Mimzy and 2X2s

Well, Deets can do everything he needs to be able to do to compete and do well in standard classes, and Landon is doing well on his distance work, so now it is time to focus on Mimzy and get her up-to-speed. Mimzy still has a baby-brain. She's only 18 months and still acts like a little puppy and is still a little unsure of herself. Obviously, she's doing really well with jumpers and has pretty good distance work, but we still really need to get it in gear and get out contacts and our teeter totter and our weaves. We have been working steadily with the 2X2 weaves at home, but she is not as mature or fast-learning as Deets, and I haven't had as much time to work with her as I did when I was committed to 2X2s with Deets, which is my own fault. However, in a fairly short amount of time she has gotten up to doing 6 poles.

As you can see, she's still a little unsure of her footing, but she is driving foreword fairly well and understands her entries and what her job is. Once we can put two sets of 6 together and get her to twelve, I will go back and do some exercises that Susan Garrett shows in her dvd to show the dog how to properly navigate through the weave poles. It is amusing to me that Mimzy will be weaving before she has contacts or even the teeter totter.

We've been clicker training the teeter totter and she's getting the idea, but we still have some steps to go through before she can do the whole thing together, and because she's a little fearful it may take a while. She is entered in standard level 1 at a CPE trial the second weekend of May, where she will not have to teeter or weave, but I am concerned about her making her contacts on the dog walk and A-frame. I need to get her going on her contacts, but since lovely big Deets broke my contact trainer, I can only work when we get out to CM Streak.

Cross-behinds

I have really been working lately on getting to be a better handler, with better distance work and more fluid and directive commands. With the help of my trainer, Terry, I feel I've made a big improvement in the last several months. My worst maneuver, by far, is the cross behind. I've been working hard at this with all three dogs and with myself, even practicing the maneuver without the dogs. This week I finally felt like I really got the feel of the move itself, mostly with finally understanding that the cross behind occurs behind the dog, not behind the obstacle. For those of you who don't know what a cross-behind is, it's a maneuver where you send the dog slightly ahead of you and cross behind the dog to change directions. Such as in the picture above, Mimzy was on my right side, but I sent her ahead slightly and crossed behind her to put her on my left. We really started to get it while practicing a masters level jumpers course from the DAWG agility trial in McKinney this last weekend.



Deets' weaves are really coming along and looking great. He's got a great little duck paddle going through them. Mimzy and I are still working steadily on 2X2s and she's down to 4 straight poles, ready to add another 2. Her contacts are coming along slowly, and I'm honestly getting frustrated with how long it's taking her to catch on. Deets' contacts look good but need a little polishing as I think I've rushed him a bit, but he generally gets the idea to go to the bottom and stop. Deets and Mimzy are really coming along, and all are surprising me. Landon who is really awful at cross-behinds even got them down today. Mimzy is forever thrilling me and I'm convinced that as she matures and starts to really get this down she will just be a blast. I'm astounded at how fast Deets has progressed. The second weekend in May Deets will compete in Standards for the first time, and Mimzy will be in jumpers. The weekend after that is a USDAA trial here in town and Deets and Landon will be in standards, jumpers (Landon in P2) and gamblers. Mimzy will be in jumpers. I've decided to move Deets down to Performance in USDAA so that he can jump 22 instead of 26, because he's such a big, thick dog that I don't think it's fair to ask him to jump over his own shoulder height by that much. Mimzy, on the other hand, will be jumping 26" even though she is only 23" tall, simply because she's so lean and athletic.

USDAA Trial 4/11/10

We went to the USDAA trial put on by Dallas Agility Working Group this last weekend and brought home lots of ribbons. Deets competed in Starters Jumpers and although he did really well, he took out a bar and went off course. Still had fun though! And the off course really was my fault, I stopped and faced the jump rather than turning and continuing to move. Woops, I'm not perfect either!

Landon competed in Gamblers, Standard, and Jumpers all on Sunday. Gamblers wasn't so great because we had to do the teeter totter at a distance and he bailed on me. He got his first standard leg, though, and did the teeter totter albeit slowly. He also got his last leg for P1 jumpers and another blue ribbon, which makes him three for three.

Jumpers with Weaves

Well, today all the dogs got worked again. My lovely boyfriend went with me and took the video camera, so I have a lot of footage of what we worked on today. Through the week, I've been working with Landon on getting the movement for cross behinds, which in case you don't know what that is it's when you send the dog ahead of you for an obstacle and you switch sides behind them. Our practice with it showed when we worked a jumpers course from the AKC Nationals this year.



Deets and I have been working on our 2X2 weaves, and now at day number 8 and less than an hour of combined training, Deets can get all twelve weaves with some amazing entries.


He is also doing well on his contacts, and does great cross-behinds... so he can do this very difficult jumpers course as well. He's pretty darn slow in the video because he was so tired at this point already, he was ready to quit. He got almost through the whole thing without knocking bars, but took down a pole on the double at the very end. He's going to be my darn little bar knocker...







Mimzy is still coming along steadily with learning the teeter totter game. Look how cute she is when she pushed it down!

Just another day of training

Well, today was just another day of training. I started in the front yard with Deets working on his 2X2s, and he still remembered perfectly how to get weaves his 6 poles. He's a little bad about getting his entry from the right side, which I recognize as my own fault for mistakes made with step 1 in the 2X2 method, but it's nothing I can't fix with good repetition, and now I know better so I won't make the same mistake with Mimzy.

All the dogs and I loaded up and went out to CMStreek to work on the field in the afternoon. Landon and I worked on going to the tunnel from a distance of about 15 feet, which is a skill I realized we needed to work on at the last trial when he wouldn't complete the gamble in USDAA gamblers. Then we did some weaves and I let him quit for the day, seeing as how good he's been lately and he was already getting hot and therefor tired.

Mimzy and I worked on going to the tunnel, too, but she's splendid at that so we worked contacts on the contact trainer. I was able to move the trainer to a steeper slope today, and she was still great about hitting the bottom and stopping. She's a little slow about it when I stay behind her... she doesn't like to go all the way to the bottom, and sometimes when she does she turns around to look at me. She's getting there, though. We played the teeter totter game some more and she actually went up the board and made the teeter go down by herself, but she was very hesitant about it, so I think we need to play with the obstacle on the ground more and maybe with the wobble board some more.

Deets and I worked on some distance jumps and tunnels, too, and he's so reliable at a distance. We worked on contacts on the A-frame and Dog-walk and he is just great with them. He stops two-on/two-off every time and waits for me to tell him to go. Then we grabbed a set of 6 weave poles and worked the 2X2 method working around the "clock" a bit, and even threw in a jump for fun.

A successful day for Deets!

Well, it's been a busy last week for the dogs. Landon has been working steadily at his 12 sets of weaves and doing a very admirable job. He's got about 80% accuracy... he pops out of the last two poles so we're opening up the weaves for him at the end so he has some good chances for success. His distance work is getting great and we're finally getting really good at it.

Mimzy's head has sort of been in the clouds the past few days, and I can't help but feel it's the weather finally warming up and all the nice smells of Spring coming out. She's slowly working the contact trainer to learn her "holds" but she's slower than Deets is at learning and I sometimes forget to slow down with her. She is very good at getting her two-on, two-off and waiting, but only when she sees me stop. If I keep running or hold back she doesn't go all the way to the bottom. We played the Teeter Totter Game again today, and she was much better about it than last session. She is not nearly as afraid of the board coming down, and is now jumping to push the board down from about 2 feet up in the air. She'll be doing her "C" in no time!

Today was really Deets' successful day. We went to train and he's finally really got his contacts. We moved up to the big A-frame and Dog-walk and he's got them about 90% of the time... he stops 2-on, 2-off and freezes with complete attention on me to go to the next obstacle. This means the only thing we have left to learn before we can compete in Standards is the weave poles. Aaaannnd.... we've just about got those! Today was Deets/ 4th day of 2X2 training, with several short sessions every day. In that time, we've added a second set of poles moving in toward the first, gone to weaving four poles, and tonight we added another set and now have 6 weaves in four days. We're going to wait here for a few days and get this really solid and taking the weaves from all over "the clock", and some hard entires. We'll also add in a jump before, so he learns to sequence the weaves in. After we spend some more time doing that, we will add a second set of 6 weaves and begin closing those together to get 12 poles. Should take us less than a week.

Teeter Totter

Well, it's been an interesting week. I haven't been able to continue the 2X2s because I had to run to Dallas for 5 days, and then had a week swamped with tests and homework at school. Monday night Landon and Deets had their regular classes. Landon and I have been working on distance work, because I have an awful habit of taking my dogs to every obstacle. We're getting a lot better about it and Landon is, in result, getting much faster. He's also slowly conquering his fear of the teeter totter, which we now call "See" (short for see-saw) and will do it now without bailing off the side, but he still does it very slowly.

Deets and Mimzy both need to learn to do the teeter totter. Deets has got it down, now, after clicker trianing him to do it. I started a few weeks ago by playing the "teeter totter game" with him, in which I hold down the "up" side of the teeter and wait for him to touch it with his paw. When he did, I clicked and gave a treat. Slowly I required him to do more and threw a bigger learning curve at him, so instead of one pay I wanted two on the board. When he was coming at the board with both paws quickly and without hesitation, I raised the end of the board up by about an inch, and had him slam it down and clicked. By this point, instead of clicking as soon as his paws touched the board, I clicked when the board hit the ground. Slowly I raised the board higher and higher with every try, so that, after two 10 minute sessions in a week span Deets was jumping up with his front feet and making the board slam from its full height.

I then started to vary my position around the board, making Deets run up and slam the board from coming around my side, or from ten feet away instead of right next to me. He LOVED the game, and picked up on it really quickly. Soon, I asked him to actually walk up the board and perform the teeter like it should be, and he did it without hesitation of fear. By the third time he did it this way, he understood that the whole point of the game was to make the teeter totter slam as hard as he could make it. I continued to click when the board hit the ground, so that the reinforcer is not the clicker itself, but the sound of the bang on the teeter totter. Deets learned to do the teeter without issue with less than 30 minutes of total training. By his third session working he is able to perform it in sequences with jumps.

Mimzy, however, does not like the teeter totter game. I just started to play with her yesterday and she quickly learned to put her paws on the board while it doesn't move and enjoys the game... but as soon as I let it up an inch off the ground and it moved under her paws she became very fearful and ran around me in circles and barked and got very frustrated. Instead of continuing the game, I decided to teach her to play on the wobble board with me, so we took the clicker and learned to get on the wobble board. She's still pretty frightening, so this will be a much slower process with her.


Landon's weaves are really coming along. He can do a set of 6 perfectly every time, but with the set of 12 he likes to pop out at the 3rd or 2nd to last poles. I've split the two sets of 6 so they are about 4 feet apart and I stop and treat him between each set and then have him continue. Slowly I'm bringing the sets together. Yesterday at practice he performed the whole 12 together two or three times with no mistakes. We've got to get on this because his first standard USDAA run is on April 11th.