We're starting with real sequences today, you'll get a new sequence every time and we'll always be running them in parts, starting with a small part and then adding more&more obstacles, just as you can see in the video - reward where I rewarded and then start from 1 again, meaning that you'll always be doing the whole sequence only on a 4th try or so. Whole sequences will be pretty long, to get the flow, but do NOT run a whole sequence again and again - you can run little parts several times, but the whole sequence only once or twice. Always run it without the dog first and only when you really know it, try with the dog. After every try, PLAY, give a dog a break to rehearse the next sequence on your own and only then try again.
Don't keep running the same sequence for 2 weeks!!! You can either think of another sequence on your own or keep working on multi-wraps and sends (from lesson 1 and 2). Also, don't forget to keep working on weaves and contacts, we'll get back to that later!
And Bi on the same sequence to show how things should look like on a low and then higher height:
1. introducing straight lines: after all the cik&cap work, it's time to introduce some straight lines and extension jumping too. Set a straight line of 2 or 3 jumps between two tunnels (or simply use one if you don't have two), start with some cik/cap to tunnel, cik/cap to tunnel, then straight over the first jump to cik/cap on a second jump back to tunnel, then two straight jumps to cik/cap on a third one, cik/cap again on a next jump etc. - just think of something, putting more and more straight jumps in between one and another cik/cap. See a video and again another example here:
2. sequencing: start with cik on 1, run in for a front cross between 2 and 3, ask for cap on 2 from the landing side, RUN for cik on 5 (extension jumping on 4), another cap on 6 and finishing with cik on 8, rewarding in the direction of 9.
3. bang the see-saw game: if you did the "closing drawers and doors" trick, then you're all ready for this new game. If you don't have a see-saw, you can use a small plank with something underneath so that it moves when the dog pushes it with front legs. If you have a see-saw, either lower it almost to the ground or support it so that one end is 10 to 15 cm (4 to 6 inches) off the ground and have them push it down with front feet - you can then raise it somewhat more off the ground. Do not promote 4 feet, 2 feet is better to teach them to push. Jackpot for most powerful pushes and eventually stop rewarding the gentle touches. Reward away from the see-saw, you want a push&go (I'm not doing very good job on that in the video, I forgot to bring better treats for that - a toy would actually be even better). ONLY work on this part (step 1 and 2) for next 2 weeks (no 4 feet yet!) - I included next steps in the video just to give you an idea what's the plan 🙂
I'll be answering your comments till Friday 29th. Then I'm leaving for EO and have the camp after that, so we'll be on break till 15th August so that everybody can catch up AND you can practice cik&cap some more. We're introducing straight lines too today, but if you only started with cik&cap when the class started, you still need to do quite some work on that anyway - especially exercises 1 of lesson 1 and 2! You can also keep adding height... So, plenty of work for everybody! The second week of this lesson will be from 15-21st August, with no video commenting in between. I like those breaks as they take some pressure off and I can always see a huge progress after the break!
Hi Silvia & classmates!
I hope you all enjoyed the break, I know we did! This is our video of our first two practices after a long 2 week break spent camping & hiking. Some real good: weaves, teeter bangs & sends to tunnels. Some not so good: still struggling for better sends and speed to cik/cap jumps. I am thrilled with how well she likes the teeter bang game! She is a sensitive little lady, when we first did the cupboard slam it took her a long time to get brave enough to make it make noise. But she is hopping up and slamming it down with a happy smile on her face and races to the teeter to play the game! The weaves are coming along very well, she is working to find the entrance, running hard and staying in no matter what I am doing.
Dogwalks are ok, they have changed a little since we are working on turns at home on the plank, and we went 2 weeks without any practice at all, but it’s not anything I am worried about- just not the nice deep rear leg split hits I was getting before starting the turns and before the break.
Our weak area remains the sends to cik/cap jumps. Since we added using tunnels in dog walk practice she is sending to those really well now and coming out fast. She will now send to a jump to wrap around to run the dog walk & will send to a jump after a dog walk very nicely. But with the cik/cap jumping she will send fine if I am still, she will do multiple wraps nicely but as soon as I want to peel away she wants to go with me. She finally had it before the break, but that progress is gone so we are back almost at square one, I am not worried and know we’ll get it back. I have been doing more one jump sends and have found some toys & rewards she drives better for, still plain old ball is the best, but getting closer with other toys. She is a thinker and if she is not sure about something she goes slow and I can tell with this exercise she still has not yet had that lightbulb moment.
I think part of our problem is also timing, our arena time is squeezed in around classes on Tuesdays & wednesdays. It’s around 95 degrees out so we train either in heat or almost dark. AND my husband and I spend Sunday & Monday doing mega hikes this time of year. So this week she hiked 10 miles on Sunday 15 miles on Monday and swam for hours, so come Tuesday she is tired and when we have arena time she is never fresh. I knew this would be a challenge when I started the class, but it’s a challenge I am up for:) She will drive all out for the exercises she understands (dog walk, weaves, etc) so I know we can find a way to get that with the jumping too.
anyway, here is our video of our current progress & practice sessions.
Welcome back! And yeap, definitely send to cik/cap before DW! Maybe you could also do some wrap to DW to a wrap back to DW -- to make those wraps more fun. Try to also find a place in your garden for one stanchion and always send her around first when playing ball with her. It would definitely be better to work on that when she is not tired or hot, to make it more fun for her. You can also support it with body language more, to avoid too many mistakes as that makes it even less motivating I think.
The rest looks good, nice banging, nice DW, nice weaves! Try doing even more extreme things when she is in and keep making entries harder&harder.
Sounds good, we’ll keep working on making those wraps fun. I honestly think I have just been rushing her, I know her, she needs things to make sense and I think with the things I have spent more time breaking down into small steps like the contacts, weaves, banging tricks I had already worked a lot longer on the early little steps. But with the wraps I rushed into doing them before she knew what I wanted and while my other border collies let me get away with that kind of thing she just doesn’t. She gets confused, I am running around, tossing her into tunnels & expecting her to wrap jumps when I say “cik,cik,cik” and she stops looks at me like “right, and that means what?”. She’s good for me, making me slow down and think a little more.
I will do the trick of making her go around stanchions in the garden for her ball, that’s a good idea! And I will also do more DW’s with wraps. I only have small amounts of cool time to work with in the arena, I had been doing more jump sends and less DW’s & weaves since those burn the most energy & get her the hottest think I was taking advantage of working her weak areas more. But I think for a little while maybe I should do more DW’s with jump wraps & weaves with jump wraps (I just started doing a few wraps to the weaves since she likes them like the DW) and not do wraps as a separate exercise to see if I can just make them fun for awhile. Does that sound like a good idea?
Yeap, I think it’s better to go that way as to keep getting her frustrated, trying to do too much in little time you have on agility field. Instead, try to do a little bit every evening in your garden, sending her around stanchions for the ball should make a difference fast.
Dawn, I am so impressed at the way on the kik&cap you waited and waited that once for her to figure it out—you gave her a chance to think and I’m sure solidified the concept even more in her smart head!!! I have to have that kind of patience with Stella—you are my inspiration!!!!
thanks,
Dinah
PS: we’ve been doing the jump wraps at the beginning of the DW and I think it has helped her add fun and speed too
Hi all,
Spur and I are coming along slowly but surely. Her tunnel fear kept us back for a while, but we had a breakthrough last week and now she seems to mostly like them if I don’t pull off too soon.
She LOVES to bang the board. My question is how much is too much. She would bang the board all day if I let her (and rewarded it). While I’m really happy with her progress in this, I don’t want her to think that banging the board is performing the obstacle.
I also have a question on running the carpet. Spur has gotten much better at running all the way through the end. Before we progress on, should I be proofing it at this stage? By that I mean throwing the toy early or fading away from the carpet when running beside her. We use both toys and a remote treat dispenser to train this.
Thanks bunches,
Mary
Sounds great! You definitely don’t want her to bang it all day because of other reasons 🙂 -- but it won’t affect her future teeter performance in a bad way if that’s what you’re afraid of. Dogs are very smart, definitely smart enough to know the difference. But you can go to next step if she is ready.
At carpet and low plank stage, I don’t do any proofing. I only start challenging them as the plank gets high enough that the angle makes the end more obvious and I already have many successful repetitions, speed and confidence.
When I looked at the video I could see how I was not helping with any body language, but I didn’t realize how deep I had gone for the FCs. I think it is self defense on my part because he is coming like a freight train. And, I have to work on my mind and mouth working faster than Paddy, so I can get my commands out in time! I have anchored my tunnel more securely so it doesn’t drift as bad with Paddy barreling through it, so I hope I can keep the entrances closer together. Will try again this evening when it has cooled off a little. Thank you so much for your comments.
Anita and Paddy
If you have hard time keeping entrances closer, you can also set two straight lines of jumps instead, works just as well. Keep working on collection. Once he really knows it, you won’t be in danger anymore when he is jumping towards you 🙂
Hi Silvia,
Here a little compilation video of Synergy doing the following:
1. Running on carpet first time. I have no idea if I am doing this right or not so will not do more until I hear your feedback:-)
2. Working on cik/cap and extension exercises combined with weave entries.
Weaves are only open 2″ now (almost totally closed).
Thanks,
Marla
Cool, her collection&extension and weaves look great. Over the carpet, she is still not running full speed as she is waiting for the ball. You need to throw it in advance, as a lure, at beginning stages to get full speed running.
Well, I’m wondering about that because I thought if I threw the reward too early I might end up rewarding jumping off the end. I thought I shouldn’t throw the toy until I knew she didn’t jump off.
Maybe you should join the RC class 🙂 -- Or at least read everything under “running contacts” on this website -- that same thing was discussed million times 🙂
Wow, Marla, that looks really good.
Anita and Paddy
Thanks, Anita. I have a good doggy:-)
And, I love her name.
Thank you. I name all my dogs with “S.” She is the daughter of Spritz (Floss Granting Pleasure) -- full sibling to Silvia’s BU (Even Sweets Granting Pleasure).
Here is video of Bree doing teeter banging and some more carpet running. I’ve included one full teeter after the banging just to show you where we are on that. One problem I have with Bree and the teeter is her not recognizing it when we’re away from home. She seems to approach it as the DW, charges up, suddenly realizes it’s tipping, scrambles to hold on, slides off and then is very cautious for a day or two after that.
I’ve extended the carpet to 24′ to stop the single bounce in the middle and I have her coming out of a tunnel to give me some time to get to where I can see and throw the ball. I think the first run was the best. After that Bree seems to make an effort to jump over the end of the carpet and land on the grass, though her running seems to be more normal and less airy than on our last video. I’m not sure she likes the feel of the carpet. When I first added length, she refused to run it and ran right along the side on the grass. Took a little effort to teach her I wanted her on the carpet. We’ve just gotten to a location where I have room for 24′ of carpet so perhaps she’ll get used to it as we do more of it.
Thanks for watching these. Looking forward to your comments.
Cool, her teeter banging looks great. Strange she is mixing it up with DW… Do you have two different cues for the two? Maybe you could also add additional cue once she is on a see-saw to warm her the stop is coming right away.
And yes, the carpet running definitely looks much better now, no more air. The hits are not perfect (other that the first and the one before the last one), but that’s not an issue at that point. Try moving a tunnel some so that she has different starting point -- play some with it until you find a good spot and then keep it to have as many jackpotable hits as possible. I think that will help as she doesn’t seem to be avoiding the end on purpose to me, she is just striding that way.
So cool to see how Bree loves to bang the teeter! I’ve noticed most dogs like it ones they dare 😀
Hi Silvia and classmates!
here is our contribution. we did just the first sequence. tonight i’ll do the second.
about the first session there was some food on the ground, and Doucette was not really concentrated all the time… 🙂
About the second session, grass is too high and she felt. please don’t hear my man laughing, men sometimes are cruel! 🙂
i was too late for the last cap, then i did another cik to reward and stop. i try to do short sessions, is it the good timing? and after that we are doing some weaves as i’m showing in Foundations #1.
I think Doucette is barking really well. 🙂 we have so much fun and this seminar is so funny! if you want Silvia i will put the video about last trial when Doucette passed in A2 with one clean run. it was better (she did all collapsed tunnels from the first time) but still problems in weave poles.. thank you and have fun!
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Awww poor Doucette she hit that bar really hard! It was kind of funny….:)
She is really fast! Looks like a lot of fun
thank you! yes we have fun!
Cool, really great speed and great extension. Some problems getting from full extension to collection (she collects better when not coming from a straight line -- but that’s of course normal to some degree), so keep working on this set up some more, I think it’s good for her anyway, she looks really great. I hope she once looks like that in trials too! -- Sounds like you’re on a good way. It’s really too bad the stupid rules are limiting your options to the solution of the problem, but as long as you see the trend is good, that’s great! It’s good to keep sessions short yes, that was a very nice length of a session! Great job!
thank you! i like this sequence so much because Dou can run very fast and its funny. Actually we are doing a break because it’s so hot outside, but we’ll keep working on that. 🙂
i hope not be boring for you but here is our last trial video, i did what you said, (except first weave poles sorry… habits…) I kept Doucette outside field all the time, just doing tricks before the run and have fun. she was ok with loudphones, for the first time, in the end of the day we went both under loudphones and i asked her to bark and bark, she forgot the environment, i was so happy. BUT i’m almost sure that the main thing who stress her and makes her to be very uncumfortable are kids. when she hears and sees children her tail goes down and she starts to stress a lot.
i think when judge is a woman she feels better.
The man judge (secund run) was traumatized because Doucette did only 5 or 6 poles in weave poles… 🙂
this day we could finish our runs even when we were disqualified. it was a good thing for us.
thank you for watching! as you wrote, i hope that one day she will have as much fun in trials than in trainings.
thank you for watching!
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Cool, it’s definitely getting better! Don’t worry about traumatized judges! 🙂 It’s also very good to know what stresses her. Try to spot the kids and avoid them when coming to the start -- I do the same with Bu and Malinois 🙂 If you know a kid who would cooperate, you can give her/him some treats to throw them around for her, but you can only use a kid you can trust to ignore her completely, look away from her and just throw the treats around as s/he is walking away from her -- never towards her!
thank you we’ll try to do that. my man has a 9 years old boy who can cooperate. Doucette knows him for 15 months and never he can touch her. But when we are together (all dogs and kid and me) walking and playing in the river, Doucette is ok and plays too. when we are training in holiday’s home and when Pierre is here, i sometimes ask him to stay near us but not move or talk. Doucette is more stressed (but plays agility with me) do you think it’s a good idea?
tomorrow we have another trial (just another in the end of september and it’s done for 2011)…. we’ll see!
Yes, try the free cookies flying around approach and once she is o.k. with that, she could also do a trick or something for him. You can also do agility with Pierre around, just make sure her stress level doesn’t go so high she would start shutting down. You need to work with stress level that still allows her to run and try to get her stress-high vs. stress-down, that is respond to stress with more barking and running vs. shutting down.
So great to see you two are having fun and she barks because of that! Yes.. I had to laugh also, it did look funny 😉
thanks!
I’ve been able to get some video of one of the two cik & cap exercises. Not sure if I should work to get her wraps even tighter or if it’s time to move the bar up slightly. Thanks!
Great!!! That’s really tight! Definitely ready to raise the bars some! Great job!
And to everybody asking what I mean by precuing front crosses: you can see it in this video, Carol is precueing them really nicely, changing the hands before Bree is taking off to warn her that will be her lead hand after that jump and then doing the front cross really smoothly. That looks much better to my eye as abrupt changes of direction, sudden front crosses without a warning.
Thank you Carol, I would be happy to be your dog, you’re effectively really clear. Hope I can copy your style from now!
Thanks Silvia for warning us!
Céline
Hi Silvia, hi clasmates!
It´s so nice to have you back ,excited to watch the videos of all the great dogs and theire handlers. I learn sooo much 🙂
Here is our 3rd homework. I have a score muscle and Bono is happy:)
Sequence 1: Bono( is) was so excited of the straight jumps that he didn´t listen anymore when there should be a cik&cap you can see it on the video ( otherwise i trained a yery good “go,go,go”)
He was just running straight ahead or the cik&cap was toooooo wide.
So we did a lot ( tons)of short sequences and 8s ( long distance)every
morning ( only 5 minutes ) and very late in the evening, because of the heat
Weaves are 10 cm open and still working on entries .
Looking forward to your comments
Your shortest Long-Distance-Students
gabi&bono
Great job with the sequence, your handling is really getting smoother& smoother! Great job with “go go” too 🙂 -- but yes, not so easy to get Bono to collect after that straight line… For now, I would still do lots of figure 8s on big distance and some cik&caps from a straight line too, but only after one straight jump, not two just yet. -- About what you’re doing in a second session on this set up, that was much better already: redoing the bad ones and not doing too many after too long straight line for now 🙂
Great independence in weaves, keep working on entries and putting them closer together. I see you got some better weaves? If you can sometimes train on not-movable channel, that would be great. See-saw is very nice too, great job.
Cool that sounds really great:) very happy about it:)
I´m getting more self confidence and don´t care anymore how my handling looks like for other peoples.
Yes, these weaves are very heavy with very long earth nails! I am going to organice the training on a not-movable channel .
bye gabi
This is Fury working 2020 on the seesaw. Should she be driving faster to the end? Any suggestions?
Yeap, faster is always better 🙂 The last tries (with her on your left) were actually pretty nice as she is jumping more at the end, so I would make sure she for now starts close to the end so that she can immediately jump into the position. Once she gets jumping into the position vs. crawling in a position, I would slowly take her further&further back, rewarding when she drives to the end and redoing from closer to the end if she goes into crawling at one distance again.