Weekend Shenanigans (Happy Birthday Shane)

Saturday July 29^th

Long day of work. Took Shane, Pip and Dunn out to play some disc for about 15 minutes a piece.

Shane -15 min- we went off leash the block and a bit to the park, working on heeling with side sits. These were looking pretty good for Shane, especially as his legs weren’t wonky. He tends to sit a bit more forward than he should (his wanted position is sitting on my feet), but that’s okay. I will separate the placement out from the side sit. Right now I’m just looking for mostly sit parallel two-front position. I’ll get a leash out later and help a little with leash pressure, or work on positions with platforms if my session is more about precise placement. Once at the worked the better part of his session bringing the disc to hand without any verbal cue before I would throw another. The first several throws of any session Shane likes to do a lot of regripping and will sometimes stop short of a full return. We also did some monkeying around with disc placement, continuing on to a straight second disc without turn back (he tracks it really well but there’s a load of spinning). We also fuddled with a three-disc pattern for an UpDog game called Time Warp.

Pip -15 min-. We played similar disc games and patterns as Pip. We worked two discs up, and then worked a disc from about 30 yards to a disc at about 20 yards. I’m working different patterns for a game called TimeWarp in UpDog, where the dog needs to catch a 30 yard, a 20 yard and a 10 yard in the fastest amount of time. Unlike Shane who tracks and waits very well (aka saves my ass a lot), Pip has a lot more difficulty on the far toss to close toss and has a habit of grossly overrunning. I think with him we’ll focus on the zigzag and herding circle 10, 20, 30 approach, but will keep practicing the other.

Dunn -20 min-. Didn’t realize I overdid the time until I got home. Dunn went off-leash on the walk and worked both pre-mack and activation on the way. Basically what this means is whenever I stop -usually because she is slightly far ahead-, I stop. She needs to choose to lie down (if there’s grass) to get me to continue on my way -behavior to life reward-, or choose to come back into heel (another behavior to life reward). She is exceptional at this. Although I was concerned about taking a one year old terrier on the streets unleashed, she is an exceptional little walker. Once we got to the field we played with 215s tonight and she was catching them at 10-20 like MAD! (I can also throw them decently unlike her Atoms, so that helps a buttload). I’m not exactly sure how I feel with a not quite 14” dog and that big of disc, as her landings sometimes have the disc smash the ground and then smash her face, but I will play with them further to see if she just needs time to figure out an altered jump muscle memory for the bigger disc. She is still figuring that out with the small disc, so as long as she is keen and there is no bloody tongue bites, we’ll play with these larger discs for awhile. Dunn is hilarious the way she brings a disc back right to my hands -which means she has to jump a good ways to get the disc there-. Then she just hangs on. Her favorite is being swung around. She enjoys tug now -enough to use as a motivator-, but that swinging is where the real reward is for her. She knows how to hang on tight, so although it’s not my favorite reward in the book, it’s the one I’m going to use as it makes her the happiest.

Too tired to take Jinks out. She doesn’t seem to mind anyway. Despite the fact the last few months she has been really keyed into training, I do have to make a solid effort to give her at least two -if not closer to four- days a week where she does absolutely nothing. She has mental spoons to keep hold of.

Exercise/Training -today it’s pretty much one and the same.

Shane -15 min

Pip -15 min

Dunn -20 min

Handler Investment: 55 min

Thursday and Friday

Thursday July 27^th

Today Jinks and Dunn bumbled around the hill for a little under an hour. Beside the occasional recall they were left to their own devices and ran, sniffed and peed on things to their hearts content. 

Pip -20 minutes

I ran Pip through a similar weave entry exercise as yesterday, getting speed into poles, speed out of poles, tighter entrances and needing to really look for his entrance. We did long through (20+ yards) discs as reward, to stretch out our session and get some more exercise in to boot. We also worked both left and right side entrances and started to layer a small bit of handler movement into both sides. The faster I go the more he stops thinking about his job and turns it into a race, so it will be a gradual layering.

Shane -15 minutes

Shane did the same exercise as Pip with weaves. He was hitting both right and left entries tonight, weaves with quite some handler distances, weaves as a discrimination against a “go” (aka, go straight and fast). I am going to pull the tunnel out sometime soon and start doing tunnel into weaves. I also need to bite the bullet and buy a second set of six poles to add to mine.

Exercise:
Jinks/Dunn: 45 minutes

Training:

Pip -20
Shane -20

Handler Time Investment: 1 hour 25 minutes.

Friday July 28^th

Took everybody swimming for about 45 minutes. We had a poodle and Pig Dog join us. No dogs drowned. No training today.

Exercise time: 45 Min

Handler Time Investment: 45 minutes.

Week 1 -Here it Goes!

From here on out I will try to update every day, or at least every other day with what's been happening. For now, here is my first week. For quick reference, you can view the picture of the associated dog on the right-hand column.

THURSDAY AUGUST 20^th 

Jinks and Shane came to work. We tested three different dogs for the adoption floor. Dunn and I took an extended outing at lunch and farted around down by a dock. She happily jumped off the dock several times, took an off-leash meander down the beach and we putzed around the little town and ate an ice cream together -well mostly I had the ice cream and she had the cone cause I don’t like cones. The best part of having a dog (or a child for that matter) is you can usually pawn off what you don't want to eat.

Jinks

Approx 10 minute training session (divided into two mini sessions)

-fronts with go-through leg resets. First time training go-through leg resets. Became quite fluid, needs more proofing.

-FENZI TEAM Level 2 Exercise 6: individual pieces of behavior chain and then putting together for behavior chain: Left Finish, Wait, Toy Toss, Eye Contact 2 seconds, Mark 2 seconds, send. Left finish is rusty, strong wait, lovely eye contact, mark needs a lot of work, broke down as soon as it entered the chain.

*Realized the next morning that I have the sequence incorrect and there is no toy/food toss, instead it is a wait, go place treat, come back, start exercise.

Shane

Approx 15 minute training session (divided into three mini sessions)

-fronts with platform and go-through leg resets. First time training go-through leg resets. Became quite fluid, needs further proofing.

-find heel position with platform and backwards cookie reset w/light angles near end. Coming along well. Able to hold his sit without slopping for approx. 2-3 seconds! (YAY!)

-Pivots on a food bowl. Making progress towards a 180 turn, though needing to treat frequently

-FENZI TEAM Level 2 Exercise 6: (Left Finish, Wait, Toy Toss, Eye Contact 2 seconds, Mark 2 seconds, send.) Need to work on the left finish completely separately -wants to spin into the finish-, need to work on the mark -loses toy after eye contact-. Keeps shifting bum when asking for eye contact -likely asking for too much time on the sit and it’s going sloppy (Shane has ALWAYS had a sloppy sit). Lovely waits, lovely sends. Just need to train and proof the individual pieces he’s lacking

Pip

Approx 20 minute training session (divided into two much too big sessions -cause it’s Pip and he’s nearly impossible to get to quit working before I do. Plus he tends to get frustrated with the short stuff and feel he did something poorly to end it that fast)

-find heel with platform. Can excellently reset from front, side and rear. Excellent bouncy, tight left finishes from front. Crisp and precise. Moving towards auto-sit at heel. Auto sit is excellent with food, disappears with toy reward. Monkeyed around with toy reward placement -behind, take, drop in front, ahead, side, between legs- to see if forward focus was our main enemy. No obvious changes. Will experiment with toy off body behind us in a later session and graduate up to toy in hand. That said, takes verbal cue to sit easily when holding toy, so workable on verbal cue at present. Will need to weigh if it’s worth the training time to train all the cues with the huge ask of a toy in hand. Benefit: if he can do it with a toy in my hand there’s pretty much no greater distraction. Con: may eat up a lot of time.

-find front with platform. Need to work from scratch (haven’t worked true front with this dog in years). Comes to front as if it’s a flyball line-up -both him and I facing the same way-. Very crooked even with prop. Might need a different prop, or more props to aid muscle memory. Definitely needs more through-leg resets to keep him nice and close to body in front position. Won’t worry too much about precision at this point and will systematically weed out the worst 20% or so each session.

-FENZI TEAM Level 2 Exercise 6: (Left Finish, Wait, Toy Toss, Eye Contact 2 seconds, Mark 2 seconds, send.) Worked on pairing physical and verbal cue for “Up” (look up to me). Was able to take the physical cue (light touch to shoulder) out and move to verbal. 80% success rate on first-time verbal. Easily and beautifully moves from Focus to Mark. Will practice further duration on the focus and mark behaviors to proof for the full skill. With also polish that “Up” cue on its own a few times before sending it back into chain. Otherwise skill is mostly hot to trot.

Dunn

-Bumbled around with AJ (1 year old human) and played ball with him (bringing ball to me which I hand back to him) for about five or ten minutes. Otherwise laid on my lap.

Total Exercise Time: Dunn -45 minutes

Total Training Time: Jinks 10 min, Shane 15 min, Pip 20 min, Dunn 5 min

Total Handler Time Investment: 1 hour 35 minutes

Friday August 21^st

-Dunn inter-dog tested two dogs at work for me (about 20 minutes a dog). We played some disc (rollers), did some restrains to dead ball and worked focus work in the presence of some hyped up canines. She begrudgingly posed for pictures as I worked a half-baked stay in my office chair.

Then took the collies for half an hour to a friend’s agility equipment over lunch. All three worked teeter -good progress on all three from both sides despite not being rubberized. Was able to put the teeter into a small sequence with all three dogs. No fly-offs! Need to proof both Pip and Jinks to ensure they aren’t turning back on the fulcrum if I’m further behind or stationary. Need to figure out my old cue system for the teeter for Shane. It’s been over a year since he’s been on a teeter and I know he doesn’t have the same cue system as either Jinks (Teeter, Easy) or Pip (EASY!!!) ), so need to figure that out for next time or create something new. Also need to proof a slight wait on the end of the teeter for Shane even just to ensure his weight is on the back legs to stop the teeter and hit position. He hit his contact every time today but I think that was more luck and being slightly more cautious on the new surface than anything thoughtful.

Worked a 5-6 chain on each of them. Pip worked choosing at static handler over a tunnel, tight wraps and finally started a rear cross (I need to figure my shit out on this one -must revisit some online material). Jinks worked flow and kept herself in the game for about ten minutes effortlessly (YAY JINKS!). Shane worked on the same choosing a static handler over a tunnel exercise (it was very hard but I was a smart human and started small) and tunnel into serpentine. I’m all kinds of agility rusty, so will need to get back into handling shape. Dogs did awesome considering my rust, their rust, the equipment and the considerable heat.

All the dogs also got a small 1 minute mini session on six metal weave poles. Shane has forgotten them from the right side (again, over a year off now), Pip is having a hard time as he can’t bash through them like the ones from class -good!- and Jinks’ six weaves look the same as they did a year ago when she did them. Though she takes awhile to learn something, when its there it rarely backslides -good for me! Will definitely be working our weaves up to 12, at least from the left side in hopes of running some standard starters courses in the not-too-distant future.

-All dogs went swimming after agility. We did a combination of swimming and hill sprints for approximately an hour. No training, just having a good time. Fried puppies didn’t move all night.

Total Exercise Time: Everyone together for an hour

Total Training Time: Jinks, Shane and Pip split 30 minutes agility

Total Handler Time Investment: 1.5 hours

Saturday August 22^nd

-Work all day/trained five classes, company is over. No one gets anything. Backyard lounge day. Pet some dogs in the morning before work, pet them again when I got home for an hour, then bedtime.

Total Exercise Time: None

Total Training Time: None

Total Handler Time Investment: None

Sunday August 23^rd

-Went out to the dock for an hour. Everybody including Jinks jumped off (YAY BRAVE JINKS). Had planned to do some fronts and finishes tonight, but dogs (minus Pip) are wiped and it’s hot out. Plus company is still in town.

Total Exercise Time:

Everybody: 1 hour

Total Training Time: None

Total Handler Time Investment: 1 hour + the drive out and back to the dock

Training Log Supplemental

This blog is designed to jot down my personal day-to-day training efforts, to both keep myself accountable and give others a window into another person's training life.

In my day work I am the Behavior and Training Coordinator at the local Humane Society, giving eight to ten group classes a week and working with shelter dogs in need of behaviour modification.

Although for quite some time I was dedicated to the sport of agility, for many reasons we never truly competed. Three years ago life and location changed and with it came different avenues for learning.

We play and dabble in lots of different activities from agility to flyball, rally-o to scenting, trick work to competitive obedience, stunt dog to barn hunt, dock diving to disc and more. Mostly, I am keen to play and engage with my dogs and work towards small, achievable goals while breaking down behavior into small components.

During non-work time I am the mother to a one year old little boy. My husband works away quite frequently during the week, so our training efforts always revolve around a busy-mom schedule that often means I need to get creative with minimal time and space with high levels of distraction and multi-tasking.

I hope you enjoy following along!