Agility Updates Please Everyone......

What IS everyone doing?? Any trials, fun matches, workshops, seminars in the near future?
Winter training or trialing goals?
Problems that we can pick each others brains?

Boy, this section of the forum has been quiet lately, hasn't it!

Meg and I are still in our weekly competition class. The class decided that this winter, we wanted to work on improving distance work for our dogs (three of the four of us don't have nearly enough) and jumping skills (three of the four are big bar-pullers). We've started the distance stuff a bit already, and our trainer is doing some research into the Susan Salo stuff to set up a jumping program. The distance is my big goal with Meg. She almost never pulls bars and has great jumping form, so I'm actually a bit pleased that we get to be the ones with the good skills in something finally! Distance is hard for her. She has a good "go" ahead to take the obstacles in a line in front of her, but lateral distance doesn't come easy to either one of us. We haven't been working that much in class yet, so I'd love any ideas!

We also re-joined our agility club, so we get practices on the weekends. It's a nice set up (an hour where there are three small sequences to work on, then a full course and everyone gets two runs through it), but a little tough because you do get a lot of comments from the peanut gallery, and I have a hard time saying, "Nope, this is how we are doing it. Thanks anyway." Luckily two of the people from my class, and hopefully soon our trainer, are also in the club, so we can kind of run interference for each other if needed.

I was really hoping to do one or two USDAA trials this winter, but money has just been so tight. The early December one I was planning on is out for sure. There is another just after the New Year that is supposed to be good; I may try to tuck away the Christmas bonus and do that.

I still think we all need to find a trial to meet at!

That is a great idea, maybe we should look at one of the trials in the Montreal area. How far is that from you? For me its about 5 hrs, but I would certainly consider it, if we could plan a meet and greet.

I am back doing seminars and getting lessons myself lately. Boy oh boy did we need it!!!!!!!! Good grief, I was/am making some REALLY stupid mistakes on course and it is costing us. I spent sometime looking for a trainer, the ones that I had gone to in the past either didn't have a winter place to train or our times of when I could get to them just didn't work out.

So I now have two new trainers, one I can get to on Sundays and I have one lesson with him which was very good. We are planning on me having private lessons with him twice a month for the winter.
The other trainer is far away and costs a small fortune for a private, but she is very good and I have had one private with her. I wont be able to train with her again until the end of Jan. bc she is booked doing seminars all over N.A.

I have a trial this weekend, but that will be the last one for a while. We are retraining Petie's weaves on the 2x2x method, teaching him to find the entry without any suppore from me. As of last night, my good hubby made me a new set of 2 by 2 weaves.
We are also reworking Petie's contacts, running for the frame (which he does already and doesn't have a problem with) but just fine tuning but more importantly working on his DW stopped contact which has been a problem as he strides over it.
I am also in a contacts workshop once a month with my one trainer.

And of course both trainers have the same methods (Derrett & Mecklinburg's methods) to improve my handling skills.

Somewhere in there, I also want to work on fine tuning our gamble skills at the Master level!!

I expect it will be at least 2 months or more before we will be back to trialing again, hopefully with much improvement

In short, very busy with some short and long term goals. I know I will miss trialing and seeing my friends at the trials but you can't retrain some stuff and continue to trial at the same time (well you can, but it isn't advised and typically doesn't work :rofl1

It's been over a year since we've had lessons and oh boy do we need it!!!!!!

Montreal isn't bad for me at all - about an hour. My biggest concern with Canada is BSL - Meg looks very pitty to someone who doesn't know dogs well. But that is mainly just in Ontario, right? I would absolutely make the trip!

Last winter was our "pull out of trials and get this stuff fixed" winter. My little slowpoke finally got fast enough to start leaping contacts, so I retrained everything with a stop. They are now 98% reliable at home, and she hasn't been called on a contact in a trial all year. She doesn't always give me the stop, but I think that is more my screwy handling than anything else!

I really want to learn about the different handling systems at some point. I didn't know enough to pay attention to them when starting, but watching a friend who trains with Derrett's, I can see how the consistency matters. Meg is oh-so-tolerant of my mistakes, but I'd like to have a real plan with my next dog.

We're 7 Qs away from Qualifying for CPE Nationals. (need them by mid-Feb to qualify)<--which would also be our Level 2 Title. That is our goal right now.

We're got a lot of stuff that needs work on, alot of help, as I usually just come up with stuff to teach her. I have weekends off, I need to go get some more PVC for a jump or two.

Stuff we need work on or I need to teach:
Reliable weaves (our main focus right now!)
Balking at Tunnels
Staying at the Start Line
Serpentines
Rear Crosses
More distance work
Discrimation work

I've got to figure out a way to teach her to calm herself when we're running. Friends say it looks like she's herding me. For example, I'll do a rear cross and she'll spin and come after my feet, and is a pain the rest of the run.

I wish there was a place we could go practice at indoors! That would be awesome!

And for Stryder... he's still in basics. I want to get him close to Kiba, so we can train on the same stuff together... but he's still really green...

mushroom and i had our third foundations class tonight and after a horrible horrible first week, we are rocking the place. oh yeah. he is doing so so well with everything i've asked of him, and he's having a fantastic time. one of the trainers (the class is team taught) keeps offering to take him home.

the class is not what i expected from reading the description, and i have my concerns about it as compared to what i was expecting/wanting from a foundations class, but my dog is comfortable, working well with me, succeeding in his tasks, and not overwhelmed or stressed, so i guess it's all good.

my biggest stumbling block at this point is his utter lack of toy drive anywhere outside of my house. i'd love for him to tug or chase a stuffy or something, but no. not even in his own backyard, except every once in a blue moon.

Awww, I'm jealous! I was going to try and qualify with a couple of friends this year, as I could actually finish the Q requirements in two more trial (barring any major mess-ups). But our schedules didn't work out, and I also saw that they do a draw to decide who gets to actually compete at Nationals. I figured it would be just my luck to put a bunch of money into getting qualified, and then not be able to compete. So, I'm sticking with mainly USDAA for now, and just attending local CPE trials to hang out with my friends who prefer that venue.

Have you tried the tugs you can put food in? Meg completely refused to tug with me for the longest time. Even when I finally got it at home, she wouldn't do it in public. I think she's just too polite ("Here, you want this? You can have it, that's okay"). I finally, finally got her to start tugging in class/practice with one of the soft fleecey "pouches" you can stuff with treats and tug. Now she will tug all day with enthusiasm until I ask her "Do you want me to open it?", at which point she will drop it and wait for me to get a treat out for her.

I even ordered the new "Tug-It" toy to try, which is sort of mesh-y, so when the dog clamps down, food squishes out for them. Meg just thought it was icky.

There is an excellent article at Garrett's website www.clickerdogs.ca on building toy/tug drive with a non tugging dog. (I am assuming its still there on the site).
Petie wont tug either, but to be honest I also haven't done everything I could to get him too

I love agility I took my sheltie to a snooker clinic a few weeks ago. I learned alot, and there was a (for fun) agiltity match later in the day. Breezey did pretty good and I was very happy on her behaviour around strange dogs. She's not very brave, but totally ignored the dog doing the course that was barking non stop. We stood in line waiting for our turn and she was fine with the dog ahead of us.

She has just learned weaves and we could use some more work on 2on,2off but I'm in no rush.

Cider rocks my socks. She's on the Top Dog list of the AAC this year though it's only by Q count.. if you can afford to trial more.. you can get higher on the list..

I'd like to work on us compressing and hitting our weave entries. Sue Miller finally diagnosed our issue. We're 2 Qs from maser jumpers, seems like a reasonable goal.

Smudge I may enter in jumpers at Royackers next month. He's like teaching a pet rock when it comes to weaves though. Has drive for everything but weaves. Even one 2x2 doesn't matter what I throw he doesn't power through. We make progress in a session, next session we're back at square one. I'd almost like to give up an lure, but I know better Also need to work on our contacts. He's a pro at jumping over the walk contact. Stuff that came easily to Cider I forget he's not Cider some days and needs me to work with him at stuff I take for granted now.

MP, so are you going to share? And tell us what Sue said and how you are fixing the problem?

I am happy with our year, we have missed the Top Dogs list by only one Q as of this weekend. Considering how many trials we have been too, it has only been a few and not many runs at each trial. And FINALLY we picked up a AD Team Q after 15 trys!!!! No wonder so many people hate team lol.

Hahahahahahah apparently I just need the stress of Sue.. Something about her quickly calling out a sequence stresses me just enough that it makes it trial like and we fumble our weaves, go back to the start and redo them until she hits them. Eventually she remembers and compresses more.

Her actual suggestion was a jump 5ft or less before the weaves so she'd have to compress. She does it great at home, at Sue's or Spot On she runs past more than one pole due to lack of compression. I think I just need more lessons with Sue.. Practice while feeling flustered.

Congrats! I know how few trials you've been to, that's a lot of Qs for not many trials. I keep looking at the top cocker list. I don't understand how some of these people can trial, or afford to trial so much that 3 or more cocker people have 120+ Qs..

YAY on team!! It's the only stupid game we are in advanced for. We still need one Q, often because we miss the weave entry and then our partner needs 5 faults too

Im attending two Say Yes workshops with Susan Garret the first and second week of December- if that counts as an update.

lol of course that counts!! which workshops? I have always enjoyed the workshops there, but it has been a few years since then.

I tried to get one of my students who was the worlds greatest Lurer, to go there for the Lurer's Anonymous, but she wouldn't spend the money, so I just busted her a$$ here instead :yikes:

Is that the actual name of the seminar? I love it!

A friend of mine works with a very successful trainer here in the Northeast. This trainer actually switched my friend's opinion on a lot of things, including luring. She went from the "you don't ever lure, you shape" school of thought to using some luring. I didn't discuss it enough to argue the point, but the trainer's dogs are phenomenal, and my friend's dogs are doing great under her instruction.

Congratulations on Cider's success, MP!

I hear you, I don't know how people enter as much or as often as they do. Thats a lot of money.

Same here concerning Team, only thing here for the games in Advanced.

Thanks, this weekend wasn't bad, 3 Q's, 2 in Steeplechase and the one in Team (lol although we don't need the Steeplechase). I actually got really annoyed at myself, I was making mistakes and babysitting the courses and my dog...........neither works and I know this (and I had the expected results NQ's)!! My last Steeplechase, I RAN and powered through everything and of course Petie delievered. Even the Judge was amazed that it was the same dog

I am going to Puppy Camp and the Skills Workshop but only Saturday and Sunday of both sets I am very excited I am not bringing Duke, but am going to observe either way It will be very interesting.