Perhaps a week of having to sit in her crate and watch Breeze do agility class made it look much more fun to Lizzie to stay with me and actually do agility instead of trying to run off??? All I know is this week in Deanna's class I actually had a dog to work with. I got in the yard and Lizzie was paying attention and able to do her tricks so I did the first sequence with her. It was a sequence with some treadles, a lot of turns and collection--and I have to say she did great. The next sequence she did OK with but about half way through the course she deceided to run wander around a bit, so I did not want to give her a chance to run off because I saw where that was going, so I IMMEDIATELY got her and put her in the crate, which was very close- which helped with the dramatic effect of putting her away. I grabbed Breeze and played with her (I had not warmed her up so I could not run the sequence with her, but I got a good game going!). A few minutes later it was Lizzie's turn and we had a dog back again. Her 2020 contact on the Aframe was gorgeous...although then she kept wanting to go back to the Aframe because we had prebaited a target when she had taken the Aframe before..... Breeze of course did amazing. Breeze's Aframe contact was looking pretty good last night.
The greatest thing was that it is still cool wheather wise here. It is so unusual for this time of the year that it is not blazing hot until midnight, but I am really enjoying it because I know soon we will be hammered by scortching temperatures. The dogs love this weather for agility, and have to say...so do I.
Moe Srenfel Seminar
I was lucky enough to get to go with my friend Denise to the Moe Strenfel seminar on Saturday. This was a seminar on Foundation work and I really enjoyed it. First off it was held at a persons home that was gorgeous, they have the prettiest agility yard-I could have moved to that agility yard and lived there and been happy I think. The day was cool, which is not the usual for this time of the year here, just cool enough that I needed to put on a sweater a couple of times during the day, PERFECT weather. There were some other fun people at the seminar which never hurts and some very cute puppies-so it definately had the makings for a really great day!
As far as the seminar, I think it is very safe to say it seems Moe feels very strongly about foundation for dogs/puppies being very important. She said that her dogs do not see equipment for their first year but get lots of foundation work and then once they get on equipment after a year things go fast and they progress very well due to their strong foundation.
One thing I really found awesome and interesting was how she talked about raising your puppy so they are excited about exploring and playing. She said you should not be raising your puppy to stay out of things and be the traditional "good" puppy if you want a good player and a really good performance dog. You should manage the environment so you do NOT have to be telling the puppy to leave things alone, or not to get into things because that discourages them playing and investigating things and can dampen the toy drive. Using xpens, baby gates, and putting things up lets your puppy really learn to explore and play and feel like that is a good thing.
The whole theme of the seminar seemed to be that you should find your chosen handling system-she uses Greg Darretts handling system (I am using Linda M's), and make sure all the teaching and foundation you do with your puppy is true to your system so everything the dog learns is consistent and will make sense to the dog. The first parts of the seminar addressed lots of flat work, and I really enjoyed seeing how she does flat work-I have read a lot of books but it was great to see someone really demonstrate flat work well, and Moe was great about explaining how each of the exercises had a purpose and was designed to teach things. LIKE..when she did an exercise where you put a plate with food on one side of you, the dog on the other and click/feed the dog for looking ahead, and the dog is not supposed to go to the food until you move and point your body to the plate-she feels this teaches the dog to not go on off courses because no matter how much the pup wants something, say a tunnel, the pup needs to wait until they are given permission to go to the desired object. She uses games and little exercises to teach the dog to listen to body movement, decelerations, accelerations, etc...
I found her methods to be very respectful of the dog, she talked a lot about making sure the dog was comfortable and not stressing the dog out. Even when she was working with the participants if a dog did not look totally comfortable she would immediately tell the owner to put the dog back because it was not worth stressing the dog out.
The last section of her seminar was a section I really liked because it is something we have worked with a lot at our house and that is doing things to make sure your dog is physically fit. She uses wobble boards, and she showed us where she used a 9" cone filled with cement with a wobble board on top, so of course I had to do that when I got home--I posted a LONG video of that, LOL, but that stuff is just so good for the dogs and so fun. She also uses stools, and exercise balls, exercise discs, and she brought a lot of her implements for everyone to practice on.
So the videos she recommended for raising your puppies are Susan Garretts Crate games, a personal favorite, Wendy Papes Games video-another personal favorite, Click and Fetch, On the Ball-Deborah Gross Saunders, Pilate for Pooches-Sarah Johnson and Andrew Sams.
THIS IS BREEZE, THEN LIZZIE, THEN CHERRY DOING THE WOBBLE BOARD ON A 9" CONE FILLED WITH CEMENT-SO IT REALLY ROCKS AND ROLLS-the balance work really helps with core strength which protects the dogs back which I feel like helps protect the hips, knees, etc. Another benefit is the dogs that learn to ride the ball or the boards learn to relax their joints which helps them to relax their joints on equipment so they are less prone to injuries, and of course their balance is better so again they are less likely to injure themselves, and it can be fun!
As far as the seminar, I think it is very safe to say it seems Moe feels very strongly about foundation for dogs/puppies being very important. She said that her dogs do not see equipment for their first year but get lots of foundation work and then once they get on equipment after a year things go fast and they progress very well due to their strong foundation.
One thing I really found awesome and interesting was how she talked about raising your puppy so they are excited about exploring and playing. She said you should not be raising your puppy to stay out of things and be the traditional "good" puppy if you want a good player and a really good performance dog. You should manage the environment so you do NOT have to be telling the puppy to leave things alone, or not to get into things because that discourages them playing and investigating things and can dampen the toy drive. Using xpens, baby gates, and putting things up lets your puppy really learn to explore and play and feel like that is a good thing.
The whole theme of the seminar seemed to be that you should find your chosen handling system-she uses Greg Darretts handling system (I am using Linda M's), and make sure all the teaching and foundation you do with your puppy is true to your system so everything the dog learns is consistent and will make sense to the dog. The first parts of the seminar addressed lots of flat work, and I really enjoyed seeing how she does flat work-I have read a lot of books but it was great to see someone really demonstrate flat work well, and Moe was great about explaining how each of the exercises had a purpose and was designed to teach things. LIKE..when she did an exercise where you put a plate with food on one side of you, the dog on the other and click/feed the dog for looking ahead, and the dog is not supposed to go to the food until you move and point your body to the plate-she feels this teaches the dog to not go on off courses because no matter how much the pup wants something, say a tunnel, the pup needs to wait until they are given permission to go to the desired object. She uses games and little exercises to teach the dog to listen to body movement, decelerations, accelerations, etc...
I found her methods to be very respectful of the dog, she talked a lot about making sure the dog was comfortable and not stressing the dog out. Even when she was working with the participants if a dog did not look totally comfortable she would immediately tell the owner to put the dog back because it was not worth stressing the dog out.
The last section of her seminar was a section I really liked because it is something we have worked with a lot at our house and that is doing things to make sure your dog is physically fit. She uses wobble boards, and she showed us where she used a 9" cone filled with cement with a wobble board on top, so of course I had to do that when I got home--I posted a LONG video of that, LOL, but that stuff is just so good for the dogs and so fun. She also uses stools, and exercise balls, exercise discs, and she brought a lot of her implements for everyone to practice on.
So the videos she recommended for raising your puppies are Susan Garretts Crate games, a personal favorite, Wendy Papes Games video-another personal favorite, Click and Fetch, On the Ball-Deborah Gross Saunders, Pilate for Pooches-Sarah Johnson and Andrew Sams.
THIS IS BREEZE, THEN LIZZIE, THEN CHERRY DOING THE WOBBLE BOARD ON A 9" CONE FILLED WITH CEMENT-SO IT REALLY ROCKS AND ROLLS-the balance work really helps with core strength which protects the dogs back which I feel like helps protect the hips, knees, etc. Another benefit is the dogs that learn to ride the ball or the boards learn to relax their joints which helps them to relax their joints on equipment so they are less prone to injuries, and of course their balance is better so again they are less likely to injure themselves, and it can be fun!
Liz contact progress
We still need some work but Lizzie is finally got the idea of her 2o2o contacts-she is a retrain from the 4 on the floor and I have learned that retrains are HARD! The distressing part of the practice was Lizzie totally not understanding to stay on one side, dancing, twirling and cutting behind me, we had to do tons of call to side work. We do so much work using the Linda M. jump book page 24...my poor page 24 is going to be totally worn out.
My all time FAVORITE training course...so far...
I am teaching the agility class where I usually take classes....and things were sort of messed up, the contact obstacles were not at the yard which sort of messed up some of the plans for the class, it was a cool, cloudy day and I just deceided to do something that I thought would work for everyone and would be a lot of fun for me. The basic class plan that was left for the class was very similar but it did not have the tunnels, so I took some license and changed things a little. I have played with this particular basic box type set up a little before, but I love it, it is very simple but you can train so many skills with not that much equipment and without moving around a lot of stuff. Then it gives you a great place for the dogs to go with the tunnels at the end, so it works to build speed, motivation, or to test things like the weave poles coming out of a tunnel with a lot of whoo hoo factor and a lot of speed.
So with the first class that has the youngest dogs I was able to really walk with them and help them get some front crosses and I will say they all got their front crosses in and did marvelous. Even the youngest dog was able to just back chain small parts and ended up sequencing four obstacles with a front cross in there. I was very proud of them all. It worked great because I held the dogs before the first tunnel to start out with so they could get set up for their front crosses and practice them, then we were able to put the whole first sequence together.
The second class is a class with some more experienced people and we were able to start out helping one dog with speed and motivation by just making a huge speed circle and rewarding often, then we were able to work on a variety of skills. That was a small class so I was able to run Breeze in that class and we had a blast. I rarely get to participate in the class when I am teaching and when I taught last summer I felt like I missed out on so much of my own training time, so it was REALLY COOL to be able to work in the class today-I LOVED that!
WHEW! Teaching the class makes for a very long day, I had to take my daughter to get a tooth filled at 1 pm, and then left for class around 3, but it is a long drive there so by the time we had the two classes, with the drive, set up and clean up, I got home around 11:30.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)