest. I was over the moon happy with this! It was like having “my” Loa back. But then on a run the very next day she went back to running over to me instead of taking obstacles. 🙁
So this is the very next day, similar to the other problematic runs we had been having for a number of weeks, and the one that convinced us to take Loa out of agility for several months for medical testing/PT/rest. We were concerned that her avoidance of obstacles and running over to me, which had come on so suddenly in August (it is not a behavior we had ever seen from her before), were indications that she had some sort of injury that was exacerbated by agility. In retrospect, I wonder if we shouldn’t have paid closer attention to the fact that in this run she chose on her own to take a jump after I “aborted mission” and as we were heading to the exit. But I think we just must have thought she was aiming to please….
So I will post two videos from what I think is the last weekend Loa and I trialed in fall 2018, after the sudden issues that emerged in mid August. Over the next few trials we did early that fall, Loa sometimes had solid or even quite fine runs, but also continued to have the problematic issues on other runs. This first run is what I would consider a “solid” run. She seems pretty happy throughout; she does get distracted by the judge at the top of the A-frame and on the table, but this looks to me like her “friendly” self rather than the “worried” self I’ve increasingly come to see (though I could be reading this wrong).
Hope it’s OK to jump in and ask a question! Kim, since you mentioned before that 70% play to 30% training is ideal (we are waaaaay far from that proportion!) would it make sense then to do that handful of cookies/5 mins in the training space and either do the 5 mins all at once and then a ton of play after in the same space, or intersperse one minute bursts of training with a couple of minutes of play?
