agility

had obedience this week - nothing spectacular that i want to post about - both dogs are entered in an ASCA trial in a few weeks (2 maybe?) ...

berlin had another private agility lesson.

the first lesson we worked on basics and foundation - coming to side without crossing my lines, reading my cues. for her its really going to be important to focus on cues and being consistent and clear - if i dont send her or call her over something, she cant take it. and she NEVER gets to do a tunnel unless i tell her :)

things to work on:
1) re-enforce stays where she is in sit and i walk past her, then run past her, then front cross her.
2) take that on the road and add it into a contact - and peel off, get lateral distance.
3) work on her foundation positions again to really focus on her reading the cues quickly and cleanly - coming to side, lateral send, forward sends.
4) impulse control (HA) - sherrie said start playing some crate games with her. neither of my dogs have any impulse control (i could have told her this)
5) shadow handling around tunnels -first on leash, slow, far away - and then increase speed, off leash and closer - and she CANNOT take the tunnels. then introduce her taking some tunnels and not others.
6) we also worked on some desensitization protocols with her reactivity when she's working alone and strangers enter the barn - i see it at trials where a long person will be hanging over a gate. in large groups she doesn't notice or care about the people, but in situations where one person is easily visible and prominent, its much worse. feed feed feed.

obviously this trainer is a positive based trainer, and i will give things a try. berlin already has the foundation of crate games, i just never continued.

afterwards we ran a course that was pretty cool and she did fairly well

i cant make a pic of it on this computer since i dont know what programs i have (i just got a mac!) but heres a facebook photo :)



sherrie said if i didnt need to stay close to 3/4 then i should just send her - and she was right - being too close meant she extended over three and had to curl back in, when i wasnt running so hard towards her she didnt push so hard out and had a much better natural line to the aframe.

here we discovered that while if i babysit her contacts shes golden, if i move on she hits the contact then self releases - oops!
we discussed where i wanted to do the landing side front cross at 5, and she made me think :) and then i did as much of a forward send as i could get to the tunnel at 8 so that i could get my but nearer to 9-10 and call her to me (and away from her love the tunnel she came out facing). we had trouble with the rear cross into the weaves because i personally had trouble walking the fine line of having her drive to the poles but not pop her out, v. hanging back so she doesn't feel my pressure but being too far back so she stopped and looked for me and said, huh?

worked that out (had to remember not to do the front cross after the poles too soon or i pulled her out) and needed to stay closer to the poles so that i could have a nice line from the poles to the far side of the tunnel, then took off and called her through the jumps to the tunnel again.

i picked her up with a blind cross at the end of the tunnel and turned her on my left from there to the far side of the other tunnel, then took off for the dog walk, making sure to have NO motion at all towards the tunnel discrimination.

so thats the course... i wish i had some videos. need to plan another lesson soon - kinda in a stand still since im whelping a litter for my trainer - but sad because it appears that there's only one puppy in there, which will be hers obviously! we will try to have some hope for a miracle :)