Agility training

The starters level will almost always be red-color-red-color-red-color-closing (2 - 7).

Snooker is incredibly demotivating to Lucy (the complete opposite of nadac's distance and flowing courses). The time's we've been successful are the times where I was able to piece together a flowing course, and was able to think on my feet if she missed an obstacle (making her turn around just makes her stress go through the roof.) If snooker is the first run of the day, i will throw it out--not worth killing her drive for the rest of the events.

My friend's dog, on the other hand, is her shadow and does really well in close quarters. They find snooker reinforcing!

Yay! Good luck at your first trial!

Gah it's Diesel and my first real trial this weekend as well! I am soo freaking nervous!

And I ordered from clean run last night, it shipped today! Awesome.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of dogs are either Snooker Dogs or Gamblers Dogs. I need to be very deliberate when planning a snooker course with Gusto that I DON'T plan a Meg snooker course. She is the snooker queen, and has been from day one. She can call through a line of jumps without taking one unless cued, her point of commitment is basically "when her back legs leave the ground", and running with me is her favorite thing. With Gusto (who I think will be great at snooker eventually), I make a point to make courses with more flow.

When I was really fighting for Meg's last couple of gamblers Qs for her championship, I would do a really easy snooker course if snooker came before gamblers, because I didn't want her to be thinking I was going to be calling her off stuff.

I still just plain love snooker! I like the planning, the thinking on your feet, and the fact that it is one of the few classes where my little hound who almost never pulls bars has the edge on all the BCs I usually run against!

In other news - I think I've decided that I'm going to break Gusto's stopped dogwalk contact for a while so I can retrain the obstacle. I'm mildly terrified. I just hate what his obstacle performance is right now, and it used to be fantastic.

This was his dogwalk right when he started on full height equipment:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151063573722827&l=1772624846028434264

And this is more like what I get now:
[YOUTUBE]wE55WBnlCL4[/YOUTUBE]
That was a trial obviously (and a venue where he is uncomfortable), but it's pretty typical of the dogwalk we get all the time now.

Summer is pretty sticky to me vs a dog that likes to go out and do distance. I think a lot of it is the fact that when we did agility when she was young at the 'for fun' place a lot was leashed. Anyways, she is developing some tunnel-suck and last night kept taking the chute way out of the way during our 4 jump exercises! It wasn't even set up near anything.

We've done well with gamblers- I can improvise ok. snookers seems much more complicated.

Thanks! I'm really looking forward to it. Glad I entered this trial.. two days this weekend and next weekend we're running one day at the National!

Good luck!! What venue? Glad I have another first time running this weekend!




Now that I think about it... how common is the broad jump in Novice courses?

There is always a broad jump in AKC Novice Standard courses. It's required.

Outside of Novice Standard it's not that common, but definitely possible.

NADAC lol, which seems to be mostly a joke to agility peeps, but it's what we train up here so it's what I compete in.

Hopefully I can get out to practice it tomorrow.. otherwise we may be spring boarding off the broad jump...

Soda 12-packs. No joke... that is what I lined up to make a "broad jump" in my basement. At 10pm the night before Payton's first trial LOL.

I had a wonderful class last night and just had to gush. My instructor is really working hard to challenge our abilities and I'm seeing some good progress. I'm quieting down my handling and learning not to push the accelerator so much, and Cohen is getting much better at handling turns in tighter spaces.

Lately her dogwalk/teeter performances have been lackluster so last night I opted to throw down a target on each of them. The difference was night and day. Fast, driven, straight, clean contacts with solid releases despite me running on ahead. I'm going to fall back to using a target for a little while to remind Cohen what contacts are all about. She got confused somewhere along the way, and I didn't pay it much mind until recently.

She was just on fire last night -- faster than I've seen her in a long time, and the courses were pretty twisty and turny.

Love Cohen.


So... I busted out the white tray from the bird cage and propped one end up. It's white and slanted, sort of like a broad jump? Mimi offered to target it, stand on it, touch it with one foot, walk over it and do her contact behavior on it... All before asking her to do anything with it. Lol
Set up a little PVC bar 'jump' on top, mixed results. Finally broke apart some of the PVC weaves I'd tried to make forever ago, finally got her to jump it pretty consistently without the raised jump portion. I might be able to get out to the club and practice it tonight, or we might be using it this weekend as a launch pad.

What height class are you in? Some have the boards so close they almost look solid, others are more spaced out.

Worst case scenario, run hard past it and cue "jump" and hope for the best most dogs at a run will clear it when they are moving straight for it quickly. And then take the time to train the obstacle after

Good luck to everyone with their first trials you will have so much fun!

I have another one in two weeks.. it is Penn's last chance to find her brain. If not, I'm going to probably pull her from the Jess Martin seminar and just be done. I'm defeated by the stressed out 22 month old Vizsla and I can't figure out how to fix her

Yay Cohen! Always nice when they're on fire. That extra little fuzzy feeling is necessary every once in awhile. Cohen is so awesome anyway.

It is official. I sent in registration and funds. Kili has an FEO on April 24. Might be a bit of a mess. It is outdoors in a ring Kili has never seen before... and I don't think I can get off work early enough to make it to drop in before hand to burn some energy. I might hike her on my lunch hour to blow off some steam so she's not super pent up. Then we have a true fun run on April 28 which is indoor where we have our drop in time... and we'll be able to do drop in a few hours before. 2 minutes in the ring in a trial setting. Perfect.

This might be a bit of a gong show. Oh well. lol

Don't give up. Just scale back. Most dogs aren't trialing at 22 months. A lot of dogs are training for over 2 years before their first trial. And there's a lot to be said for maturity. Get back to the fun runs and make your only expectation to have a good experience and have fun. Maybe take her to some trials where you don't even run her... just take her into that environment and tug and ask for focus behaviours.

I get how frustrating it is. Believe me. I have the QUEEN of distraction. These fun runs/FEOs are probably going to be a bust. My plan is to try to get her to show SOME focus, do a few things that I ask, tug a bit and just not be too stressed.

Keep your head up!

20" is my guess, we haven't officially measured. I'm thinking your idea is the current best option. I'll have to include "run like hell" in my mental walk through!

She's been going to trials since she was about 3 months old and we have done 2 fun runs but our closest fun runs/ trials are all 3+ hrs away. I won't be trailing her again after this one if I don't find any improvement. I just go with the BC anyway so figured she would do at least semi-okay but no. It's focus, focus, focus until she steps up to the start line then it is STRESS. RUN. REPEAT.

It is frustrating. She is brilliant at home and I am sure if she had a more competent handler, she would do well. She is Border Collie fast. Turns tight. Amazing mix of handler/ obstacle focus ..then we go away and nope. She just stress runs. And I can usually get out of my own way to just find the positives but just not today. I just want to not always be the bad dog aha

Wow. I am a Debbie Downer.. sorry! You are totally right. I think it's a combination of stellar performance except for when I want it and being so over winter!! A little sunshine and hiking with my red dog will for sure help this crappy attitude aha

What if you videoed her runs so you can see what she is doing well, and what needs improvement when you are at home, out of the moment and relaxed?