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Agility

Update

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:
 

Update

We’re really looking forward to spring now. I’m fed up with snow! Missy and I are doing a lot of obedience right now. She is really doing great and I am looking forward to the trial in April. Her attitude is a lot better and we’re working on send to square and distant control right now. I want to be ready for doing the whole program when we train with Maria Hagström March 14, so I need to get started with some longer sequences pretty soon. I find it really helpful to have set clear goals for my dogs this year. It helps me to plan and focus and believe in a way that I haven’t done before.

Squid has been working on some obedience as well. Our goal for March 14 is good heeling in a trial like setting, with turns and halts and duration, and a good stand from heel. It’s going great, but we still have lots to work on in order to make it. Here is a video from earlier this week:

We’re also working on down, send to target, picking up all kinds of objects and a speedy recall. I would like to start working on send to square with her, but she doesn’t have the drive forward that I would like to see. She is very calm when doing obedience and often seems a bit tired. It doesn’t bother me, I’d rather have a calm puppy that I need to build speed into, than a crazy, over the top kind of dog. Missy was also pretty calm as a puppy (but had more toy drive as I recall). Indoors, we have been working on some more tricks, scent discrimination (freeze your nose to the post it note that smells like me) and nose touches for agility.

Shejpa went to a trial on Saturday, where a friend of mine ran her since I couldn’t be there. She did a good job in standard, but got faulted twice. Her running dogwalk was great! Here’s the video:

We’re going to a trial on Sunday, where I will be running her again. She was great at training yesterday, but then I heard a rumour about that the judge likes to use the table in standard. We very rarely get the table in any class here, and I haven’t trained it at all. Let’s hope the judge chooses not to use it on Sunday…

Shejpa’s debut in class II

This weekend was Shejpa’s debut in class II at a trial a couple of hours drive north at a very nice indoors arena where they could fit two rings. First class on Saturday was standard and we were unfortunaltly eliminated because Shejpa missed a pole in the weaves, and I wasn’t sure about it. My goal for the run was to get a good seesaw and she did it well. Next class was jumpers and we had a clean run, with a few turns that were not very good. She won the class and got her first jumpers leg in class II. Last class was an open jumpers class, where we got to compete against dogs from class III and the world team. Shejpa did really well and the handling felt great, I think we won a lot on good rear crosses. I crossed behind her at the last tunnel and she came out the wrong way and we lost a second or two there. I thought we were out of the top 3, but we actually won by 1,5 seconds! Open classes are unofficial, but this was the win that has made me happiest so far.

Sunday started with standard again and Shejpa and I had a clean run and got our first leg in A2. She had a great run, but I had to wait for 8 seconds on the seesaw before she nose touched. She has a hard time nose touching if she’s not coming with speed onto the seesaw and therefore doesn’t land in 2o2o when the seesaw hits the ground. Despite those 8 seconds, we took second place, only 2 seconds after the winner. Last run for the weekend was jumpers and this was a course that I really liked. Unfortunatly, Shejpa came out of the first tunnel when I just turned and ran instead of crossing behind her. Need to work on staying in tunnels even if I do weird things. She also dropped a bar after the weavepoles. Even though I had to put her back in the tunnel, she was the faster than all other small and medium dogs.

Two wins and two legs are great, but what makes me most happy is that Shejpa is such a wondeful dog to have at a trial. She is so relaxed and sleeps as long as nothing happens. She is as fresh at 7 pm as she is in the morning, since she only gears up when she is running. She is walking nicely around, wagging her tail at everybody. I can see that she has started to really like agility, because she would get excited when we were getting ready to go into the ring. Not about the chicken necks, but excited about running agility, wich is a big thing for Shejpa! She even started tugging on her leash before the last run. I never thought that day would come 😀

I didn’t get all runs on video. The worst one (elimination) and the best one (win in open jumpers) are not in here:

Squid’s First Obedience Seminar

Saturday and Sunday was Squid’s turn to work with Maria Hagström. Squid did really well and I couldn’t be more pleased with her! She stays in her open crate while other dogs are working and I am engaged in other activities. People with dogs have been passing her crate and giving her cookies for staying calm. Not once did she show any of the resource guarding behavior that I have seen before. She was all happy and wagging her tail. We did a lot of proofing on focus and sit stays on Saturday. And worked on stimulus control.

On Sunday, Squid got to do her first sequence in a trial like setting and we worked on the first part of a trial – entering the ring and getting ready for the first exercise. In our last session, we worked on heeling. Here is a video of some of the training from yesterday. As a bonus, I included some of Shejpas dogwalks from lunch:

Sunny Days in January

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 🙂

Focused over the jump

The last rays of sunlight for today

Goals for 2009

We’re back home after a few days with the family in Gothenburg. It’s my 25th birthday today and I celebrated it yesterday with my family. Thomas is leaving for Bergen right after New Year, to continue working on his master in ethology (comparing the effects of different kinds of reinforcers), so I’ll be alone in the house with my girls for two weeks. I plan to spend my days training the dogs and I hope that the weather will be good.

This year has almost come to an end and it is time to start looking ahead and setting goals for next year. I have always been afraid of writing my goals down, and especially of publishing them on the internet. I have realized that I am afraid of articulating my goals and even of preparing really well to reach them, because I am afraid of failing. Understanding that made it easier to realize that there is nothing to be afraid of and that articulating my goals will make it easier to focus. So… Here are my goals for 2009!

Missy: My goal was originally to make it to the final in the Norwagian Obedience Championships. But since we did that this year, I thought that we need a higher goal, so that I really have to focus in training to make us better and more stable. Next years goal is to be in the top three in the finals. I don’t know how many other obedience trials we will be able to fit in to our tight schedual, but we’ll try to do some and do well. Missy will also do trials in agility, but I will not set any goals for results, as there are so many things that we need to work on.

Shejpa: The goal with Shejpa is to get to the highest class in agility during the spring. I’m also planning to go to European Open this summer. Our highest goal for this year is to get into the finals at the Norwegian Championships in November.

Squid: Our goals for 2009 are to be qualified for obedience class III and class C in search and rescue. I would also really like to do the first level in herding, but that depends on how mature she gets in herding and there is a good chance that she will be a slow starter. We’ll also train a lot of agility foundation, but she won’t be trialing until 2010.

Greg Derrett seminar

We’re back from more than three days with Greg Derrett in Malmö, Sweden. It’s so much fun and the fact that I probably won’t be able to work with Greg until next December is pretty depressing. We’ll try to get some other intructors to come before that. Monday night was a lecture on the system. It’s always great to hear it again and to hear the new stuff that is going on in the system. And to be able to ask all the theoretical questions we’re always coming up with…

Tuesday started with some ground work. I ran Missy, to show that her circle work actually is pretty perfect even though it doesn’t always look like that on equipment… It was really good. We then did some two jump drills and my dogs were really showing off their worst sides. Missy was crazy and bar-dropping. Shejpa was sniffing and shutting down after a few runs. Some of it was probably my fault, it’s just like Shejpa’s first trial. I love running agility under pressure so much that I get too excited. I want to run fast, get to positional cue as fast as I can and I’m not patient enough on my rear crosses. I alternated wich dog I ran. On Wednesday, we did sequences with jumps and a tunnel. I ran Missy some in the beginning, and it was really better when I tried to think about being calm and just flowing instead of rushing. I have no problem getting where I need to be even if I’m not running away from my dogs. She was still dropping quite a lot of bars. Some of it is handler error, some of it is that Missy can’t handle my acceleration. Greg told me to do a lot of speed circles with 90 degree turns with her. Shejpa was a lot better and I ran her all afternoon. Greg concluded that: “She does have her moments of brilliance”.

We finished yesterday with a test on contacts and weaves. I was a bit nervous to try our running contacts on new equipment and under pressure, but Shejpa was just perfect. The proofing test we did on the dogwalk was stopping half way and she hit her contact below the last slat. A-frame is never a problem, so I didn’t worry about that. Seesaw is definatly a problem at times, but with just that one obstacle, she was alright and Greg was pleased. Weaves were good, Shejpa was the only dog that passed all the tests on weaves, and her time was much better than I thought it would be. We get a lot of nice comments on our weaves, but I’m not entirely pleased with them, so the plan is to retrain her with 2×2 (but I’ve said that for a long time…). 2×2 is a brilliant method and Thomas dog Pavlov has the best weaves with almost no training and he’s the only dog that has been taught with the 2x2s.

Today was about running courses, and I ran Shejpa all day (we only got through three courses). She was even better today and when she is focused and running, she really is brilliant. I think she could still get a lot more speed, but I do struggle to keep up with her sometimes, so I think she’s pretty ok. She had better turns than I thought she’d have and she is very responsive to my handling. First course was the individual small standard course from world cup (as it is on paper, not the actual course that you can watch on YouTube, they differ a lot). Shejpa was great and I manages to get us around the course fine (rewarding her seesaw). I got into position for front cross after the dogwalk and was even able to decel and be stationary and front cross as she met criteria. Contact was perfect. Next course was a pretty tricky jumpers course that was fine, apart from some footwork on my part. And the last course (wich, surprisingly enought also was a USDAA masters course!) was really easy and all about running.

Here’s a video with Shejpa running all three courses with Greg’s comments in the background.

About my handling then… I seem to have good footwork, good timing and I can run pretty fast. Most of my mistakes comes from not having enough patience. I need to work a lot more on handling with both dogs, really getting to the point of “meditation in motion” that Greg was talking about. Where you just flow around the course and also really know your dog. Missy needs a lot of work on speed circles and double box. Both dogs need to drive better to a jump before a rear cross. Shejpa needs more drive on lead out pivots, I feel that she is slowing down, especially on the harder ones.