Since we did the DOCNA trial a couple weeks ago and missed most of our contacts, I have gone back to really reinforcing them using a hoop at the bottom. Initially I had trained him to hit the "box" that I placed on the contact zone, but as his confidence built up, that deteriorated.
I am going to see if I can rely on muscle memory to get a consistent performance. I have tried to run him over his contacts every day. I have a little more than 3 weeks before his next trial - his DAM team at the Rocky Mountain USDAA Regional.
Here is a video of our training. I think his dogwalk is looking AWESOME.
Chaos Crew
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Rip is on a DAM team!
I've decided to enter Rip on a DAM team at our upcoming September (11-13) Regional event! I have no expectations of a Q, nor does the rest of our team as we all have inexperienced young dogs. In fact, that inspired our team name "Black and White and Green". We will join Mary w her border collie Split and Val with her smoothcoat border collie Trickster for a fun, no pressure, lets-get-experience team. If we can run clean, it will be interesting to see how our times stack up to the Masters dogs.
Skye is also on a PVP team with Susan Anderson's dog Ring. We are both pretty consistent, and Ring needs the Q for Nationals (Skye qualified in January), so hopefully I can help Susan out. Since Skye is mostly white and Ring is all black, I came up with the team name Ying and Yang. If you are not familiar with that, its typically represented by this symbol:
Skye is also on a PVP team with Susan Anderson's dog Ring. We are both pretty consistent, and Ring needs the Q for Nationals (Skye qualified in January), so hopefully I can help Susan out. Since Skye is mostly white and Ring is all black, I came up with the team name Ying and Yang. If you are not familiar with that, its typically represented by this symbol:
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Rip's Debut!
This weekend Rip and I did a DOCNA trial as his agility debut. He did a great job!
We had some issues as expected, but overall he was fast, enthusiastic, and had a good time. My Rip boy is the best! We MUST do about 100 more repetitions with the hoop on the AFrame though. He missed most of his AFrames, though on the plus side, he did hit almost all of his dogwalks.
A couple times he thought the dogwalk was the teeter, so he slowed at the top before realizing it was the DW. We had a few run-by's on jumps, but that's OK - its my handling that I need to adjust as Rip is not Skye.
We only Q'd 2 of our 8 runs, missing a couple due to dropped bars (in jumpers) and a couple due to jumped contacts (Standard), but all the runs were great.
Here is a video of some of them. Check out those weaves - love my 2x2 trained boy!
We had some issues as expected, but overall he was fast, enthusiastic, and had a good time. My Rip boy is the best! We MUST do about 100 more repetitions with the hoop on the AFrame though. He missed most of his AFrames, though on the plus side, he did hit almost all of his dogwalks.
A couple times he thought the dogwalk was the teeter, so he slowed at the top before realizing it was the DW. We had a few run-by's on jumps, but that's OK - its my handling that I need to adjust as Rip is not Skye.
We only Q'd 2 of our 8 runs, missing a couple due to dropped bars (in jumpers) and a couple due to jumped contacts (Standard), but all the runs were great.
Here is a video of some of them. Check out those weaves - love my 2x2 trained boy!
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