Turning and tunnels

I really liked Diana's exercise in her blog where she had both Java and Miley work on coming out of and going into tunnels combined with turns.  One thing about Lexi is that she sucks to tunnels, and loves blasting out.  I thought it would be fun (and good practice!) to work on driving ahead, and paying attention.

I tend to love any exercise that can be turned into an "either/or" scenario!

You'll see that at about 1 minute I come to the epiphany that if I have to direct Lexi off of a straight line, I better find a way to get there (a shortcut--whether it's cutting corners, leaving her on a contact, etc...) or I can't give her information.

Inside/Outside turn comparisons

Several weeks ago in class we did an interesting exercise.  We were presented with a few tough sequences from some "famous" courses, and were asked to perform them two ways.  Once, turning the dog to the outside, and once turning them to the inside.  Prior to running, we were asked to guess which way the dog would be faster.

As a key to the worksheets, the circled answer (where it says "fastest") was our guess.  The times written were the actual times for each sequence.  (Note: click on photo to see them larger)

Bentley p.2:

Lexi p. 2:

A few observations:
Not surprisingly, Lexi was faster to the outside every time.  I was 3/4 in guessing correctly.

I was surprised, however, to see that Bentley was faster to the outside a couple times.  We have a tendency to turn inside with him much more often, but I'll definitely be rethinking that.  I'm guessing it's because it's harder for him to speed up again once he slows down and collects for turns.

Lexi's worrying patterns; flyball version

We've had a tough couple weeks the last two times we went to flyball.

Basically Lexi's turns at home are great.  I took her to class and even without the ball, and without the trigger, she just doesn't want to put 4 feet on the box.  I'd get 2, or 3 (with the third way down at the bottom).  I don't think she put 4 on a SINGLE time.  I had her out there with treats and she just wasn't doing it.  She was revved up and excited, I tried running with her, sending her, etc...nothing doing.

So, I decided to work on something else.  I started with triggering the box myself and throwing treats out.  Lexi did not appear worried about the noise at all, and was very excited about the sound since it would immediately lead to treats.  So, I started having her trigger the box and I would throw a ball--awesome, no trouble (she was just pushing with two feet, but I figured that was okay since I was just working the noise/feel).  Then I had her actually triggering the box to get the ball.  She did it about 3-5 times, was excited, up, happy, etc...and then all of a sudden, she wanted nothing to do with it.  She went from triggering the box and fetching the ball to refusing to put any feet on the box at all.

We took a long break, then I went back just a few more times and had her trigger the box for a cookie, and we called it a night.

This reminds me of what she did with the teeter.  No issues that we could see, but one day she would just refuse it.  We must have retrained it 3 times.  Looks like a similar pattern with the box.

Lexi's flyballs turns

Have been working Lexi's turns this week.  They aren't half bad!  I hope she's able to make them translate to the box with a ball.



The hardest part for her I think is going to be the noise of the box.  She tried it last week, took the ball off three times when it triggered, and the third time she decided it was scary and didn't even want to put one foot on it.  So I put her back on it without triggering it until she was jumping on it again, and then just triggered it and threw food at Lexi so she wouldn't be worried about it.