Day 2 and 3 ABCTC

Day 2 and Day 3 were again very eye opening. We were once again outside for one session and inside for another. We had Karen H in the morning and we really worked on collection. She basically said I was allowing him to pass me and I was only using one finger to tell him to stop when I should be using my whole hand. Again, I am hugely visual so she said to use it just like a big sign and once I started doing that, he started respecting it more. We worked on serpentines which deuce did very well and also calling a dog into heel position and how to correctly reward this. Deuce even got to run extra because a fellow camper had a dog that didn't want to run. Deuce loved it and she even sent him to the back side of the jump (by mistake of course) but since I have taught him back, she cued it and he did it. We had ann for the afternoon session and back to the inside. Once again I learned that I needed to keep my eyes on my dog for him to go to the right obstacle, even if that was peripheral vision. I tend to look at where I need to be since I do alot of front crosses and with him timing is so important. That is when I lost him. We finally did one sequence with weave poles which he nailed but he was pretty collected already so that wasn't an issue. We need to work on lateral and forward sends on my end, he has it, I just need to send and rock back instead of rotating around. If I send and rock back and go, he is collected and tight but if I send and roll, he goes wide. Good feedback for sure. Ann also had me run a big long three jump lead out with a push since she said I could be ahead of him and then timed us doing a three jump lead out standing still versus a two jump lead out with a big push. He was super fast with the second option and she said that as long as I can get ahead of him, that would be the better option time wise.

We ended had a big discussion on training puppies including teaching the release and also how to deal with a barky dog. Ann says she works on drive first and then impulse control, so lots of restrained recalls and shaping which is how I trained Deuce. I can't wait to start working with Tony and stella on some of these things. Kind of hard right now with two puppies in the house, me just getting back from camp and of course not getting very much sleep. Babies both have upset tummies right now so can't really give lots of extra training treats till they settle a bit more.

Day 3 was the all out door day and it started out with Jenn to go over strategic placement of rear crosses on course. Again I hate using RC and am super sucky at them so it was nice to see where they would be better than the FC and even learned how to do double rears (i.e. we did a rear on the flat and then a parallel rear cross over the jump). Jenn also helped me more on collection and had me stopping him before the jump like Lori has us do. She had me do 10 two jump lead outs with 8 stopping him and two not and said that I need to do that every day. I hate that the temps are so unbearable hot right now or we would be out practicing this for sure. We also talked about the "ring of fire" exercise, which I got to use in Karen's session later that day when Deuce started releasing himself from me to take other obstacles. We ended with Karen and I wanted to work on the moving FC at the beginning so got to work on that in her sequences as well as some more rears. Basically I was not setting up far enough laterally and once I did that, he was super tight and collected on his turn. Of course it will be a timing issue as to when to rotate and when to go but we will work on it. We ended on a great note and I was so proud of Deuce and myself for making it through.

Overall, I highly recommend this camp. I was able to challenge myself within my group and had powows every night with my traveling partner who was in the top group to go over what she went over. I have gone over my notes several times, rewritten them several times and purchased Linda's book so I don't have to flip through old clean runs over and over. I am hoping if the money is there that i will be able to go next year and maybe take a bigger group. Both Jenn and Karen are coming to KS so hoping to have the money to go take at least a day or some privates from them as well. Puppies are up so have to go potty them so guess I am wrapping up!

ABCTC summer session part 2

Well up earlier than I thought (still 10:30-10:30 was a nice 12 hours) and hubby is washing dishes that he dirtied while I was gone and i am waiting for breakfast to settle so I can go and run. Like I said in my previous post, I am so excited to try the exercises we learned and set up some of the sequences we had and try running them the different ways we learned to run them. I am hoping if it isn't too horribly hot monday after class that I can do some of that. Of course Stella will be here tomorrow and we are baby sitting another puppy so I may be so busy with puppies that I won't be blogging much for a while.

So again for those of you who haven't been to this camp, the format is this: You have two rotations a day so you get two different instructors, usually one inside (ann) and one outside in the outdoor field (jen or karen). We started out with Ann which I really, really liked. We had to introduce ourselves and tell our dog's names, ages and issues. I guess we were the only group that got to do that since we were the novice dogs. Most of the people in our group had issues like start line stays, sends, getting speed, and getting your dog to stay with. I figured out right off the bat that we were probably in the wrong group, but I decided to make the most of it and learn from everyone's issues. I took away so much info on how to work through these problems that I feel my students are going to be super lucky as I really filled up my tool box so to speak. It also took pressure off of me I think to be perfect and own up to his baby dog issues. When it was my turn, I told her that he is having issues with collection and seems to run a gear or two faster in trials than in training so I am having timing issues. We learned so much about the 6 parts of linda's system and how certain things can trump others in context to a course. We also focused on running the right way and how to give "screw up cookies" when we made mistakes. This hit home for me because I am really bad about getting frustrated with myself and then letting down and then he thinks i am mad at him so he gets stressed. She was really good at pointing out when to give them and I think that really helped the slow dogs more than anything to speed up as the owners weren't blaming them for mistakes and rewarding them more thus building more value in the game. We got to run two sequences of 8 or 10 obstacles each and really talk about what options work and what options didn't for that sequence. My biggest mistake with deuce is that i take my eyes off of him to try and see where I need to be going and that is when i loose him. HUGE light bulb moment on something so simple. Also learned that sometimes, because of his speed, I need to really think hard about always putting in fronts as they are late and then loose their value. I HATE rear crosses so it is hard for me to do this but the next session with Jenn cured that hate. We ended up going way over into our lunch so we got about 30 minutes which was more than enough but then we had to drag all of our stuff outside and that was a pain. Next year, I will be for sure taking my van where I have crates already in the van and then my other lighter weight crates to drag around. My traveling buddy's car is very small so we couldn't take a lot of extra stuff so whatever they traveled in was what they were crated in at the seminar (heavy wire crates, ick).

We ended the day in Jenn's outdoor ring and talking about rear crosses. I learned SO much about all of the different kinds of rears and how to execute them correctly. My fav quote of jenn's was, "you are so worried about the off course option. Go out there, walk how you would do it if that was the correct option, then don't do that." Of course we started with rears on the flat which I thought we were good at but try doing them at a distance and not saying anything. YIKES! Once I got the body motion down, he was doing them quite well but it took me a few times. Also in this ring there was a family of voles and deuce became quite enthralled at their scent so I had a few times of calling him off of vole hunting. Guess I need to proof for voles LOL! Of all of the rear crosses at the obstacle, my favorite was the decel rear cross or the no motion rear cross. Those are my fav because they cued collection and tight turns without me having to yell or scream or do any of that silly stuff I do with deuce to get him to collect. I learned that no motion rears are very good for baby-D and that I need to really, really exaggerate my accels versus decels right now to get him to read them. Very, very cool, came out of this session with a HUGE smile on my face!

After day one, took a nice long walk around Chippewa falls downtown area and let the dogs swim and unwind. We were lucky since I can't leave baby-d in the hotel room that there were several fast food joints right next to our hotel. This pic was taken in the park before we let them swim. It was a log that was rescued out of the water and probably was over 100 years old. Very cool!

ABCTC summer session part 1

Am back finally to a computer and able to blog. Am very tired however so this first entry may be very short. My traveling partner and I have opposite sleeping issues. I can't get to sleep, and when I finally do, I usually stay asleep as long as everything is relatively quiet and still, and she can sleep at the drop of the hat, but can't stay asleep so is usually up by 1:30-2 am ready to go. Out of courtesy, she tries to lay in bed till 4 or later but after that she is up and going. Needless to stay, I am very exhausted after getting 5 hours or so of sleep a night. I am really amazed I am even awake right now to even type. I think i probably could have gone to bed 2 hours ago but had laundry and cleaning to do first. Something about being gone makes me crazy when I get home and I usually have a marathon cleaning, unpacking, laundry session even though all I really want to do is sleep.

To give a very brief teaser, camp was AMAZING, I had lots of light bulb moments and ended the three days running my dog silently with motion only. No reactive screaming of his name or yelling commands that don't have enough meaning in his brain. I was very, very happy with how we ended, even if his brain did get fried by day three, session two of the all day outside sessions. Even then I was able to glean some very useful exercises to try when he gets this way. Overall, very happy with his progress, my progress and my understanding of LM's system. I have never been a true system follower and probably still won't be true to any one system, but I do have alot of respect and more understanding for it now. I bought her book even though I have all of the clean run articles she wrote and will be going back over all the exercises with baby-d. I am also very proud I was able to swallow my ego when we got put in the "novice dog" group even though baby-D is running in excellent. He still is just two and still has a tendency to act like a baby and we are still so new in our team work anyway. While the sequences were a tiny bit easy for us, I tried to run them all completely different than my comfort zone which equals lots of rear crosses instead of the fronts I tend to defer to. Also had a ton of work on collection, something that has been KILLING us lately and got lots of really good feedback both with the lead out push, the lead out pivot and the moving front cross. I am very happy I spent the money and look forward to next year when I will be able to move up maybe to the more advanced group. I will write more tomorrow, decided to not do the 5 K i was signed up for and instead catch up on sleep, laundry, and get ready for the baby to arrive (aka the red demon stella).

Volunteering

Okay so we bloggers were challenged to talk about volunteering so here goes. I feel like in our area, finding volunteers isn't a problem. I like both systems of signing up ahead of time (especially for the big jobs like scribe and timer) as well as having a board with blanks and letting people jump in when they have time. Most trials in our area do a combo of both and it seems to work really well. I got the chance to be a ring steward at a two ring, two judge trial not to0 long ago (we had one for each ring) and I really, really enjoyed it. Other than one person accusing me of not giving them their worker's dollars for two days (which was a big mix up as I was, he was just loosing them) it was a very pleasant experience and I would gladly do so again. I really got to put people's names to their faces and got to meet some people I didn't even know, but were just friends on FB. Everyone was very willing to pitch in if there was a hole and the doggy dollars were a very nice touch. Some of the trials in our area have a worker's raffle and I have won a variety of fun stuff including a NADAC hoop and a portrait sitting with a photographer. I have also been to very small trials in our area (mainly USDAA) where pretty much every competitor present had to pitch in and help, some more than others of course, but our USDAA is so small that we all pretty much work every class or have the option of being there till midnight. I really haven't seen the issues that maybe bigger clubs experience or bigger trials experience. I feel like I am young and I don't have any medical issues and I enjoy volunteering so I do. I don't think people should be made to feel guilty for not volunteering at all. For some, the trial is very serious and they need time to think and strategize and plan or tend to their dogs. For me, I need to be busy, I am always up and walking anyway so it is better for me to be using that nervous energy for something productive. My dogs don't take a ton of time to warm up and as long as I have walked the course 5 or 6 times, I am good to go. I enjoy working with others and learning about course building and even though I am not a morning person, will come super early to help get courses started. Just don't try carrying on a lengthy conversation with me if it is early:)

I have met those that are not suited to be volunteers at all. They are very nasty to others, they don't have patience with the newbies, and they seem to get on a God trip with whatever job they have been assigned. I always try to be nice to everyone because I was a newbie once and I probably wouldn't volunteer near as much as I do if I had had a bad experience. Heck, I have been doing agility for probably 10 years now and I still have trouble remembering how to set a USDAA double or at what height the table goes up or down in AKC. So I guess the big picture is don't make people feel guilty if they don't want to volunteer and if we who like to volunteer want to shoulder a big load and do alot of work, let us. I really enjoy helping so use me and abuse me. I will for sure let you know if I need a break or can't volunteer for whatever reason.

I'm so excited! (as sang by the pointer sisters)

Getting really excited to head up to Ann braue's three day agility camp!!!! I can't believe we leave a week from today. I can't wait to get some outside eyes and opinions on my baby. It's going to be hard, I am a perfectionist and I have an ego that tends to get in my way sometimes. I am wanting to go into this experience with a giant open mind and soak up everything like a sponge. I have been to a Karen Holick seminar before so I am excited to hear from Ann and Jennifer. Biggest issues we are having right now are collection and I look forward to learning how to take a dog that is super amped at a show and remind them that yes, they do know how to collect.

I will have to say, the other night in class, we really had the best class that we have had in months. Baby-D and I were just clicking and he was listening and I was trying some stuff and we were successful more than we weren't. I really feel like this was the first class where we were really in sync. Not sure why, courses were hard but doable, temperature was not horribly hot but not cool. Did get a little stress at then end as we ended with a hard weave pole entry so i quit while we were ahead. Wanted to end on a good note so had him do some dog walks as he LOVES alice's rubberized dog walk (WHEEEEEE).

Today is Baby-D's second birthday and it is hard to believe I have had him two years. It just seems like yesterday he was just a cuddly little bundle of fur. He is still my baby, still sleeps beside me, touching me, and still lays in my lap when we watch tv. He still has impulse control issues that we work on daily, and still is a lover of all people, dogs and things. Happy birthday baby-D, may there be many, many more!!!!!!

early mornings

I have been taking a work out class twice a week at (YIP) 6:00 am in the morning. For those who know me, I am NOT a morning person and I generally do not wake up till around lunch time. Most people just leave me alone till I start conversing with them or after I have had my moring diet coke. Well, the good news is because I am up, I am getting alot of training done with baby-D while it is still cool. Since I moved my equipment back, I can't do much more than a few small drills, but I can do lots of stuff with weaves. I have been doing lots of weave pole games to work on collection in and also entries with just sets of 4. Getting a mix of success and failure but the failure is good because it gives me a chance to let him know that he is wrong and then set him up for success. Today we worked on a hard pull back to an obstacle after the weaves, something we saw at the show and were not successful at. He did better for sure but does look at the off course option still. Guess we need to do some fast heel work around inviting obstacles like tunnels, maybe even some stay at my side work while we run around the course and no taking obstacles unless released work. I love this time with him though, all the discoveries of what he is lacking in or what he has down. They are like clay right now, turning into whatever you mold them into. Every show I have a list of things we did well and things we need to work on and the next few weeks till the next show are devoted to getting all of these things better. I do so much better when i have a goal to work towards or specific things to work on versus, oh just go out and train whatever. Can't wait for open practice this week to work on some accel/decel drills. Maybe I can get some videos made this time of what we are working on. Now, if I could just get out of bed on the days I don't work out and run:)

learning experiences

Ah, my first three day trial with baby-D. I had gotten really use to just running two day trials with miller so this was my first time back at three days. I am really glad we did all three days though because Baby-D improved every day. Did we get a Q, nope, not a single one, even in FAST. I knew this would happen, seems to take an adjustment period each time we move up a level, even though we train at the top level we can in practice. Our biggest issue coming to this weekend was yet again, Deuce has kicked it into another gear so we are having huge collection issues, especially into the weaves. I truly believe he knows weave entries, just isn't getting collected enough to get in them at all. He is hitting second pole every time with this freaked out look on his face, like how did these get here? He is also still 50/50 on two jump lead out pushes. I refuse to give up on them though. He is going to get them or blow out my knees one or the other. I had opportunities to do rears into the openings with these set ups but chose to stay strong, make him collect and suffer the lose of Q if he didn't. Here are the positives and negatives for the weekend starting with the negatives and ending on the positives for a change:

Negatives: I can no longer leave baby-d in the hotel room while we eat. Bummed. Like getting my eat on. Even tried crating him with a peanut butter kong this time and still when we pulled up, could hear him in the parking lot. Had to get take out the other two days:( Hate to not get to go out with the group as agility is as much about the socialization of humans as it is of running of the dogs. Weave pole entries are 50/50 right now. He had some he blatantly didn't collect into and then he hit some at 100 MPH no problem. At least it gives me something to work on. Who knows what is going on other than he has kicked it up a notch and needs to figure out how to handle his speed. I am also having trouble in classes like FAST where I am racing to get points. It seems to send him over the edge and he starts shopping like a crazy man. He has to learn that we can both run balls to the wall and he can keep his head. Chalking this up to a baby dog issue that experience with take care of. He needs this skill for snooker, gamblers, and FAST. He gets the sends (well most of them) no prob, distance isn't a thing for this crazy dog. My timing, well, enough said:) Still seeing stress, especially when he misses weave pole entries and has to re do them. I do feel like at this point he needs to go back and get them. He seems to hate being wrong but I think that is a good thing. No video, need to remember to bring my camera!!!!!

Positives: Our runs got better as the weekend progressed. Much improvement. Feel like we are getting so close to gelling as team. I really like having three runs a day but really for this time wish FAST was at the end, not the beginning of the day. Weave pole entries were 50/50 this weekend and so were collection spots. He is staring to read lateral distance better as come with not continue forward. Need to work on accel/decel exercises. Need to trust my dog but doing better. Had the best jww run on sunday that left me so happy. Great crosses, great attention, fast, fast, fast, no reactive handling. I am very excited to have these problems even though I sometimes bitch. I have always wanted a fast aussie that has the skill set I desire and I think we are getting there, slowly but surely!!! His contacts are exactly where I want them right now. Driving to his position, no matter what, hanging on to his 2 on 2 off and waiting for release. Had one self release but he quickly stopped when he realized what he did. Couldn't hang on to one teeter, tried to bang it back down and reposition to the laughing crowd's amazement. Must stop using him for the bang game drill in beginner class. Was overall very happy with everything although a little sad as I am human. This makes the second (or third) show with no Qs in anything but I have to keep telling my self that it isn't about the qs right now, more about us getting together as a team. Still is hard when every other young dog right now is kicking ass in the Q department. Guessing we might be in Excellent A for a little while but making peace with that.

Next stop, Ann Braue's camp in Wisconsin for three days of agility goodness and then another three day show in July on sod indoors, yipee!!!!!