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Hellooooo and welcome to you and Vanessa!! I love the name!!! Can’t wait to see her 🙂 Yay!!
About the profile photo – you’re not old lol! I still don’t know how to use most of the functions on this site. But we can change photos:
Our website software pulls profile images from a popular profile image service called Gravatar. You can create an account at Gravatar.com using the same email address that you use on agility-u.com. Then follow these instructions to upload your profile photo over on Gravatar: https://en.gravatar.com/support/activating-your-account/Hope that helps and see ya later!!
TracyHello and welcome!!! Being a bit older is actually good, you’ll make quick progress 🙂 and being a bit more thinky is GREAT – we want the dogs to have understanding before we add speed so I am glad Ria wants to sort it out before blasting through it. Have fun!!
TracyHello Glenda and Ribsy!!!!! Welcome 🙂 I’m so excited to see you and Ribsy 🙂 and oops, I think it screwed up the dates, it should be Tuesday. I will fix!!
TracyHello and welcome! She is the cutest critter and I love her name (so many nickname possibilities :)) And of course now i must figure out how she is related to my dogs 🙂 yay!!!
Hi! He is a funny creature on the set point and ladder – he kind of finds them to be yawners. LOL! Not a lot of challenge, so he doesn’t really power through them. He is just like my Voodoo – totally like “whatevs” on a regular set point or ladder grid. But…. add some challenge and some action, and GAME ON! LOL! Kaladin likes the challenge of the zig zag grid, definitely not a yawn-fest for him. But he appears to think the set point is dullsville. His form is really nice! But he just doesn’t want to power through because it doesn’t seem to be all that stimulating for him, even when you are running. But on the mini ladder grid, especially after wrapping the fox barrel? Oh heck yes, game on! He zipped around the barrel and powered through the ladder, both on the regular wrap and the tandem turn. So cool! Ok, noted, then: we will just give him jumping challenges that are challenging and action-packed. He doesn’t lose his head over it, he just finds the regular grids to be a bit dull LOL! And he certainly didn’t lose his form when there was more speed and challenge, he added power and push. Cool! Noted LOL! And when you went back to the set point at the end, after the running – no loss of balance, same good form. Makes me chuckle! Good boy!
>>You recommended doing the progressive grid with different intervals. First 9 and 12 ft. Would that be a 5ft-9ft-12ft spacing?
Yes.
>>I think he’s going to short stride the 9ft one.
Yes – 9 feet is an awkward distance – he is either going to have to bounce or add a small one stride. Either way, we are asking him to solve the puzzle – balance is the correct answer, even if he bounces or one strides.
>> Then how does the 15ft come in? (assuming that should be an extended stride) – 5ft-9ft-15ft? (hope it’s not 5-12-15 or I’m going to start running out of yard)>>
Well, I was going to say 5-12-15 LOL!!! But it can also be 5-15 if you only have room for 3 jumps, and save the longer grids for when you have indoor access.
Great job here!
TracyHi!
The zigzags are challenging but he is doing well!!! The 4 inches looked good in both directions, bouncing the gapes. The first rep at 6 looked difficult for him to sort out at first, but it could have also been the leads – going left to right on the computer screen was a tiny bit less fluid than going right to left at 4 inches, and going right to left across the screen was definitely more fluid on 4 and 6 inches! Just something to revisit here and there 🙂 I think you can unlock the bars – he doesn’t seem to be touching them, so you can give him the option of knocking the bar because it seems very likely he will not have a problem 🙂
We will be building on this in the next class 🙂 Nice job with it, he has made tremendous progress!T
Hello and welcome! You will be getting a couple of emails in a few minutes and more info appearing in the Course Syllabus section as well. I am excited to get started!!
Tracy
Hello and welcome! I am in the process of loading all the lessons, so you will find it there shortly 🙂 The titles are loaded up but the rest are in progress 🙂
See you soooooon!!!T
Good morning! Hope you had a good Thanksgiving! I agree that the wraps are looking really good! And the mechanics of cuing the slices are what was causing the issues – here are specifics:
Circle wraps are looking really good!! She is both turning her head to get the turn and collecting herself really nicely. On the last couple of reps. you changed the reward placement to follow your exit line, which is fine – but give her a litlle connection at that point so she knows which side of you to be on.
Slices: the one jump slices look great too – she is rounding the entry wing, clearly looking for the jump and not at you – perfect! That will really help the commitment and jumping effort. Great job with the reward placement on those.
2 jumps: this is where it gets juicy!
>> what I might be doing with my feet, chest, motion that causes her to take the wrong side of the jump – other than the fact that she is a little dog.>>
I agree that being so small, it is easier for her to end up on the front side because she doesn’t land out near the plane of the backside like a larger dog might.
But aside from that – the errors stemmed from how you were cuing the backside – you were using the verbal but running away so your motion/chest/feet shoulders/etc were all facing the front side. Instead, you will want to be moving forward, parallel to her path to the backside, until you know for sure she is heading to the backside wing, then you can turn and move away – and use the extreme commitment back to her so your shoulders/chest are pointing to the backside line rather than turned away from it. I also recommend *not* using your dog-side arm to send forward of your body on this, as that turns your upper body to the front side of the bar especially when your arm is high. Either have your dog side arm down & back, or use your ‘get out’ arm to get your upper body turned to the backside line.
On the video, here is what was happening:
on the first rep, you were using the verbal but the body language was saying something else: at :59 in the slo mo, she was landing from 1 and you were totally turned and in ‘regular’ connection so you got the front of 2. Same at 1:12 and 1:29. So the physical cue really did say front side not backside.At 1:06 she got it – you were still pretty turned but not moving as fast and maybe a bit more arm support, but she might also have been able to process the verbal better with less motion.
She also got it at 1:16 – I believe mainly because the 2 jumps were closer so she landed on the backside plane of 2. The same thing happened at at 1:20 and 1:27, it was more like a serpentine for her and less like a backside push.When you switched back to the other side, the jumps were a little further apart so she was not landing on the backside plane. At 1:35 you stood between the uprights to help her, which worked but we don’t want you to have to stay there. At 1:43, you had more of the parallel path I was mentioning above, yay!!! But you can be even clearer (and more patient with it, no need to blast away as early). You used the out out out cue there – you can still use your backside verbal but you can be using your ‘out’ body language of parallel path and upper body rotated towards her.
On the wraps: You were a tiny bit late rotating at 1:50 and then she back jumped – possibly just a young dog error as you moved away with speed – you can reward lots for NOT backjumping to keep that skill very fresh in her mind 🙂
She fixed the error on the next rep and you had less motion – and all the other circle reps looked great 🙂 The throwbacks to the backside circle on the last reps looked really good!! I think on all of these circle wraps, you can ad more motion now – she is rocking those.So let me know if the ideas for the slices make sense – the key is your line of motion first and foremost, and also how you connect as you deliver the cue to her.
TracyWow, thank you for all of your work in the past year!!! You’ve been busy – Demi looks fabulous!!! I think we are all going to have to sit tight this winter and not do much in terms of agility 🙁 But you have done an amazing job with Miss Demi!!!! And that is great news about Wilson… does that mean he can eventually go to 16″ Preferred for his retirement years? That is so great!!
Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving 🙂
TracyHi! I am quite competitive too, and I like to know the why and how behind the winning lines… and the losing lines 🙂 Video obsessing has been super useful for that!! I think we are obsessing down to the 1/10th of a second with Juno – but to be competitive with a large dog, that is exactly what is needed 🙂 Have a great Thanksgiving!!!
TracyHowdy!
Good stuff here, he was flying! So fun!!!
First video – He is doing well with the Go lines! What where the distances on between the jumps? He was really good on his go lines but the distances were hard with all the motion – spread ’em out so he can do a 1-stride stride. You can do 2 jumps, 15 feet apart, to begin with. Also, he was totally watching the toy and your running – so you can use the MM way out ahead on the line and trigger it nice and early so he doesn’t look back. You can also mix in having a toy placed out there. Do you have 2 tunnels? You can do tunnel-jump-jump-tunnel 🙂 Wheeee!
Looking at the rear crosses – I know I am usually a pain in the ass about rewarding sooner, but I think in this case I would like to be a pain in the ass about rewarding *later* LOL! He was not turning his head until you tossed the toy. So, delay your reward throw until you see him turn his head the new direction on the RC – then throw it. For example – :53 and 1:02 was more of the timing of the reward throw where you got him to turn to the new line and then threw it. Your RC cues were generally really good, so we can wait now for the head turn. Now at :46, you were just late on the RC pressure, so it is fine to just reward that (not his fault LOL!) and same at :56, here you were early and pushed him off the jump.
Adding in your ro ro ro (row your boat hahaha) wrap cue nice balance for the go and the rear cross work! – Add in some more decel as he is landing from the previous jump so he can collect more rather than rely on pure verbal.
When you added the line back to the tunnel – neither tunnel entry was really on a go line (one was a get out, one was a threadle entry) so I think he guessed and came to the closer one (which is my preferred guess over flicking away).
Because there was so many jumps on this session…. give him a few days off of jumping so you don’t accidentally over do it – he is a baller so he will keep doing it as much as you want but at only 8 months, we want to have maybe only one repetitive jumping session per week. He will try to convince you otherwise haha
Tunnel threadle video – fun! I will bug you about running more on the simpler lines – you can dial back the motion on the threadle moments but run run run on the rest of it. On the threadle moments: he is coming right in for it when you turn your feet to face him on the tunnel threadle. Yay! But now we want to strip that out to let you keep moving – he is relying on the feet to come in and also the arm cue to go back out. We can go to next steps where your feet are facing forward the whole time (turning towards the tunnel threadle side) and you do not use your arm to send him back out – you just keep moving towards the tunnel entry you want and then he will turn himself back out. You can see he doesn’t recognize that your feet will still be moving forward because he stayed on the straight line when you did that. And also, we want to take out the arm cue to go back out because when your timing was not perfect (you were early at 2:19 for example) he took the end of the tunnel you didn’t want or when your feet were turned away and your arm went behind you at 2:40, he had no idea what it was some came in for tooth hugs LOL. So basically that arm cue (plus your verbal) means to push da momma out of the way and go to the ‘other’ end of the tunnel as fast as you can, without needing any additional cues. That way you don’t even need to worry about rotating or timing the arm cues to go back out 🙂
At 3:00 you were starting the ideal cue of moving – just keep moving though, when you stop so far away he is not sure of what you want. 3:09 was MUCH better, that is exactly what we are going for – he had a really good line there and lots of speed. You had variations on that til the end, but still a little too much sending him back out with the threadle arm (I know how hard it is to not fling the arm back out LOL!! The rep at 3:09 was my favorite. Yes, you’ll need to stay in super chill mode as he is arriving at the wing before the threadle, but as soon as he understands, we can add back all the motion. Fun!One other little detail – when he exits the tunnel and you are facing forward with a high pointy arm… he questions and zig zags. So, make connection to him with your eyes and your arm low and back on the exit of every tunnel to get rid of the zig zag.
Excellent work spitting out all of the verbals, too! Yay! I think you only had one moment where you spit the wrong word out (you apologized to him lol)
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>What kind of proofing are you talking about in the proofing games?
The proofing class is a handling proofing class – designed to proof the different verbals and handling skills with distractions (backside verbals, wraps, threadles, go, etc) – I think all you need is a tunnel, one jump and a wing.
>>And also, is the mental prep course lecture or what is that about?
It is lecture/discussion with live discussion times too! So everyone will have their own ‘thread’ but can also discuss in person in the live lectures (twice a week).
Have a great Thanksgiving!
Tracy
