Jemma:
Jumping
This was a good round for little Jem, it did have 6 weaves in it, first time - good entry but missed one out, second time - went in the second gap but did the rest of them, third time - got it right!!! She came in 12th in the end bless her - 14.872s slower than the winner, 8th place if no faults!!!
Snakes and Ladders
She went on the dog walk but for some reason came off at the bottom, then got really confused what I wanted, saw the tunnel that was under the dog walk and went through that so then we opted to just do the jumps round the edge and she saw a random tunnel and opted to do that so we just went to the end as I had no idea where I was supposed to go after that!!
Agility
There was a very bad angle on to the 6 weaves and she got the entrance again but I carried on running so she missed one half way down, next time I stood back and let her do the weaves before I moved and she did :) She did the rest of the course very nicely.
Up and Under
Just one refusal, I crossed behind her quite tightly and the next jump was quite wide out so she just missed it, but did the rest very nicely bless her - finished 10th, 5.562 s slower than winner, 4th place if no faults.
Its a knock out
She won her first race but then knocked a pole on her second round bless her :(
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Friday, 10 April 2009
Notts Obedience Comp
Jemma:
She was drawn fourth in beginners but sadly as she got out the car someone "let off" a clicker and so I had to work really hard to get her focused and even then she spent the whole round worrying it was going to go off again and when someone outside the ring clapped loudly we both lost the plot a bit and I misheard the steward so went the wrong way and lost us two marks!! She left with 11.5 points, mainly for a going REALLY wide A LOT!! We didn't do the stays because I left the comp early to go house hunting with mum.
In the pre-beginners sit stay she lay down as soon as I took a step away from her - naughty girl!! Her heelwork on lead was really good (she only lost 1.5), on her recall, behind me there was another handler making a fuss of her dog and it distracted jem so she did a really wonky present and finish (lost 1.5) and then on her heel free she had her confused look as to why we were doing heelwork again and lost 3.5.
Elliot:
This time I had him out of the car for half an hour before I worked him but worked him in the morning and not the afternoon like before and outsde the ring I managed to get him really focused on me. Sadly as soon as we got in the ring he saw the stay ring behind us and just wanted to play with all those other dogs so was just on the end of his lead paying no attention to me bless him. On his recall he stepped offme until I then told him to sit again bless him, but then he stayed sitting until I went diagonally to the other side of the ring, then came hurtling towards me when I called him but then saw another dog behind me and ran past me but luckily I managed to catch him before he ran off!!
Heres hoping for more luck next week!!
She was drawn fourth in beginners but sadly as she got out the car someone "let off" a clicker and so I had to work really hard to get her focused and even then she spent the whole round worrying it was going to go off again and when someone outside the ring clapped loudly we both lost the plot a bit and I misheard the steward so went the wrong way and lost us two marks!! She left with 11.5 points, mainly for a going REALLY wide A LOT!! We didn't do the stays because I left the comp early to go house hunting with mum.
In the pre-beginners sit stay she lay down as soon as I took a step away from her - naughty girl!! Her heelwork on lead was really good (she only lost 1.5), on her recall, behind me there was another handler making a fuss of her dog and it distracted jem so she did a really wonky present and finish (lost 1.5) and then on her heel free she had her confused look as to why we were doing heelwork again and lost 3.5.
Elliot:
This time I had him out of the car for half an hour before I worked him but worked him in the morning and not the afternoon like before and outsde the ring I managed to get him really focused on me. Sadly as soon as we got in the ring he saw the stay ring behind us and just wanted to play with all those other dogs so was just on the end of his lead paying no attention to me bless him. On his recall he stepped offme until I then told him to sit again bless him, but then he stayed sitting until I went diagonally to the other side of the ring, then came hurtling towards me when I called him but then saw another dog behind me and ran past me but luckily I managed to catch him before he ran off!!
Heres hoping for more luck next week!!
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Another agility lesson back home :)
Jemma:
We did quite a lot of work on her a-frame and addressed two problems, one: her driving to the bottom - with the target in she was great so we just started phasing it out and making her touch the ground sometimes instead of the target, it seemed to work well and has given me something else to work on on the stairs :), two: her not being 100% confident on going when i say go, she seems to hang around and look confused and be all like "does mum really mean it" so i did lots of throwing her toy/treats to really build up her confidence on this. It seemed to work but I still need to do more of it. On the dog walk she was driving up & along it but then really slowing down on the way down so we did some work on just the down plank and getting her all excited so she really drove to the bottom. This now needs more work and then we just need to back track it a bit :) She seems to also have a hang up about going in tunnels these days, I used to be able to drive her to one from quite a long way away but now she seems quite reluctant to go in them!! I need to go back to rewarding her after she has done the tunnel so it becomes fun again. We then did a lot of work on the flick flack handling and I think by the end of the session she was really understanding it, I just need to keep up the practice so she doesn't forget it again, sadly something easier said than done!! Think that was it for today, we had no time to do weaves, we shall just see how they go at the weekend!!
Elliot:
We did some more shadow handling work - getting him to go in front of me and me to cross behind him, he kept doing silly twizzles though so it is definately something I need to work on!! My main aim with him at the moment is still change of arm=change direction. So we did quite a lot of front cross work with two rows of three // jumps and he did this really well (apart from when he smelt a treat and went wondering off for ages, naughty boy!!) We then did some flik flack work but as my trainer said, and i agree he is too young really to be worrying about these, but it is just nice to have something else to use to reinforce the change of arms, he did well but just struggled a little when he was turning into my left side and kept running behind me, but we worked on it with the tuggy and he got it by the end :) Something I need to work on with both dogs is focus forwards at a jump when they are sat at and angle to it and not dead straight!!We also spent a lot of time today going over how I would sort out problems that arise during training Elliot (and Jemma), such as when he went off sniffing, not to shout at him but to go back and rebuild the reward/drive for the jump because he obviously found sniffing something more rewarding than doing the jump, and with the flick flack he kept going between the jumps (despite my body language being correct) so instead of trying to change what I was doing I should move the jumps closer together so there is no gap and then gradually move them further apart until he gets the hang of it!!
We did quite a lot of work on her a-frame and addressed two problems, one: her driving to the bottom - with the target in she was great so we just started phasing it out and making her touch the ground sometimes instead of the target, it seemed to work well and has given me something else to work on on the stairs :), two: her not being 100% confident on going when i say go, she seems to hang around and look confused and be all like "does mum really mean it" so i did lots of throwing her toy/treats to really build up her confidence on this. It seemed to work but I still need to do more of it. On the dog walk she was driving up & along it but then really slowing down on the way down so we did some work on just the down plank and getting her all excited so she really drove to the bottom. This now needs more work and then we just need to back track it a bit :) She seems to also have a hang up about going in tunnels these days, I used to be able to drive her to one from quite a long way away but now she seems quite reluctant to go in them!! I need to go back to rewarding her after she has done the tunnel so it becomes fun again. We then did a lot of work on the flick flack handling and I think by the end of the session she was really understanding it, I just need to keep up the practice so she doesn't forget it again, sadly something easier said than done!! Think that was it for today, we had no time to do weaves, we shall just see how they go at the weekend!!
Elliot:
We did some more shadow handling work - getting him to go in front of me and me to cross behind him, he kept doing silly twizzles though so it is definately something I need to work on!! My main aim with him at the moment is still change of arm=change direction. So we did quite a lot of front cross work with two rows of three // jumps and he did this really well (apart from when he smelt a treat and went wondering off for ages, naughty boy!!) We then did some flik flack work but as my trainer said, and i agree he is too young really to be worrying about these, but it is just nice to have something else to use to reinforce the change of arms, he did well but just struggled a little when he was turning into my left side and kept running behind me, but we worked on it with the tuggy and he got it by the end :) Something I need to work on with both dogs is focus forwards at a jump when they are sat at and angle to it and not dead straight!!We also spent a lot of time today going over how I would sort out problems that arise during training Elliot (and Jemma), such as when he went off sniffing, not to shout at him but to go back and rebuild the reward/drive for the jump because he obviously found sniffing something more rewarding than doing the jump, and with the flick flack he kept going between the jumps (despite my body language being correct) so instead of trying to change what I was doing I should move the jumps closer together so there is no gap and then gradually move them further apart until he gets the hang of it!!
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Agility lesson back home
Elliot
We spent some time doing circle work and realised that he has an issue doing inside circles (I have only ever trained outside ones so it is not surprising really!!) so that is something I need to work on. We then did quite a bit of focus and front cross work as I want him to start really understanding that change of arms=change direction. We then did some contact work and like Jemma he stops if i stop, he also stops if i am behind him but if i carry on running or if i reward him for stopping and then run he just merrily comes of the end of the dog walk/a-frame!! If only i had stairs leading to a long straigh corridor and not a little box!! Finally we did some weaves, we used the channel weaves and he was fine with them at 6&5 inches so we took them down to four. He struggled a bit with this as he finally had to move his body round the poles!! So we just did three weaves at four inches a couple of times and left it at that as he was tired after over an hours work!!
Jemma
We did some positional cue work with her using boxes which to start with she was rubbish at. I had thought that it was that she didn't understand change of arm=change direction but in actual fact she understands that, what she doesn't understand is the positional cues. By the end of the session she got the hang of it though!! :) We also discovered why she looses sprit when we are doing stars - its because i stand still and just idly move my arm waiting for her to jump. This time I tried continuing to move and wow what a difference it made!! :) The biggest achievement we ahd today was that we did 6 weaves for over 10mins and she went wrong only twice, once when we tried something new -me leaving her at an angle on the right and me standing at an anlge on the left // to her, however she did this when I set her up in the same place but i stood in line with the weaves. And the other time was her last attempt at a little course we set up where I ran full pelt. So she was doing jump, walk, tunnel, weaves, jump, then back round this jump into the weaves and got that right at least 3 times!! :) I think she may, finally, have got the hang of them bless her!!
We spent some time doing circle work and realised that he has an issue doing inside circles (I have only ever trained outside ones so it is not surprising really!!) so that is something I need to work on. We then did quite a bit of focus and front cross work as I want him to start really understanding that change of arms=change direction. We then did some contact work and like Jemma he stops if i stop, he also stops if i am behind him but if i carry on running or if i reward him for stopping and then run he just merrily comes of the end of the dog walk/a-frame!! If only i had stairs leading to a long straigh corridor and not a little box!! Finally we did some weaves, we used the channel weaves and he was fine with them at 6&5 inches so we took them down to four. He struggled a bit with this as he finally had to move his body round the poles!! So we just did three weaves at four inches a couple of times and left it at that as he was tired after over an hours work!!
Jemma
We did some positional cue work with her using boxes which to start with she was rubbish at. I had thought that it was that she didn't understand change of arm=change direction but in actual fact she understands that, what she doesn't understand is the positional cues. By the end of the session she got the hang of it though!! :) We also discovered why she looses sprit when we are doing stars - its because i stand still and just idly move my arm waiting for her to jump. This time I tried continuing to move and wow what a difference it made!! :) The biggest achievement we ahd today was that we did 6 weaves for over 10mins and she went wrong only twice, once when we tried something new -me leaving her at an angle on the right and me standing at an anlge on the left // to her, however she did this when I set her up in the same place but i stood in line with the weaves. And the other time was her last attempt at a little course we set up where I ran full pelt. So she was doing jump, walk, tunnel, weaves, jump, then back round this jump into the weaves and got that right at least 3 times!! :) I think she may, finally, have got the hang of them bless her!!
Monday, 6 April 2009
Flyball back on the downs
Elliot
He joined in with the starters team for the Easter weekend competition (we aren't going, we have agility instead!!). He was doing proper change overs and not phased at all but because the rest of the team were competing the next weekend they took the jump in front of the box out. He got really lazy with his turns and although his back feet were on the box they were really low and on the white bit. He needs more work doing full runs with the jump in to stop this, naughty boy!!!
Jemma
Well, she did gorgeous box turns, even without the jump in. But even though she was start dog she was naughty. As soon as the other people in the queue started saying ready ready ready she was tryin to get at them and the second i let her go, no matter how focused i thought she was she spun round me to bark at the other dogs so I took her back to the car for a few minutes. When i bought her out she did the exact same thing again so went back in the car. When she came out again it was with a starter group where the handlers didn't say ready ready ready and she was more focused and ran erally well as start dog. The problem we have now is that she needs to work through doing it when she is excited. At a competition even if our team doesn't say ready ready ready until after she has been released the other team will likely be saying it so we will go back to havin gher run over there. If she is start dog when I let her go she needs to run forwards with no messing about, hence putting her in the car, we have got to just work through it and not let her get away with it otherwise she will never compete!! For the same reason I was releasing her from 10foot and not right on the start line!! Hopefully this new tactic will work, we shall have to see!!
He joined in with the starters team for the Easter weekend competition (we aren't going, we have agility instead!!). He was doing proper change overs and not phased at all but because the rest of the team were competing the next weekend they took the jump in front of the box out. He got really lazy with his turns and although his back feet were on the box they were really low and on the white bit. He needs more work doing full runs with the jump in to stop this, naughty boy!!!
Jemma
Well, she did gorgeous box turns, even without the jump in. But even though she was start dog she was naughty. As soon as the other people in the queue started saying ready ready ready she was tryin to get at them and the second i let her go, no matter how focused i thought she was she spun round me to bark at the other dogs so I took her back to the car for a few minutes. When i bought her out she did the exact same thing again so went back in the car. When she came out again it was with a starter group where the handlers didn't say ready ready ready and she was more focused and ran erally well as start dog. The problem we have now is that she needs to work through doing it when she is excited. At a competition even if our team doesn't say ready ready ready until after she has been released the other team will likely be saying it so we will go back to havin gher run over there. If she is start dog when I let her go she needs to run forwards with no messing about, hence putting her in the car, we have got to just work through it and not let her get away with it otherwise she will never compete!! For the same reason I was releasing her from 10foot and not right on the start line!! Hopefully this new tactic will work, we shall have to see!!
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