Training Challenge 9/17/12
As you know from Weavin’ Wednesday, last week’s schedule changed to suddenly include weave pole training for P. Surprise! Well, we’ll continue that this week. Maybe I can teach the baby dog to weave before there’s snow on the ground?
Auggie is having fun playing in the six weave poles as well. I don’t really need to work on his poles, they are his best obstacle, but he does enjoy them and it never hurts to refresh, so I’m letting him play after Payton.
M – W – F
Session 1:
Jump work
Set Point x3
Straight line x3
Straight line with height x3
Session 2:
Tunnel rear crosses (A)
Weaves
Session 3:
Weaves
T – R
Session 1:
Jump work
Set Point x3
Straight line x3
Straight line with height x3
Session 2:
Weaves
Session 3:
Table (A)
Weaves
Saturday and Sunday are Auggie’s last agility trial ever, so I will probably not take the time to train P during that weekend… I will be slightly preoccupied.
Training Challenge 9/10/12
I’m trying to get back into the habit of weekly updating. Monday is for the training challenge, I’ve got a new feature for Wednesdays, an idea for Thursdays, and Sunday needs to be for our weekly wrap-ups again.
So to kick it back off, here’s what this week looks like:
M – W – F
Session 1:
Jump work
Set Point x3
Straight line x3
Straight line with height x3
Session 2:
Tunnel rear crosses (A)
Retrieve (P)
T – R
Session 1:
Jump work
Set Point x3
Straight line x3
Straight line with height x3
Session 2:
Weaves (A)
Copcop (P)
Sat
Session 1:
Jump work
Distance grid – x4 out, x3 back in
Progressive grid x3
Session 2:
Sequencing (A)
Baby sequence of tunnel-jump (P)
Sun
Play day! Whatever we feel like doing. May involve taking P to the lake. Unfortunately our “beach” lake is closed for the season, so no more swimming for us both, but he can play at the other lake which is close to home.
Training Challenge 8/13/12
Okay, these are going to be pretty tough to keep up on. I close on my house NEXT WEEK. Holy crap! From there I have a week of vacation but it’s likely going to all be spent working at the house, getting the major Must Be Done Now things all taken care of before we can move in (like finishing the fence in the backyard!)
This weekend was incredibly cool weather wise, hence why Henri came to pay us a visit. The cool weather will be good for working at the house, but bad for other fun things I had in mind – like continuing working with Payton on swimming to get him ready for Dock Dogs. I need to cart him off to the lake again and do another swim in deeper water. I would really prefer to do this when the weather is above 70 degrees! Let’s hope for some hot weather coming in the next few weekends.
As a result of continuing craziness, I’m just going to continue to make general goals instead. Last week I took a break from teaching “into my arms,” mostly because I visited a dermatologist for a full body scan and she asked me “What did you do to your legs?!” in a horrified voice – what I did to my legs was ask my dogs to jump up in my lap. They may be small but they don’t do anything halfway and I had a ton of bruises, including a few really big ones, all over my thighs. So I took a little break to let some of the bruises heal before I started adding more bruises, lest my thighs become completely black, blue, and yellow.
This week I am going to work on shaping a retrieve with Payton using the bumper. It would be helpful if he brought his toy BACK to me after I throw it into the pool, right? Right.
Speaking of doctor’s visits and horrifying things, two weeks ago Auggie peed all over the floor inside after having just come in and peed outside, so away to the vet we went for another urinalysis. The urinalysis turned up lots of blood and bacteria yet again. So Doc suggested a cystocentesis, which for those not in the know of bladder problems, is where they inject a needle into the bladder and draw a urine sample directly from the bladder. This gives a sterile sample, as opposed to a free catch which is not considered sterile. This was sent off for a culture and sensitivity…
which produced absolutely nothing. NOTHING. So the urine in his bladder is fine. This means the problem is below his bladder. Urethra? We really don’t know. So today Auggie is here at work with me until our appointment at the university vet clinic, where we will attempt to learn something. Anything. Also where all of my moneys will disappear. Our new house is going to be furnished with a cheap butterfly chair I bought on clearance from Target many many years ago, and my Nintendo Wii sitting on the floor in my living room.
So that’s our week. Training and some expensive vet visits. Whoo-hoo. Away we go!
Training schedule for 7/30/12 and our big news!
Well, last week’s training went kind of crappy because I was involved in something else going on… the big news I hinted about in the last post…
We’re moving!! Because I bought a house!! Ahhhhh!!
There’s some work to be done after close before we move in, but we should still get some nice time in the fall to work in the backyard! Payton is super lucky to get to learn all kinds of things in our brand new HUGE backyard, which has the space for all my jumps, a full-size dogwalk, a full-size a-frame should I decide to upgrade from my mini-aframe, and pretty much anything else we could ever want. I could even give him an underground pool if I wanted to! (That is, however, not on my to-do list.)
Even more exciting – this means Miss Pepper gets to move in permanently! Hurraaaaaay!
Not a terrible time for Auggie to be retiring, overall. The money I would be spending on his entry fees is instead going to go towards doing some stuff on the house, and it will take some time to get Payton (and Peppy) ready to trial and my finances will have rebounded by then, so financially everything seems to have happened at about the right time. I have mailed in Auggie’s entry form for our last trial and have a Pinterest board to plan his party. I was a little sad filling the form out and mailing it in, but I know this is the right thing to do. Besides, with our brand new yard, Auggie will have plenty of room to run and play at home without any of the pressure he gets from trialing. All positive!
This does unfortunately mean Miss Georgie will lose her best buddy, half-Uncle Payton, and her grumpy Uncle Auggie (I admit to calling Auggie “Uncle Auggie” just about all the freakin’ time now) – but she will get to come over and play and train with us! So once again, still positives here. Besides, that means once she’s lonely, my parents will decide to get another dog for her to play with. ;>
All good stuff. So in light of this, my training schedules will probably be a little crappy because I have a lot going on the next few weeks and into the fall as we do some fixing up on the house and of course the actual move. I’ve decided to keep up the general training idea for now. Payton got one solid session of “grab the bumper,” which turned into an incredible fetch session with Georgie, who is now the proud owner of her very OWN bumper since she loved ours so much. However I don’t think his “grab the bumper” is where it should be. We’ll keep working on it, and Auggie could do with some extra “grab the bumper” training too.
Besides that, I’ve decided – against my better judgement, much like when I taught Auggie “speak” and now have a dog who yaps at me while we’re clicking training just in case “speak” is what I’m looking for – to teach all three dogs to jump into my arms. Payton and Georgie I believe can do this easily. Auggie is the only one I’m not sure about. He can jump higher than I think, as he has proven while running up to agility practice jumps that are set for big dogs and taking them in his excitement before I can reset them to his jump height (I believe 22″ is the highest he’s done) – but I’m not sure if this is really something he can do for me given his physical limitations. It might be a “jump into my arms as I kneel” trick for Auggie. We will work on it, and hopefully will be able to finish our last agility runs together and wrap them up with that trick. (And hopefully my eyes won’t be so full of tears I will miss catching him!)
So that’s our plan this week! Keep working on “grab the bumper” and start “jump into my arms.” No clue what to call the latter one yet. “Don’t kill Mama?” “Don’t throw out my back?” “Careful, Mama is still increasing her bar weights at the gym?”
Training Challenge 07/20/12
I haven’t posted one of these for a few weeks, mostly because I was recovering from our last agility/rally trial, partially because it’s still really stinkin’ hot outside and it makes it hard to do much work out in the yard, and also because I’ve been busy juggling a few other things. I don’t want to jinx it so I won’t say more just yet, but really fabulous things might be about to happen for the Sheltiechick crew!
So this week, instead of breaking it down day by day, I think instead I will just make a general goal. I have been working on teaching the dogs to swim and yesterday I decided to start adding in more as it relates to Dock Dogs. I bought a small plastic footstool that sits inside the pool (actually, it floats, so unless a dog is sitting/standing on it, it’s floating around the pool…) and had Auggie standing on the stool, click+treating for him nose-bumping our ChuckIt amphibious bumper. Being the rock star that he is, very quickly I had Auggie nose-bumping the bumper when it was floating in the water. Next step will be to get him to actually mouth the bumper.
Payton’s turn was next, and the poor dog made me laugh so hard I almost fell down in the pool, because he was trying to do his pivots in the pool. He kept thinking his back feet should be on the bottom of the pool and his front feet on the stool, and he should then pivot around the stool, right? No, Payton, no! Poor guy. Payton will actually fetch the bumper for me on land but he doesn’t want anything to do with it when he’s in the water, so I think I need to train a “grab the bumper” outside the pool (rather than just “fetch the bumper”) and then move back INTO the pool and generalize “grab the bumper” to him standing on the stool in the pool.
Of course, my parents want to re-roof the house this week, so the pool is due to be emptied and come down. I’m thinking this coming weekend I might actually go to the lake again and see if we can get some swimming done there. I think Payton will do much better now with his new life jacket, and could benefit from being in water that’s actually deep rather than a pool where if he tries he can actually put his back legs on the floor and just flail around with his front legs. Auggie, meanwhile, is doing awesome, particularly if I put a life jacket on him. He doesn’t seem to really need it, but with the life jacket on, his swimming became much smoother. Unfortunately he wears the same size as Georgie but they don’t fit the same, so I will have to buy a third life jacket if I ever intend to have all three dogs in life jackets at the same time. I could order one of the Outward Hound jackets in pink for Georgie and give Auggie her orange one…
So that’s the training plan this week – “GRAB THE BUMPER!” Low key but still a goal regardless.
Training Challenge for 7/2/12
This week is going to be a bit different, because Thursday night we set off for a three day agility trial for Auggie, which includes two days of rally for Auggie and also – gulp – two days of rally for Payton. That’s right, Payton’s trialing debut is this weekend. And I’m slightly terrified. Anyway, on with the schedule!
Monday
Session 1:
Heeling (Payton)
Treadmill (Auggie)
Session 2:
Heeling (P)
Jump chute (A)
Session 3:
Rally sign practice
Tuesday
Session 1:
Rally sign practice
Session 2:
Heeling (P)
Jump chute (A)
Session 3:
Rally sign practice
Wednesday
Session 1:
Rally sign practice
Session 2:
Heeling (P)
Jump chute (A)
Session 3:
Heeling/rally signs (P)
Treadmill (A)
Thursday
Session 1:
Jump chute (A)
Session 2:
Rally sign practice in the hotel room
Friday
Auggie agility trial!
Session 1:
Last desperate attempt to fix any problems with rally signs!
Saturday – Sunday
TRIAL TRIAL TRIAL
I have printed out a full set of rally signs, so we will hit those on July 4th, since I have the day off and can play with them a little. I know one I need to practice is the “bowl of food on the ground” with Auggie. It also occurs to me that Payton doesn’t have a very good Front, so I probably need to teach him that.
Auggie’s jump chutes have changed according to our weekly wrap up, so we’ll continue with those this week and cross our fingers that it may put some deposits in his jumping bank before this weekend’s trial.
Weaves for Pay have been scratched from this week, partially due to the impending rally trial and the need to work more on heeling, and partially just due to the heat. I’ve been taking Auggie out to jump after 8pm at night, and even though it’s still pretty hot and humid then, it’s at least a little cooler than the rest of the day. He’s also still getting some treadmill work to get in better shape and improve his speed. So far he seems to be doing really well, he’ll hop onto the treadmill and doesn’t seem bothered by it, so hopefully that will do some good for us too. It’s always a surprise with Auggie, haha! We are two standard Q’s and one jumper’s Q away from his masters agility titles, and I’m hoping we can clean those up this trial. But it seems I’ve been saying that for a while. Ohhhhh Auggie! <3
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.
Training Challenge
Okay, the “challenge” isn’t actually in the training. It’s in the staying organized and focused.
I’ve made up a little calendar for myself detailing what I’m going to work on every day. I usually do two or three training sessions a day, so it’s broken out into three training sessions… one at lunchtime, one after work (or after I get back from the gym on days I go to the gym right after work), and one late at night.
Every week, between the normal agility stuff, I’m going to try and focus on new “tricks” on certain days, so this will require me figuring out which tricks exactly I want to work on. So I will try and make a post on Monday detailing what I plan to work on, and at some point later in the week I will post again about our progress. Maybe even with some videos? We’ll see what happens. It’s a challenge.
Auggie gets less training/more time off, however you’d like to look at it, because he is both further along in stuff and because I’m kind of ramping down his training. More on that later whenever it’s more relevant to talk about.
Below is the current Base Schedule. Certain outside stuff is of course dependent on the weather, right now we’re drilling hard on heeling because we have a rally trial coming up in a few weeks, and of course once certain tasks are mastered they won’t be “drilled” so often (like the 2x2s.) And this schedule doesn’t account for Georgie at all, who will pop in and out when I can work with her. And I actually work on training my dogs all day long… this is just the actual structured training sessions I have planned.
BASE TRAINING SCHEDULE:
M – W – F
Session 1:
2×2 weaves (Payton)
Session 2:
2×2 weaves (Payton)
Treadmill (Auggie)
Session 3:
Heeling (both dogs)
T – R
Session 1:
Jump work (both dogs)
Set Point x3
Straight line x3
Straight line with height x3
Session 2:
Shaping (both dogs)
Session 3:
Shaping (both dogs)
Sat
Session 1:
Jump work (both dogs)
Distance grid – x4 out, x3 back in
Progressive grid x3
Session 2:
2x2s (Payton)
Treadmill (Auggie)
Session 3:
Heeling (both dogs)
Sun:
“Rest day” – just playing, shaping (both dogs)
This week, shaping sessions will involve perch work. Both dogs can pivot on the perch in one direction but do not pivot in both directions. Auggie’s pivot involves barking loudly at me and jumping off the perch a lot. Payton’s pivot is a lot better and I’ve already done one session getting him to pivot the opposite direction so I anticipate Payton will progress faster than Aug.
I may also work on Payton’s back up which is in progress. Auggie already knows this trick and cracked me up last session by patiently laying in a chair watching me work with Payton for almost the entire session, and when I was down to one last cookie in my hand, he jumped out of the chair and proceeded to back up across the room. Like “Seriously, screw this – WATCH ME DO IT LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME GIVE ME THE COOKIE MOM!” And, well, I had to give him a cookie after that. It was too funny not too. Yes, I do sometimes reward my dog for being a brat.
