Insanity is...cik & cap!

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" -Albert Einstein

I can't help but think of this quote when I'm trying to work on cik & cap with Bentley and Lexi.  From my previous videos you'll see that both dogs have a preferred side.  Lexi prefers to turn with her left shoulder to the pole, and Bentley with his right.  Within a day, I had great turns from both dogs going the way that they chose.  Silvia recommends teaching both ways at the same time...but it's so hard!  I've  been working on the dogs' weak sides (Bentley L and Lexi R).  It was a tough process for them, but last night I finally broke through and was getting turns on the dogs' weak sides.  Hooray!

But, I was feeling guilty because I was only working one side--and Silvia made it a point to say that you should work both at the same time.  So, I took a little break and then decided to work Lexi's strong side again.  Nothing doing.  All I could think about was the aforementioned quote from Einstein. 

I'm not sure I understand the logic behind working both at the same time.  Obviously at some point I'll reward turns either way, and then add the words, but right  now...I am not changing any cues (because the only cues the dogs have to work off of are my body language and the "obstacle") but expecting different criteria.  Isn't that like me holding a cookie in my hand (the signal for sit) and expecting a down?  I finally gave up and just allowed Lexi to work her weak side, because her turns were looking really nice.  So now both dogs only want to turn to their weak side (Lexi L Bentley R)

Any suggestions?



And here are a few short sequences (my husband never remembers to record me!) from yesterday.  We've had a stretch of a couple nice sunny days so I wanted to take advantage of it.  It stinks because by the time I get home from work, we only have about 30 minutes of daylight.  Also, there are less afternoon videos of Bentley because our neighbors leave their fence-chasing dogs out all evening.  They don't bother Lexi, but  Bentley goes crazy and we can't get any work done.

Lexi learning to pay attention

Backyard handling

I wanted to work on some handling with both dogs.  Lexi always needs work, especially on the  more technical stuff, and Bentley is rusty so I wanted to see where we stood.

Both dogs did well..though Bentley was a bit rusty (both his fault and ours!) as expected.

We set up this short sequence based on a steeplechase course that we ran back in August.

Here's the video of both dogs, alternating dogs and trying different handling.



Lexi is a few seconds (2-3) faster than Bentley.  But the interesting thing was that her run with the FC is much faster (2-3 seconds) than her run with the RC.  Definitely a reminder to keep moving.  Lateral motion really helps her get her job done.

Also, you can see our outtakes where we just couldn't figure out the timing for Bentley to commit to the jump with a RC.  Always a weakness of his, it's gotten worse since we've spent all this time running Lexi.

The other night Lexi got to work on gambles.  We rarely work that with her because her default is to work away and grab whatever...but it was her birthday so we let her choose ;)

Here she is doing a masters gamble from a course map that I had.  I thought it would be easy, but she really wanted to come out and take that jump across from the tunnel (jump 1) rather than make that turn.  We had to work on it!

Disappointing Final Class

Last night we had our final class. The set up was a full course (jumpers with DW) with multiple sends and recalls to be identified and then performed. I have been working on these with Lexi for the past few weeks. Clearly she hasn't mastered them, but she did not run one segment of course correctly. She cut behind us multiple times, failed to read our body language, etc... It was really frustrating. I expressed that I was frustrated because I felt that as handlers, we had broken a dog with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, I think our instructor agreed (not that Lexi was broken, but that she could be really good with the correct instruction.) She even said, "I really like her..and I don't normally like dogs other than my own". Sigh.

I asked her if she thought Lexi had improved over the 7 week course. She said yes. But, she said that she felt like we as handlers had improved more than Lexi has as far as getting her the correct information. I guess that's good. We can't teach her if we don't know what we're doing, so we'll have to keep working on it.

I'll post the "course map" with analysis another time.

I am attaching 2 videos from a segment some friends of mine are calling "How would you handle this?" My friend went to a Daisy Peel seminar, and was presented with some tough sequences.

Here is how I would handle them...






Apparently I misread both course maps, so here are the "actual" sequences, and how I would handle them.

Ketschker's turn

After reading about Ketschker's turns online I decided to give them a shot with our dogs.

First of all, the best way to describe a Ketschker is to say that it is a combination of a front cross followed by a blind cross.  You set it up by starting to front cross but you don't complete it and instead finish with a blind cross.  But, you don't actually switch sides of your dog.

Sounds confusing...it makes more sense to see it.

I had heard that it really benefits dogs with longer strides, which surprisingly is true of my Lexi.  It is said to make turns more efficient and to increase acceleration out of the turn.

Here were our first attempts with both dogs (suffice to say that we won't be using this with Bentley--but it was fun to try!):

Catching up

I only have a few short videos today.  The heat has kept us from doing much outside of a few short sessions a week.  We go to class, but handling two dogs is already too much to handle, so the camera doesn't quite make the cut.

The first is some work that we've been doing with Lexi on handling.  I really don't want to make the same mistake we made with Bentley.  Bentley was never taught to learn patterns since we babysat him through all (rounds, outs, pinwheels, serpentines).  It has taken us some time to go back and teach it and it has made our lives a lot easier.  We are now working these things with Lexi.  Here's a short video of Lexi's second attempt at a serpentine (we've been doing rounds with her previously).



I have a video that I wanted to post, but my computer's being difficult.  He hits about 50% of his dogwalk contacts--an example of the regression we've seen.  I'm sure it's because we just haven't been able to put the time in at the field.  We get up there twice a week, but sometimes after class it's just too hot, and he's too tired to focus.  I don't want to set him up to do poorly, but now we have a dog who has "forgotten" the stride.  We may need to go back and lower it to start again.

And here's a video of his A-frame.  I've actually been really pleased with his A-frame, but in this video he misses the second contact.  It's the ONLY time I've seen him miss his contact on this obstacle...ever!  I hope it was just a fluke, as he was very tired (we had class, then worked dogwalk, then a-frames).

Lexi does some backyard training

Our little Lexi girl is doing great!  The other day we did a quick sequence with her that included the table.  She had a tendency to turn and bark at us rather than going towards the table.  I suspect it's because she really isn't that familiar with it.  So we worked on it, and this is what we ended up with:



We've been working on a few handling commands, and she's doing okay on them.  She patterns easily, so that helps, but it also makes me wonder if she really knows the words that we are throwing at her, or if she's just reading us and the obstacle.  She was doing okay on "Round", but seemed to get confused today, so we cut that out for now.  We'll just focus on crosses and in, since it's just a cross.

Here's her in:  (Obviously as she goes on I want it a bit tighter, but this is a good start)