I made my goals and such for Deuce on my agility blog but I might as well talk about them here as well:) What can I say about the upcoming year? Well, I know I want to strengthen our team bond in the ring. I feel like we are clicking training wise (can always use improvement), but we need that same click in the ring. I am going to start entering him in more trials and putting him in more challenging situations in the ring. No more safe, no more creeping, all out running in the name of the game. Criteria must be upheld and I need to bring that sense of confidence that I know he can do it, into the show ring. You know, every time you get your next agility partner, you set out to change things. I want my dog to do this and that better than my other dog or whatever but you are still you and you have to change YOU too! That is the part I am working on, changing ME and that is the hard part. We talk about trusting our dogs and we pound this into our head and then we go out in the ring and turn into careful, cautious dog handlers. I am sure Deuce is wondering what in the hell is wrong with me when I am out there walking on the course or slowing down to make sure he gets his contacts. He is probably thinking, "I got this mom, wait, why are you handling so different?". Anyway, am planning on attending summer camp with him and trying to get him in as many different situations as I can so he can mature and have fun and have successes along the way. I have no big goals for him, no national's dreams this year, just go have fun, and what happens, happens. I would like to have him in Excellent A by the end of the year and I do think this is attainable.
I have been trying to really work on how I train. I like the sentence perfect practice makes perfect. Don't get my wrong, my practices aren't perfect but I am trying really hard to only let him rehearse behaviors that I like and completely ignoring behaviors I don't like so that they will go away quickly. We are still working through collection issues, but he is a baby and this is part of him growing up, learning his body and what he can do and what he can't do with it. I need to drag some jumps home from the agility field we have and do more one jump work. I have joined a netflix for dog vidoes and on the top of my list is Susan Garrett's stuff you can do with one jump or whatever the title is. I figure this is something we can work on no matter what the weather is and inside the house as long as the repititions are low and light. As I said, he is still trying to figure out his body and the more I can help him know what he is capable of, the better.
I am also still trying to work through this a-frame issue we are having. I am trying to build immense value in the bottom of the a-frame and driving to the bottom. It is so weird, he drives to "toes" on the dog walk and teeter perfectly with speed and determination but now all the sudden, the a-frame is for star gazing. At first the behavior was only in shows but now he is doing it in practice. I thought I had put enough value in toes as a position since I was getting the behavior on the other contacts but maybe not? I have gone back to asking for toes on everything and lavishly rewarding for giving it to me. I have also gone to a target at the end of the a-frame with the best goodies in the world. I am not asking for a nose touch per se am still asking for toes which I am getting with more drive. I will continue for a while to do so until I feel like he is understanding the value of driving to the bottom into position and then I will remove the target and start rewarding from the hand again. We have been really lucky that the weather has held out thus far. We have been able to train on mondays at all star and have class pretty much all winter so I am crossing my fingers that this continues!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment