We finally went back to class yesterday! It was fun to be there again. Tuesday's class was all about rear crosses - not our favorite thing. Our warm up was startline stay exercises and I BROKE my startline at least twice - mom was thrilled! Each handler had their dog stay at a jump and then had to play tricks on the dog - jump up and down, pound on the ground, run past the dog, call the dog with a word like"pizza" instead of the release word, etc. We had done those before and I never moved a muscle. Yesterday I broke and I didn't get rewarded with a treat but I could tell mom was happy that I was so excited to play!
Our rear crosses went ok. The first drill was jump, rear cross, jump, and then either the dogwalk, the teeter or another jump. We were working on different kinds of rear crosses - driving forward for more extension or decelerating for collection. We are now supposed to think about the forward or lateral components of the RC and not just about the mechanics of doing one. I got to jump the double a bunch of times and mom made sure to run with me and to keep me straight going over it.
The most exciting thing that happened at class was I tugged with my sock toy twice!! I have never tugged on a toy there ever before! Mom was ecstatic! She is hoping that some day she can get me to tug before running in a trial - that is a LONG way off but at least I tugged a little between my turns.
I am sad to report that I am having another bout of diarrhea - it started last night and I had mom up at 4:30AM. This afternoon I really didn't feel good and wanted to cuddle with mom so she knew something was really wrong. Dr. Jan just went back to work at the clinic so we got an appointment. Apparently I have clostridium bacteria in my system again - from eating too much bunny poop! Mom always tells me to leave it because it will make me sick and darn it if she wasn't right! I am on an antibiotic now and we are hoping I will feel much better soon. Diarrhea is no fun (especially with a furry Sheltie)!
Yesterday we started a new session of our Tuesday morning agility class! The class was all about what Jenn calls parallel rear crosses - a rear cross where you approach the jump from one end instead of straight towards the jump bar. When you do a regular rear cross, the handler keeps her shoulders straight and facing forward so it is easy for the dog to see the jump and go ahead towards it. With a parallel rear cross, the handler drives towards the end of the jump and has to turn her shoulders and invite the dog over the jump to the side. Timing is everything - the handler has to hesitate slightly to allow the dog to see the jump and to go ahead of the handler. It is ok to use the dog's name as a directive (never as an after-the-fact-turn-now panic command - LOL!). So if you are doing a parallel RC and you need the dog's attention and aren't sure you'll get it with hesitation alone, you should say the dog's name before they commit to the jump. ( In our case though, it would probably pull me off the jump if mom said my name because I don't have tons of obstacle focus).
Confused? Well we made a video that will make everything totally clear - LOL! Any way on the video (done in Ricky-time slow-motion so you can see it all the first time):
1. parallel rear cross exercise with one jump - turn shoulder and let dog go ahead and then drive forward (although for me, I watch mom's feet more than her shoulder and you will see her feet point toward the jump)
2. pinwheel exercise - go around a pinwheel twice keeping the dog on the same side and sending them to the middle jump and then the third time, do a parallel rear cross at the middle jump
3. parallel rear cross sequence - the jumps are closer together than in class but the set up is similar - we have trouble with the rear cross at the 3rd jump - if mom doesn't keep moving forward, I back jump.
4. Two exercises - one where you want the dog to drive forward after the parallel RC and the next where you want a turn and you need to hesitate more (not bend over like mom does) and you can call the dog's name if you need to.
5. the sequence again from a different angle and with a little added on at the end.
The class ended with some work on the handler moving laterally away from the dog in the weave poles. I am really good at that, so I did some showing off! Most of the class went well for me - I was sniffy at the very beginning (during the first try at the pinwheel) and mom told me to quit it and I did. Mom thought the class was fantastic and she learned so much and is so grateful that we get to work with Jenn every week. It is such a privilege!
It felt strange to be at class again after two weeks - seemed like it had been forever. This week's class was about serpentines and handling them all from one side or handling them using a FMFC. First we practiced the serpentine recall to heel with one jump. This mimics the middle jump of the serpentine if you are handling it all from the same side. Then we did some sequences - first time we had to do the single-sided handling and then the next time through we did FMFC after the first jump of the three. For us it works much better. The other thing we tried was a rear cross with a parallel approach to a jump. This was difficult - we had never tried it before and I didn't read it well. I turned the wrong way and then back-jumped the jump. You know how we mostly practice rear crosses with the dog coming to the jump straight on? Coming to the jump at an angle made it a whole different thing. Jenn told us to practice what she is calling a parallel rear cross with one jump - set up across from the end of the jump (the jump standard?) instead of perpendicular to the bar. Does that make sense? We haven't practiced it yet so we didn't video it! :)
We tried to make a video today to show what we mean. First we do a serpentine with same side handling and then I take another jump and going to the 5th jump is where mom pushes on my line and I rear cross at an angle and then turn around the jump tightly to the right. Then we ran it backwards with same side serp again and then into the weaves. The third time mom did the FMFC.
Today's class started out horribly. It was mostly about rear crosses again, but we learned to differentiate between rear crosses where the handler uses lots of forward motion to cue the dog to keep going in a straight line (basically)(I think of these as extension rear crosses ) and a rear cross where the handler wants the dog to turn after the jump kind of tightly in one direction or another (I think of them as collection rear crosses).
So first thing we did was (out of the blue by itself) a rear cross at the aframe. I had to run (more like walk) to the aframe and mom was supporting me with forward motion until I committed to the aframe and then as I was going up it, mom snuck behind me to the other side (rear cross in a straight line). Well my commitment point for the aframe was so late that this didn't work very well for us. If you do rear an aframe (or dogwalk or teeter or weaves or straight tunnel), you have to make sure to indicate forward motion to the dog until commitment or you risk pulling your dog off the obstacle.
Then we tried a rear cross of the teeter with a few jumps before it - I got all sniffy and pokey slow and then I didn't want to do the teeter. Jenn had mom put me on the teeter a couple times without rear crossing to make sure I wasn't developing some teeter phobia. After that we were supposed to run a sequence and mom said "Ready, go!" and I veered off and sniffed something I was sure was food on the floor and that was it for mom. She was NOT happy. She picked me up and then tossed me over a jump and said to get going.
Things got better when there was about 20 minutes of class left and we did a couple longer sequences. Mom asked Jenn if she could start out running the outside and then get into position for the skill we were supposed to practice. And that worked. I rear crossed (at jumps and on the flat) like nobody's business. We even got a couple "beautifuls" from Jenn!
Before I forget - here are a couple things to remember when you are trying to do a rear cross with a tighter turn. If you want the turn, you use lateral motion in the direction opposite the one you want the dog to go - like if the dog is on your right, you move to the left before the jump and decel and the dog goes ahead, takes the jump and will turn to the right (putting him on your left). It's ok for the handler to start her lateral motion even if she is ahead of her dog. Another thing is consider how you use tunnels ( all the time, not just with rear crosses). But if you send your dog into a tunnel and want to rear cross the following jump with extension (like a straight line rear cross) stay back and meet your dog coming out of the tunnel so you can drive forward to the jump together. But if you need to turn your dog at the jump after the tunnel, run ahead of your dog and when he comes out of the tunnel show lateral motion and then deceleration to get him to rear and turn.
We tried to make a video to show a little bit of what we did in class (the general idea any way). Mom used just all regular jumps because she was too lazy to get anything else out. In the video we tried to describe what we were doing. Hope it all makes sense!
So even though class started off very poorly, we felt good at the end. Mom is hoping that there is a way to run the outside of the first few obstacles at our next trial - she wants to see if that will speed me up from the beginning. Only problem is that not all courses are set up to make that possible at the beginning. Guess we'll wait and see!
Today was our first class in competition silver (last session we were in competition bronze)! Last session was a lot about handling and this session is going to be more on skills - not sure what that means, but we'll find out! I'm sorry to say that I don't have a lot to report about what we learned today. My backyard target practice and ground speed work is not translating to the training building yet. Jenn says it probably won't and mom will have to bring me to the building to work on it. (As well as taking me to other places). I don't know why it is so difficult for us to go and practice in new places but it seems almost impossible to get it done! We must make more of an effort. Any way, I sniffed some - not as much as some weeks - and was kind of slow. But today's class was about rear crosses again and those just don't motivate me! I can do nice rear crosses but they are mostly in very slow motion!
Ok, the advice for the day - make sure you have two separate and clear signals for a rear cross and a rear cross on the flat. So if you are doing a rear cross at a jump, the handler needs to cue the jump with shoulders forward, inside arm and a jump cue - when the dog commits, then introduce the outside arm to cue the turn. BUT when doing a rear cross on the flat, the handler needs to get her outside arm ready sooner (this cross is of course done separately from a jump) as the outside arm cues the dog to the side change. Jenn said a lot of handlers get into trouble when they use their outside arm to cue the jump where a rear cross is going to happen because the dog doesn't know to go forward and take the jump first. Make sense? Did I get that right? We might try to make a video of this later in the week.
We also experienced that when you practice a sequence it's important to get it right the first time. If you don't, and say the dog takes an off-course, the dog becomes pattern trained very quickly and it's difficult to get the dog to do the sequence you intended. Jenn suggested we all do more box work - some dogs wouldn't run parallel to their handler and just take two jumps straight in a row - they were veering off and taking the jump to the side even if their handler was not indicating that jump at all!! Even I got into that act at the end and made up my own sequence instead of following mom. But mom was thrilled with that since I was moving faster and showing my confidence.
Well, we decided to definitely not go to the trial on Saturday, but over the weekend mom tested my leg a little bit with a few easy jumps and weaves. I knocked a bar with my back legs on Saturday and hit the tire with my back legs on Sunday. Everything else we tried looked good. And I ran and ran in my backyard and never showed any signs of limping. Mom thinks I still put more weight on my right front leg than my left, but maybe I always do that?
Any way, today was our first class back with Jenn! She now has her own building to train in and this was our first time going there and seeing it. Very cool! We haven't had class Feb. 22 so it was awesome to be there! Today's class focused on rear crosses on the flat and at a jump and front crosses on the flat and at a jump. The first thing we had to do was jump, jump, rear cross on the flat, turn to left, jump, aframe. Mom took off way too fast and got to the cross position ahead of me so, of course, I couldn't do a nice rear cross! I needed to be out front! So we tried again and mom did a little better with her timing and we managed a slightly uncomfortable rear on the flat. But then I flew up and over the aframe (while mom held her breath and hoped that I wouldn't struggle or show signs of limping or anything)! Then we tried the same thing but with a rear cross before the second jump and that was much easier and felt much better. We also practiced the rear crosses on a couple other jumps with me being on mom's right side.
After that we practiced a recall to rear cross on the flat which was confusing for mom but she finally figured it out (I think).
Then we tried some exercises with front crosses on the flat - which we thought were a lot easier - and front crosses at the jump. We had to do aframe and then a jump off to the right and then mom had to move far enough ahead and out to do a front on the flat and line me up for two more jumps. This went pretty well - mom has done these before and didn't realize that's what they are called. Next we did it where I did the aframe and mom did a parallel send to the jump on the right and then ran down and front crossed before the third jump. Well, I was so fast that mom didn't have time to get the cross in! WooHoo for me!!!!!! She had to try again and trust my send more and get into position faster. It worked the second time.
Finally we ran a little longer sequence that included the dogwalk (no problem) and weaves. Overall, class went really well and no one saw anything weird about the way I was moving or anything. And I was very happy to be doing agility!
Some things to think about - crosses on the flat are used only between obstacles (they don't involve any obstacles), they can be very helpful for young dogs who don't know how to "send" yet or who require more motion from the handler to keep up their momentum, the front on the flat we did today was used with extension, front at the jump cued collection (don't know if this is a rule but we want to remember this point and think more about it), motion cues the rear at a jump, and mom should trust my sends more. That's all we can remember right now!
Here is a really quick video we made mostly to show the recall rear cross. The actual rear crosses aren't very good - mom didn't think it through enough to be able to really show the difference between rear at the jump (she should've moved laterally behind the first jump) and the rear on the flat.
(As always we are writing all of this down so we can have a chance of remembering it all and we know these long descriptions can be boring so please don't feel bad if you don't want to read it all!)
As promised we went back to learning more about turns in our handling class today. The entire class was about rear crosses! Not a strong point for me and mom as I tend to be behind her most of the time and you can't rear cross when the dog is behind the handler! LOL!
Jenn explained today that there is more to rear crosses than just changing sides behind the dog. She said she could lecture for days on rear crosses alone (thank goodness she didn't - :) ) For today we talked about two kinds of rear crosses - the first one is when you rear cross your dog and cue extension. So say you have two jumps in a row and then perpendicular and out a ways to the left, you have the third jump. You start with your dog on your left and drive toward the second jump and send the dog ahead and then the handler moves laterally to the left behind the second jump and behind the dog, cueing the dog with extension and then also to turn left. The handler might end up kind of close to the second jump.
The second kind of rear cross we talked about is a rear cross where you cue collection and a tight turn. Say you have the same two jumps in a row again but then off to the left side you need to kind of cut back and head at an angle to the aframe (so the aframe would be to the left and over a ways and behind the plane of the second jump). Dog on your left again. The handler needs to decelerate as she approaches the second jump and start to move laterally to the left to cue collection plus a left turn for the dog as the dog is sent ahead. If you do it correctly the dog will land with a tight turn and take the aframe instead of heading out and taking the original jump (farther out to the left and perpendicular) from the first exercise.
Jenn was telling us that the handler should be able to stand right up at a jump and call the dog to jump and cue the rear cross right there at the jump and the dog can learn to read the handler's motion at the last second. You wouldn't do the crosses like this but it is an exercise you can practice with one jump (in the bedroom like we do) to teach the motion to your dog. A handler can also do a rear cross running parallel to a jump but you have to dip your shoulder to cue the dog to take the jump or according to the rules of motion and body position, your dog should continue to run next to you and not take the jump because they are trained not to cross in front of the handler's body in that instance. Another important thing is that to do a rear cross a dog must have a send. Seems logical but Jenn said lots of people try to teach their dogs rear crosses before they ever teach sends and it needs to be the other way around.
I sure hope I am explaining all this ok - sorry if we get any of it wrong - we're just writing it down to the best of our ability and memory. It's all very interesting. Mom thought this class was completely over her head when Jenn started talking. But we actually did the sequences and exercises with the rear crosses! It wasn't the fastest way for us to do them, but Jenn was impressed that I read mom as well as I did and was able to go ahead of her and complete the crosses!
My neighbor gave mom the great idea of boiling ground turkey as a training treat - mom put a third of the package of ground turkey and a little garlic powder in water and boiled it until it was done. It breaks up into nice little bits for training but doesn't seem to get too crumbly. That's what we brought to class today and I give it two paws up! It's super easy and should be pretty healthy too.
Last night we went to our first advanced intermediate agility class! It was great to be back in class again. On Wednesday we had gone to practice in the morning armed with new treats (these beef burger bites that we had gotten as part of Johann's giveaway gift). They are full of bad stuff - according to mom - but I love them! I was very motivated to do fast agility on Wednesday morning and that kind of carried over to last night.
This class is divided into two sections - about 6 dogs in each group. So we get to work on longer sequences. Some of the dogs in the class are very experienced and already trialing at excellent level. That was good for mom because she could watch how they handled an exercise and that helped her figure out how to do it.
The first thing we worked on was rear crosses. We have done some of that on our own, but very little in a class. We also had to do tunnel/dog walk discrimination. Mom found out that she is successful if she can block the tunnel opening with her body and send me up the dog walk. Then she did a rear cross while I was on the walk to get where she needed to be. We also want to work on sending me into a tunnel when it is the first obstacle in a sequence. I tend to not be revved up at that point and often balk at getting in the tunnel. But last night I was pretty fast through the chute - the first time through is always a little hesitant and then next time is much better. (but in a trial you only get one chance!) The weaves had entry and exit wires on which confused me the first time too, but then I remembered them and was ok.
Our second section focused a lot on lead out pushes. I have a really good start line stay at the moment, but I don't have a lot of drive when mom does a lead out. Actually though I was better last night because I kept remembering that awesome tasting treat mom had in her pocket! We did more weaves and also the teeter in this section.
Overall it was a lot of fun and more challenging than the last class. We were disappointed that we didn't get put in a group with our cattle dog friend Katie but the instructors probably did that on purpose knowing that Katie's mom and my mom would talk the entire time if they were together!
My name is Ricky (Covewind Little Ricky, AX,AXJ,CGC) and I am a six year old tri-color Shetland Sheepdog. I do agility and I like to learn tricks too! This blog is about all that and some other stuff as well!
