Agility training
- Thread starter Panzerotti
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Punky and I had a great time at the Jess Martin foundations workshop today. Working on sends, wraps, k-turns, backsides, recalls to side past obstacles and threadles all on the flat and with a tunnel. I am really pleased with our day, Punky was very focused, first time working her foundations in a strange place, off leash on an open agility field (not fully fenced, but the property was fenced, with horses in the next field. Punky tries so hard for me, she loves her foundations training and goes like a bat out of hell, the faster she goes the more she likes it lmao.
She has only seen horses once before when I took her to the barn (boarding stable) where I kept my horse. Many of the dogs barked at the horses, I took Punky over marking and rewarding for just looking at them and not reacting. In typical Punky fashion she quickly dismissed them and started offering some excellent pivots to side and heel
When it was our turn, she was focused and never gave the horses a second look, even when they ran off (mares and foals).
She took a dip in the pond for a quick swim to cool off and had a wonderful time trying chasing and trying to grab the huge tadpoles lol
Sorry no vids but one pic of her ringside waiting for our turn.
She has only seen horses once before when I took her to the barn (boarding stable) where I kept my horse. Many of the dogs barked at the horses, I took Punky over marking and rewarding for just looking at them and not reacting. In typical Punky fashion she quickly dismissed them and started offering some excellent pivots to side and heel
When it was our turn, she was focused and never gave the horses a second look, even when they ran off (mares and foals).She took a dip in the pond for a quick swim to cool off and had a wonderful time trying chasing and trying to grab the huge tadpoles lol
Sorry no vids but one pic of her ringside waiting for our turn.
Ack love Punky. <3
Tomorrow afternoon is our fun run. I am worried about Payton taking contact obstacles. I'm not ready for him to do so (I don't want him rehearsing any bad habits.) so I'm hoping I can just keep him in a little spot with jumps and just do those. I really just want to get my baby dog in the ring, have him NOT PEE ON ANYTHING, and do a few jumps... if that happens it will be a success.
Tomorrow afternoon is our fun run. I am worried about Payton taking contact obstacles. I'm not ready for him to do so (I don't want him rehearsing any bad habits.) so I'm hoping I can just keep him in a little spot with jumps and just do those. I really just want to get my baby dog in the ring, have him NOT PEE ON ANYTHING, and do a few jumps... if that happens it will be a success.
Well, thanks to my mom apparently not understanding "PUSH THE BIG RED BUTTON TO RECORD" I only have one video of Payton. I impromptu decided this morning to take Georgie - it was only $5 and I thought it would be good to get her in a ring and have her do some jumps. Plus I am generally in a less serious mood playing with her, so I thought it might lighten my mood to bring her along. I thought about taking Auggie but he HATES the floor in this building so much, so I didn't. I wished I had, but when I say he hates the floor I'm not kidding, so it wouldn't have been fair to him.
Somehow my mom managed to get video of all three of Georgie's runs... just not Payton.
Anyway, Payton did fairly good, no new problems presented themselves, all stuff I was expecting and dare I say maybe a bit better than I expected. One of the people I trial with locally showed up with their dog and I was like "oh yaaaay... people to see the terror..." hahaha. He took jumps, even most of the ones I asked him to take. He didn't pee on anything, though he considered peeing on the table the first time he jumped on it. And he didn't drop any bars. (I decided to run him at 12" instead of 16" today. He's a baby, I don't care.) He did surprisingly well considering what a horrible dog he is. My plan was to totally avoid all contact obstacles, but everything was basically right in our path and, well, we do have a teeter and have been working on it - so I took a chance with him. The first run (no video) he was like "errr nope, dunno" and took a pass on it. The second run (no video!!) he put a few steps on it then changed his mind, so I took him back and tried it again just telling him "go touch" - and this time he did a BEAUTIFUL drive to the end then once it was down stepped into a perfect 2o2o. I'm so mad I don't have video of that. I was happily stuffing food down his throat while he held his 2o2o and specifically stepped out of the way so my mom could get it on the video... *flips table*
The third time he slid off the teeter, and it bounced up behind him while he was sitting there, which he believed warranted a telling off of the teeter for being rude. Yeah. That one's mine.
Be warned, he doesn't shut up for most of this video, so you might want to mute it. Also sorry for the Blair Witch Project type filming, apparently my mom had been drinking today.
[YOUTUBE]Pf5b5v4L-dY[/YOUTUBE]
Georgie was the surprise superstar, though I'm pretty sure my mom was underselling her to people and then when I ran her everybody was like "......" I couldn't remember if she had ever seen a chute before - we just found mine buried in the storeroom - so I tried to put her through it, but no go. The first time a lady outside the ring said "oh, let's lift the chute up and get her through it!" so we did that and she went through. I thought she might try again after that but nope. Not her fault, I really don't remember if she's ever seen one before or not, and I kinda think no.
Neither dog has ever done the table before (hence why I'm saying "on," it's just our cue for climbing up on something) so excuse all the shoddy table stuff, it's their very first time just playing on it. I figured why not? I paid my money, let them see it.
[YOUTUBE]ZHEFtbLIX1w[/YOUTUBE]
Very proud of the baby girly today. And Payton was not terrible. I would have liked better, but for a baby dog I think he did pretty good. I realize on video they probably look fairly similar. I realize I'm being harder on Payton since he's mine and I've trained him so my standards are higher. He got lots of cheese and kisses and got to sit in my lap between his second and third runs, so don't feel sorry for him.
Somehow my mom managed to get video of all three of Georgie's runs... just not Payton.
Anyway, Payton did fairly good, no new problems presented themselves, all stuff I was expecting and dare I say maybe a bit better than I expected. One of the people I trial with locally showed up with their dog and I was like "oh yaaaay... people to see the terror..." hahaha. He took jumps, even most of the ones I asked him to take. He didn't pee on anything, though he considered peeing on the table the first time he jumped on it. And he didn't drop any bars. (I decided to run him at 12" instead of 16" today. He's a baby, I don't care.) He did surprisingly well considering what a horrible dog he is. My plan was to totally avoid all contact obstacles, but everything was basically right in our path and, well, we do have a teeter and have been working on it - so I took a chance with him. The first run (no video) he was like "errr nope, dunno" and took a pass on it. The second run (no video!!) he put a few steps on it then changed his mind, so I took him back and tried it again just telling him "go touch" - and this time he did a BEAUTIFUL drive to the end then once it was down stepped into a perfect 2o2o. I'm so mad I don't have video of that. I was happily stuffing food down his throat while he held his 2o2o and specifically stepped out of the way so my mom could get it on the video... *flips table*
The third time he slid off the teeter, and it bounced up behind him while he was sitting there, which he believed warranted a telling off of the teeter for being rude. Yeah. That one's mine.
Be warned, he doesn't shut up for most of this video, so you might want to mute it. Also sorry for the Blair Witch Project type filming, apparently my mom had been drinking today.
[YOUTUBE]Pf5b5v4L-dY[/YOUTUBE]
Georgie was the surprise superstar, though I'm pretty sure my mom was underselling her to people and then when I ran her everybody was like "......" I couldn't remember if she had ever seen a chute before - we just found mine buried in the storeroom - so I tried to put her through it, but no go. The first time a lady outside the ring said "oh, let's lift the chute up and get her through it!" so we did that and she went through. I thought she might try again after that but nope. Not her fault, I really don't remember if she's ever seen one before or not, and I kinda think no.
Neither dog has ever done the table before (hence why I'm saying "on," it's just our cue for climbing up on something) so excuse all the shoddy table stuff, it's their very first time just playing on it. I figured why not? I paid my money, let them see it.
[YOUTUBE]ZHEFtbLIX1w[/YOUTUBE]
Very proud of the baby girly today. And Payton was not terrible. I would have liked better, but for a baby dog I think he did pretty good. I realize on video they probably look fairly similar. I realize I'm being harder on Payton since he's mine and I've trained him so my standards are higher. He got lots of cheese and kisses and got to sit in my lap between his second and third runs, so don't feel sorry for him.
I think Payton and Georgie did very well for their first time out! I'm particularly impressed how well they handled the table for the first time ever!
Gusto and I had our agility lesson today. It was supposed to be yesterday morning (I purposely took the first spot, because I didn't want to be running him in the heat), but they double booked it by accident, and I'm the person who will always back down. So instead of running at 8:30 am yesterday, we ran right at the middle of the day today, with 88 degrees and high humidity. Gusto didn't wanna. He held up enough for me to get a few really good things out of it (new thing to try - leading out at a jog and releasing on the move, which he seemed to really love, rather than stopping, releasing, and then moving). He can be a little slow and wander-y off the start line sometimes, so I'm hopeful this will help.
We also did our first assignment - just a "who are you and why are you here" for our first Agility University class. It took me about 2 hours to write it, because I'm afraid of making myself look like an idiot in this class. I'm terrified. But I'm going to suck it up and try. It's so hard in our area to get decent instruction, and I've learned the hard way that going to every seminar, just because it is a 'big name' person, doesn't work. So hopefully this will be the ticket to bridge the long gap between lessons/seminars. We will see.
Gusto and I had our agility lesson today. It was supposed to be yesterday morning (I purposely took the first spot, because I didn't want to be running him in the heat), but they double booked it by accident, and I'm the person who will always back down. So instead of running at 8:30 am yesterday, we ran right at the middle of the day today, with 88 degrees and high humidity. Gusto didn't wanna. He held up enough for me to get a few really good things out of it (new thing to try - leading out at a jog and releasing on the move, which he seemed to really love, rather than stopping, releasing, and then moving). He can be a little slow and wander-y off the start line sometimes, so I'm hopeful this will help.
We also did our first assignment - just a "who are you and why are you here" for our first Agility University class. It took me about 2 hours to write it, because I'm afraid of making myself look like an idiot in this class. I'm terrified. But I'm going to suck it up and try. It's so hard in our area to get decent instruction, and I've learned the hard way that going to every seminar, just because it is a 'big name' person, doesn't work. So hopefully this will be the ticket to bridge the long gap between lessons/seminars. We will see.
Last class before the trial and let's take a tally....
1 dog peed in the ring.
1 dog decided to sniff out about 10 dropped treats.
I ran into 3 separate obstacles(2 wing jumps and 1 set of weaves)
I lost my dog on the course once when she took a blind cross just perfectly but I had planned a front cross there and then everyone was cheering because.... well my dog did right but I had no idea where she'd gone. So I ended up standing in the middle of the ring with a derrrr look on my face.
So I'd say we're ready. :rofl1::rofl1::rofl1:
Seriously though we had some good moments and my dogs are doing well. We did decide to try guides on the weaves and it seems to be working very well for my two so I'm going on a quest to build some easy and cheap guides for my weave poles.
At least we had a happy.
agility by Summer_Papillon, on Flickr
1 dog peed in the ring.
1 dog decided to sniff out about 10 dropped treats.
I ran into 3 separate obstacles(2 wing jumps and 1 set of weaves)
I lost my dog on the course once when she took a blind cross just perfectly but I had planned a front cross there and then everyone was cheering because.... well my dog did right but I had no idea where she'd gone. So I ended up standing in the middle of the ring with a derrrr look on my face.
So I'd say we're ready. :rofl1::rofl1::rofl1:
Seriously though we had some good moments and my dogs are doing well. We did decide to try guides on the weaves and it seems to be working very well for my two so I'm going on a quest to build some easy and cheap guides for my weave poles.
At least we had a happy.
agility by Summer_Papillon, on Flickr
BB - Ugh this heat has totally been brutal. I can't blame Gusto on that! I'm glad he gave you some good stuff, though! And I understand about a new class being scary - I'm still nervous running sometimes in the same class I've been in for like a year now LOL.
Beanie - I think they did GREAT! Love their enthusiasm. Can't wait to see more of both of them
Laurelin - HAHAHA sounds like you guys are ready
Here's a video of Kimma doing a course last weekend. It was REALLY hot in there at only 8am so I didn't push her. Did some warm up and practicing a few places in the course, then we just ran it:
[YOUTUBE]WXgRLwLwj-Y[/YOUTUBE]
Beanie - I think they did GREAT! Love their enthusiasm. Can't wait to see more of both of them
Laurelin - HAHAHA sounds like you guys are ready
Here's a video of Kimma doing a course last weekend. It was REALLY hot in there at only 8am so I didn't push her. Did some warm up and practicing a few places in the course, then we just ran it:
[YOUTUBE]WXgRLwLwj-Y[/YOUTUBE]
Love the Reason video, too. Sometimes I ask myself that question when I try to add up all the sacrifices, the time, every dollar spent. But, the images in the video speak so much truth, I live for the happy dance at the end of an agility sequence or the unbridled giddiness that happens when something finally clicks. The pride felt for those brilliant ah-ha moments and good decisions you know were really hard for them!
