Blade and spent some time working with the "redneck" box again this morning.
Absolutely fabulous effort from the Bee's Knees!
Even though I think he's doing exceptionally well thus far, I'm going to spend a few more sessions just working the different handler positions before I test his understanding of the "Hit-It!" cue.
As before mentioned, Blade's Achilles Heel has been his Aframe.
We have about a 50% shot of him actually hitting the yellow with his current performance.
Which isn't terrible but it isn't great either.
We tend to have a better chance (or we did) at AKC but after this weekend I'm sure it really just boiled down to wishful thinking on my part ;)
Generally, Blade will two stride a USDAA Aframe and one stride an AKC Aframe. As of late Blade has been one striding ALL Aframes and has been acutely aware of WHERE the colored part and yellow part of the Aframe meet. So, instead of brow beating myself over it and trying to "manage" his contact, we are going back to square one (or abouts there) to FIX the problem!
Bottom line is, I want to see a considerable amount MORE of these:
rather than these:
Simple enough right?
Right!
Since it was so unbelievably nice outside this afternoon, I pulled out a "redneck" version of the PVC box commonly used to train running Aframes (after a 15 minute "box-hunt" I couldn't locate my actual box) so the "redneck" version worked well enough for today!
Our session went something like this:
Overall, I was totally impressed with Blade's understanding of what the criteria was (at this point) as it has been almost two years since he has interacted with a box!
On that note there isn't much else to report, so wish us luck!
I have so much to say about this past weekend, I don't even have a clue where to start. Seriously.
I had to make an itemized list to share with bloggerdom.
We'll start with the "what".
For those that don't know, this past weekend Da Boys and I ran in our first AKC trial since July of last year.
Yes, July!
It was spectacular.
I've started walking courses accompanied by some fabulous people Joan Jett, Adele, Lenny Kravitz, The Beatles, Bruno Mars and the such. It single handily improved my mental game. Music is food for the soul and mine has obviously been starving for a while, while walking courses.
Da Vipe is starting to give me even more speed (HaPpY DaNce) I was late cuing several turns/transitions with him because he was already THERE. It ate up some seconds here and there around the courses but his confidence this past weekend grew in leaps and bounds. I could probably go on for pages about all of the little improvements that made this weekend so awesome. A recap (including video, I might add) has been included farther down in this post if you want to skip my ramblings.
Always the rebel with a cause...
There's my handsome man. OA Title included!
Blade was well, the Bee's Knees. I'm supporting him more verbally and the boy is so excited about it he can't stop squeaking. Sort of. If you take a look at the videos it's blatantly obvious that Blade had a tough time on the mats. There were a lot of extra strides from him and we just focused on running OUR best course every run and he improved dramatically from Friday to Sunday.
Some Qs were lost because of his Aframe but I won't beat myself down over it. It's our Achilles Heel right now and instead of being upset by it we are calculating our next few moves to not only fix it but defeat it for good. After watching our videos I realized that Blade is becoming quite the loudmouth before and after our runs. Never thought I would see (or hear) the day!
Besties be rockin' the bling.
I promised recap and video from the weekend so here they are:
Video from Friday
Recap from Friday
Blade: T2B NQ/1st Place (Missed Aframe contact) Master Standard Q/1st, 17 points towards 2014 AKC Nationals Master JWW NQ/1st, dropped my shoulder as if I was indicating a blind, pulled B off of the jump
Viper: T2B Q/4th Place for 7 more points Open Standard Q/1st for his OA Title (on to Excellent!) Master JWW Q/3rd Place, first Q towards 2014 Nationals! Yay!
Video from Saturday
Recap from Saturday
Blade: T2B NQ/2nd Place (Missed Aframe contact) Master Standard NQ/2nd Place, guess what? His Aframe got called again. Master JWW NQ/2nd Place, slipped through the first weave pole.
Viper: T2B NQ, tunnel got the best of us. Excellent Standard NQ, lack of criteria on his end DW behavior shone through. Master JWW NQ, bar down. Loved the run regardless!
Video from Sunday
Recap from Sunday
Blade: Master Standard Q/2nd Place, second Q and 19 more points towards 2014 Nationals! Master JWW Q/1st Place! First QQ towards next years Nationals! YAY!
Viper: Excellent Standard NQ, DW criteria still lacking, but so much came from that! I'll post later! Master JWW NQ, bar down. Second fastest time in 20" class. Da boy was on fire!
A weekend filled with so much good wouldn't be complete without a quote. Just sayin'. To also clarify we (the boys and I) are not suffering right now. We are simply figuring out our current level of awesomeness so we can become even MORE awesome focusing forward!
"Don't quit. Suffer now and live the life of a champion."
So far, 2013 has totally knocked my socks off. It's been that good on and off the Agility scene.
I hope some recent "good" news makes it even better!
Things are very much "still in the works" but I was recently approached about teaching a seminar with a good friend of mine. Needless to say I'm beyond thrilled to have even been asked! Teaching is an opportunity that I've been hoping for, for a very long time. The excitement overflowed onto the blog because I just couldn't contain it anymore!
I promise, I will post more when details are finalized!
I'm going through a phase where the canine anatomy as well as the overall physical well being of the dog is totally fascinating me.
I hope It's not just a "phase" but I find myself drawn to reading any and every article I can find on canine conditioning, overall physical fitness and any workout program pertaining to dogs that compete in dog sports.
I've been wanting to take some kind of canine conditioning class for some time now but haven't been able to fit it into my schedule. With spring just right around the corner I finally took the plunge and signed up for my first canine conditioning course :) I'm uber excited (if you couldn't guess!). After researching, researching and researching available classes I decided to enroll as an auditor in Bobbie Lyon's Canine Conditioning I class being taught through Daisy Peel's website.
I've trained with Daisy before and after following Bobbie for some time I can't wait to get started :)
I know, this isn't a very informative post, it's more of just a "Hey guys, I want to blab about this thing I just did!" so my apologizes to anyone who was hoping for a post with "more". I guess I just wanted to say YES! I finally signed up!
With May not being too far away I'm trying to tread the fine line between the perfect amount of course work and the perfect amount of back-to-basic type stuff with both of the boys. (If you're confused by the significance of May that's when WT Tryouts are for Blade and I!).
Today was one of the back-to-basic days with both dogs. Blade's accurate but I have a hard time getting him to run HARDER. So we are working on it every chance we get.
I also realized while working with Blade this afternoon that I need to reinforce actually listening to cues and not just following my body motion. We had a few spots of miss-communication which I wasn't expecting, but it was nice to work through it and take note especially getting geared up for tryouts.
Happy Blade :)
Da Vipe on the other hand got to work on his criteria, specifically on his dogwalk. Some people know that we are taking a break from the whole running dogwalk thing until I establish a very black and white criteria with Viper. So, for right now I am asking for a solid 2o2o with speed. Since the majority of the time I am able to at least pace him I haven't worked very hard on him driving into his end position. So our focus was to start peeling away or lag. Surprise, surprise Da Vipe was a rockstar ;) video is below:
Running with da' momma peeling off. Awesome
Another rep of da' momma peeling away from him.
Total rockstar. I'm very happy with his speed getting on and moving across the dogwalk. With more confidence I am hoping that he will be more willing to omit some of the extra steps he's taking to get into his 2o2o position at the bottom. Right now I'm ok with what he is offering as I'm more focused on his STOPPING then just moving through the contact.
We tried a few where I lagged WITH a lure out in front of the dogwalk to keep Viper driving forward. The video is pretty self explanatory.
We have an AKC trial coming up in two weeks and even though I'd really like to get Viper out of Open Standard, I am more concerned with maintaining his 2o2o criteria in new places. We have another ring rental next week which I am going to try and remember to spend time proofing Viper's end behavior even more.
Again, that is if I remember...
I'm hoping to get some time in just focusing on handling next week. If there's enough time I'll settle for a little of both!
So yeah, when it rains, we train!
And have totally fabulous training session maintaining contact criteria (finally)!
What is there to do when there's no Agility trial scheduled?
And no desire to train?
Hike of course!
The boys and I spent the better half of yesterday afternoon hiking the trials of a park that wasn't too far from home. It was our first outing to this particular park and needless to say we WILL be going back.
To say it was invigorating would be an understatement. It was a fantastic workout for both the dogs and I and the boyfriend who came with too :)
There were plenty of opportunities for some pretty rad photos as well!
Oh, and there was more then enough photos to make a video. I mean who doesn't like a video?
I can only imagine what this park looks like in the summer. Probably stellar.
This was by far the hilliest trail the dogs and I have hiked in a very long time and as stated before it made for some rad photos.
Like these:
Hurry Up.
Handsomeness.
Beavers doing some work.
Attack of the Derp. Mission aborted.
The most eventful thing that happened on our hike, was that Da Vipe somehow managed to corner a raccoon in the base of a tree. I wasn't paying attention (I was snapping some photos of Blade) and heard some growling and looked up to see a paw taking a few swipes at Viper. Luckily Da Vipe called off and even luckier, the coon was a young one and just coming out of hibernation. He was pretty slow moving but we got him up the tree and took a few photos. Yes. I know the coon is blurry and the tree is in focus but I still liked how they turned out.
Yes. Da Vipe cornered this fella.
So long.
"Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows." - Helen Keller
Needless to say the dogs were pretty tired after a few hours of hiking and spent the majority of last night zonked out at my feet. Here's to non-Agility weekends and lazy Sundays.
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