We've Been Busy

Are we going somewhere fun?

Yes, we've been busy.  And no, not with fun dog stuff!

I think I've mentioned before that this time of year is crazy at work (holiday time!).  I've been working late pretty much every night, and since I work 45 minutes from home, it doesn't leave a ton of time for dog training.  The fact that it gets dark at 6pm makes training at home impossible.

It's also hard because we're supposed to do Lexi's exercises every day.  It's about 30-45 minutes of exercises and a lot of them require two people.  By the time we get home, feed the dogs, cook dinner and walk the dogs, it's usually close to 9pm.  I'm still hoping to win the lottery soon and train the dogs all day long! :)

Nope, to the chiropractor!

Her chiro adjustments have been going well, and now we're hoping to go to only once a month (we'll see what the vet has to say at the end of this month).  When we go to the chiro at the vet's office, Lexi is miserable.  She's so sad!

Lexi's still doing really well.  She had her first class last week and was awesome.  She was high as a kite (can you blame her?  It's been 4 months!) but she didn't limp, balk, or even slow down one instant!  It made me very, very nervous with all of her spinning and break neck speed, but she did great.  I was so happy to be out there with her!

We rented the building for some practice this week (class was canceled), and really had fun.  Bentley's contacts have improved (hooray) but it's clear that he mostly just keys off of our motion.  If we decelerate too soon or slow down too early, so does he, whether he's reached the bottom of the contact or not.  Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, it's not one of my training priorities for him.  It's rare that there's an occasion when we can't show motion at the end of an obstacle, so I'm okay with his performance.

Lexi was kind of a mess, but she is really out of practice.  And again, she had fun and was healthy, so all in all it went well.  Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...if I'm going to treat her like a normal dog (which she is) I have to say that she has forgotten all of the work we've done on collection.  She collects really well (for her at least) in the yard, but when we get to the building she is extension & flat jumping all the way!  I could not get her to collect even by standing still.  I'm hoping that with more practice she won't be quite as excited at the building (and trials) and she'll remember all the things we worked on.

One of my major problems is timing.  I tend to run in a very chaotic way.  I usually end a run and don't remember everything that happened!  So I know that doesn't help our timing.  Lexi's running like a bat out of hell, and I'm running around panicked!  No wonder everything feels so chaotic.

Here's Lex doing a bit of work in the yard.  Her discriminations are quite nice...


And here's a video from the building.
You can see Bentley's great collection and serpentine recall to heel.  But then you see his poor discrimination skills.  He's always preferred every obstacle to the tunnel, but with a constant reward at the contacts, you can't blame him for taking the dogwalk (despite Jonathan's motion).

Then there's Lex.  Firstly you'll notice my poor handling getting her over the jump, and then her poor collection heading towards the weaves.  After the video I worked and worked and worked on collection over the jump and could only get it with a backy uppy with me right on top of her.  More work to be done!

Good signs!

I'm a little behind in posting about our daily activities...but having a job is much more tiring than I remembered!

Anyways, just a quick little update.  Hopefully this weekend I'll have more time.

Tuesday we started a new class with Lexi (we didn't enter Bentley this session because he isn't ready yet physically) about contacts and weaves.  She needs a lot of handling work, but we can't afford more than one class, and Jonathan and I have committed to working on all the RTH positions with her during the week on our own.

I will post more about the class another time, but I had to say that our instructor actually used Lexi as an example while we were doing fast, straight weave approaches, and said "see how Lexi rocked back onto her rear and collected into the weaves?"  I thought I would cry.  I couldn't believe it!  I guess our work is paying off!

And then, another moment of Zen on Bentley's part.  As many of you know, we've struggled consistently with his contacts.  As a quick recap, we started with 2o2o but he was unmotivated, lacked confidence, and crept down the down side of the equipment.  It would take him 10 seconds to come down the a-frame some times!  And then, he would creep and jump off and STILL miss the contact.  So, we switched to running.  It did wonders for his confidence, but then he got too confident and starting jumping (which was partially our fault as we started rewarding jumps by accident) off too early.  Now, we're back to 2o2o because it's the only thing holding him back from Standard success!

Anyways, my little boy just doesn't learn quickly or generalize well.  He never seemed to get the position, and often just seemed confused despite our best efforts.  We had recently started retraining just with a target on the flat, or with little incline.  Tonight we took him outside (after over a month off due to his surgery) on the lowered a-frame and he got into position like a champ!  He showed true understanding of his job because when he missed it, he slowed down, but couldn't hold  it, and got back into position moving his back legs.  What a good boy!

Collection exercises

Everyone loves to tell us that Lexi needs to learn to collect. Unfortunately, being novice handlers, it's something that we're still learning how to do. This started with one of our lessons with Stuart where we learned that Lexi is always jumping in extension, and it causes her to take wide turns, and sometimes knock bars.

Unfortunately, an hour with Stuart isn't enough to fix the issue, it's something that takes constant work. I could list the things that we've done with Lex to work on this, but I don't think there's enough room (or time) on this blog! Jump grids have played a big role, as have jump boxes, working on tight turns, turns out of tunnels, using a command to indicate a change ("shhh"), but nothing has shown us a great deal of success. But! We aren't giving up.

I spoke with a friend of ours who recommended working on the flat some to reward staying with us and reading speed changes. Lexi read our speed changes very well. It's almost like when she sees the obstacles, she loses her mind. But, I've come to find that a great deal of it is because of my poor timing, so I'm trying to improve as well.

This issue also pops up when working weaves. You may have noticed that at our last trials, the weaves have been an issue. Lexi consistently goes wide and misses her entrance. It isn't because she doesn't know how to enter (she does), it's because entering from an angle often forces her to slow down, and she chooses not to. So she swings out wide, and enters when it's easier for her. So, we're working on that as well. I think the future holds some 2x2 weave training to help with that.

Here are a few drills that we worked on last month:

Okay, I forgot that YouTube doesn't show my captions. Here is what we worked on, in order:
1-- Circle work, rewarding for attention to speed changes
2--Circle work, including crosses
3--Circle work, then a send, rewarding a tight turn
4--Collection with jumps, rewarding collection
5--Collection prior to the weaves
6--Big scary neighbor dog comes out, forcing us to stop. Also, forces us to put up a fence.