Yikes! I went to train agility yesterday with a really good friend that I have not seen in a long time, it was a red letter day, agility, Cricket and a couple of good friends ;-) how fun is that? Unfortunately, I had to drive almost 3 hours to a field in the middle of NOWHERE! The field was in the middle of an orange grove and sort of a hidden garden type of thing. Very pretty but very private.
YEP, I chose this place to forget to turn off my lights on the car while we were working (I had to drive through a couple of those day light headlight required areas on the drive there). Three hours from home, probably 20 min from a tiny town, way far away from any big towns, and have you ever tried to direct a tow truck to a location in the middle of an orange grove-there were a couple little turns to the agility yard.
I was really sweating it because my friends had jumper cables but we had not been able to jump my car with our cars, I was really worried the tow truck was not going to be able to jump the car, I was having trouble coming up with a Plan B if the car would not start this far from home and with the dogs in the car on a hot summer day-but it was all good in the end.
My car used to have the little warning "bing" if I left the lights on, but that is not working now ;-(, and no one tells you if your lights are on anymore because so many cars automatically turn the lights off. I unfortunately don't have one of those, LOL!
BLOGGER WOES...my gripe of the day-
The real irritant in my life right now is blogger! First off I do not know what the deal is, but blogger started not letting me sign in to leave comments in a lot of peoples blogs, ughghghggh. How irritating is that? What happens is that it tells me I need to sign in, then it brings me back to the blog, then it tells me I need to sign in and it is a never ending cycle. Sometimes I can use my lifejournal account to sign in and sometimes not, just to keep it interesting. Sometimes I can sign in under an open ID and sometimes not. The really irritating moment was when I wanted to sign in and make a comment in my own blog and I can not do that, LOL. So there are a lot of posts I have been dying to make comments on, but just can not get signed in, so if I have been reading and enjoying, it is just a challenge to comment sometimes ;-).
AFRAME
If I could have commented on my own blog, I would have commented about Cynthia's comment and say that what she said hit the nail on the head, a good running contact does take a long time to train, and I it has held us up from being able to trial doing standard courses. Rachel Sanders (whose method we are using) says that if you are REtraining you can go ahead and compete while you are retraining, just try to not do too many aframes in competition on any day while you are retraining. I am not sure that applies to a new train, and I would not do it... A 2020 would have been a lot quicker train, but I could have started a lot earlier training this then I did. I was wishy washy for awhile trying to make a final decision on what I was going to do with my contacts. So length of training is definitely a consideration but I knew that when I started and that was ok with me ;-). Now I have been promised that once you get it,....it is pretty easy to maintain so....hopefully that is so.
A red letter day for us!!! We started the next step of this aframe odyssey. I moved the aframe from 5'3"to 5'5" and added in some handling after the aframe. So I did one trial standing still in the front corner of the box, I did a push past from the left, a push past from the right, one poorly done front cross and one good front cross. We had a 100% success rate and all of a sudden this does not even feel like the same exercise, it is more fun with the movement and it just feels like something has clicked-VERY EXCITING for me!
As always do not feel anyone has to watch this, it is just exciting for me and I can not get enough! LOL, what a dork huh?
Aframe Obsessions.....
MY AFRAME OBSESSION LIVES!!! (but it is getting a little old!)
It is my theory that anyone who has TRAINED a running contact...(as opposed to if you have a dog that has always "naturally" ran through their contact because they naturally run through -the running contact is built in, or you know how to manage so they do it) goes through a little obsessive phase.
WHO KNEW there could be so much to think about even if you were looking for things to think about...lots of thinking about all the little components, dogs strides, how their back feet look as they run-together or split, watching other peoples videos, watching your own videos of your own practice, reading about other peoples journey with running contacts, etc...LOL, my poor family and friends and poor people who visit my blog ;-). All this obsession and I have not got to the part of how to train exits and how to go to the next obstacle, I am sure that will be a whole new area for us. I am getting really ready to move on to the next stage and get this Aframe all put together. We had a big set back a few weeks ago and had to go back to the start,but you know what they say it is always darkest before the light, and they were probably not talking about aframes, but...that saying works for those too! Now I just feel like things are clicking and it is time to shift from slow and careful to HYPERDRIVE. It is very exciting!
I moved the aframe up 7 inches in two practice sessions, we are FINALLY at 5 ft 3-almost at full height. I am soooo excited that we had a 89% success rate, so we can move the aframe up another few inches at our next practice, how cool is that? The one trial that was not successful in our last practice was when I did a different entrance to the aframe which I was not supposed to do. I think Cricket got off balance and on try three she set her foot down on top of the apex, so not her fault she just was not ready for that entrance challenge and it caught her off balance-but she almost made that one too.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT WE ARE ACTUALLY GOING TO DO THIS!
Do not feel you have to watch this, this is part of my obsession and my feelings will not be hurt if you choose to pass on this ;-). If you do watch, check out trial 3...not successful. I had given Cricket a bad entry, which I am not supposed to do yet, she does not yet know how to balance herself with a harder entry, so on the top of the apex she sets her right front foot down-I never saw that even watching the slow motion-Brittney her breeder saw that-and it totally explains why she had to put her foot down before the box, what a miracle she is smart enough to figure it out and even being a little off balanced she was so close to that being a good hit.
This has totally been worth it to train a running aframe because I really am learning a lot, and I have a lot of thoughts on the good and bad of this method--I can not wait to see if my opinion changes as we head into the next phase, and as we get to start competing and see how this baby holds up! It is still aways away, but the end is getting in sight!
As tired as I am of training this, I am already thinking I know someone who I am pretty positive will let me borrow one of their dogs, hummm....and when I get Cricket trialing.., maybe I could borrow a dog to try to to see how I could do trying this another time with the benefit of knowing where I messed up the first time. ;-) Wouldn't that be fun to do with the benefit of some recent hindsight? LOL, see there is an obsessive quality to this training...at least for me. Hummmm....something to think about.....hahahahahahaha
It is my theory that anyone who has TRAINED a running contact...(as opposed to if you have a dog that has always "naturally" ran through their contact because they naturally run through -the running contact is built in, or you know how to manage so they do it) goes through a little obsessive phase.
WHO KNEW there could be so much to think about even if you were looking for things to think about...lots of thinking about all the little components, dogs strides, how their back feet look as they run-together or split, watching other peoples videos, watching your own videos of your own practice, reading about other peoples journey with running contacts, etc...LOL, my poor family and friends and poor people who visit my blog ;-). All this obsession and I have not got to the part of how to train exits and how to go to the next obstacle, I am sure that will be a whole new area for us. I am getting really ready to move on to the next stage and get this Aframe all put together. We had a big set back a few weeks ago and had to go back to the start,but you know what they say it is always darkest before the light, and they were probably not talking about aframes, but...that saying works for those too! Now I just feel like things are clicking and it is time to shift from slow and careful to HYPERDRIVE. It is very exciting!
I moved the aframe up 7 inches in two practice sessions, we are FINALLY at 5 ft 3-almost at full height. I am soooo excited that we had a 89% success rate, so we can move the aframe up another few inches at our next practice, how cool is that? The one trial that was not successful in our last practice was when I did a different entrance to the aframe which I was not supposed to do. I think Cricket got off balance and on try three she set her foot down on top of the apex, so not her fault she just was not ready for that entrance challenge and it caught her off balance-but she almost made that one too.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT WE ARE ACTUALLY GOING TO DO THIS!
Do not feel you have to watch this, this is part of my obsession and my feelings will not be hurt if you choose to pass on this ;-). If you do watch, check out trial 3...not successful. I had given Cricket a bad entry, which I am not supposed to do yet, she does not yet know how to balance herself with a harder entry, so on the top of the apex she sets her right front foot down-I never saw that even watching the slow motion-Brittney her breeder saw that-and it totally explains why she had to put her foot down before the box, what a miracle she is smart enough to figure it out and even being a little off balanced she was so close to that being a good hit.
This has totally been worth it to train a running aframe because I really am learning a lot, and I have a lot of thoughts on the good and bad of this method--I can not wait to see if my opinion changes as we head into the next phase, and as we get to start competing and see how this baby holds up! It is still aways away, but the end is getting in sight!
As tired as I am of training this, I am already thinking I know someone who I am pretty positive will let me borrow one of their dogs, hummm....and when I get Cricket trialing.., maybe I could borrow a dog to try to to see how I could do trying this another time with the benefit of knowing where I messed up the first time. ;-) Wouldn't that be fun to do with the benefit of some recent hindsight? LOL, see there is an obsessive quality to this training...at least for me. Hummmm....something to think about.....hahahahahahaha
Experiences and Some Thoughts on Contacts!
OUR AFRAME: I LOVE training challenges and trying to teach new things. I think that is one of the reasons why I wanted to train the 4 on the floor with Breeze for her contacts. I did not know anyone who had trained the 4 on the floor and I learned so much by teaching it, some of which has helped with the aframe we are doing now, some has helped with our 2020 we are teaching now, although we had a lot of detours with Breezes four on the floor contact.. I love Breezes contacts now. Learning by trial and error really does make the whole thing take longer. I will say that in the back of my mind up until now....I was worried that we would never get a decent running aframe, but all of a sudden I feel a new found confidence, and inside I no longer have doubts that we will get a good running aframe, now I can focus my worry on wondering if I will learn how to handle speedy Crickets running aframe ;-).
When it came time to teach Cricket some sort of contact behavior I could not resist the challenge of trying to teach a running contact on the aframe. I liked the idea of the challenge of learning to handle a course with a running aframe which I **HOPE** is doable, but it will be different from our stopped contacts of course. One instructor told me she would not recommend teaching a running aframe with a dog unless it had a "natural stride", she did not know how I would accomplish a running aframe with a border collie, either how to teach it or how to reward it or how to handle it, so of course I had to try it after that comment.
I got the Rachel Sanders Running Aframe DVD, I signed up for the Yahoo Running Contact list, and I trolled through youtubes to watch videos of other peoples training. I was suprised at all the things you had to think about, training the dog to handle turns because they will not be stopped to give you a chance to get there to handle that say if they need to turn back and go into a tunnel, it is really important where their focus is, I learned that if Cricket is paying too much attention to me she will leap off the side way too high because she is looking at me, I learned that if she sets one foot down too high she is likely to quickly to start to launch right over the contact. The other thing that is suprising is how fast it can all unravel if you do not really stick to all your criteria and evaluate what is going on.
The biggest thing I would recommend to someone thinking about running contacts is to video as much as you can, so you can really see what is happening. Recently I had a session that I thought we had a 100% success rate, I looked at the video and found that Cricket had CONSISTENTLY stuck her left front foot down on the aframe, it was happening because she had started not going far enough over the apex and so she was starting to lose her stride into the contact zone. Luckily I saw that quickly and Brittney (Cricket's breeder)helped me figure out what was going on so I could put a stride regulator (a pool noodle on pvc so I can attack it to the aframe).
We are back on track now and cooking (I think, LOL). It is all looking really good now and we have had several sessions where things are looking GREAT. For the most part I really like this method of Aframe training, although I would really like to try Sylvia Trkmans method of training a running contact,....maybe with my next dog????
I know it really seems like we are taking forever, Crickets brother did this method and has been competing for awhile, the just seemed to zip through it and has a gorgeous aframe, but guess Cricket and I do everything a little slower then some ;-) ... even if we are slow, TEAM CRICKET is going to get there and I am confident it will be beautiful so who cares if we are taking the scenic route to get there? I am doubting how much better it is for the dogs joints from a 2020, just because of the sheer number of repetitions I have had to do to teach it, ....way more then I thought,although Rachels method is supposed to limit the number of reps you need. Maybe the number of reps I have needed is related to the mistakes I made, maybe next time I would not have to do as many?
DOG WALK CONTACTS: We have been playing a lot of games with the dog walk contacts. I stuck a board on a stool in the hall and when we are rough housing I run down the hall, dodging the dogs and cats and Cricket jumps on the board and runs into position. I also moved my baby dog walk to the gate going out to the agility yard. Cricket LOVES going into the agility yard, it is one of her highest value treats, so a couple of times a day we run to the gate and play the touch game, she runs into position and then I release her into the yard to go do some training for a few minutes. I really want Cricket to understand the position and to think the position on the contact is a very fun thing ;-) .
contact board and aframe practice, and it is a red letter video,....my 150th posted video! Whooo hoooo!
I know watching other peoples aframe videos of the same thing over and over are not very exciting unless someone is doing the same training now...but if anyone wants to watch any of our other videos they are on my youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/bordergirlsmom
When it came time to teach Cricket some sort of contact behavior I could not resist the challenge of trying to teach a running contact on the aframe. I liked the idea of the challenge of learning to handle a course with a running aframe which I **HOPE** is doable, but it will be different from our stopped contacts of course. One instructor told me she would not recommend teaching a running aframe with a dog unless it had a "natural stride", she did not know how I would accomplish a running aframe with a border collie, either how to teach it or how to reward it or how to handle it, so of course I had to try it after that comment.
I got the Rachel Sanders Running Aframe DVD, I signed up for the Yahoo Running Contact list, and I trolled through youtubes to watch videos of other peoples training. I was suprised at all the things you had to think about, training the dog to handle turns because they will not be stopped to give you a chance to get there to handle that say if they need to turn back and go into a tunnel, it is really important where their focus is, I learned that if Cricket is paying too much attention to me she will leap off the side way too high because she is looking at me, I learned that if she sets one foot down too high she is likely to quickly to start to launch right over the contact. The other thing that is suprising is how fast it can all unravel if you do not really stick to all your criteria and evaluate what is going on.
The biggest thing I would recommend to someone thinking about running contacts is to video as much as you can, so you can really see what is happening. Recently I had a session that I thought we had a 100% success rate, I looked at the video and found that Cricket had CONSISTENTLY stuck her left front foot down on the aframe, it was happening because she had started not going far enough over the apex and so she was starting to lose her stride into the contact zone. Luckily I saw that quickly and Brittney (Cricket's breeder)helped me figure out what was going on so I could put a stride regulator (a pool noodle on pvc so I can attack it to the aframe).
We are back on track now and cooking (I think, LOL). It is all looking really good now and we have had several sessions where things are looking GREAT. For the most part I really like this method of Aframe training, although I would really like to try Sylvia Trkmans method of training a running contact,....maybe with my next dog????
I know it really seems like we are taking forever, Crickets brother did this method and has been competing for awhile, the just seemed to zip through it and has a gorgeous aframe, but guess Cricket and I do everything a little slower then some ;-) ... even if we are slow, TEAM CRICKET is going to get there and I am confident it will be beautiful so who cares if we are taking the scenic route to get there? I am doubting how much better it is for the dogs joints from a 2020, just because of the sheer number of repetitions I have had to do to teach it, ....way more then I thought,although Rachels method is supposed to limit the number of reps you need. Maybe the number of reps I have needed is related to the mistakes I made, maybe next time I would not have to do as many?
DOG WALK CONTACTS: We have been playing a lot of games with the dog walk contacts. I stuck a board on a stool in the hall and when we are rough housing I run down the hall, dodging the dogs and cats and Cricket jumps on the board and runs into position. I also moved my baby dog walk to the gate going out to the agility yard. Cricket LOVES going into the agility yard, it is one of her highest value treats, so a couple of times a day we run to the gate and play the touch game, she runs into position and then I release her into the yard to go do some training for a few minutes. I really want Cricket to understand the position and to think the position on the contact is a very fun thing ;-) .
contact board and aframe practice, and it is a red letter video,....my 150th posted video! Whooo hoooo!
I know watching other peoples aframe videos of the same thing over and over are not very exciting unless someone is doing the same training now...but if anyone wants to watch any of our other videos they are on my youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/bordergirlsmom
Cricket goes to school...
Cricket got to go to agility class last night. I was not sure where our skills would be...and I had planned to do at LEAST half the class with Breeze.
Cricket actually did really well, and except for one near death incident, when I thought I could get ahead and do a front cross...(in my dreams could I get ahead, LOL) so we did crash-I even caught that on tape! Luckily I managed to stay upright so it was all good. I imagine poor Crickets life was flashing before her eyes too, LOL. OOOH forgot the other bad moment when I was getting ahold of Cricket at the ed of a run and the next gal started running...Cricket got away and chased her dog on course, yep, Cricket is pretty stimulated by other dogs running. Luckily that ended well too.
The last run of the night I ran with Breeze, it was so weird running with a baby dog all night then bringing Breeze out who I now realize is a pretty experienced dog, she turns so tightly and reads me so well....what a dream girl! I have to admit after tonight I really think Cricket is a dream girl too. Not sure she thinks I am a dream handler after tonight, sorry Crick.
The classes at our local club are CRAZY though, we started at 7:30 and finished at 10:30-how is that possible? I did not get home until 11:10, it was a long night. One of the lights was out at the yard, and it was pitch black, even with the shadows and working at night which is a first for her, Cricket was not thrown by anything, what a good girlie!
THE COURSES:a lot of running,...you can click on the map and it will enlarge so you can read the numbers ;-) if you are interested.
THE VIDEO:not the best video, I did not get most of our work, but gosh a few sequences to give you and idea and for me to look back on in years ahead to remember how my baby girl is. It was pitch black, so the video was a bit hard to see so I adjusted the colors, so it has a weird look, sorry about that. The dog barking is not my dog for a change-I have been known to have the barking dog on more then one occasion.
Cricket actually did really well, and except for one near death incident, when I thought I could get ahead and do a front cross...(in my dreams could I get ahead, LOL) so we did crash-I even caught that on tape! Luckily I managed to stay upright so it was all good. I imagine poor Crickets life was flashing before her eyes too, LOL. OOOH forgot the other bad moment when I was getting ahold of Cricket at the ed of a run and the next gal started running...Cricket got away and chased her dog on course, yep, Cricket is pretty stimulated by other dogs running. Luckily that ended well too.
The last run of the night I ran with Breeze, it was so weird running with a baby dog all night then bringing Breeze out who I now realize is a pretty experienced dog, she turns so tightly and reads me so well....what a dream girl! I have to admit after tonight I really think Cricket is a dream girl too. Not sure she thinks I am a dream handler after tonight, sorry Crick.
The classes at our local club are CRAZY though, we started at 7:30 and finished at 10:30-how is that possible? I did not get home until 11:10, it was a long night. One of the lights was out at the yard, and it was pitch black, even with the shadows and working at night which is a first for her, Cricket was not thrown by anything, what a good girlie!
THE COURSES:a lot of running,...you can click on the map and it will enlarge so you can read the numbers ;-) if you are interested.
THE VIDEO:not the best video, I did not get most of our work, but gosh a few sequences to give you and idea and for me to look back on in years ahead to remember how my baby girl is. It was pitch black, so the video was a bit hard to see so I adjusted the colors, so it has a weird look, sorry about that. The dog barking is not my dog for a change-I have been known to have the barking dog on more then one occasion.
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