After the fiasco of our last trial in October, it was great fun to play agility with a focused and into-the-game Walter this weekend.
Masters Snooker
This was our first try at a Masters Snooker course, where the time limit drops from 60 to 55 seconds and the number of required points increases from 37 to 40. For some reason my nerves were actually pretty calm, unusual for Snooker. It was a fun course consisting solely of jumps, tunnels, and frame. Walter ran well and didn't make me think on my feet. Our opening was #7 jump/tunnel combo, #6 frame, and #6 frame again, and we finished the closing for 49 points, a Q, first out of ten dogs and best run of our division. :-)
Steeplechase
In this, our second try at Steeplechase (our first being at the October trial where he was Mr. Scatterbrain), my goal was to push for speed and get an idea about whether or not he has any hope in heck of ever qualifying in Steeplechase. He ran really well except for bobbling the weaves (got the entry but then immediately popped, but completed them on the retry). He was 2 seconds over SCT but had it not been for the bobble at the weaves and/or some crummy handling I did at the opening, he would have come in under time. So, Qs in Steeplechase aren't totally out of our reach. He finished third out of eleven dogs in his jump height.
Masters Jumpers
This was our second try at a Masters Jumpers course and my goal was again to push for speed. Early in the course I wrongly estimated his commitment point to a tunnel and booted it in the other direction for a front cross, so at the last minute he pulled himself off it. Brought him back to do the tunnel just so he'd know yes, I really did mean he should take the tunnel. This goofup messed me up for the next obstacle and I ended up sending him straight to an offcourse jump, but there was really no point in messing with his flow since he had only done what I asked, so we just continued with the rest of the course. Despite it being our first elimination, I was really happy with his speed and focus and left the course a happy camper.
This weekend I discovered how fun it is to run fast and be willing to risk some precision for the sake of speed and flow. Up to now I've just been kind of jogging along, so that's all Walter's been doing too. Going into today I wanted to push myself to run faster and do more front crosses and see how Walter would respond, and he not only picked up the pace but also seemed to have a lot more fun. :-)
Temp: mainly sunny, 5 degrees
Pre-trial exercise: none
Classes entered: 3 (Masters Snooker, Steeplechase, Masters Jumpers)
Qs: 1 (Masters Snooker)
Time/SCT: 48.45/55.00 (Snooker), 46.14/44.00 (Steeplechase), 33.14/35.00 (Jumpers)
YPS: unknown
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Trial (Dream Fields)
Just one class today, but it was worth the drive: Walter *finally* got his first Advanced Standard Q!! Only took us 9 tries to get it, with for the most part one miscellaneous goof on each of the previous Advanced Standard courses keeping the Q out of reach. I almost feel like framing the course map for pete's sake.
It was a good course with a couple of tricky spots, #2 jump to #3 weaves and #7 frame to #8 chute. Most of us were agonizing about how to handle 1-2-3. How far to lead out? Where to lead out to? To pivot or not to pivot? Well, if there's anything good about not having a leadout on one's dog, it's that the lack of options for handling opening sequences limits some of that agonizing. :-) I briefly considered starting with him on my left and rear crossing between 1 and 2 but tossed that idea. So, I started with him on my right. Somewhat to my surprise, he didn't go to the offcourse frame but instead ran over in the general direction of the weaves, and then kept on running toward the middle of the arena. But, Lady Luck was with us as it just so happens that he ran between poles 1 and 2 on his way to check out the middle of the arena. In Advanced, as long as the dog gets the entry it doesn't matter if they pop out; you can bring them back to do it again without incurring any faults. If his excursion into the middle of the arena had taken him a few feet south of the weaves, he would have scored a refusal, or if a few feet north, a fault for incorrect entry.
The rest of the course wasn't a problem, including a good table performance which has eluded him in recent standard runs, and he ended up with first place and best specials run of his division. Thanks to Ms. Luck, Walter was among the 7 dogs to get a Q out of the 36 dogs who ran the course.
Some stats:
Weather: sunny, 2 degrees (perfect weather for a happy Walter)
Pre-trial exercise: a short flyball practice
Classes entered: 1 (Advanced Standard)
Qs: 1
Time/SCT: 53.69/64.00
YPS: 2.98
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Group lesson
The theme of today's lesson was distance handling, including these two sequences. My artistic abilities are limited as is my proficiency in Paint, so kindly use your imagination to picture in these schematics a frame, a tunnel (heh), some weaves, and three jumps.In exercise 1, I was glad for the opportunity to work on the frame/tunnel discrimation, and thanks to some patterning we did first, Walter was doing "out tunnel" pretty well. (But, later on when we tried the same exercise using the frame instead of the tunnel, he kept going to the darn tunnel.) This being a distance exercise, Walter couldn't find the weave entry to save his life (kept entering on the wrong side), but no surprise there since weave entries have admittedly been a big gap in our training. I'll be bringing out the living room weaves this winter I think.
In exercise 2, the goal was to be able to stay in the spot marked H. After he popped out between poles 5 and 6, the instructor tossed a toy for him a couple of times after the weaves, and then, lo and behold he completed the sequence on two of two attempts, with the instructor throwing a toy for him after the frame. I have to admit I was surprised that he did so well at this exercise and need to trust in his abilities more. He may still be a "baby" in so many ways, but he's no longer a baby agility dog. :-)
Running list (no pun intended) of winter projects:
- circle work with him on the inside
- weave entries
Friday, November 2, 2007
Practice on the flat (soccer field)
Had fun brushing up on some shadow handling at the soccer field. Front crosses, rear crosses, outside circles in both directions, using a toss of his ball as a reward, all was going smooth as cinnamon until I tried inside circles and realized what a huge gap in our training! So there's a winter project, circle work with him on the inside.
The soccer field also provides a good opportunity to practice "go on" and "get out", using the soccer goal post things. He knows "around" so using the two posts I can send him on a "go on", then either "here" or have him continue on a "get out" to go around the second goal post. Lately he's tending to anticipate the "get out" so getting him to come in before the second post is a bit tricky.
Then took Lucy out for her walk at a park and was enjoying the lovely fall day, until I felt it... the unmistakable
s - q - u - i - s - h
of stepping directly over the center of a large pile of dog poo. It wasn't a chihuahua who laid that egg, let me tell you. I'm trying to give the culprit the benefit of the doubt, like maybe it was dark, or maybe they were busy calling 9-1-1 alerting officials to a nearby crime in progress so didn't notice their own crime in progress. Yeah... right.
The soccer field also provides a good opportunity to practice "go on" and "get out", using the soccer goal post things. He knows "around" so using the two posts I can send him on a "go on", then either "here" or have him continue on a "get out" to go around the second goal post. Lately he's tending to anticipate the "get out" so getting him to come in before the second post is a bit tricky.
Then took Lucy out for her walk at a park and was enjoying the lovely fall day, until I felt it... the unmistakable
of stepping directly over the center of a large pile of dog poo. It wasn't a chihuahua who laid that egg, let me tell you.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Practice (BF)
For our last green fee practice before the field closes, we worked on slicing jumps and a bit of 6-weaves. He played the "I don't know how to weave" card when I tried to call him through the weaves but did just fine when I sent him to them instead, so it wasn't that it was too hot for him (about 18 degrees). Hmmm. Will have to work on that next year for sure.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Group lesson
We worked on various ways of handling a jump/tunnel sequence. It started with a really tight line between two jumps parallel to each other but a few meters apart, sort of like this but not quite that tight:
-- _
A strong slice over both jumps gave a good line to the #3 tunnel. That was challenging enough on its own since I've hardly practiced slicing jumps, but it was even more challenging since the frame was a nearby offcourse and grabbed at Walter several times.
Also, the instructor borrowed each of our dogs to give us a demo on how people generally tend to ask for wider than necessary wraps out of their dogs on jumps with wings v.s. wingless jumps. It was probably the first time he's been asked to work for someone else and although he came back to me several times, he was quickly catching on that working with the instructor was much more rewarding than coming to me and being ignored.
-- _
A strong slice over both jumps gave a good line to the #3 tunnel. That was challenging enough on its own since I've hardly practiced slicing jumps, but it was even more challenging since the frame was a nearby offcourse and grabbed at Walter several times.
Also, the instructor borrowed each of our dogs to give us a demo on how people generally tend to ask for wider than necessary wraps out of their dogs on jumps with wings v.s. wingless jumps. It was probably the first time he's been asked to work for someone else and although he came back to me several times, he was quickly catching on that working with the instructor was much more rewarding than coming to me and being ignored.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Practice (KK9)
Set up a rough approximation of a couple of the exercises we did at our lesson on Sunday. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but he kept shooting from the first tunnel to the second without checking in with me to see that I was trying to front cross him to come in to the jump.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Practice (BF)
Walter's frame to tunnel turning left away from me was great today. Also, it may be a fluke, but he seems to be getting the "get out". I only used it for turning/veering out to single obstacles -- no discriminations at this point.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
October 1st-14th
(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)
Sunday October 14th 2007 - group lesson at K9 Sense
Woo hoo, back in lessons for the fall! We worked on three different jump/tunnel sequences, focusing on distance while using silent handling. Took a while to get the hang of not saying anything except the release, neither his name nor any obstacle names. This will be a fun session.
Saturday October 13th 2007 - fun match at Red Gate
The course setup provided the opportunity to try out our frame to tunnel thing. The first try didn't quite work, but after that it went great and we did it a few times over the course of the day. At the table on his first run, he hopped off before lying down, but not with any particular apparent purpose as opposed to last Sunday when there was a spot of particular olfactory interest nearby. Mostly I modified the courses to be nice and flowy. He did some nice serpentines and his focus was good all day.
Sunday October 7th 2007 - trial at AARF (Harrowsmith)
Most of us agree that our dogs really don't care about ribbons and Qs and initials after their name, right? But, most dogs do care about treats, and mine are no exception. Well, I think a little bird, or perhaps a deer, rabbit, or some other smelly critter who had visited the agility fields recently must have told Walter at the outset of the day that this club doesn't award treats for Qs or placements. So from Walter's point of view, there was really no point in trying today.
Advanced Standard #1, #2, and #3
Our first two runs of the day (both Advanced Standards) were complete write-offs, riddled with refusals and terrifically inefficient wide lines. I discovered how unfun it is to run agility with a dog whose attention you're desperately trying to hold onto. Or get a hold of for that matter. He even hopped off the table to go directly to investigate a captivating smell at the nearby fence. He was almost, but not quite, as sniffy as that time at the June trial where the dog before us had bled all over the course. Extremely not fun. For Advanced Standard #3, he was starting to come around although I really had to fight for it. He was clean except for the time faults accrued due to a bobble at the weaves (popped at the 11th pole) and a very slow down on the table. So... this brings us to 0 for 8 in Advanced Standard. Sigh.
Masters Jumpers
The same story... had to fight to keep his attention and he ended up with a couple of refusals and a few time faults.
Steeplechase
Our first try at Steeplechase! It was fun and the course was what Steeplechase courses are supposed to be like, fast and flowing. One or two refusals and a popout at the 10th weave pole kept us from a Q, but I think he was going fast enough that he may have Qd if he hadn't had those bobbles. Given that it was now past 5:00pm and his day had started at 5:00am with no sleep except for catching a few winks in the car on the way down, his last run was actually not too shabby.
So it was bound to happen sooner or later: our first trial with no Qs. Glad to get it over with I suppose. But man, that sniffing was just awful, and not only in the ring. Even outside the rings on walks and pee breaks his nose was *glued* to the ground. It will be interesting to try this venue again next year and see if the same sniffiness happens again.
On the bright side... Well it's always a good day when neither dog nor handler gets injured, so that's good. Plus, he held all of his dogwalk and teeter contacts nicely, and got all of the weave entries. And, he did some nice starts where I had to set him up at a sharp angle to the first jump because of a tight 90 degree turn to the next obstacle.
The stats:
Saturday October 6th 2007 - practice at Red Gate
Dogwalk or frame to tunnel good today, turning left or right away from me. Also worked on same thing but with the turn to the tunnel being towards me.
Next training priority before end of green fee season: Tunnel/frame and tunnel/dogwalk discriminations.
Thursday October 4th 2007 - practice
Dogwalk to tunnel coming along very well with the turn away to the right, and coming along but less well to the left. Frame to tunnel turning away right coming along very well, didn't try frame to tunnel turning away left.
Tuesday October 2nd 2007 - practice
More work on dogwalk to tunnel, turning right. He's really catching on now.
Monday October 1st 2007 - practice
My main training goal for Walter for the rest of the green fee season is to get a nice smooth dogwalk-to-tunnel and frame-to-tunnel so we worked on that today, mostly with the dogwalk, using outside arm. He did fairly well but goofed on a few of them. I have a picture in my mind now of what I want to see, after watching lots of really smooth Masters teams on Sunday. We're not quite there yet. :-)
Sunday October 14th 2007 - group lesson at K9 Sense
Woo hoo, back in lessons for the fall! We worked on three different jump/tunnel sequences, focusing on distance while using silent handling. Took a while to get the hang of not saying anything except the release, neither his name nor any obstacle names. This will be a fun session.
Saturday October 13th 2007 - fun match at Red Gate
The course setup provided the opportunity to try out our frame to tunnel thing. The first try didn't quite work, but after that it went great and we did it a few times over the course of the day. At the table on his first run, he hopped off before lying down, but not with any particular apparent purpose as opposed to last Sunday when there was a spot of particular olfactory interest nearby. Mostly I modified the courses to be nice and flowy. He did some nice serpentines and his focus was good all day.
Sunday October 7th 2007 - trial at AARF (Harrowsmith)
Most of us agree that our dogs really don't care about ribbons and Qs and initials after their name, right? But, most dogs do care about treats, and mine are no exception. Well, I think a little bird, or perhaps a deer, rabbit, or some other smelly critter who had visited the agility fields recently must have told Walter at the outset of the day that this club doesn't award treats for Qs or placements. So from Walter's point of view, there was really no point in trying today.
Advanced Standard #1, #2, and #3
Our first two runs of the day (both Advanced Standards) were complete write-offs, riddled with refusals and terrifically inefficient wide lines. I discovered how unfun it is to run agility with a dog whose attention you're desperately trying to hold onto. Or get a hold of for that matter. He even hopped off the table to go directly to investigate a captivating smell at the nearby fence. He was almost, but not quite, as sniffy as that time at the June trial where the dog before us had bled all over the course. Extremely not fun. For Advanced Standard #3, he was starting to come around although I really had to fight for it. He was clean except for the time faults accrued due to a bobble at the weaves (popped at the 11th pole) and a very slow down on the table. So... this brings us to 0 for 8 in Advanced Standard. Sigh.
Masters Jumpers
The same story... had to fight to keep his attention and he ended up with a couple of refusals and a few time faults.
Steeplechase
Our first try at Steeplechase! It was fun and the course was what Steeplechase courses are supposed to be like, fast and flowing. One or two refusals and a popout at the 10th weave pole kept us from a Q, but I think he was going fast enough that he may have Qd if he hadn't had those bobbles. Given that it was now past 5:00pm and his day had started at 5:00am with no sleep except for catching a few winks in the car on the way down, his last run was actually not too shabby.
So it was bound to happen sooner or later: our first trial with no Qs. Glad to get it over with I suppose. But man, that sniffing was just awful, and not only in the ring. Even outside the rings on walks and pee breaks his nose was *glued* to the ground. It will be interesting to try this venue again next year and see if the same sniffiness happens again.
On the bright side... Well it's always a good day when neither dog nor handler gets injured, so that's good. Plus, he held all of his dogwalk and teeter contacts nicely, and got all of the weave entries. And, he did some nice starts where I had to set him up at a sharp angle to the first jump because of a tight 90 degree turn to the next obstacle.
The stats:
Facility: AARF Harrowsmith (outside on grass on a farm)
Weather: cloudy and 14 in the morning up to a warm sunny 19 at 3pm
Classes entered: 5 (Advanced Standard #1, #2, and #3, Masters Jumpers, and Steeplechase)
Qs: 0
Time/SCT: not worth tracking since he was so all over the place.
Saturday October 6th 2007 - practice at Red Gate
Dogwalk or frame to tunnel good today, turning left or right away from me. Also worked on same thing but with the turn to the tunnel being towards me.
Next training priority before end of green fee season: Tunnel/frame and tunnel/dogwalk discriminations.
Thursday October 4th 2007 - practice
Dogwalk to tunnel coming along very well with the turn away to the right, and coming along but less well to the left. Frame to tunnel turning away right coming along very well, didn't try frame to tunnel turning away left.
Tuesday October 2nd 2007 - practice
More work on dogwalk to tunnel, turning right. He's really catching on now.
Monday October 1st 2007 - practice
My main training goal for Walter for the rest of the green fee season is to get a nice smooth dogwalk-to-tunnel and frame-to-tunnel so we worked on that today, mostly with the dogwalk, using outside arm. He did fairly well but goofed on a few of them. I have a picture in my mind now of what I want to see, after watching lots of really smooth Masters teams on Sunday. We're not quite there yet. :-)
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