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Winter training

January 31, 2011 in Agility, Epic, Obedience, Pictures

Thomas has been away teaching in Norway for a week now and I’ve been home alone with my dogs. I haven’t had much teaching to do this week, just one evening class, so we’ve been training a lot. We’re fortunate enough to have two indoor dog training arenas within about an hours drive. They are warm and have turf footing, which is a life saver when it’s cold and icy outdoors. We also have a riding arena where I have my agility equipment just 5 minutes from our place, but it’s not quite the same. I’ve been training a lot of obedience the past month and both Squid and Epic are doing well. Squid will do her first obedience trial in march and I feel very well prepared for that. We’re working on a lot of sequences with 3-6 exercises in a row with only one reward at the end. I’ve also started to add more and more distractions to the sequences, trying to find new things that could distract us at a trial. I will keep doing that, but now that everything works well as a whole, I’m also planning to take care of some minor details that will make our performance even better. My goal for the trial is to be so well prepared that there will be no surprises.

Squid, tired from four hours of training in one of the indoor arenas

Epic is mostly working on heeling, the stand (which i promise I will talk about in the blog soon), sitting still with distractions (people coming up to him is one of the hardest, he is such a happy dog, just like his sister) and always retrieving his toys to me in full speed. We’re also working on some tricks and agility foundation behaviors, like circle work, nose touches and puppy jump grids. He is so much fun to work with – always keen and focused, but also very good at relaxing in his crate when I work with one of the other dogs or watch others work. He will be 6 months old this week.

Epic, running in the snow at home

Shejpa doesn’t do obedience, but I’m working on some stimulus control and standing still waiting for a cue with her, something she’s not very good at. We’re also training agility, like today when we went to a riding arena where our dog club has training every Sunday. This year, my goal with Shejpa is to get a more consistent performance in trials. She really has ups and downs and I’ve never really figured out what makes the difference. I’m starting to think that the correct warm up is very important for her and I’m trying out different warm ups and record keep so that I can get optimum arousal and focus in every run. So far I feel I’m on the right track and I’m very excited to do more trials so that I can tell if I am or not.

Crazy cocker spaniel <3

Right now, I’m preparing for two days of obedience with our favorite instructor Maria Hagström. I’m really looking forward to it and I’m sure I’ll have something to tell you about it later this week.

My pretty dogs

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New Year

January 4, 2011 in Pictures

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years Eve. We sure did. I’m so tired of snow right now, it’s pouring down outside. I plan on going by train to Gothenburg tomorrow for this year’s first agility trial, but who knows if we’ll get there in this weather. We thought last winter was extreme, with snow from December to the beginning of April. This year we got snow already in November. And December has been really cold. There are more and more indoor arenas built for dog sports in Sweden, which is wonderful. Being able to train in a heated facility with nice footing is not something we are used to here. For us, it’s a 40 minute drive to the closest one and it’s not cheap, but it’s worth it!

This year, I’m trying to get even more structure to my dog training. I have always found goals based on results hard to focus on, so this year I have a long list of skills that I want my dogs to master by the end of the year. Trying to figure out what you want to teach your dog in a year is not easy, but probably better than just training without knowing where you’re going. Working with these goals also require breaking them down into smaller goals and keeping track of progress often. I have decided to write down goals for one month at a time, and then combining that with a plan for each week and each day. Does it sound complicated? I guess it is, but training three dogs in at least three different sports takes time. I need to make sure that every training session is taking me closer to my goals. I believe that good planning and god evaluation is the key to good, efficient training. I’m excited to see how this works out and I’ll let you know.

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Introducing Epic!

December 14, 2010 in Epic, Pictures

It’s about time to present my new puppy. He is a border collie named Epic and he is from our first own litter of puppies, born on August 3rd. His mother is Squid’s mother Fly and his father is named Killiebrae Hemp (bred by Derek Scrimgeour in England, living in Norway). I have really loved the puppies I have seen from Hemp, both in agility and herding. So far, Epic looks like everything I wanted from this combination. He is very friendly and outgoing and a lot of fun to work with. He relaxes well at home and is very focused on his work even with distractions. He is keen on sheep and shows great talent, but he’s just met the sheep a couple of times. I will start training him on sheep within a few months.

Two weeks ago (we still have a lot of snow…)

End of october

Six weeks old

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Jen

May 4, 2010 in Pictures

Thomas picked up his new dog at the airport 3 weeks ago. Her name is Jen and she’s a 8-month-old border collie that we’ve bought from Derek Scrimgeour in England. She is a very friendly and soft girl, and she is adjusting to her new life well. She’s doesn’t seem used to living indoors and the life we live is probably very different from what she has experienced during her first seven months. She’s getting along with all the other dogs here and she is very friendly with people.

Jen

She is very keen around sheep and is doing a lot of nice things while herding. We’ve started to train her a bit, teaching her to lie down around sheep and balancing them to us. She is very easy going and cool, not at all like my crazy red head at that age… Thomas is hoping that Jen will be able to do sheepdog trials at a high level with him in the future, and maybe she’ll do some agility as well.

Jen

Jen also has to learn to offer behaviors and play with us. We had to have a lot of patience to get her to become active in learning. In the beginning, Thomas would train all of his dogs at the same time, offering them all treats for different behaviors. Jen seemed more relaxed and creative in that setting. She is now offering behaviors both at home and at the dog training club. She’ll offer stand, sit, down, bow and a simple retrieve. She has also started to play a little with us at home, but it’s a still a long way to go. It’s very exciting to see how much she changes all the time, how much more personality she gains with every week here. She might be acting like a more focused, toy crazy border collie in a while, or it might be a lot of work before she’ll work and play with Thomas. I’ll let you know!

Jen

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Herding in the snow

February 8, 2010 in Pictures

Fog
Squid’s uncle Fog

Fly
Squids mother Fly

Fly
Fly

Fly and Fog
Fly och Fog

Squid
Squid

Fly and Squid
Mother and daughter herding together

Fly and Squid

Fly with Squid in the background

Flynn
My friends puppy. Strandängens Flynn, 10 weeks old

Flynn
Flynn meets the sheep for the first time

Flynn
Flynn

Halfsiblings Arvid and Fly

Arvid and Fly

Tags: herding
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Update

October 26, 2009 in Agility, Obedience, Pictures, Tests and trials

I know it’s been forever since I wrote here. Everything is great in our new home, except that we still haven’t got an internet connection. I was really looking forward to finally getting broadband (we couldn’t get it where we lived before), but it’s taking forever. It took them almost three months to connect a stationary phone and now that that’s done, I hope that we’ll get internet connection soon. Right now, I’m on a mobile connection that is really slow (and that I can’t use with my Macbook). Wich is the reason why I haven’t been able to post any videos lately. I hope this will change soon, then I’ll be a better blogger and publish new videos.

I’ve done a few trials this fall and we’ve done really well. Missy became Obedience Trial Champion in the beginning of October and Shejpa became Agility Trial Champion the same weekend! I’m trying to qualify both dogs for Swedish nationals next year. Shejpa and I just came back from a trial on Gotland, an island on the east coast of Sweden. We weren’t as successful as we’ve been before, if you only look at the results. But I have been working on speed with her and it has really helped! Her speed was really good and I know I can make it even better. We did only have one clean run out of four, where she finished second, after another working cocker, world team memeber Max. Her running contacts are perfect in trials and I don’t worry about them at all. It’s a great feeling, knowing that they are consistent and fast. I was more worried about the other dog that I brought to the trial. My student and friend Anna let me run her border collie Fonzie in his debut in standard. Unfortunatly, he knocked a bar in two of his runs and had weave pole problems in the two others. But his running contacts were great and that was what I wanted most of all.

Squid has turned one year and is doing good. We’re training agility, obedience, herding and search and rescue. She is very immature and I have decided not to do any trials with her this year. I have so little time and I might as well spend my weekends trialing with the dogs that need to in order to qualify for nationals. Thomas’ cocker Pogue is one month younger, but he did his first trial in obedience this weekend. He did really well and is now qualified for the next level! Now, Thomas has promised to do focus on Pogues agility training – we’re bringing the young dogs to Greg Derrett’s double box seminar in about five weeks. Shejpa is running in the advanced group. We’re really looking forward to the seminar!

Squid herding:

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Our new home

May 19, 2009 in Pictures

We’ve been renting a house 50 kilometers south of Oslo for a couple of years, but the contract got cancelled and we have to move out in August. We weren’t quite prepared to buy a house right now, but we didn’t have much choice. Fortunatly, a house that we looked at in November and really liked, was still for sale. This house is in Sweden, near Örebro. It’s about two hours west of Stockholm. The house has a nice interior and 20 000 square meters of land. We’re moving there in two and a half months!

I’ve been living in Norway for four years and now I’m finally moving back to Sweden. I really like Norway, but I still feel like most things are a bit better in Sweden. I hope that Thomas, who is Norwegian, will agree.

Here are some pictures of the house:

Small training field behind the guesthouse.

This will be the big agility field

Garden

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Spring is on it’s way!

April 9, 2009 in Pictures

Most of the snow has melted and we had a nice walk today with Missy, Pi and Pogue. Laxmi (our vet with a degree on rehab from University of Tennessee) took a look at Shejpa’s back today and it was fine! I can’t wait to start training agility with her again! She has been very bored with no training and walking on leash for a month.

Here are some pictures from todays walk

Some snow left on the field makes Pogue very happy

No snow in the woods makes me very happy

Happy cocker

Two spotted dogs

Pogue

He loves everything wet or muddy, unlike Shejpa who’d rather keep her paws dry

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Sunny Days in January

January 3, 2009 in Agility, Obedience, Pictures

We’re having really nice, sunny (but quite cold) days here. Thomas has left for Bergen again and I am alone with my three girls. Setting goals for this year has been inspiring and we have been training quite a lot. Missy has gotten at least one session of obedience every day and Shejpa has been working on her nose touches on the stairs (working a lot on the seesaw made them weaker) and some weaves. My main focus with Shejpa right now is about speed. She knows lots of things and there are really not many techical things that we need to work on. The coming months will be all about focus and drive. I hope that she, in the future, will be running as fast as she can every time I set her infront of agility equipment. That means less training, shorter sessions and always rewarding for speed.

With Squid, we’ve had some sessions outdoors today. In the first session, we worked on circle work for agility. She loves it, but sometimes she’ll get to excited and jump or bite my clothes. I’ve had to to shorter sessions, slow down a bit and reward her more with food. It has helped and if her attitude is right, she can run with me really fast and she loves it. We’ve also worked on some heeling. I love how walking backwards in our heeling sessions really helps her to differentiate heeling from loose leash walking or circle work. She is very good at the backwards heeling and I can turn around and let her walk pretty long distances before rewarding. I make sure to reward when she falls back, as I don’t want to encourage her to rush. I don’t think that a border collie puppy can walk too far behind you (not with great attitude anyway).

We’ve also worked some more on our sitstays. She has a tendency to lie down if I get to far away from her and that tendency got stronger after I started rewarding downs the other day. Working on it today helped a lot and she has a pretty good sitstay. I just have to remember working on her holding position in stand and down as well (especially the stand). Talking about staying in a down. Some people make it hard for themselves. I started rewarding her down on Thursday, and the day after, I started to shape a crawl. I sure hope I won’t get into trouble for that. The crawl is an advanced exercise in our working trials (and I plan to trial Squid in search and rescue, wich also has an obedience part in it). It’s not hard to shape a dog to crawl, but to get the technique perfect is a big challenge. I want the hind legs to work independently and with rythm, no hopping. It’s an interesting challenge. I have taught a really nice crawl with two of my dogs, but that is pretty much the only exercise where I have used some luring to get the footwork right. This time, we’re trying out shaping.

Squid got to do some jumping today for the second time in her life. Despite her fluffy, round looks, she is a very coordinated and athletic puppy. She has no problems with jumping over bumps with good rythm, I guess she’s seen worse while playing in the woods. She had no problems with the bars that made the exercise quite challenging visually, but on the other hand, she seems to love challenges. Here are some pictures:

Sitstay is good