Agility training

Babyblue5290

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Even experienced dogs can wind up on top of the tunnel.

[YOUTUBE]kEC2O8pa2ZY[/YOUTUBE]
haha! That's so awesome! :rofl1:

Thank you for showing me that, I think it brightened my day for sure! All the other dogs in the class had no problem with the tunnel, mine was the only one that was a nutcase :eek: lol so that made me feel better! ^_^
 

Flyinsbt

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A friend/instructor did this with one of her dogs. Worked really well until I ran her dog and she neglected to tell me that her dog will shoot off to the farther end of the tunnel unless explicitly told otherwise. I'm told the expression on my face was priceless when she suddenly turned on a dime for no apparent reason and took the wrong end of the tunnel, leaving me bewildered lol. We do mostly motion-based handling and I know that every fiber of my being was directed toward the near end of that tunnel. Coulda knocked me over with a feather :p

As we left the ring after our otherwise-clean run, her handler said to me, "So I suddenly remembered I forgot to tell you....."

Good times, haha.
*cough* Some dogs will do this without training.

Tess will always by preference take the tunnel end furthest away from me. That's just how she rolls. At one Barb Davis seminar I was at, we spent an embarrassingly long time trying to get her to take the end nearer to me. I mean, we're talking ridiculously overexaggerated handling moves. Like, any normal dog would probably skip the tunnel and go straight to the handler.

If at all possible, I just make sure the end furthest from me is the one I want her to take. If for some reason I can't do that, I overhandle, and hope for the best.
 

CaliTerp07

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I have a question about rear crosses. More specifically, about options for how to cue them.

I was taught to set the line the obstacle before the cue, decel and then pressure the dog's line for the turn. Evidently I'm not very good at this (or Cohen is bad at reading it, but it's probably me), so it's not uncommon for Cohen to turn the wrong way when I try to cut behind her on a tight turn.

Last night my instructor suggested I cue the rear cross verbally. More specifically, to give Cohen my "turn" cue (verbally and physically), which means for her to turn away from me. So I'd be approaching a jump, cue the turn, then cut in behind and pick Cohen up after she jumps. I hadn't heard this suggested before. Is this common practice? Is it advisable? What do you guys think?

My first trainer taught mostly the Derrett handling system, and my currently trainer is more Mecklenburg, so I've been struggling to marry the two systems. Sometimes I get conflicting information and need to figure out how best to proceed with my own dog.
Lucy loves rear crosses. I avoided them for the longest time, because I was convinced that being behind my dog was a bad thing. Rear crosses are SO overused in NADAC by handlers who don't want to (or can't) run with their dogs, so I was almost avoiding them to prove that courses could be run without them. I finally gave in though (some courses just lend themselves SO nicely to rears!) and have seen great results. Someone told me my dog has "rear wheel drive" :)

I have 2 different rears. There's the rear at an obstacle, where you sent the dog to a jump or tunnel and cut behind, and there's a rear on the flat, when you're just flipping their head to turn a different direction, but there's no obstacle around. For both, it's all body motion and arms for us.

I know I just posted this, but it was all rears at obstacles (a last minute game plan when I saw she had no start line). You can see my arms switch (right hand was up, now left hand is) around the 4th jump. We do another rear at the obstacle at the red jump, but that one I totally screwed up my hands and she read it anyway because my body was heading that direction. One more rear at an obstacle to the tunnel. As soon as she's committed, I can run across her path and she doesn't flinch.

[youtube]SqFzj96GChQ[/youtube]

This was my attempt at a rear on the flat for chances (NADAC's distance course). I was trying to do it really deep so we could get momentum back up heading to the line, but I totally bobbled it by bending over (cuing forward motion) and the tempting ring crew drew her in. Still, you can see the exaggerated arm changes.

[youtube]dPVeIpCAwhs[/youtube]

NADAC is big on needing a verbal for rear crosses on the flat (you'll hear people yell "SWITCH"!) I've never put one on it for Lucy. She's a dog who I can yell "TUNNEL!" and run towards a jump, and she'll follow my body motion at all times over the verbal. I'm sure it helps some dogs, but I don't like the idea that you must. have. this. or you won't be successful. I find the same black/white idea for rights and lefts, a verbal "go out", etc. These are the same people who try to give me "helpful hints" and tell me I need to never say my dogs name on course. Everyone has different opinions.
 
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For rear crosses I use my off side arm and a verbal "switch" cue. I have always made it very obvious and can get away with turning my dogs head away from me with just the verbal and arm cue alone which can be super helpful in gamblers (when you can't move) and for flipping my dog into a tunnel off a piece of contact equipment with out needing to move in. I never realized how much of a dork I looked like with my exaggerated arm swing, but whatever I guess its not about looking cool its about what works...right? lol

You can see me use the "switch" in several of the runs in this video. I use it for the gamble too where I have to stand still and can't actually cross behind.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5ommAFj61Q&feature=c4-overview&list=UULa2OdsbUZSn0AaHc3zv-EQ

I taught the rear cross on the flat with my dog sitting and clicking for his head turning as I crossed behind, then I added the verbal and arm cue. I then moved on to doing it from a stand and then moving together. The flat work really helps give the dog a solid understanding of what you are asking. Of course once you get on equipment there is a bit of retraining but its pretty quick.
 

Laurelin

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Well tonight wins for worst agility practice ever. All dogs except Summer went kaput at the end of the class. Summer was a little bit scatterbrained and not quite as fast as usual but the rest were just.... not in it at all.

I have no idea what was going on. Mia's middle sequence went well enough but the last one was.... awful. She barely walked it, and I was calling her through the tunnel, turned around to pick her up for a front cross to see her INSIDE THE TUNNEL puking her guts out.

Oy. I win for worst dog.

At least now I know what was wrong with her all evening. She rocked last week though so I'm trying not to worry about it. No idea why she ended up puking but now we're home and she's playing ball like usual.

Trying not to worry, though, I'm such a worrier.
 

Finkie_Mom

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Well tonight wins for worst agility practice ever. All dogs except Summer went kaput at the end of the class. Summer was a little bit scatterbrained and not quite as fast as usual but the rest were just.... not in it at all.

I have no idea what was going on. Mia's middle sequence went well enough but the last one was.... awful. She barely walked it, and I was calling her through the tunnel, turned around to pick her up for a front cross to see her INSIDE THE TUNNEL puking her guts out.

Oy. I win for worst dog.

At least now I know what was wrong with her all evening. She rocked last week though so I'm trying not to worry about it. No idea why she ended up puking but now we're home and she's playing ball like usual.

Trying not to worry, though, I'm such a worrier.
Oh no, please don't worry. Kimma has had her fair share of totally out of it classes/training sessions. At first it would really get me down, but I learned that she's not always going to be "on" and that the best thing I can do when I see she's not into it is to not make her do anything crazy, pull her aside for some quick wrap/figure 8 work with one jump, and take parts of the course in small sequences. There have been times I've not come close to running a full course in class because of it. I'd rather have a relatively happy dog than a tired, stressed one, because all that does is cause ME to be tired and stressed LOL. Luckily, those types of things are very infrequent nowadays, but I have been watching her very closely now with the heat for any sign that she's not enjoying it. Try not to stress - you will be OK if you just keep listening to your dogs and remembering that it's (supposed to be) all for fun :D
 

Laurelin

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Yeah I'm thinking she was just feeling bad. I realized his morning Mia didn't eat anything at all yesterday other than treats. I just assumed she did but I found her tug a jug this morning full of food. When she puked it was only the hotdogs I'd given her at class. Last night when I picked her up once she made a little whimper whig looking back on it I bet her tummy just hurt. I bet empty stomach + hotdogs + heat was not a good combination.

Back to eating food this morning though.
 
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I started doing some weave work with Karma today and OMG this dog is making it super hard to re-home her... It was her first session with 2x2's so just really working on entries and she picked up on it sooo fast. I'll have to try and get a video but I seriously love this little dog with all her epic drive and love of working...

Of course we'll be breaking for a bit since she goes in for her spay tomorrow so might be a while before I can get that vid...
 

Sekah

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Agility training fosters is a good way to turn them into foster failures. :)

Speaking of weaving, Mega is coming along pretty nicely. We've probably only done about 4 days worth of training at 5 minutes per day and she's starting to get the hang of it. I'm recording our sessions and will (hopefully) post a compilation of our progress, assuming she continues to, well, progress. :p At the tail end of the last session I introduced the second gate which was definitely more difficult for her, but she got a few successful repetitions before I cut her off for the night.

I've only been working in one room thus far, so I'll probably move to a different one tonight, restart with one gate, then re-add the second depending on progress.
 

DJEtzel

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What can you guys recommend to keep dogs looking forward while they run?

We had our first drop in class with Recon last night in months and OMG he's a spaz and was quite frustrating. I got a few things to work on (driving towards toys over jumps, etc), but I've always worked on them and it apparently hasn't made a difference. Maybe we just need to do it more? He never USED to have this problem, it is brand new to me.

He's great WHILE we're doing that sort of stuff, but when it's not sitting there for him to steal err.. I mean, see, he's not. He ran into two jumps last night (splitting one into a bazillion pieces) because he will not pay attention to where he's going whatsoever.

eta.. I don't keep food on me and hide my toy and it still doesn't make a difference. No hands, no words, and he's still running into jumps!

:dunno:
 
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Agility training fosters is a good way to turn them into foster failures. :)
She speaks the truth. C'mon, I have Bloo, you can have Karma... ;)
I'm seriously considering sitting my parents down and talking to them about possibly keeping her. I mean the other day my dad did say that I should be doing agility with her instead of Abby since she has the energy for it and abbers is starting to slow down(course we'll still to agility until she no longer enjoys it etc)... So maybe he's softening to the idea...
 

Julee

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How long have you guys had her? Quite some time, if I remember correctly?

We've had Bloo since July and finally it was just kind of "well, she's not an easy keeper, but nobody else wants her and she's a hell of a sport dog prospect" lol
 
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We've had her since February I believe... It's just so hard adopting pitties out. I've had a lot of interest in her, but it was mainly people wanting to breed her, weren't actually educated on the breed, couldn't provide proper exercise, not to mention she's a fence jumper so that turned quite a few people off... Well that and her insane energy...

But I love everything about her so I'm hoping my parents see things the same way like "she's been here and clearly not going anywhere so might as well stay".
 

SaraB

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Going back and retraining foundations with jump drive, etc, (going out and looking forward, shaping) is the only solution we found to work for my handler obsessive dog.
This. Training them to find their line as well. Foundation exercises meant to increase obstacle focus include sending to targets, wrapping around jumps, sending to jumps, plank work, anything that has the dog moving away from the handler with the handler giving little input (IE not moving with the dog).
 

DJEtzel

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This. Training them to find their line as well. Foundation exercises meant to increase obstacle focus include sending to targets, wrapping around jumps, sending to jumps, plank work, anything that has the dog moving away from the handler with the handler giving little input (IE not moving with the dog).
Alrighty. We did a ton of this as a puppy, maybe during his break he just forgot it all. Hopefully it helps!
 

SaraB

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Always, always rewarding on the reward line, too. That's part of the foundations but it has helped B look for his reward away from me and specifically in front of him.
Truth! For handler-focused dogs, it's good to reward away... For insanely obstacle focused dogs (ahem, Zuma), it's good to reward at the handler's side.
 

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