a revisit of the 2009 goals.. .

Goals for Rah -
-attain an AKC CDX - DONE
-attain an ASCA CDX - Done!
-attain a UKC CD and CDX - didn't trial at all in UKC this year, unfortunately...
-attain a CDSP CDX-H - still has one leg, but trialing this weekend for our next attempt!
-attain his APDT ARCHX - done!
-attain his RL1X - done!
-attain his RL2X - done!
-get better go-outs! -still clearly a work in progress!!!! but definitely getting there.
-learn to work better outside and get somewhere near the sort of attention i have when we work indoorshmmmmmm
-work on his issue with the SFE and not moving to the judge! ha ha just brought this back up last week and worked on it a few times since then - it's kicking my butt in utility too! still a WIP
-work on his issue with men in the ring and get him comfortable with a male judgethought we had made progress up in NY, but his last show in PA he was still stressed. However, he was able to work through it - our worst score yet, high 180s, but he didn't shut down - just obviously very stressed.
-work on his fronts - teach him to adjust to find perfect front, and then translate that to with the db in his mouth. some progress, some set backs -this will be something we work on for the rest of his career. he was better, but he has a world to go understanding that he needs to have less fun and focus more on a JOB
-be matching in utility at least once a month or every other month depending on show schedulesdone!
and the very lofty one - be ready for utility by the end of the year! and we did it - we have a UTILITY LEG!!!!
- work on his food stealing and counter surfingfull of fail.

Goals for Berlin -
- earn her CDSP CD-H - done
- earn her APDT RL1 done
- maybe earn her RL2? purposefully held her back because of allstars, so didn't even try
- lofty goal, but maybe have her ready for Rally Advanced?? again - she is ready, but i purposefully havent shown her beyond novice to keep her in allstar novice division
-start tracking and maybe back into schutzhund i hate tracking. she did some work and i am looking into other venues but time is still an issue. she says she wants to bite things
-keep her interested in her work were still a work in progress. she has great drive. she wants a better handler. if there's a problem, she says its ALLL me and doesn't want to be seen with me
- match her at least once a month or every other month in novicedone!
- get her to do a full db retrieve by the end of the year, happilydone!
-work on her barking in the house ]ha ha ha ha ha
-work on her barking while she is in the crate while we show rah.definitely a little better. a little.

so that's where we are... now to think of 2010 goals!

it's been awhile since updates again - we have a bit of a break in training because of the holidays so ive been doing most stuff on my own. last wednesday we had some ring time alone and i worked on weaves (i will post those videos) with the dogs, and did random things. rah did pretty good weaves and terrible go outs! worked a lot of fronts with rah, need to do some stuff with berlin too. i have janice demello's cruise control heeling video, i think ill watch it and try to see if i can implement some stuff.

have a lot of matches coming up in the next week or so, and a CDSP trial on january 3rd where rah will once again attempt to finish up his CDX there. its funny that we havent shown in UKC, and i need to start him in novice there! berlin is also showing there, as a marker as to when she may make her AKC debut.

im debating about whether or not ill keep rah in open or try for utility for all stars - the question will be what sorta scores is he capable of - will talk it over with terry and kathy.

speaking of, both of my trainers came home yesterday with BC rescues - one from glenhighland farms, and another from a BC rescue in VA!

and trained dogs are for the win - rah just found a sock and i asked him to bring it to me and he did. GOOD DOG.

the weaving:

video evidence!!!

rah's first leg!

training and rah's utility debut

ill try to contain myself and start with training this week :)

we did agility first on wednesday - i didnt train rah because he was on rest because of his weave pole incident last friday...

worked single jump exercises and dog walk, then did some rear cross and wrap work. berlin did well, but she chose to jump off the dog walk at one point to bark at someone (bad girl) and landed on her neck/head when she tripped and put her tooth through her lip. blood everywhere. she also bit me in the finger going for her tug at one point. we bled a lot.

thursday was only her, and she did lovely - great attention, lively heeling _ WONDERFUL fig8s, and we did nice work with the broad jump, retrieves, etc. terry says she will be my more reliable dog once she figures it all out, she HAS the ability to be perfect!

ok ok ok moving forward... we had ASCA trials this weekend - rah was entered all 4 trials - needed one leg to finish his CDX. i toyed with entering berlin but opted not to since i wanted to focus on rah here, and i dont know where she is yet.

first trial, rah was on crack. CRACK. all his freak flags flying and hits off of (his border collie brother-from-another-mother) shane . his heeling was vertical - literally jumping straight in the air. it wasn't pretty... then we got to the drop. and i misconstrued her drop signal so i wasnt sure, so i dropped him and ... he didn't drop! it was bad bad bad :) ROF and ROH not bad, BJ was pretty good... but no CDX.

second trial - rah was still on crack, but slightly more controlled drugs. vertical leaps in the slow that went ABOVE my head. but he did drop and completed the principle parts of the exercises with his crazed fashion du jour and we qualified with a third place for his ASCA CDX!!!

i decided to move him up to utility for sunday, because his open was majorly breaking down and he was anticipating everything, a total twitch and was having a problem controlling it. didnt want to reinforce that, letting him get worse and worse without talking to kathy/terry, so move up he did - figured it would at least be a nice match, since the entries were fairly cheap.

so we're last in utility A...

signals - the judge gives us the wrong heeling pattern, so she stops us and restarts (side note, he seems more controlled with a signal rather than a verbal heel) - we heel and i give him the signal to stand, he nails it. i leave him, cross the ring and he NAILS his signals!!! woohoo!!!!

articles next - im nervous but he runs out and hits the right article first one he sniffs! everyone things this is a flaw... second article we get out and he works hard. picks up the wrong ones and knows they arent right, finally finds the right one, grabs it (by the bell, EEK) and comes back - WOOHOO!!!

gloves - gets the right one, but shakes hard and considers for a flicker of a second not coming back. but he does, good boy!

moving stand - moves a bit during the exam (INTO the judge to be pet -another thing to work on), but he does it.

and he NAILS GO OUTS - RAH QUALIFIED!!! HE QUALIFIED!!! rah got his first UD leg!!!!!!!!

he almost fronted to the judge on the last go out, but he DID IT!!!!

we were the last sole survivor of the class, but he DID It!

im on cloud nine - i took this as a training match opportunity sorta thing, and he did it!!!!!!

of course, the second trial it wasnt as nice, but i dont care - i know we need to work on things. but he DID IT!!!!!

RAH RAH - super dog!

agility for roo

so the private lesson with roo - i keep meaning to bring the camera to videotape what we've been doing and monitor progress. but i forget. and i want a new camera.

just worked roo because rah is still definitely sore in a hind leg. and we started with the dw - she hasn't even done most contact equipment since we dont have any, but now we have our dogwalk - she didn't even care! she went over fine with me leading her 1-2 times, and after that she was powering over no problem and debbie said i can already start naming it since she's doing it without coaxing. and the first thing berlin did when we got near it was get into 2o/2o at the base, and her first time walking through she stopped perfectly. debbie said normally she doesn't ask the dogs for contacts their first time running the wood, but because berlin is so literal and already clearly understands the concept, we will reward it - if she wasn't offering them we wouldn't ask. twice she missed it - once when she stopped with only one front foot off, and once when she got to the bottom one back foot fell off.

since we did so much weave work on friday we just started with some courses and some nasty wraps, crosses and serpentines. we did some one jump work on jumping to side when im indicating a lead out pivot because she blew past it the first time - she's better to the left than the right, and we'll work on that at home - but she got it by the end. serpentines, she didn't miss a single one of them and we did 3 or 4 different ones. in fact for the last sequence in which we were both missing the rear cross because it was REALLY tight, instead of crossing her i was able to serpentine it kinda and pull her in - handling it from the other side pushed her too far into the tunnel.

she did really well over the course of the lesson, she did get tired but she handled herself well. my little agility star. need to go look at USDAA and NADAC trials...

i really have to be better about updating!

wed training - agility first, we ran the openings to some excellent courses that debbie had this past weekend - some of the tunnel discriminations were really hard (especially for tunnel sucks like mine) so i had to do elaborate yardage-wasting crosses to ensure that my dogs would avoid one end of the tunnel (the close end) and go out to the other end... but both did fairly well all things considering.

utility - rah did really well!!! go outs were AMAZING like at the match - the minute i told him to mark it, he was focused on his stanchion and didn't pull off at all. one time he did turn back and steal the toy, but he dropped it when i told him :)

articles not bad - he had a lot of pressure at the pile, including lydia standing on top of the pile, mulder in a down next to her, annette behind them doing stuff, and terry had bess in a down and was working pickups right next to the pile - he took some time to work through it, but he was able to work the pile and get the right articles with only one grab and pick.

i didnt do full signals - i just worked on firming up the stand with the clicker like i had been doing earlier in the week, and he did pretty well considering we were doing it in between all different people doing multiple things (anne paul working dune on go outs, terry working bess on the broad jump and me just wandering standing rah all different places).

with gloves he wasnt that bad - pivots are much nicer, but we're going to have to work on the finishes since i wont do lefts with him and i want to keep the glove in my right hand (in the left he targets it for the finish and he wont complete the finish, darned long neck!) - so i will probably have to do it with a verbal.

thats pretty much all we did - not bad, and im pleased with how it went - some definite improvement in some areas and i hope the go outs stay as solid as they have been.

berlin was a superstar on thursday - her attitude was spot on, she was in my face and awesome. the best fig8's she's ever done, she was pushing on the outside every time, she was paying attention on the inner post with her head up, and we were just in sync. heeling was really nice too, i have to remember not to slow down on the turns but she was right in position, head up, prancing along. i was clicking her for exceptionally good parts and she liked it!

worked on some recall games - sometime she still forgets and offers me a drop instead of the front, but we will get through it (even though she's never done a formal drop!). also played some db games - first with two others throwing and her doing attention work - she did AWESOME and at one point charlene threw the db and it HIT berlin and she glanced and then came right back up to my face with perfect attention - what a GOOD girl!!!!! then we played db games while they did attention - and berlin was awesome - GREAT speed, very enthusiastic. in fact, she tried to steal eco's db a few times, too.

brought out the bj and had to work on her really putting effort into jumping v. just popping over, its not big enough to require much out of her. also worked rah a few times to get him slowing down and working his parts, he's thinking a lot more about what his job is there and it's nice.

some very nice ROH for her too, i have to reinforce the wait because she anticipates and just takes off, but im fine with it for now. that i can train through!

had a weave seminar friday night - both dogs kicked ass, but rah tired to kill himself and we found that he will never ever ever do channels with guide wires again - ive never seen metal based poles fly through the air. unfortunately, i think he hurt himself when he crashed them and he's just off a bit in his gait (no one can put their finger on it) so i pulled him from his trial sat am (which would have finished his RE).

but both dogs did awesome at the seminar - berlin had a ton of speed on her weaves and i was getting some mad lateral distance from her as well, and we started introducing off side weaves with her. i have some work to do with finding entrances when i am all over the place - but again, we havent done a lot of offside work, so it will come. rah needs more babysitting right now, but considering he's in about 5 poles at once, he showed some good rhythm in the poles and did quite a few full sets of 12 with me about 2 feet away, he's understanding the point now!

we experimented with a bunch of different methods, WAMs, channel, guides, etc - and i think both my dogs do best on just the plain set of poles and the behavior just shaped - better speed and clear understanding of the job.

today we have a private lesson - ill probably just work berlin since im not sure what is up with rah...