Paytongility 2014
I had no idea this photo was being taken until long after the fact.
It has not been a very good year for us in agility. In an entire year of trialing, Payton has only gotten three Qs. Two are in Novice FAST so they don’t even really count. One Open JWW Q. So many near misses in JWW; most of the time it’s just no weave poles, but if we have weave poles, I get so excited he got his poles I blow it for us, gaining us extra refusals from poor cues or doing something that results in a dropped bar. Standard has just been an overall disaster between the weave poles and contacts.
And yet we train. I sign us up. We go.
And we play.
Everybody loves Payton. Even after a horrible run the peanut gallery always tells me he’s a beautiful dog, he has great structure, he looks amazing. His speed is highly desirable if nothing else is. He loves the game, he is happy, he is excited (yes I know.) Over Halloween a friend who last saw Payton when he was a tiny 14 week old puppy finally got to see him run and came up to me after our run and said “I think you should know, that dog is going to be really good really soon. He’s fast, he’s really incredible. He’s going to be great. He really is.” Many many people who have given me a lot of votes of confidence with him, which helps when we have a bad run and all I want to do is sit down and cry.
But this past weekend is when I actually got the best comment of all.
After a run, which didn’t go as planned, we came back to our crate and Payton was sitting in his chair getting cookies for his stay and whatever else he did that was clever (I always tell him exactly what his cookies are for. One cookie for a stay. One cookie for the weaves. One cookie for that obstacle discrimination. Et cetera.) And the lady crated in front of me said “I really like how you handle your dog.”
Thinking she meant “handle” as in handling on the course, I said “oh, thank you.”
But then she continued.
“He has a lot of drive. And you do a really good job of trying to channel that drive instead of trying to just squash it.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing what she meant. “Well thank you. That actually means a lot, because it honestly doesn’t feel like it.”
“Well, it might not feel like it,” she says, “but I can tell by watching you together. You’re doing a really good job with him. You seem like you really know your dog and you really know your breed. I love watching you with him.”
That is probably the best compliment I have gotten with my dogs. And of all the awesome photos I’ve gotten of Payton doing agility this year, I really do think this one is my favorite.
I would much prefer to be posting brags of his Qs, his ribbons, his placements, his MACH points, how close we are to a championship. Instead we are limping along just trying to get some Open Qs, never mind getting OUT of Open. He is not an easy dog, but he is mine, he’s kinda cute, and I kinda like him. I know in other hands he would be treated an entirely different way. It is a balancing act with him and will probably forever be one. But he is mine and I’m glad he is.
I guess I’ll keep him.
At least until we see how next year goes.
Meanwhile Georgie is over here like HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT I THINK I MIGHT GET A MACH IN A YEAR OR SO
Payton’s First Agility Seminar
Yesterday was our Stuart Mah seminar. The day started at 4:30AM; I packed almost everything into the car the night before so I wouldn’t have a lot to mess with in the morning. Roll out of bed, feed the dogs, potty the dogs, get dressed, pack the cooler full of caffeine, put Payton in the car crate, fire up the GPS, and away we go! We left at about 5:15AM and arrived at the seminar location a little bit after 7:40AM. The seminar was small, so we all got plenty of chances to work our dogs.
We started just talking a little about a list on a wipe off board, a list of skills dogs need for agility and a list of skills people need for agility. The list for dogs is obviously much longer, but it was a bit surprising to me how MUCH longer it was. There were definitely skills on the list that Payton doesn’t have. Then we all got the chance to run our dogs on a course Stuart set up. After we ran, he asked us what we thought our dogs needed.
Funny enough, after two weeks of Steak & Weaves, there were NO weave poles in the course. We didn’t see a single weave pole all day. We did, however, see contact equipment, and Payton was spectacular in his judgement of where to jump off in order to precisely clear the yellow completely. Sigh. He also took some great off-courses for me. And barked a lot. Basically, he had a very lovely Payton-esque run, which is what I was hoping for so I could be like “My dog. Let me show him to you.”
So what I said I thought Payton needed was impulse control. Stuart said “that’s part of it.” But more over, what he thinks Payton needs he called “attention to detail.” Payton’s version of agility is to run around the course as fast as he can, taking as many obstacles as he can, often just grabbing whatever he sees in front of him, with very little regard for where I am on the course or what I’m telling him to do. In my description of this, it sounds like a dog who is stressed and is running zoomies around the course – we’ve all seen those dogs. But that’s not quite Payton. Payton instead is so eager to go on, run ahead, and keep trying to take as many obstacles as he can – hit your contact? But there’s a jump right out there. Finish the weave poles? But there’s a tunnel there I would rather do instead. Take THAT jump? But this one is in front of me! The rules just don’t come into play anymore in his eagerness to play the game as fast as possible. In my head I pictured a little kid playing soccer. The kid is so excited he picks up the soccer ball, runs as fast as he can down the field, flings the ball as hard as he can into the goal… then he dives into the goal, grabs the ball, and runs back the other way as fast as he can, flings the ball into THAT goal, repeat. And the whole time he’s doing this he’s screaming at the top of his lungs. And meanwhile all the other kids are standing there going “But dude, that’s not how you play the game!” But he just doesn’t care about how THEY want to play the game, because he has decided he wants to play the game by running as fast as he can and scoring as many goals as possible, not even necessarily for his own team. He doesn’t care that in soccer you’re supposed to move the ball with your feet. He doesn’t care that only the goals scored for YOUR team really matter. He just wants to run fast and score goals and also yell a lot.
That’s Payton playing agility. Except it’s not quite a perfect example, because Payton will generally follow me around a course. He doesn’t run off and start taking jumps at the opposite end of the ring while I’m still standing back by obstacle #3 – but he’s not super concerned if I’m over by jump #5 and he’s on an off-course over that way. In fact the off-course jump might, in Payton’s view of agility, give him bonus points (hint: it doesn’t.)
In some ways, this is good news, but in other ways, it’s bad, because Impulse Control is a Thing that I know, a Thing that I have a concept of how to work on. How to teach my dog attention to detail, I have no idea. I’ve never even heard of that as a Thing.
He also said part of the reason Payton does this is because he doesn’t feel there are any consequences for not playing the game correctly. It’s true; I don’t punish my dog for making mistakes. I try to not even let him know he’s screwed up and I’m unhappy. And it wasn’t until later, while Stuart was talking about something else, that it really occurred to me WHY. Because in my head I think that if I do anything or say anything, I’m going to squash Payton’s enthusiasm and end up with Auggie. A dog who desperately needs the energy to be kept cranked WAY over the top to drive him through a trial, and even then, he might not make course time. So I’ve decided that in exchange for speed and enthusiasm, I give up control. And the end result is we still don’t Q but for entirely different reasons.
I’ve also said before to friends that I feel like Payton and I escalate each other, and definitely some of what Stuart said backs this up. Payton is running fast and loose and loud. I start getting louder. He gets louder (and faster) so I get louder and the cycle just continues. I want Payton to come to me and instead of being calm and quiet, I’m basically shouting PAYTON PAYTON PAYTON at him which is just adding energy and intensity and doesn’t at all signal “chill out” to Payton. Somehow I have to manage to be in enough control of myself and my voice and my tone and volume to communicate better to him. Not exactly a skill I’m good at; my volume level tends to be very reactive… so that will be interesting.
There’s also the issue that I run hard and fast a lot. Payton runs hard and fast so I run hard and fast so Payton runs hard and fast, more of the cycle repeating. Let me drop my psychology degree in here for a second to mention that it’s very self-rewarding for ME TOO to run hard and fast with Payton; excepting the exercise physiological aspects of endorphins and everything from the equation (like the fact that my sport of choice is running and I just plain enjoy it,) which of course comes into play, I have a fast dog who is wildly opposite from my first Molasses Dog and it’s incredibly rewarding in all kinds of ways to run all out with my fast dog. It’s also rewarding to Q though. There has to be a balance there, from me, which might be harder than just training the dog.
Ultimately it almost sounds like it’s going to take more changes in my behavior to force changes in Payton’s behavior, so the onus is really going to primarily be on me. Yes, there will be some extra training going on, but I’m going to have to step up my game and be better about what I do and don’t do with Payton in the ring. Our next trial is over the July 4th weekend, so we shall see if there’s anything to be gained by that point or if I’m just going to continue setting money on fire for a while. All in all, it was a pretty good experience and helpful to have somebody of a high caliber confirm a lot of things I was thinking. I flat out asked about the contacts and weave issues (even though Stuart didn’t see him weave) and he agreed that he feels it’s an overall issue with his lack of attention to detail rather than an obstacle performance issue.
On the positives, Payton was otherwise a delight all day. Sat in his crate quietly even though a major windstorm was brewing outside and the entire building sounded like it was shaking. Let Stuart use him as a demo for his stretching routine. Gained some admirers who asked where I had gotten him because he was a nice, solid dog who rebounded from failures easily and is of course a very cute, enthusiastic boy. In most cases I really believe Payton tries very hard to be a good boy, and while it’s true I was sitting there halfway through the day and thought “I miss Auggie…” it was nice to spend a day with my little baby dog and have some fun. Also, it’s the very first time I’ve ever seen Payton truly tired. He had to use his brain HARD for hours at a time, and even though he was happy to play and wrestle and run around after we got home, when we all finally crawled into bed at night, he lay down right next to me and stayed there, even after Auggie decided it was too hot and jumped off the bed to sleep on the floor. Normally P snuggles for a bit and then moves to the floor, but NOPE… too tired. Can’t even get off the bed. And that alone might have been worth the whole thing.
Steak and Weaves
As part of Payton’s re-training (to rule out any gaps in our training as issues in the ring), I’ve decided to start over with the 2x2s. In order to make them really awesome, I’ve also decided to use steak to train them.
Today was our first session, the “entry” pole not totally wide open, but open enough to make it an obvious entry. I worked the arc, alternating success with entries high on the arc with an easy, straight on, flat out entry. His success rate was quite high although at times when we were high on the arc he’d enter the second set, possibly because they “look” like weave poles and the open entry doesn’t. We’ll go with the former in the name of re-training.
Although it’s funny to even call it re-training, because, as I mentioned to a co-worker, he always knows what weave poles are in the backyard. Is it re-training, or is it supplemental training? Proofing? Desperate attempt to get my dog to Q? What should I technically call it? So I’ve decided, for the fun of it, to call it Steak and Weaves.
We have three nice steaks I picked up cheap at the grocery store last night, so those will be sliced up and grilled and used for our further work. We also have some jump work and more contact proofing to do, so I need to work out a new training schedule for him. We have just under two weeks to get some additional training in before our seminar, so hopefully we’ll be able to make some advancements and rule training gaps out so we can be a little more direct with our seminar adjustments… but in the meantime… STEAK AND WEAVES!
Memorial Day Agility Weekend, and Georgie’s New Title!
This weekend we drove down to Glen Carbon for three days of agility. Whenever I have a day off work for a holiday, I like to try and squeeze in three days of agility, since it gives me an extra chance to snag some Qs without having to take any vacation days. I’ve been hesitant to go down to Glen Carbon for a long time because it’s a bit far and the hotels aren’t very cheap. I hated to make a big, expensive trip out of it and waste all that money on brand new baby dogs who aren’t quite on their game yet, but my friends wanted me to go, so away we went.
I also decided to enter Auggie in one day, just for fun. Auggie and I haven’t really done any practicing since before Louisville, and being semi-retired, I don’t really care what he does, so it was just for the fun of running my old man. He ran both rings on Sunday and actually had some really nice runs. His jumping wasn’t the greatest since we haven’t done any work, and he knocked the final bar on the triple jump in both rings, and he also decided 11 weave poles were plenty, BUT – he was really running quite fast for Auggie runs. If he had Qd in standard he would have gotten about 10 points, and jumpers would have been about 4 or 5, which might not sound like much, but for a dog who had a career plagued by trying to make SCT, it’s a pretty big deal. The other big deal was I did all of this without using any treats at all with him. All of our warm-up and playing before his runs was done with his shark tug. This is a dog who wasn’t really into tugging for many, many, many years, and only really started to tug when he was six years old. Despite NQs it was really pretty awesome for Auggie, and of course, it’s always the best thing in the world to run my big dog.
Payton and I have spent the past two weeks doing self-control work and some more proofing on contacts. We also did some weave pole work, but that’s sort of frustrating for me because I cannot make the dog miss weave poles in the backyard. He’s excellent about it and I felt like I wasn’t really working on what I needed to be working on by flinging him into 12 weave poles from various difficult angles. Perhaps the weaves were really what we needed to work on, because all weekend long, Payton did not complete a single set of 12 weave poles. He made some entries. He also missed some entries. He did a few poles, and also skipped a few (several.)
On the upside, his startline stays were really great all weekend long. I have been hesitant to do a lot of lead outs with Payton because, in the backyard, he will sometimes decide the fastest way to release is to simply go around the jumps rather than actually taking the jumps in front of him. I hate to blow a run just because I’m trying to do a lead out, and given that my sport of choice is running, sprinting to keep up with my dog is well within my physical abilities, so I haven’t done a lot of them. This weekend I decided to try it, wondering if the extra self-control required to not break a stay might help with control on the rest of the course, too. I can tell you it doesn’t bleed over into self-control on the rest of the course, but he did several nice lead outs for me, including one through a tire jump, which it wasn’t too long ago that we had tire issues. His contacts were also pretty nice. The a-frame wasn’t what I wanted, but I wasn’t getting what I wanted from the a-frame in practice either, and I’ve been considering re-training the a-frame with the Rachel Sanders method to a running a-frame and reserving the 2o2o for the dog walk. He wasn’t called on the a-frame all weekend long, so there’s that. This weekend he actually chose to complete the teeter, waiting for it to tip rather than adopting our last agility weekend’s style of running up the teeter, pausing for about a quarter of a second, then diving off the side because it wasn’t tipping fast enough and he needs to GO GO GO GO! His dog walk, however, which is what I’ve really been working on, was rather nice. The first day he held it properly. The second day we had a minor fiasco at the table and I was a little irritated, so I held him on his contact for a LONG time. The third day I admit I was irritated at him because he didn’t get his weave poles and ran past the dog walk, only issuing one “touch” command as I blew far ahead of him, and he cleared off the down plank without getting anywhere near the yellow. Bad trainer for letting my irritation get to me and failing to try and maintain my own criteria.
A contributing factor may also be that this weekend, I tested out giving him multiple “touch” commands. Part of me hates to do this, because part of me really believes I should only need to give my dog one command for him to respond properly. I don’t have to tell my dogs to “sit” multiple times. I do not have to, nor do I, chatter “stay… stay… stay…” to my dogs to get them to stay. I do not have to tell him “jump jump jump!” So why should I have to tell Payton “Touch, touch, touch” on the agility course? One should be enough.
But the reality is that so far, one has NOT been enough. I also will happily tell my dogs “tunnel tunnel tunnel!!” to really drive and send them to a tunnel. The other part of me doesn’t care about this, remembering an article in Clean Run written by Silvia Trkman about how she talks a lot to her dogs and repeats commands like “tunnel tunnel tunnel.” So why, exactly, should “touch” be any different than “tunnel?” If I say “tunnel tunnel tunnel” to encourage them to drive forward into a tunnel, “touch touch touch” should encourage drive down to the contact. And with only a very small amount of data (three days this weekend), it appears multiple commands to Payton WILL get him into his position. It’s not like I’m trying to be on the World Team or anything anyway, I’m just trying to enjoy a sport with my dog, and if giving him multiple commands is the difference between an NQ and frustration and a Q and success, why shouldn’t I?
So that’s where things stand with Payton at the moment. Still work to do on the contacts and some challenges with weave poles. I will fully admit that excepting the weave poles and some weird table issues, most problems from this weekend were 100% my fault (resulting from bad handling position or one time I set him up too close to the start jump), and there were also things that looked really, really good, and should make me very proud of my young baby dog. I am confident we’ll eventually get there as a team, it’s just going to take time. I still haven’t learned that Payton is not Auggie and I cannot run Payton just like Auggie. There’s a lot of physical muscle memory stuff going on that I need to break from four years of running Auggie and less than a year of running Payton. It will happen, and once it does, I believe we will be beautiful. At this point you can cue Georgie Harrison and start singing “It’s gonna take money, a whole lotta spending money, it’s gonna take plenty of money, to do it right child. It’s gonna take time, a whole lotta precious time, it’s gonna take patience and time to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it right child.” YEP.
HOWEVER.
The real exciting moment of this weekend is that Georgie had some phenomenal runs of her own. After picking up the first Open Q in jumpers at our last trial, she followed up her performance by snagging a jumpers Q on Saturday, missing one on Sunday by one refusal, and then grabbing her third and final OAJ leg on Monday. So the baby girly has now blown past her best friend Payton and has her OAJ. She also was one refusal away from her first standard leg on Monday. She’s a very good dog and everybody had great things to say about her. A nice, steady dog. In my head I imagine she’s out on the course singing to Payton “Anything you can do, I can do better!” So in honor of the great little girly, here’s the video of all three of her OAJ qualifying legs:
So big congrats to Georgie! Now she gets to start chasing Excellent legs. She really only needs to get a few kinks ironed out with her weave poles and a few other baby dog things, and otherwise I think she’s going to be quite phenomenal.
So that was our long weekend, some ups and downs, plenty of alcohol was had by me, but overall, I remembered that even a bad weekend at agility is better than a good day at work. Fun was had by all. I’m pretty sure bad baby Pay had the most fun of the whole crew.
Springfield Agility Wrap-up
Agility in Springfield started out good, got weird, got better, then got worse… then got mostly better, then ended on a good note.
To start, we arrived Friday morning and got set up. Georgie ran in jumpers and snagged that last Q she needed to get her NAJ title. Yay little girly!! What a great way to start the weekend. We decided not to move her up for the rest of the weekend, mostly because she doesn’t have 12 weave poles. I debated moving her up and letting her see some tricky Open courses but not even attempting the weaves, but we decided it was more important to let her see some more Novice courses and just gain more confidence.
Next up was open jumpers. I pulled Payton out of his crate before his run… and promptly freaked out a bit because his face looked SUPER puffy. I asked my CVT friend to look at it and she agreed he was puffy, and thought he had some kind of lumpy nodule on the right side of his muzzle. After some quick discussion, I popped him a Benadryl. The puffiness went down pretty quickly, and he was in a good mood and playing, so I ran him and he seemed happy and fine. After about a half hour, the puffiness went down, and by his standard runs later he was back to normal. We thought maybe just sinuses from environmental allergies? Though I thought there was a possibility that there was a spider in his crate (I had just picked them up from my house Thursday night and loaded them into the car, and they were in my garage where they are definitely spiders.) and maybe a spider bit him.
Georgie then picked up her first ever standard Q, getting her first ever “double-Q,” so it was a good day for Georgie. Payton NQ’d both his runs, but I cut him some slack since his face was all puffy that morning.
That evening we had the great Hotel Tire Building and practiced the tire in the hotel room, and I felt better for what the next day held.
At 2AM Saturday morning, Payton woke me up by jumping in the bed and pressing himself against me, obviously upset. He kept shaking his head and was holding one ear off to the side – his right ear was bothering him. By 2:30AM, I didn’t know what do; he wasn’t settling down while holding him, stroking him, trying to physically prevent him from shaking his head. By that point, his fussing woke up my mom, so I turned the lights on and started trying to come up with another idea. I tried trimming the hair around his ear in case it was bothering him – nope. I tried cleaning it out with a cotton ball, and didn’t see anything gross in there… but when I really looked down inside the ear canal, I could see spots of blood. That’s never a good sign. So I pulled out the phone book to try and find the local emergency vet. I called and asked their advice, giving them the history with what happened with his puffy face, and they guessed possibly still allergies and recommended more Benadryl. I was of course happy to try it and avoid an emergency vet visit, so I gave him another Benadryl and tucked him into bed with me to hold him and see if he would calm down.
For a few minutes around 3:15 or so, it seemed like he was going to settle down… then he started panting again and shaking his head non-stop. At 3:30 it had been a half hour since the Benadryl and he was still pretty clearly in distress, so I put my clothes on and drove to the e-vet.
They had to sedate him to look down in his ear canal to make sure there wasn’t any kind of debris in there; there was nothing there, but she thought there might have been a small tear on his eardrum. So we were sent off with some ABX and some pain killers/mild sedative, and there’s really nothing else we can do except wait for him to get better. She said to have my regular vet re-check him in a week. We returned to the hotel at 4:30 in the morning and he was still quite drowsy from the sedative, so I tucked him into a crate and he slept for most of the night without further issue.
Saturday he seemed okay in the morning, but about mid-afternoon he was getting fidgety again. I gave him some Rescue Remedy and Traumeel and that seemed to help for a bit and got us through the afternoon. During his runs, he ran with as much joie de vivre as he always has and seemed quite pleased with himself – possibly the excitement made for a nice distraction – so I decided to run him instead of pulling. No Q’s, but I hardly expected a lot from him. Georgie ran as well but got no Q’s on Saturday either. He started fidgeting more in the evening, but I pushed it until 9pm to give him his meds again, hoping the mild sedative pill would help him sleep again. He was clearly in a foul mood, pouting in the crate the entire evening. I was exhausted, not having slept much myself the night before, and hated that he wasn’t feeling well and I couldn’t do anything to help him feel better, and it was COLD AS BALLS at the trial and I hate the cold, and I just really wanted to go home. But I’d already paid for my hotel and my runs, so I deemed to tough it out.
Sunday morning, Georgie started the morning with a nice run in novice jumpers, picking up an extra Q. Payton had a fair run in open jumpers but acted like he had no clue what weave poles were, and also shook his head a few times during his run, so I was kind of upset. Since it was quite cool out, I packed up and decided to work out of the car for our last runs so I would be ready to just put the dogs back in the car after their standard runs and go home. I took everybody on a nice long walk around the fairgrounds because there were hours to go between runs. Georgie’s standard run was first and she proved three days might just be too much for her. Payton’s run was next (with one dog between us, yay for Novice) and we had a bobble at the tunnel with Payton deciding the far (wrong) side of the tunnel was the preferred side, but instead of just bagging the run I stuck it out and got him in the right side of the tunnel. He stuck his contacts the best he had done all weekend, decided the table wasn’t worth getting up on right away, but ran the rest of the course pretty nicely.
I left the ring thinking the tunnel had done us in, but a competitor I know was outside the ring and said “No, I’m pretty sure that was a Q.” So instead of putting the dogs in the car and driving off annoyed and ribbon-less, I stuck around to wait and see…
And sure enough, there it was. Payton got the last Novice Standard Q he needed to secure his NA title.
Hurray!!! We aren’t entered in any more trials and probably won’t do anything until next spring, so it was nice to wrap up the season by finally cleaning up that novice title. Payton is officially out of Novice!
Both dogs have MASSIVE homework lists for this winter and so much to do. I also have the tiny matter of a half-marathon in April to prepare for, training for which has taken a backseat to working Payton. Now I will hopefully be able to strike a better balance and get both things done, and by the time we get back at it in the spring, things will be cleaner, faster, and much much better!
I haven’t edited videos yet because I am still exhausted, but glad to have picked up two titles this weekend. Payton is also feeling much, much better now, shaking his head far less, playing and throwing toys at me, and happy to curl up on the floor and get his belly rubbed instead of sulking in a crate. Georgie, however, is rather mad because I won’t let her jump on Payton’s head and chew his ears. Poor poor Georgie.
This Is What Happens At Trials
Payton went under the tire today in his standard run – twice. He did this once in Indy too, but at least that time I got him back and he actually jumped the tire. Today he was like NOPE NOT GOING THROUGH IT MUST GO UNDER NOPE NOPE.
On our way to get dinner, we pulled in and I discovered we were next to a Menards Hardware Store.
So what is happening right now? I bought a ten foot piece of irrigation tubing, scissors, and a roll of yellow duct tape, and I made a tire, and we’re practicing it in the hotel room.
I sent a photo to our trainer and she texted me back “Ha! You’re drunk and you made your own tire!”
And I said THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT IS HAPPENING because I’m totally drinking.
The tubing fit in the trunk of my car. I had to get it up and into the hotel room. I went down to get it out of the trunk and OF COURSE there was somebody sitting in their car idling when I went down there. And I’m like “Ahhhhh no, go away, I don’t want anybody to see this because it’s going to look crazy and ridiculous! Go away!” I fiddled around in the trunk for a little bit and they STILL were sitting there. Okay. Look. I know I’m crazy. But I don’t care. So I pulled the ten feet of irrigation tubing out of the trunk of my car and walked right past this person sitting in their car and took it up the stairs of the Red Roof Inn and into my hotel room.
Yep. DEAL WITH IT.
Indy Trial Wrap-up
Well, Friday night brought on some excitement. I fell while bringing some things in from the car to our hotel room and twisted my ankle. Saturday morning I made an emergency run to Wal-Mart and bought some athletic tape to wrap it up because it still hurt, even though I slept with a pillow under my foot to keep it elevated. Even better – as I was packing up to leave the hotel and MAKE the emergency Wal-Mart run, I realized I was having a migraine aura. Awesome!! I took a migraine med and then a fistful of Ibuprofen, and happily, within about an hour, I was feeling back to normal (minus my sore ankle.) I had to wonder if it’s a GOOD thing or a BAD thing that I know how to wrap my ankle. Yay me for being a distance runner!
So Saturday was… interesting. Very interesting.
Georgie would have her NAJ after this weekend except I was stupid and sent her over a wrong jump. The ending of her course was the same as Payton’s for open jumpers, except in Payton’s course you took THIS jump then that, that, that one… and in her course you just did that, that, and that jump. Well, I sent her over the THIS jump. Bad bad handler ripped Georgie out of a Q and what would have otherwise been her title, because she got another jumpers Q on Sunday.
P came home from all three days with no ribbons and a handful of rotten performances, some for reasons that are just due to inexperienced baby dog, and some due to… I don’t really know what reasons. I wish I was able to point more clearly at what was going on (or what wasn’t going on.) The real plus I came away with for P this weekend: he ran his open jumpers course on Sunday at 5.91 YPS, and that speed is brought down by having to redo his weave entry (all that work on weave pole performance this past couple of weeks, and only ONE TIME did he get his entry the first time – and it was after he already NQ’d his run so OF COURSE) and a second spinning refusal later. Holy crap. I knew it felt really fast, but I didn’t realize until I looked at the times exactly how fast. SCT was 43 sec, his time was 23 sec. The closest time after that was a small border collie at 31 sec. If Payton had run clean and smooth he would have smoked the course under 20 sec.
So just a, um, minor problem of learning how to control the wild man. I’m hoping time and experience will shape things up. Some lady walked past us as I was taking P out to potty and she said “Oh, there’s that wild dog!!” Yeeeeep, that he is. That he is. Sunday on the drive home I announced I want a shirt that says PAYTON SUCKS. And I just saw that AKC is considering rules that will allow people to wear clothing with their dog’s name on it. PERFECT.
Editing the videos together was a little disheartening because they look worse to me than they felt at the time, but I’m probably just being far too critical of two baby dogs.
Georgie completely refused to do the chute this weekend:
And then there’s Payton…
Indy Trial, Day 1
Georgie got her first Q today! She took 1st and Q’d in JWW.
Payton bit on some kind of wonky angle in open jumpers and ran around a jump, we’re not sure what was going on but a lot of dogs even in excellent (the sequence of jumps was the same) were running out. Also missed his weave entry because there’s a huuuuuge fan spinning at this place and it basically causes strobes on the floor, so he came out of the tunnel into the strobes and had to go straight into the weaves – no go. Nailed them the second time though. Darn refusals!
Standard was a mess, it had been a long day and neither dog wanted to do the weave poles with the off course a-frame staring them in the face. Georgie was a bit of an off-course mess (still did really great for a baby dog!) but she stayed on her teeter today!
Ughhhhhh I just really wanted P to get his last standard Q, because I literally ran Payton, ran upstairs to put him back in his crate, grabbed Georgie, went downstairs, shoveled five pieces of hot dog in her mouth, then ran Georgie. I wanted him out of Novice so I don’t have two in the same class anymore! We’ll get it eventually. (BUT I WANT IT NOOOOOOW.)
Georgie’s Agility Debut
The most amazing princess puppy had her agility debut! Check out her video below.
My mom admitted to me she was disappointed Georgie didn’t get any Qs, but I don’t see anything in her runs to be disappointed with. I am very proud and pleased with Georgie. She did a lot of things I knew were potential trouble spots for her debut: she did the tire instead of trying to go around/under it. She got on the rubberized contacts and stayed on them instead of being disturbed by the texture and bailing. She got her weaves. She didn’t drop any bars. She did tunnels splendidly! And she even did the chute despite not wanting to go through it the first time. So many good things she did, I just can’t find it in myself to be at all upset or disappointed in what she DIDN’T do. Even though she didn’t ride the teeter all the way down and got an E for that.
For a baby dog who has been mostly trained by somebody who has never actually done agility before, and who ONE WEEK ago didn’t want to even go halfway up a teeter set all the way to the ground, I think she’s a rock star. Little Georgie is entered in two more trials this year before she gets to break for the winter, so we’ll see how she shapes up over the next several weeks!
Payton’s Second Agility Trial
The weather for Payton’s second agility trial, and first ever outdoor trial, was surprisingly beautiful, even a bit hot on Sunday (and I came home with a pretty serious sunburn on my neck, backs of my ears, and arms – yeouch!) It broke the pattern, or “curse,” of the local agility trial, which traditionally calls for sub-50 degree temperatures, high winds, and rain if you’re really lucky! We were all quite delighted and I will accept my sunburn as penance for forgetting to grab my bottle of sunscreen.
Here’s the video of Payton’s runs:
Saturday Payton got his NAJ title. He also got his very first Novice Standard leg. I was pretty stunned, because going into the trial I expected a bit of a disaster for being outside. Once again the rules included “don’t pee on anything.” Happily, he peed on nothing! And came home with his first “Double Q” (which of course truly means nothing sub-Masters.)
His Open Jumpers on Sunday run looks more like the Payton I am used to! THAT is my baby dog. The dog who’s running around in all these other runs and picking up Qs and blue ribbons and stuff, I dunno who that is. Poor guy got popped in the face by a weave pole in jumpers and was quite startled, but I was very proud that I just pulled him back to start over and he got it done instead of staying offended. His collection obviously needs more work so he doesn’t barrel into the weave poles and pop himself in the face anymore…
His standard run was great and he came home with another first place and a second leg towards his NA!
Overall, I am very pleased with Payton. He needs more control, but that is something I’ve been noticing as we practice – as he’s gotten more and more confident in various obstacles and sequences he’s gotten faster and the control is slipping a bit. Self-control has been a constant with Payton since I brought him home and will likely be a challenge his entire life. Luckily, I am up for the challenge. I have a whole host of things to work on with him this fall and winter, and hopefully he will be a really great dog come spring (and hopefully I’ll suddenly come into money so I can trial him more often.) After Saturday, he was getting a small fan club. My heart was glowing with how many people thought he looked good, was coming along really great, and had very complimentary things to say about the baby dog. We are all very proud of him and excited for his future!
Broad Jump Lumber Emergency
So 10PM the night before our second ever agility trial, and the first time Payton was entered in Standard, I remembered I had never actually TAUGHT Payton the broad jump.
Had he seen it? Yes. He’s taken it a few times even. And also walked across it a couple times. And never really, actually TAUGHT how to do it.
Uh-oh.
For those who don’t know, the broad jump is required in Novice Standard. So it was GOING to happen. Determined not to let a stupid broad stand in the way of my dog and our success together, I ransacked the house trying to find a suitable replacement for a broad jump, simultaneously swearing that Home Depot used to be a 24-hour store and why isn’t it anymore and don’t people know that there are lumber emergencies going on?!
I settled for 12-pack cartons of soda… fishing all kinds out of the closet where my parents store their soda and shoving them together and making a make-shift broad jump.
THERE. That’s close enough.
And Payton’s first interaction with my make-shift broad jump was to hop up on it and pivot in a circle.
We’re going to do AWESOME.
Baby Payton’s First Agility Trial
The time leading up to this trial was… emotional.
I went through “We might actually be able to pull this off!” to “OH GOD HE WILL BE TERRIBLE WE ARE GOING TO BE LAUGHED OUT OF THE RING” and all kinds of turmoil. A friend asked me “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
And I didn’t answer because if I said it out loud, it was going to make me cry – the worst thing that can happen is that Payton is not Auggie. He is not Auggie and he will never be Auggie and it is unfair to Payton, and to myself, to continually compare the two.
“He is just a baby,” people said. “I never expect baby dogs to strike awe into people their first time out!”
Auggie did. Auggie’s first run ever. Remember? “One day that dog is going to be awesome,” from a total stranger.
He came home with a first and Q in his first ever jumpers run. It was a clean run, I still remember the feeling as I staggered out of the ring with my dog in my arms. My amazing Auggie.
And now? Now I have Payton.
I decided that we needed to just go and have fun. It’s just expensive practice, I reminded myself. All I want is for Payton to go in the ring, take a few of the jumps I ask him to take, not pee on anything, and also to get his weave poles.
The morning of our trial, I asked Auggie if it was okay that I was taking Payton to the trial instead. I also asked him if he had any advice for his baby brother.
I took Payton outside before his run. I had sliced up hot dog I was feeding him. I told him not to pee on anything. I asked if he could please remember how to do weave poles because I have video evidence that he DOES know how to do them, so please do them.
As I entered the ring I remembered what a friend said. “You only have one first trial with your dog.”
I gave him a kiss, then a second one.
Then we ran.
And you can’t see it in the video but I started crying right after the video cuts off. Because I couldn’t believe it. I really just wanted him to get his weaves… and he ran the whole course and he Q’d and everything.
I was crying and everybody kept saying “Oh, good job!” and I kept blubbering “He’s my baby dog!!” and took him outside and fed him the rest of his hot dog crying and telling him “You did so good! You were so good! You’re such a good boy!”
I just never believed it would happen. Sometimes I would be working with him and think “you know, maybe he COULD pull it off.” But I didn’t really think he would.
I didn’t care what happened the second day. If it was anything like Auggie’s first trial, the second day would be a disaster. But I really didn’t care. After that? After so much more than I ever dreamed possible? Heck, short of peeing in the ring Payton could do whatever he wanted.
\
So I says to him, “I don’t even Payton. I mean… I just don’t even.”
I hoped it would happen. But I never dreamed it really would.
I better get these weave poles cleaned up because I might need them sooner than I thought. Wow. Admittedly today’s weave pole bobble was ENTIRELY my fault. When I trained Auggie to do weave poles I trained him to do it by me chattering WEAVE WEAVE WEAVE the whole time he was in the poles. With Payton I did not do that. I just say “go weave.” And when I chatter he’s like “I’M ALREADY IN THE WEAVE POLES WHY DO YOU KEEP TELLING ME TO WEAVE I GOT IT OKAY???” And I caught myself walking the course yesterday and reminded myself to SHUT UP, but today I did not, and instead of just “go weave” I said “Go weave weave weave weave…” and realized what I had just done.
BAD TRAINER.
I guess whatever advice Auggie had for his baby brother was good advice.
Or maybe I just have the best Payton in the world.
A Few Foundations Videos with Payton
It was really really hot even at 6pm… he started getting really tired and hot by the end of the second video. We tried to do lesson 3 but he was just too hot so I didn’t force it. We’ll try again Wednesday…
Sends to the tunnel are going so well you can’t even see our starting point for most of this video. =P I did not film sends to a jump today.
This is where he starts getting hot and tired. These are really tight wraps and he’s not quite ready for some of them. Bars should be lower but I forgot to put them down… bad trainer.
Payton and Georgie’s First Fun Run!
Well, thanks to my mom apparently not understanding “PUSH THE BIG RED BUTTON TO RECORD” I only have one video of Payton. I impromptu decided this morning to take Georgie – it was only $5 and I thought it would be good to get her in a ring and have her do some jumps. Plus I am generally in a less serious mood playing with her, so I thought it might lighten my mood to bring her along. I thought about taking Auggie but he HATES the floor in this building so much, so I didn’t. I wished I had, but when I say he hates the floor I’m not kidding, so it wouldn’t have been fair to him.
Somehow my mom managed to get video of all three of Georgie’s runs… just not Payton.
Anyway, Payton did fairly good, no new problems presented themselves, all stuff I was expecting and dare I say maybe a bit better than I expected. One of the people I trial with locally showed up with their dog and I was like “oh yaaaay… people to see the terror…” hahaha. He took jumps, even most of the ones I asked him to take. He didn’t pee on anything, though he considered peeing on the table the first time he jumped on it. And he didn’t drop any bars. (I decided to run him at 12″ instead of 16″ today. He’s a baby, I don’t care.) He did surprisingly well considering what a horrible dog he is. My plan was to totally avoid all contact obstacles, but everything was basically right in our path and, well, we do have a teeter and have been working on it – so I took a chance with him. The first run (no video) he was like “errr nope, dunno” and took a pass on it. The second run (no video!!) he put a few steps on it then changed his mind, so I took him back and tried it again just telling him “go touch” – and this time he did a BEAUTIFUL drive to the end then once it was down stepped into a perfect 2o2o. I’m so mad I don’t have video of that. I was happily stuffing food down his throat while he held his 2o2o and specifically stepped out of the way so my mom could get it on the video… *flips table*
The third time he slid off the teeter, and it bounced up behind him while he was sitting there, which he believed warranted a telling off of the teeter for being rude. Yeah. That one’s mine.
Be warned, he doesn’t shut up for most of this video, so you might want to mute it. Also sorry for the Blair Witch Project type filming, apparently my mom had been drinking today.
Georgie was the surprise superstar, though I’m pretty sure my mom was underselling her to people and then when I ran her everybody was like “……” I couldn’t remember if she had ever seen a chute before – we just found mine buried in the storeroom – so I tried to put her through it, but no go. The first time a lady outside the ring said “oh, let’s lift the chute up and get her through it!” so we did that and she went through. I thought she might try again after that but nope. Not her fault, I really don’t remember if she’s ever seen one before or not, and I kinda think no.
Neither dog has ever done the table before (hence why I’m saying “on,” it’s just our cue for climbing up on something) so excuse all the shoddy table stuff, it’s their very first time just playing on it. I figured why not? I paid my money, let them see it.
Very proud of the baby girly today. And Payton was not terrible. I would have liked better, but for a baby dog I think he did pretty good. I realize on video they probably look fairly similar. I realize I’m being harder on Payton since he’s mine and I’ve trained him so my standards are higher. He got lots of cheese and kisses and got to sit in my lap between his second and third runs, so don’t feel sorry for him.
Auggie’s Retirement Video
I keep trying to put things into words and just… can’t. We finished our last run and I walked out laughing and smiling, then I took a breath, it sunk in, and I started to cry. It wasn’t a sobbing ugly cry like I thought it might be. Just tears rolling down my face and a bit of not able to say anything. He is just such a great dog and I love him so much. I know our journey together isn’t over, but this part of the story is, and it hurts a little. This is not how I ever pictured it ending.
I am now looking around to find somewhere he can play flyball, because I really think he would love it. We’re going to get back into getting him on sheep too. His breeder gave him a big kiss yesterday and said “You can still come to my house and play.” I know it’s not over. Stuff will be set up in my yard for the baby dogs and we will play on it. Just because we aren’t competing doesn’t mean he won’t play agility anymore. It just means I’m no longer throwing money at it, and we can just… have 100% fun without the pressure of trying to “fix” issues anymore. It’s all about fun from here on out and that’s how it should be.
until we start playing flyball.
Weavin’ Wednesdays
(Sing this to the tune of Maroon 5’s “Payphone.” Without Adam Levine’s really horrible falsetto. Think of Ne-Yo’s falsetto instead. Yeah, that’s it. Now sing.)
I’ve got a Payton, tryin’ to train him,
All of my change I spent on treats
Where has his brain gone,
Baby it’s all wrong,
Tryin’ to do these two by twos
Unfortunately every time I hear that song I FREAK out and practically kill myself trying to change the station, so I can’t parody the rest of the song because I have no idea how it goes.
BUT THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT.
LOOK AT THIS VIDEO.
Make sure you watch all the way to the end!
HE DID IT! Payton can weave!! This is the only time Payton is allowed to say “LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!” Yeaaaaaaah Pay!!
Master Auggie
So this is the result of this weekend. Well, not just this weekend. The result of a long time, a lot of work, and more money than I care to even try calculating.
It takes 10 Excellent B Q’s to get Master’s titles. Auggie got his MJP on Friday afternoon and his MXP this morning.
And with that he is more than likely all done. I doubt if we’ll ever get his speed up to where it needs to be to ever get a PACH, so there’s no point in continuing to shovel money at it when he has just as much, if not more, fun playing in the backyard. I’m already entered in another trial and there’s one here locally that I might enter depending on the judge, and I’ll be getting Auggie a pirate ship cake that says BON VOYAGE AUGGIE and we can have him a little party. I may bring him back out of retirement one day if his speed issues ever get resolved and let him play again… but I’m really not counting on anything. I feel like this is it.
I wish I had gotten today’s run on camera. It was so totally an Auggie run. He was a little snot in the rally ring so I was hoping he would be on fire and run fast in agility and he was definitely revved up. We have been having rear cross into tunnel issues but he took off for the tunnel today like nobody’s business. He came wide around a jump and headed for an off course tire and I ended up yelling “Auggie Auggie AUUUUGGIIEEEEE” – and he stopped RIGHT in front of the tire and looked at me and came over to take the dog walk like he was supposed to. He flew through the weaves so fast he slipped but kept in them and tore it up. The triple jump was the last obstacle and he was running so wild I thought he might knock it. He took off and I thought “oh God, he’s not going to clear it.” He clipped the last bar. It went CLANG…
but it didn’t fall.
There were people outside the ring watching and they all let out a “WHEW” when the bar didn’t fall. I looked up and mocked wiping sweat off my face, hahaha. One of the agility people I know was scribing and she yelled “Boy, you had to work for that one, didn’t you?!”
It didn’t even occur to me until we were out of the ring that that was it, that was #10. We were done. I was just laughing so hard. What a snot.
I really wish I had it on camera because it was just… it felt like a defining run for us, LOL.
I’m so proud of him and even though I’m sad that we will never get a PACH and never get to run a victory lap or anything like that, we have done so much in our time together. At more than one point I thought he was done and I would have to quit, but he never quit on me. After our very first run in agility together, I heard someone outside the ring – and to this day I don’t even know who it was that said it – say “One day, that dog is going to be awesome.”
In some ways that was more of a curse than anything else because I have always felt like I was giving up on him whenever things happened. Dropping him to preferred felt like I was giving up on him, because one day that dog is going to be awesome. Even this sort of feels like I am giving up on him, because one day that dog is going to be awesome.
But the reality is that “one day” is today, yesterday, last Tuesday, tomorrow, next Wednesday – every single day since the very first day I brought Auggie home and every single day until our time together on this earth has ended. It doesn’t matter if Auggie will never have letters before his name. It wouldn’t matter if he never had any letters on his name at all.
My dog IS awesome. And he always has been. He is an amazing dog, and I could not have asked for a better partner in our journey together through this ridiculous game called agility life.
Training 6/25/12 Wrap-up
After dropping the 2x2s with Payton, I went ahead and switched to weave-a-matics since I already had them dragged outside and ready to go. It was going pretty quickly, I was basically treating them the same as you would 2x2s – get the dog going through the chute of weaves and practice from all angles. Not a big deal and he was going with a lot of drive.
Then we hit the major heat wave that has affected most of the US. I figured it may have not been wise to be outside trying to work a new skill (especially one that had us hitting our heads against the wall with 2x2s) while we were slowly melting, so I axed a lot of the outdoor agility work.
Instead we switched to doing a lot of heeling practice inside. We worked more on the perch and slowly, slowly started getting the progress we needed. I took Saturday off completely with him to let some latent learning set in, but as of tonight we have walking in heel with a C+T every three steps. His left turns are AMAZING (I mean really amazing), his right turns pretty good, overall not terrible at all. I really can’t complain about his progress. I’m a little antsy about how it will translate to a trial setting, but you can never really predict for that.
For Auggie, I decided to keep up with doing some jump work outside, but switched it up a little. Auggie’s current problem is that he likes to hug the right side of jumps… even if we’re doing a left circle, he hugs the right side. He wastes a lot of time on the course altering his path to take the right side of jumps. I’m not sure if this is a physical problem due to his feet, if he’s possibly got a vision problem (all signs point to no vision problem), or if he’s just weird. Personally I think it’s a bit of A and C mixed together. So my challenge is to re-train him to NOT always hit the right side of jumps.
I’ve had a few different ideas on how to approach this, and I’ve decided to do some work with a v-bounce apparatus, or “the spider.” I’ve taken my stick-in-the-ground weave poles and made my own very ghetto v-bounce apparatus, and it may be ghetto, but it does the job. I decided to alter some Susan Salo jump chutes by adding the v-bounce in. I set up a straight chute and put the v-bounce on jumps 1, 3, and 5. I started back-chaining to see what he would do… jump 5, then jump 4, then jump 3. Once we did jump 3 and he kept himself in the center for all the jumps, I switched to all five jumps. We did that for a few reps, then I took the v-bounce off jump 3 entirely and left it just on jump 1 and 5. And he was still running the center line rather than veering off to the side. Whoo-hoo! I even proofed it with some motion and got what I was looking for.
So right now the plan is to do a few more days with the v-bounce in, then remove one more. Probably remove it from jump 1 and leave it on the last jump and see what happens. If it goes well, I’ll take it off jump 5 and work that – and pray that I get a miracle. The idea here is to introduce some new muscle memory to the situation and reward heavily for running the center line.
Obviously running the center isn’t exactly ideal either – you want a dog who can pick his line and either wrap left or right depending on what is most efficient. BUT if I’m given the choice between a dog who wraps right or just runs center, I will take running center. I’m expecting to have to do a lot of work on this, anticipate we may see setbacks with his take offs, but all I can do is cross my fingers and hope we work closer and closer towards a confident, fast dog who can jump safely and appropriately.
Training Schedule for 6/25/12
The training schedule for this week is as follows…
M – W – F
Session 1:
Weaves (Payton)
Session 2:
Weaves (Payton)
Treadmill (Auggie)
Session 3:
Heeling
T – R
Session 1:
Jump work
Set Point x3
Straight line x3
Straight line with height x3
Session 2:
Shaping
Session 3:
Shaping
Sat
Session 1:
Jump work
Distance grid – x4 out, x3 back in
Progressive grid x3
Session 2:
Weaves (P)
Treadmill (A)
Session 3:
Heeling
Sun:
“Rest day” – just playing, shaping
As you can see, I’ve changed Payton’s training from “2x2s” to just “weaves.” After yet another frustrating 2×2 session at lunch today, I think I’m done with the 2x2s. Yesterday I thought we were good to just back up to doing 4 poles at 2 and 6 o’clock and just work the arc to death. This afternoon we had meltdown again and couldn’t even get THAT done. How is this happening? How can I have a dog doing awesome entries for me on Wednesday, then Saturday afternoon, just by starting to close up the weave poles, I have a dog who’s performance falls apart so much I feel like the best way to get him back to being successful is to start completely over?
I know I’m certainly not the only person in the world to have problems with the 2×2 method. Just like people, I don’t believe that all dogs learn the same and that one approach with work for all dogs. Let me clarify: obviously the overall science of behaviourism on the whole is the same for everybody, but there are different learning styles controlled by different parts of the brain. So as much as I am enamored with the 2x2s, it just seems like a great way to teach weave poles… I don’t think this is going to work for Payton.
I’m not entirely decided what I’m going to go to instead. I may try the weave-a-matics or I may just try shaping straight poles. We shall see.
As far as the other shaping sessions, we’ll be continuing perch work this week. Payton can pivot the perch both directions now, so now comes putting them on a cue and getting him to figure out how to switch back and forth. I’m calling them “right” and “left” – and it’s not based on which way the dog pivots, rather, on which leg the dog will pivot into. So for pivoting into my right leg, it’s “right” and the hand signal is a fist with knuckles down. Pivoting into the left leg is “left” and the handle signal is my fist with fingers down to the dog.
Auggie-bad-doggie will be shifted from messing with the perch straight to heeling. He hasn’t mastered the perch yet but there are a few things I need to deal with specifically as it relates to some rally signs and I would rather spend my week and a half before the trial refining those instead of dealing with general heel work.
I told a co-worker this afternoon, entering Payton in a rally trial SOUNDED like a good idea at the time… at least it’s all on leash so he can’t do TOO much damage. Only damage to my reputation.
Three Dog Training
It’s Sunday so we have pretty much wrapped up our training challenge for this week, but I think I’ll save that post for tomorrow when I can post with some video. This morning is our “play” day where I don’t have much of a set plan and instead just fool around, so I decided I would take the pups to the training building after lunch and play around. I loaded the 2x2s into the car so Payton could play with them in another new location, grabbed Auggie, Payton, and Georgie, and off we went.
P started with 2x2s. We’re having some major problems as of yesterday when I started to close them up, and as they did last time before we backtracked and started over again, he’s had a serious setback. I did work him back to where he was before I started closing them up, but of course, the last several well done and hard entries were AFTER my camera ran out of battery power and it stopped recording.
Next I set up a curved tunnel and a jump for Auggie and worked on some rear crosses. We’ve had some issues with tunnels lately. It’s possible he is having some vision problems, or it could just be he’s a brat and it’s a training issue. So we worked that. I’m still not happy with how it went and I think I know what to work on with him next week.
Georgie came out next and she got to run through the straight tunnel. She LOVES jumping so I went ahead and let her take the jump before and after the tunnel a few times. Working on naming “tunnel” and “jump” both with her now.
P came back out and did more of the tunnel and I let him do the jump as well. Did some beginning one jump work where sometimes I would let him over the jump and take the tunnel and other times I would switch sides and he needed to come to me instead of take the tunnel, and not once did he take the bait of the tunnel and ALWAYS read my handling and came to me. Hurray for Payton!!
I brought Auggie out again next and was putting the tunnel away and he jumped into it while I was putting it away. So I had a fully collapsed tunnel and Auggie was sitting in it barking at me. “I’M IN THE TUNNEL WHERE IS MY COOKIE?” This dog. I moved the jump out of the way too and we just did flatwork where I encouraged speed on him. He did awesome. For his last two cookies I just did some off leash heeling because I wanted to let him cool down some and he was awesome with that too, because he’s Auggie and he’s usually fab.
Georgie came out for some flatwork next. We’re having a problem with her bouncing like you could see in the impromptu flatwork video but I got her really tired before long and that stopped. She kept trying to sneak behind me and dart to the wrong shoulder at first but after a few reps I got her going to the proper shoulder and switching sides with me and doing really great. Flatwork is really the biggest skill she is in need of right now, more than any kind of obstacle introduction.
I brought Payton out for more 2x2s, and like I said, this is where we seemed to heal his problems and get his skills back to where they were before I tried closing up the poles. I think we are just going to work at this stage for at least a week before I try to close them up at all and REALLY try to reinforce four poles… I’ll just say that yesterday I was so frustrated (and so was he) I was ready to say screw it to the 2x2s and go weave-a-matics instead. But I love the theory behind 2x2s so I am going to try and stick it out some more. I can ALWAYS quit and go to the WAMs if he never gets to progressing with the 2x2s. So we’ll give it a bit more time.
After all that, I was dripping sweat, so I packed all my stuff back into the car and we came back home. I could use a second set of 2x2s to leave at the training building – it would sure be nicer than having to pack mine up and drag them with us! Let’s put that on the list of things I’ll buy when I win the lottery.
Payton in class, round two
This afternoon I texted with Auggie’s breeder. My initial thought was to just bring the puppies over to the training building after her class tonight and let her see how things are going and give me some tips, especially on an issue I’m having with Georgie. But she told me she was just starting a new class and asked if I would like to bring the pups along.
I decided to bring Payton, since our rally trial is in three weeks, and he could use some work in a new location and with some other eyes watching. Georgie will wait for another day; besides, I can’t really work two dogs at once.
The class is a unique one we developed to meet some in-between demands… people who weren’t quite ready to jump into agility, but were looking for something more than just pet house manners. We delve into some rally exercises and do some extended sit-stays and down-stays in a line up like you would at an obedience trial, and also do some beginning obstacle introduction with agility stuff (jumps, tunnels, tire.)
So away we went tonight. Payton did fairly good with heeling though he is still very forgey, and forges more on me the longer we heel. I stepped on his paw once and almost tripped over him several more times. Sigh. And the sits, oh God, the crooked sits! I’m still hoping to clean it up enough in the next few weeks that we can scrape out at least ONE qualifying RN score.
But in light of my decision earlier this year to stop always being so negative about my dogs and their behaviour, I am not going to tell you where he was awesome.
First, his first sit-stay was ALMOST great, but being his very first time in a lineup with dogs he had never met before, he got up and came to me just before I went back to him. The next several sit-stays, however, were lovely, and I was even able to test him some by doing stupid dance moves and things (I made sure none of the other dogs – or their handlers – were looking at me while I was doing this.) So he rocked those!
Next, his recalls were equally lovely, though the first was lacking the enthusiasm I like to see, but he gets a pass because once again, he was sitting in a lineup with dogs he had never met before.
After that, we moved on to introduction to agility. First we had a jump, and I felt bad because Payton and I are totally cheating. We have at least a dozen jumps of varying type at home and he has seen regular jumps over and over and over again being that we’re doing beginning jump training! The other students were like “ooooh!” but HE’S CHEATING HE’S DONE THIS A MILLION TIMES ALREADY.
Next we got out the tunnel. Payton has seen a tunnel before but not fully extended, and as many times as I see it in my basement and think “I need to get that out and work on it,” I have yet to actually do that. So I wasn’t sure how he was going to do with a tunnel stretched all the way out.
Of course I am an idiot and had no need to worry. He darted right through it, then came back, then back through again. Everything was going GREAT until Auggie’s breeder suggested I run with him through it.
So I did. And Payton went OMG YOU GUYS THIS IS SOOOO MUCH FUN and the next thing I know he jumps on top of the tunnel, STAYS THERE for a second or two, then hops back down. How he managed to actually stay perched on top of the tunnel is beyond me, but he did it.
But I said I wasn’t going to be negative, right? Well, as embarrassing as that was, he only did it the one time and then appeared to realize that on TOP of the tunnel is not how we do it. I ran him back and forth several times after that in both of our turns, including setting him up for some odd entries.
The best news: he is really fast. Not so fast I can’t keep up, I am a runner myself and just generally a gym junkie (in fact, I’m blowing off a Wednesday class at the gym to take him to this class… but I figured I can do those weight lifting sessions at home…) so I have the added bonus of being able to sprint myself and not end up nearly killing myself. But he is definitely fast.
Now I just have to figure out how to not kill that speed in him. Which means I need to become a far better handler and very soon.
So there you have it. My dog is a huge brat and embarrassing, but he’s a very talented little embarrassing brat too.
Impromptu Flatwork Session
The other day I decided to do some impromptu flatwork with the puppies. Click to watch the video below…
Admittedly I haven’t done hardly any flatwork with Georgie at all. Sometimes I’ll do a few handling maneuvers with her, but that’s about it. So her, uh, interesting take on flatwork in the video is not exactly her fault! She just needs more work. Lots more work. It’s okay, we’ll get there. She’s not even a year old yet, she has time.
Payton is improving a lot. Our biggest struggle is that instead of chasing the shoulder so to speak, he was more interested in trying to bite my legs. We have gotten past that at least, though the barking, THE BARKING. It doesn’t stop. Hopefully once he has something to do besides just chase the shoulder he will use his brain more and stop using it to vocalize!
Auggie was stuck in there just for fun. His session is rather different since we are working more on building drive and speed, though admittedly, we don’t really have drive or speed problems in the yard… only at agility trials… but whatever. We’re working on it. After this we had an impromptu game of tug and fetch, in which I threw the toy, he went to retrieve it, and as soon as he reached the toy, I turned around and ran the opposite direction and he had to catch up to me with the toy. GREAT fun for Auggie and I was dying before long, sprinting in circles around the yard and trying not to break my ankle stepping in any of the holes in the ground or trip over the garden or whatever. This is definitely a game we’ll play more.
All three dogs want to squirt behind me and take the wrong side, so there’s more to be done. It would obviously be nice to have a larger space to work in too… working on that one…
1 Payton + Auggie agility
First,
I’ve given him some peanut butter in this before and didn’t think much of it, but tonight while watching him chew on it, I suddenly remembered.
That Kong is a hand-me-down.
From Happy.
Disorganized landing. His takeoff is nice but his landings are about 50/50 disorganized like this. I’m not sure if it’s due to his physical limitations or just bad habits…
THIS IS MAH SERIOUS FACE
oh hai. i like a-frame. <3 <3
I LOVE this photo. The photographer actually put together a collage in her sample gallery and used this one (cropped down to just Auggie) as the large background photo and it’s really amazing. I’m thinking about ordering it because I just love it. I know typically people think of agility pics as jumps and going over jumps, but I really like his face and movement in this one.
By the way, he’s staring RIGHT at the aframe. He really would like to off course onto the a-frame if that’s okay. (It’s not okay and he didn’t.)
Agility and Rally weekend
This weekend I took Auggie down to an agility trial. I saw they also had rally, so I went ahead and entered us in both. I would rather do both one weekend than have to travel specifically just for rally, and there’s only a rally trial locally twice a year, so why not?
I blew our Rally Advanced A run on Saturday. I practiced pivots in the hotel room the night before and thought I knew how to signal them, but when I got in the ring the next morning, I decided to tuck my arm in like you do in obedience and forgot that I needed to signal Auggie for the pivot. So he didn’t pivot with me. Also, I forgot when I did the moving call front then forward that even if it’s a moving call front then forward the dog still has to SIT when they front. Durp durp. I was so focused on the moving/forward part I didn’t make him sit. The only thing I can partially blame on Auggie is we had the stand then handler walks around the dog, and when I reached down to give Auggie the signal for stand, he immediately thought I was going to signal “down” and threw himself into a down. I could have backed up and then repeated the sign, but I didn’t think about it, so I just stood him and carried on, which meant I failed the exercise because the dog added an extra “part” into the sign. Oh well. The judge was very nice and gave us a few tips.
We Q’d the next day because I decided to screw having my arm tucked in and handled far differently. He was WAY revved up because we were also doing agility, and the way the timing worked, we basically did agility and then went right over to rally – his brain was definitely not in controlled heeling mode, so it was messy messy messy, but I wanted to at least come home with one Q, so whatever I guess. In November I will probably enter us in the local rally trial (unless it’s the same weekend I’m out of town at agility) where all we do is rally, so hopefully he will be in the right mentality and we can get it done without being so messy. The judge told us afterwards that we did a much better job the second day. I thought it was a better job the first day, LOL, even though it wasn’t a Q. Oh well.
Agility was the most important part of the weekend even though I knew I wasn’t guaranteed any Q’s and sort of doubted if I’d get any. Auggie had a clean jumpers run on Saturday, but didn’t make time because the course was wheeled so tight and he’s not running fast for me right now. He knocked the triple in standard which is my fault. Sunday standard was first and we just barely squeaked by under time, so that’s #2 towards his masters standard title. The mystery is jumpers, where he made time by plenty. We ended up with 7 PACH points. I think the scribe may have recorded our time incorrectly, but I have no way of knowing, because everybody was packing up or had already left so nobody was watching to tell me if he really was running that fast, and of course nobody recorded the run for me so we had no way to look and find out. But the course was a very fun, fast course, so it is possible he really ran it that fast… I just have no idea. But, as we say, the agility gods giveth and they taketh away, so in this case I seem to have gotten a gift.
So Auggie is 2/10 for MXP, 4/10 for MJP, and 1/20 for his PACH. And also he only needs 741 more PACH points. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah I think we need to just put the PACH dream to bed. We’ll get his masters titles and then run him just for fun. I still fully intend to try and work through his jumping problems and hopefully that will boost his confidence enough that he will start running faster, but who knows what will happen? I suppose if his confidence returns full-force and he starts running courses at trials the way he is capable I might change my mind, but for now, I think it’s just time to put the dream away. The odd thing is, it doesn’t really hurt the way I thought it would. I guess I sort of knew, in the back of my head, that this was coming and have had plenty of time to cope with the reality of it.
Or maybe it just helps that I know there is a puppy baking in the oven, and I may very soon be having a chance to try this all over again. Auggie is a great dog and I love him very much. I’m not going to love him any more or any less if he gets an agility champion title. It’s a little disappointing to not be able to shoot for the moon with him, but I will soon have another one to go after the dream with, so that eases the disappointment. And meanwhile Auggie just gets to be my super special little lovey boy!
