Here comes your new homework:
1. straight line as a serpentine: now that you mastered straight lines too, it's time to show the dog they can come in different forms 🙂 Let's try angling the jumps as you can see in a video, still working on extension vs. collection. Keep angling the jumps all the way to a serpentine. You should still throw in some wraps to keep them attentive to possible collection cues.
Showing the angling in 4 steps, but try to go even more gradually and make it a serpentine in 6 or 7 steps:
2. sequencing
With long-strided dogs, 10 will be hard - so you can simply take the other entry instead.
3. let's check how far you have got with weave entries: send in your "top 5" - choose the 5 hardest entries your dog found, the 5 you are most proud of.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7olkvSc
Hi Silvia,
Matilda and I are back in California. Wow is it ever hot here! We worked on this early before it got to hot. This was so much fun! What a great way to work on serpentines! Matilda seems to be doing fine with it. She’s having fun. Any suggestions for us?
Liza
I’ll try again with the video.
Wouah Liza, Matilda is a serpentine-champion!
Thank you. I love this method of working them!
Looks great! You can also throw in a wrap here and there to keep her attentive to your cues and to include the wraps into running fast and straight.
Thank you. Yes, I will throw in some wraps next time.
Here are Matilda’s weave pole entries. She can do almost any entry at home. At trials she does less well. I’m working on proofing her my with motion and throwing toys. Any suggestions for us?
Yeap, definitely proof for your movement and crowding her. People often work weaves on distance only at home, but then crowd the dog in trials and wonder why the dog can’t weave there! So I poof for crowding too, you can see in my video that I’m often very close and swinging my arms with a toy in it or do sudden changes of speed, shoulder turns etc. -- it affects them way more when we’re close as when we’re far, so it’s important they can’t get distracted even with us very close.
This morning I worked on crowding. I’ll keep working on that as well as other distractions. Thank you.
Hi, I have not been able to train for any duration as he tends to shut down if I train longer than a few minutes & really difficult to organise my partner to video! I missed submitting lesson 3 due to a combination of this, bad weather, competitions with my other 2 during the weekends so only time to train Harley is in the evening or really early mornings.
Here’s Harley sequencing lesson 4.
Like a true herder, he went wide a couple of times & missed the last jump! I have included those tries & also one when he knocked a bar! Also, I have increased his jump height form 12inches to 14 inches -- he is not wrapping as tightly as when he jumps 12inches. Should I lower the bar or keep working his cik & cap at 14 inches?
With his weaving, I have not been using the channel method as I have stick in the ground weaves & he was using his body to push them aside. I have ordered some channel weaves to be made but it is taking forever! So in the meantime, I have been using 4 straight weaves -- will return to channel when I have proper equipment!
Thanks for watching!
Oh, it’s no problem if you post the video even after I already publish new lesson. I think collection/extension exercise would be good for him to teach him to search for obstacles more and pull more, I would definitely like to see some more obstacle focus, so try to work some on it: lots of sends to jumps/tunnels, straight lines and throwing a ball ahead to promote full extension. RC work will help with that too. Wraps could be better yes so I would probably work the sequences on 12, while getting him prepared for 14 through multi-wraps. Weaves are going really well, but maybe simply mark an entry with your voice instead of clicking twice in a row without rewarding. You don’t really want to train for more than a few minutes per session, so that’s fine, but I still find it strange he will just shut down… What exactly does he do and is it connected to how well or not he is doing or simply only to the length of a session? Happy training!
Hi Silvia,
His shutdown episodes are normally connected to how well he is doing but if we train for too long, he will refuse to continue or come to me with his ball -- he will then stay away from the equipment & stare at his ball. When that happens I either get him to do a short sequence & then reward with lots of play or sometimes if he is really pigheaded, I will pick up the toy & walk away. What would you do?
When my dogs don’t bring a ball back, I know they’re trying to tell that they’re getting tired. Of course, they will keep going if I take the toy, but I don’t want to push them if they’re tired, so I’ll take a message and take another dog -- I always have two dogs out and change between the two so that they can get some rest in between. So try to just give him a rest and some water, change your set up in between or something to give him some time to breath and then try another really short session. The same when things are not going well: stop to give him a break and you a time to think how you could make things easier for him and then try again with easier set-up or a shorter section and then VERY gradually add difficulties if you know he is so sensitive to not making things right.
Help Silvia !
When Karmen had her injury and couldn’t practice any tricks she had all her food at once in a bowl. Since then precisely, she doesn’t want to play tricks anymore.
I’ve tried different strategies:
-- introducing a toy to make it more fun --> she focuses on the toy without showing any interest for the trick
-- making sessions even shorter (3 min) and then giving her the bowl to finish her meal --> she eats a little more without appetite
-- no trick and giving her the bowl but I don’t show any interest for her afterwards --> she eats a little without appetite
-- leaving when she looses focus without feeding her (I feel bad) --> she doesn’t care
-- insisting but I don’t like this option because it seems I’m praying her to play with me instead of the reverse --> what you can see on the video
Nothing works and I cannot figure out what is the cause… I noticed that she is less interested by food but it doesn’t seem to be the only issue. Sometimes she’ll be in the mood and will learn so quickly a new trick…
It’s so frustating…
You’ll find below some different attitudes from this morning to give you a typical idea of what is going on (it wasn’t hot this morning).
Hope you can help me
Thank you
Céline
Really strange that she is so motivated in agility now and not at all for tricks anymore! I do think it’s partly that she doesn’t understand what you want and then gets into frustration and sometimes expresses it by barking, sometimes by walking away. So I would go to something very simple again so that you can have a good frequency of clicking, starting off with her favourite tricks, rewarding with food, but also a toy for every second click to make the connection food-toy: many Poodles I know are not very food motivated, so that might help. You could also try using some better treats for a while, to get her back in the game.
Sorry, I should have posted this video on the RC class
Here is our serp work. This was a blast to do! I can’t believe I got a serpentine after 4 jump changes! I was amazed at how quickly he got it. What a fun assignment!!!
I included a contact, but he is going pretty slow partly because he fell off the first time but also because I was working way too long again. I’ll add more in the next clip.
Great job, no problems with a serpentine! You can try different starts now (tunnel on different places, from a stay, from weaves etc.) to generalize it well. You can also try with 4 jumps etc. Also, throw in a wrap here and there to keep him attentive to your cues. Very nice understanding of 2on2off too!
An here we go again….
Your video helped me a lot! Thanks for taping from this angle -- it was easy to see how you were changing the jumps. What a happy and fast jumper you have! 🙂
Thanks Catalina-I learned that from another person in this class.
Hi everyone,
Finally this morning we had some time to train the Agility Foundations.
Wether it was too hot or raining 🙁
We were just in time… it started to rain really hard when we were finished with the training.
We had a not so good training… a lot of bars fell down and sometimes I was clicking while it dropped 🙁 But if that happend, I did reward ofcourse but not that much, and just tried it over and over again 😉
I hope tomorrow the weather will be better, so we can train the weaves then…
And tomorrow I hope I have time to catch up with all the comments!
Nr 1 Straight line:
Nr 1 Straight line beginning of serpentine:
Nr 2 Sequence:
Jonina & Jin
Great, very nice and clear handling in the sequence and nice collection&extension in a straight line. -- With some more bars as you would want, but those jumps really fall easily, I think she sometimes moves the upright pole with her tail -- couldn’t do it on real jumps, so try it on real jumps sometimes too to see the difference. Still, she is definitely knocking some with hind feet too. It’s partly because she is still learning to jump, she is changing between two styles: hind feet under her (up until this video, she was mostly jumping like that) and stretched out hind feet. Stretched out feet are better, but she needs some more practise on that. You can play with different distances on straight line some more and see what gives you the best stretching and then do some drills on that.
Ok thanks, these are the only jumps I have, but when we go the dogschool we will try some jumps again and tape it.
About the ” stretched out feet” Was 1.59, 2.08, 2.15 good enough stretching? Should she stretch in a “left” or “right” curve, or can she only stretch in a straight line?
No problem, keep working with those jumps, just test the % of dropped bars on normal jumps when at dog school. Also, don’t raise the bars until she settles on her style -- is this 50 that you’re jumping now? I’m not sure which video you are talking about, I checked all three but the times don’t exactly correspond with any, but yes, ideally, she would stretch in all situations -- see some videos from Pip (or Bu), she jumps very nicely. You can then compare that to Space, he doesn’t jump so well. It’s not the end of the world, but stretched out legs are definitely more efficient as the dog can jump lower and that spares you some time.
Ok, I will test if it’s the same at our dogschool. This is 55cm what she is jumping, I raised it very gradually but if you think this is too high for her right now I will of course lower them.
I meant the last video… jump 7 (I don’t have 2 tunnels so I put a jump there) to jump 8 and to jump 9.
I will definitely take a look at videos from Pip and Bu and compare that with Space!
Also I have another question…. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you? About one month Jin will be “old” enough to have her first competition, but will she be ready for it? What do you think should I sign her in?
I will ofcourse put NON pressure on her! I will see it as a training, but if you think I should not do, it I wont.
Or, you can compare with Maja’s Phoebe, Phoebe has those feet under her all the time too, it’s hard to change it if the dog never stretches… But Jin does and I think she will do it more&more with more experience. You can keep this height, but don’t raise it for a while. In a month, you could probably get to 65cm, but I don’t think your contacts will be ready… You could do 2on2off on DW, but you really want running A-frame only and I don’t think it would be fair to push her to get it in one month… How about two, can you delay the competitions for another month? Or only enter jumpings?
Oke thank you! I will check Phoebe’s video’s on youtube.
She doesn’t have to jump 65cm at this competition, she is a
“medium” at this organisation and she has to jump 55cm.
No, we will not be ready for the RC, she knows the 2o2o on the dogwalk, maybe just say “go go go” on the A-Frame? (And see what happens?) Or will it be too confusing for her?
Unfortunately before this class started I did -for a few times- , the A-Frame with 2o2o, (I’ve always thought it couldn’t be good, everybody does at our club) but I hope we will get rid of that, because we really ONLY want to do a “running” on the A-Frame! So if you still think it would be better to not join this competition or only enter the jumping, please let me know.
I will absolutely do what you will recomment! 😀
Well, it would probably be better not to do it, but if you would really like to do it, just do it -- it might take you some sessions back but nothing more serious as that can happen 🙂
OK thank you so much for your advise, we will only do the jumping. And ” maybe” also do the agility but then we will make our own course ( without the contacts! ) just a round for fun (maybe do a straight line with cik and cap in between and then finish) for her experience. 😀
Here’s some video after day one of slalom work. He likes it, but I can’t turn the jumps too fast.
Nancy
Looks good! Keep angling the jumps gradually and throw a wrap here and there too to keep him attentive to your cues.