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Gosh, watching these videos, I can’t help thinking how boring I was :/
Training didn’t turn out as I planned, but maybe a good thing because they showed Zoe when distracted. I am a member of an agility club and this is the field where we train. We usually go early Sunday mornings. Today is a workday (Tuesday) and the place felt more noisy than usual. Groundskeeper arriving and working, and a lot of construction and traffic noises.
A quick background on the ‘treat toy’ I am using. I have a Lotus ball that Zoe likes, but since Zoe goes wild whenever I put on my socks – I think because it’s a signal we are going out – sometimes I use a retired sock, tie it in a knot and stuff a treat in the knot that Zoe can dig into to get the treat. I think she gets a kick out of chasing and ripping the sock apart to get to the treat. I was using the old sock today.
First video:
I usually start with a play session, but Zoe was clearly distracted, so I ended up improvising and going with what she wanted to do instead of what I wanted her to do. I was surprised when she started going to the tunnel instead of taking the treat at the beginning. You can see her clearly distracted. Her default behavior is sitting pretty. I gave her some treats, trying to have a feel if she could overcome the environment. Not quite certain what to do. I just wanted her to play with me, but when she took the tunnel, I decided to go with it and she seemed to run fine. What do you think? One thing I didn’t notice before, she wanted to take the obstacles instead of taking the treats even when I gave her a treat. ???
https://youtu.be/UER-1FTFsF8Second video:
We took a short break before the second video … This video showed a bit of our pre-trial run routine. Simple tricks (touch, spin, stretch, bow) to get Zoe excited, mostly I think because she gets a taste of what she will get after the run. Not quite sure why she disengaged before the tunnel, maybe because I turned before she committed? Didn’t want to correct her, so I went ahead and rewarded. I thought she was already bored with the sequence :/ In hindsight, we should probably ended when she did the entire 12 obstacle. I wanted to end on something simple and fast, then jackpot and play.
https://youtu.be/cOqas8snp6oThird video:
You did ask how we trained contacts 😀
For the dog walk, we started with a TDAA regulation dog walk before going to AKC regulation dog walk. I thought Zoe liked the dog walk because she could see more being up high. Then we started on adjustable teeter and she started showing hesitations on the dog walk. I don’t know if she thinks the dog walk is the teeter or the teeter is the dog walk. Early on, there was a joke whenever Zoe started on the dog walk that we (the class) could all get coffee and Zoe would still be on the dog walk. NADAC doesn’t have teeter, so I entered her in the Regular class and surprisingly, I thought her performance on the dog walk improved AFTER we started trialing. It’s now some 11 seconds (instead of 25 seconds). I don’t know if we should be trialing in Standard given her teeter performance, but am hoping for the same improvement on the teeter as the dog walk by trialing.
Regarding the teeter. We started on adjustable teeter, but I think I made the mistake of raising it too quickly. Amazingly, the breakthrough came by accident when I was ready to give up after 2 years of trying. Zoe never refused to take the teeter (she knows it’s a high value obstacle!). One day, she climbed and as usual stopped right before the tipping point, and gave me a pitiful look. I told myself I loved Zoe more than agility, picked her up from the teeter, put her on the ground and told her (more to myself): “if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to do it.” To my amazement, she ran right back up on the teeter!!! It’s as if she just wanted me to acknowledge the teeter was scary. I was confused, but gave her a treat a tad beyond where she stopped, then picked her up and put her on the ground. Each time I did that, she ran right back on the teeter and stopped higher. Now (as the video will show), I would hold the plank, put the treat all the way to the top, then slowly lower the plank while jackpoting her all the way down. When the plank hits the ground, I throw a treat toy (like my sock or the Lotus ball) so she would run away from the teeter and I would yell “bang!” to warn her.
https://youtu.be/vJl7T0-oVPgEnd of training routine (no video):
I learned a lot from trial and error (with Zoe being my very first agility dog). After every run, Zoe would ‘drag’ me to the gate as if eager to leave. So, our fun end of session routine is: I would say “go to car!” then we both would race to the car (with her beating me all the time) and then she gets a feast once we are in the car. At trials, I would say “let’s go get your treat!” then we race to her crate and she gets a feast in the crate. A little less if it’s not the last run of the day, a lot more if it’s the last run of the day.I hope to compile Zoe’s trial runs on the dog walk and teeter later, haven’t figured out how to cut and combine snippets of videos yet. More on contacts later or tomorrow …
Sorry for the poor quality, this was Zoe’s slow run (NADAC Novice weavers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duCR-zO-qiE
