Gambles, Tunnels, Weaves and Contacts

It's starting to really feel like winter.  By the end of our session today, I could barely feel my fingers.

I setup a pretty basic sequence, but there were lots of varieties and it kept us busy.  Here's what we had:

So, I practiced a few ways.  For each exercise, I made sure to put myself behind each of the lines to work him from both sides.  First we tried this:

Then this:

Then this:

And finally this:

With doing each sequence on both sides, that's 8 different gambles with one setup.  Nice.

In general, Jonah was excellent.  He was great at finding his entries when I sent them out to him when the weaves were first, and he never missed those on either side, including the 90ish degree on-side entries that he's had trouble with before.

He missed a couple of the entries out of the tunnels at various points.  I don't know that either entry was really harder for him, he would just come out of the tunnel handler-focused and then not have time to judge his entry correctly.  Most of the time, though, he was great.

The only other thing he had some trouble with was the 'out' to the far end of the tunnel.  He had more trouble with it in the last setups (where I sent him across the line to the far entrance) than when I pushed out of the poles.  I guess going right past the closer tunnel end was just too tempting!

We mixed in some contact and table work and he was perfect.

Then, after I was done with the gamble, I set up a discrimination.  I had the tunnel closer to me, next to the DW.  Jonah had a bit of a case of DW suck, but once he went in the tunnel the first time he was 100% after that.  It was like he just didn't see it at first.

All in all, a good day's play.

Back to Basics

Today for our first session back Jonah and I did a very basic but fast and fun practice.

The setup was basically just a speed circle...or square.  On one side was the table and a set of 6 poles.  The next side had the DW.  The teeter was on the third side, and the A-frame on the fourth.

We started at the table, then headed for the weaves, DW, teeter, A-frame and then he got his reward for a fast down and stay on the table.  It was working very well and his obstacle performance was generally excellent.

I did notice that he was close to flying off the teeter a few times.  Apparently my efforts to speed up his teeter have now gone to the other extreme.  Anyway, I started just staying with him a little bit more and had him do a 2o2o a few times.  Then I would let him run off the end but reward him right away for a correct performance, giving him a cookie right as he ran off the down side.  It seemed to be working well.  I also put the teeter up to full height, and he didn't seem to notice at all.  Maybe our teeter concerns are over.  Of course, he's only ever nervous away from home.  We'll see what happens at our upcoming trials.  We didn't end up doing the teeter at all at our last trial.  Maybe next time I'll make an effort to do the teeter in games when I have a chance.

Looking ahead, we got into the ADG January trial, and I'm pretty sure I only signed up for 3 classes but the confirmation is for 4.  I guess I'm just so used to doing all the classes I did that again.  It's not really a big deal, we're just ahead on Fullhouse and I thought it could be a good chance to come home early since it's the last class of the day.  I still haven't heard if we got into the Riverside trial in January.  I hope so.  I'm also considering going to a Sunday USDAA trial in January and running Gamblers (the first class) and Pairs (the second) so Jonah could actually have his SAD title (or do people just call it AD?  I'm a little confused about the titles).  Just thinking about it makes me nervous, but I think he would probably be fine at pairs, just maybe a little bit barkily rude.

Merry Belated Christmas

Ah, it's good to be together as a family.

Dave and I got back last night from spending a few days with my mom's family.  We had a great time, ate a lot of truly delicious food, and got to have quality time with my grandmother, my cousins, my aunts and uncles and my parents.  It was lots of fun.

That doesn't mean, though, that we weren't excited to come home and get Jonah!  He stayed with Romeo and it sounds like they had a great time.  When we got there to pick him up he was so happy to see us and the room was alive with wagging and leaping and spinning and sneezing (Jonah does that when he's excited).  It was quite the picture.  Once we got home Jonah had to do a thorough run-through of his yard to make sure everything was in order.  Romeo is a small, low energy dog, so I don't know how much running Jonah did while he was there.  He certainly did enough for a few days last night!  It was great to have him snuggled up on the sofa with us and then it was a treat to drift off to sleep with a warm dog curled up at my feet.  It's a good life.

The one negative report we got was that Jonah was barky at cars and bikes when they took him for walks.  We're going to have to work more on that.  It's not a safe habit.

So, this week we'll be back here and hopefully we can have some good agility and socialization time.  DogStar is closed so we don't have class, but we'll have to improvise.  Should be fun!

Discrimination Practice

Yesterday Jonah and I did some discrimination practice, and he was super.  He missed twice out of maybe 30 tries.  Both of the misses were where the contact was farther away, and he took the closer tunnel.  The time it was the DW, it was pretty understandable, as we don't have enough space to run at a DW/tunnel discrimination straight on, so he was turning towards the discrimination and couldn't even see the DW ramp when I gave him the command.  Overall, though, he was great.  His contacts were excellent.  We're running out of time before the contacts come inside, so I need to get practice in now!

Also, I'm pretty sure I saw a bald eagle today.  I've never seen one around here before, but apparently there have been some local sightings.  Very cool!  Add that to the list of hawks, owls, and other wildlife we have.  It makes me feel very lucky.

Over the Hump (?)

I just did the math.  Today we earned our 61st Q (really 62nd, but one leg didn't count because you couldn't move up between classes at that trial).  To get a CATCH, starting from level 1 like we did, you need 120 Qs.  That means that, as of today, we are officially more than half way to our CATCH!

That's pretty awesome.  We'll have to see how things work out over the next year.  We may slow our progress if I do more USDAA trials, and we're so uneven that lots of trials will probably offer runs we won't need while we'll still be lagging behind in other classes.  Nonetheless, I think this is quite a milestone.

Good work Jonah!

Last Trial of 2011

One year ago, Dave and I went to Riverside to watch the trial we competed at today.  I remember we watched a nontraditional Jackpot and it took us quite a while to figure out what was going on.  There was a line down the center of the ring, and if you were on the opposite side of the line from your dog as the dog did an obstacle, you got double the points.  Anyway, I remember watching and having no clue why obstacles were sometimes one point value and sometimes another.  Eventually we figured it out, but it seemed a little crazy.

A year later, I feel like a pro at these trials.  We have a regular schedule, we know what to expect, and I feel like we have the skills to do any course CPE throws at us.  We're in the upper levels for every class, and I think we're among the better performers of those upper level dogs.  I'm really proud of Jonah's progress.

Maybe I'm just on cloud 9 because we had another fantastic day, but I am truly proud of him no matter what our results are.  Here's a recap:

Round 1:  Jackpot Level 4
     We got to do another nontraditional Jackpot, and it was one of the easiest Jackpots I've ever seen.  There was no distance element at all.  We had 25 seconds in the opening to collect as many points as possible, and then when the whistle blew, if you did three obstacles and then the table you got 20 points and if you did four or more obstacles and then the table you got 25.  It didn't matter what the obstacles were--you could do just single bar jumps if you wanted.  The only catches were that if you had a fault on any obstacle your 'gamble' was negated, the table was live after the whistle blew, and if you exceeded the 18 second time limit after the whistle it was an automatic NQ.  A few dogs did screw things up for various reasons, but in general the Q rate was quite high.  Jonah ran well.  He did peak at the judge on his first time over the A-frame and as a result he put in an extra chip stride on the down ramp, but he was well into the yellow.  Then he had a slight sniff attack where he saw something on the ground and decided he had to momentarily check it out.  Once he got over that, though, he was off to the races.  His second A-frame was lovely.  We were in the middle of the weaves when the whistle blew, and then we finished a nice pinwheel for the 25 point gamble and plenty of time to spare.  I was pleased with my plan and the flow of the course.  We ended up with 57 points.  I'm pretty sure if he hadn't done that sniffing he would have gotten the jump he stopped in front of and finished the weaves, so we could have had 61, which would have been one of the highest point totals in the whole trial.  57 was pretty high as it was.  One fast small dog (so 7 more seconds) in level C managed 67, which was by far the leader.  Anyway, Jonah's 57 was good enough for a Q and first with a 6 point buffer between him and any other dog in level 4.  That's our first level 4 jackpot!  woo!

Round 2:  Wildcard Level 3
     This was kind of a funny course in that all three of the 'B' obstacles were easier than the 'A's.  My plan was to go for the third A, which was a hard pull to a tunnel entrance, where the other side of the tunnel was straight ahead from the previous jump.  The beginning of the course ran beautifully and Jonah was super speedy.  Then, perhaps fortunately, he slowed and looked at something on the floor again.  It gave me enough time to get a FC in between the jump and the tunnel, so we got the job done easily and he raced for home, still finishing with a fast time despite his little 'episode.'  It would have been a good test for us if he'd been running at it at full steam and I think he would have gotten it without much trouble, but I'll take the Q.  It was still a fast enough time for 1st, too.  Now we're done with level 3 wildcard.  When we finally get to run colors and pick up 2 of those Qs we'll be done with level 3.

Round 3:  Snooker Level 5
     This was our snooker level 5 debut.  Getting three 7's was possible, and I think 3 dogs did it, but it was not flowing at all.  I decided to go with 7-6-7, which was a much smoother course and only shorted me one point.  It still took a lot of handling, as he had to do a lot of running between obstacles to pick up his reds and get from the 7 to the closing, but Jonah handled it great and his motivation stayed high the whole time.  His weaves (part of the 7 point combination) were great, and I gave him some tough entries.   It was fun to get to the closing--it was a lot easier than the opening!  This is good practice for some day when we'll need super Qs in USDAA.  We were definitely the top 15% of our class, and got another Q and 1st.

Round 4:  Jumpers Level 4
     This course was causing a fair amount of problems for people.  It's a small space (65x80.  They can't even run standard courses there it's so small), so lots of off-course possibilities were always right on top of you.  Before the run I made an extra effort to get Jonah hyped up, and he went tearing down the first line.  Then he did a pinwheel nicely, but they always demotivate him a little bit.  Then I trusted him a little too much coming out of a tunnel and over-handled an off-course that I'd watched bite a lot of people, and I pulled Jonah right off the jump in his path.  Bad me.  He didn't take any other obstacles so we turned around and continued on our merry way with no faults, but I felt stupid for breaking his rhythm.  Luckily he picked right back up and had a fantastic finish to the course.  Again, even with the little bobble his time was fast, so we finished the day 4/4 with Qs and blues!  Good boy Jonah.

To add to all the fun, the trial flew by and I was picking up my last ribbons at 2:30.  That might be a record.  It's nice to actually have a free evening, and Dave and I were able to go grocery shopping and make a nice dinner.  A great end to a fun day!

In more somber news, I had sad news from a friend I've made at these trials.  Her one dog, who started at about the same time as Jonah, has been injured for a while, and when I asked how she was doing she said that she is still injured and now also has a partial intestinal blockage, and they don't know the prognosis.  Her other dog's liver is failing, too.  It's just a reminder that we need to be thankful for the times we get to run with our dogs and enjoy the fun we have together, because we never know how long we'll get to share those experiences.  

Ribbon Wreath

So this is a lesson in what you're NOT supposed to do when you're only one paper and one final away from vacation, but it's no use after Christmas and this was the last time we'd be at DogStar before the holidays.

I'd come across ribbon wreaths originally when we were planning the wedding, and then this website reminded me of it when I was thinking of things to do with old ribbons:  http://www.distinctivedesignsbydiana.com/horseshowribbonq.html.

I wanted a look that would use the headless ribbons, though, so I modeled mine more after this:
http://familycrafts.about.com/od/wreaths/ss/ribbonwreath.htm

In the end, I made a foam circle out of a pool noodle, angled the ends, stuck a pen through the hole in the middle and duct taped the connection.  Then I wrapped the whole thing with ribbons, just pinning them in place on the back.  Once that was done I cut ribbons in half or thirds, made little loops of them and stuck them in on the front side.  It was quite easy and took a little more than an hour.  I left a section at the bottom and made a bow.  I thought of using a regular ribbon with a head as a bow, but I thought it looked kind of silly and really brought attention to that one ribbon, which is from another local venue and thus a competitor of DogStar.  I only had one red ribbon with a rosette, apparently.  Anyway, the bow I came up with looked fine.  Overall, I thought it was a quick and easy way to get rid of a lot of ribbons in a good looking way that made a nice Christmas present.  Everyone seemed to think it was pretty cool.  Here are a few shots:

From a distance, it gives the impression of a real wreath, huh?

Closeup of the bow.

Up close, you can see the ribbon rolls.

Another close up.

A view of the side, showing the wrapping of the pool noodle.  Unfortunately it shows through in a few spots...oops!

Dave decided to torture Jonah.

Really Dad?

A (badly lit) view of the back, where you can see the pins.

The other side.

If you've got a lot of ribbons sitting around, I recommend this.  You can buy a foam wreath if you don't have a pool noodle ;-).  Wreaths of other colors could look good too, as could mixtures of ribbons you've won with regular store bought ribbon.  It's an easy craft and I was impressed with the outcome (enough that I wasn't embarrassed to give it away!)

Class Dec 15

Today's class was fun but I think the fact that I'm within days of finishing school meant my mind was not 100% there.  Jonah was really talkative from the second we walked in the door.  He did bark at other dogs, but mostly he just barked at me and was generally impatient.  It was kind of a bother.  His barking was bothering another dog, so when she ran we had to leave the ring.  Poor thing--I felt bad for her, and I wished I could just have the magic to make Jonah relax between runs.  Oh well.

Aside from that, our runs were pretty good.  We had one issue where Jonah just didn't seem to see a tunnel entry.  It looked like this:

The first time Jonah wanted to take the DW and nearly ran me over trying to get there.  The second time he just stopped and looked confused, and then the lightbulb went off and he found the far entrance to the tunnel.  The third time he actually got it right.  I have no idea why he didn't see it/was confused/whatever happened.  Those first times I was doing a FC on the landing side of 3 to a RC in the tunnel.  The second time I ran the course I had him on my right for the whole thing and just pulled around to the tunnel.  That ran quite smoothly.

Aside from that little confusion, the courses ran well.  He jumped onto the table so fast he almost knocked it over, but I won't really fault him for that.  Once he got back on his downs were good and he held them.  None of the nonsense from last week.  His A-frames looked good despite some tough approaches.  His DW contacts were pretty good but slower than they are sometimes.

Now we have to have two weeks off from lessons for the holidays.  We'll have to do some extra work at home.  I'm hoping to do some discriminations before we have to bring in the contacts for the winter.  It's getting cold enough to snow but so far there's nothing significant in the forecast.

Riverside Trial Preview

It's been quite a while since we trialed at Riverside, and we're ready to go back!  It can be a little hectic getting in and out of the ring, but at least I don't have a lot of the new trial nerves I had the first couple times we were there.  Also, it shouldn't be bitterly cold and there shouldn't be too much ice or snow around.

The judge is John Raymond, who I like a lot as a judge.  We had a great trial under him last time at Muddy Paws, and hopefully this will be another good one.

Here's what we have to look forward to:

Round 1:  Jackpot Level 4
     The exciting news is...we get to do a non-traditional Jackpot for our Level 4 debut!  The original confirmation letter had said levels 1 and 2 were running separately from 345C, but the final order of go has them all together, so that's good news!  I've never had a non-traditional with this judge before, but his traditionals aren't usually too bad, so this should be doable.  My goal is just to not get too over-ambitious, as screwing up time management in Jackpot can be deadly.  Last time we only made it by .03 seconds, and I'd like to have a little more room for error this time.  Jonah is one of four dogs in the class.

Round 2:  Wildcard Level 3
    This is our only Level 3 run of the weekend, so I'd really like to get it.  I think Wildcards are usually pretty doable, but I'll have to be careful and think through what he's likely to 'bid' for while I'm walking the course.  We don't seem to get too many shots at Wildcard, so we need to make them count.   I won't be taking handling risks to try to shave off a fraction of a second.  This would be our last level 3 wildcard, meaning we'd just need 2 more colors runs to get the level 3 title.  There's only one other dog in our height and level, but it's run by a professional.

Round 3:  Snooker Level 5
     This is our level 5 debut with snooker--only our second level 5 run overall.  Snooker was our first level 4 run this summer, and we're still ahead in it.  If 51 points is possible, I might like to make a go for it.  I definitely will want to do a relatively high point total.  Riverside is pretty small, so it's easy to get around the ring in a quick amount of time.  Jonah is one of three dogs in the class.

Round 4:  Jumpers Level 4
     If we get this Q we'll finish our first level 4 title, which I have to admit sounds pretty cool.  I like Jumpers courses a lot and I think we're usually pretty good at them.  We'll have to see how things go, but I'm looking forward to a fast run at the end of the day.  Jonah is one of three dogs in the class.

It should be a lot of fun.  We'll let you know how things go.  First, though, we get to go to class tomorrow!

Wagging Wednesday

This morning I took Jonah out and had him try the 90 degree weave poles (see yesterday's post--it's two sets of 6 poles set at a 90 degree angle from each other, about 8 feet apart).  He had no trouble at all.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Then, this afternoon we had another lesson with Grace.  It was great!  We did a lot in half an hour.  Here's a bit of a recap:

-Revisiting the line from last week's course of a 180 to the A-frame (see the videos and map from earlier posts).  We didn't have the A-frame set up, so it was just the 180, but I got a good set of practice with timing my blind crosses.  It was rather eye opening, really.  I tend to wait for him, but if I gave a verbal "jump," he would go take it, I could get out of his way, and his line was greatly improved since I wasn't in his way.  It was super cool and a big improvement.

-Adding a tunnel to the 180 blind cross.  The setup looked like this:

Now if I were just looking at that map I'd say I'd just handle the whole thing with him on my right, but the whole point of the exercise was to do a blind on the landing side of 2 and then pull into 3.  The first time Jonah took the far tunnel entry, but after that we got it.  It was a good challenge.

-Threadles!  This is what took the bulk of our time and it was hard!  I worked on three techniques.
     The first was just single sided--sending him to a wrap, hanging back and then sending him back out to the next jump.  It worked, but was sometimes awkward.
     The second method was to get in a front cross between the two jumps.  This was the smoothest method...when it was just one threadle.  Then Grace added another, so there were three jumps, and at that point it was harder to send to the backside and then boogie enough ahead to get there for another FC.  We got it done a few times, but it wasn't pretty.
     The third method, which I call the "Grace" method, has potential but we need lots of practice.  It involves picking up the dog on the landing side, bringing the dog through the gap with you, and then opening up your arms and shoulders to the jump once you're on the correct take-off side of the next jump.  Here's my attempt at a diagram:

So I would pick Jonah up on my left, run through the gap with him, and then turn my shoulders towards him, opening up the second jump as we got to the correct take-off side.  Even though the diagram shows 2 crosses, he's really always on my left and I'm just rotating towards him as he takes the second jump.  Then we're also ready to do it again if we had to.  Needless to say, we need practice on threadles.

-DW proofing.  I did a few runs over the dogwalk and Jonah's contacts were excellent.  I threw in a bunch of rear and blind crosses and he didn't blink an eye.  Great!

Outing and Practice

This morning we went on a nice walk at Willard's woods.  It started out a little bit stressful--they've put up new signs that the narrow path to the park (maybe 50m long) is a leash zone.  I think it's a good idea, as it keeps unleashed dogs out of the street, but it was a little hectic for us.  There was one dog who started barking at Jonah as soon as he saw us, and that dog's owner was trying to bag some poop and didn't have a good hold on her dog.  So, there wasn't much room to go around the dog and Jonah was jazzed up.  There was some barking but it wasn't terrible.  Then two more dogs came down the trail.  We sat Jonah off to the side but he was so brimming with energy that he still barked and had trouble focusing on me.  Oh well.  Then we got to the field, let him free, and he had a grand old time.  He met a nice flat-coated retriever and they instantly hit it off, running all around the field and getting so tired that they decided to go to the stream, which now has ice in it.  Then we had two wet and cold dogs.  Silly.  Luckily Jonah didn't go in very far.  Anyway, on our way out we passed a dog and Jonah was perfect.  Apparently he just had to get the jitters out.

Then, this afternoon we did another cheese worth of agility.  The setup currently looks like this:

I realize it looks like there's a whole lot of empty space out there, which there is, but remember we have lots of trees to work around, and now big piles of leaves, too :).  

Anyway, I worked a bunch with the two jumps in the middle, coming at them from all different angles and doing 180s and threadles.  I'm still not very smooth with my threadle handling sometimes, but the 180s were great.  He wasn't jumping wide, and we could do 1 sided, landing side FC and landing side BC with no trouble.  It was good practice for both of us, and I worked on really running both before and after, so he could get repetitions with collection and then extension.  

The other project of the day was the weaves.  I thought it was a different look than he'd ever seen, but it didn't cause him much trouble.  He did miss the entry on the second half once going 'up' on the map, but otherwise he was great.  After our session I moved the 2 sets to a 90 degree angle so we'll try that soon.  

His table and contacts were all great today.  He was actually close to flying off the teeter once he was running it so fast.  Hopefully that doesn't become a problem, but considering how at our last USDAA trial he was afraid to tip it at a walk, I'm hoping we'll have a happy medium.  His teeter looked good at class and run-thrus last week.

We have a private session tomorrow, group lesson Thursday and then a trial Saturday.  Fun week!

Also the great horned owls are hoo hoo-ing right now.  One is in our yard and the other must be down the street, but they're having a good conversation.  Awesome.

Cheesy Practice

It was getting dark when I got home this afternoon but I felt like Jonah and I should do some practice.  We weren't out there for long (one string-cheese worth with high rewards), but he was super.

We did:
blind crosses after the teeter
blind crosses after the A-frame
blind crosses after the dogwalk
90 degree weave pole entries
table practice

He had no trouble anywhere--hit all his contacts, made all his entries, and his table downs were fast and he stayed down.  If only every day could be this good!

Run Thru Videos

Jonah and I had a great time at run thrus today.

I was very pleased with how our first course went:

The second course provided two problems that we hadn't had yesterday when we ran the course clean the one time we did it.  Today, Jonah had NO interest in holding his down on the table.  This clearly needs work.  Also, the tunnel/A-frame discrimination was difficult for us today.  Sometimes I had too much pressure and he took the tunnel.  Sometimes I pulled too hard and he ran right by the A-frame.  I cut most of our mistakes out, but it showed that we really need some work on these discriminations.

Here are the videos.  His weaves are pretty good, eh?

And here's a compilation of our A-frame contacts:

Thanks to Dave for videoing!

Great Lesson

I should really be working on my paper right now, so this will be brief, but it was so great I had to record it.

Jonah was super tonight and we had so much fun!  He only made two mistakes all night, and both were my fault.  On the first course, one section looked like this:

I decided to do a blind on the landing side of 4, and I was so concerned about getting there that I didn't fully support Jonah after 2.  Some dogs took the off course teeter, and I'd considered that, so I just sent him to 2 and got out of there, I guess hoping he would read my mind about the tire.  Having boogied out of the way, I didn't really notice, but Grace said he did a beautiful wrap of 2 (we've been practicing!), and before I knew it he was pretty much on top of me at 4.  Confused as to why I was so in the way, he wiggled around me, jumped the backside of 4 and then turned around and barked at me like, "Mom, you're late.  Where do I go now?"  On our second try I paid enough attention to the tire and gave a verbal cue.  Not only did the tire jump nicely, but I got my blind in and it worked awesome!  He didn't even blink at the tunnel, which bit most of the other dogs.

We did this sequence a few times, and there were a few concerns.  The second time through, I got a little relaxed with my line and pushed too hard towards the A-frame, and we did buy the tunnel.  The third time we got the discrimination but he 1-hit the A-frame.  He did get in the yellow, but I found it odd.  Usually he's tempted to 1-hit if he approaches with a lot of extension, but this was quite the opposite; it was a tight turn on the approach.  Grace thought maybe he was really digging in to compensate.  Who knows, but it was rather surprising.

Our second course opened with a tight threadle, which Jonah totally aced (once he finally calmed down enough to sit so I could lead out).  I don't think we're usually very good at threadles, so it felt good to nail it.  We also nailed another tunnel/A-frame discrimination, this time straight on with a long running approach.

Oh, one more thing.  Today Grace referred to Jonah as 'bold.'  I bet I never would have expected to hear that a year ago!  Puppy's growing up.

Oh fine, one more.  One of the members of our class has Keeshonds, and one of her girls has puppies, now 5 weeks.  So. much. fuzzy. cute.

That's really it now.  We're planning on going to run-thrus tomorrow so hopefully I can get some videos up.

The Plan

Yesterday Jonah and I met with Grace to get some good ideas about what we should be practicing, and we developed a list of 'to dos.'

Our foci:

• Forward sends to wraps, both with and without FC's
• Putting pressure on Jonah's landing to get him comfortable jumping closer to the stanchion rather than swinging wide and sometimes going behind my back
• Serpentine practice with different handling options
• Serpentines with tempting off-course pinwheel jumps (first placed reasonably far away so as not to set Jonah up to fail, and then moving them closer)
• 'Around the clock' lead outs to blind crosses
• Blind crosses with contacts

We've done some practice on the jump work and it's going really well.  The only thing is that Jonah understands when we're doing that work with tight wraps and things, so he isn't in full course excitement mode.  I might have to set up those more technical questions in a sequence rather than just by themselves as drills.  I think we're going to meet with Grace again for another few private sessions while school is lighter.

Practice, Practice, Practice

For some reason we haven't been doing much agility in the last few days.  Somehow whenever I think of it and am home it's dark out.  Luckily in less than 3 weeks the days will start getting longer again.  Anyway, today Jonah and I did some basic practice.

We're in a funny state of motivation:  he gets most excited about the stick (rather than food), but if I throw the stick as the reward he won't chase it because he just wants food.  So I can rev him up with a stick, but then the reward needs to be food.  Of course, either one alone works, too, although only having food lacks the super excited state.

Jonah's contacts looked fantastic today.  All three of them.  His DW was fast and solid into the 2o2o, his teeter was speedy and confident, and his A-frame was consistent no matter what kind of an approach I gave him.  Sweet!

The big focus of today was working on on-side weave entries, since those are hard for him.  He missed quite a bit.  I'm a little bit unsure of whether I should be letting him find the entries very independently and move the angle of entry progressively more difficult or if I can try any angle and just help him more with the tougher entries.  I think I'm erring on having him find the entry independently, but I do push the line a little bit at times.  The best thing about all this was that he was never losing enthusiasm even when he missed and had to try it again.  I tried to keep rewards really high when he got it and not be negative when he missed, and it seemed to be working.

Jonah's table was also great today, even though it's been a little shaky lately.

I think we're going to meet with Grace on Wednesday to work on developing a long term training plan and learn some good exercises to do at home.  Should be fun (as always)!

December Goals

November was a little crazy what with being away for 9 days.  Anyway, some good things did happen.  Here's a review of our goals:


1.  Put the A-frame up to USDAA height with the box to get some good muscle memory at that height.  
     Yes.  It takes a little more momentum for Jonah to get the contact easily, and our space just isn't huge for a big approach.  I just need to get him running at trials.  For now though, I like keeping the A-frame lower so we can have more repetitions with less stress.  We're really focusing on CPE right now, anyway.
2.  Practice the 24" table.
     Yes.  Thanks to Grace for getting it out for us.  Of course, then the Grand Prix course didn't have a table.  Oh well.  Jonah was great with it.  At home, though, he hasn't been too interested in a down.  I think I'll clean off the table and bring it inside for the winter so we can practice a lot.
3.  I want to keep myself calm and in a good mood for the USDAA tournaments this weekend.  I was really stressed the last time we ran Steeplechase and I think it impacted Jonah.  I want to handle the courses fairly conservatively and make sure Jonah has as much fun as possible.  I don't want to fix mistakes--I want to keep running if he misses something (but I want to do everything I can to make sure he doesn't miss anything).  It would be really exciting if we could get a tournament Q (we'll need 5 if we ever get to an ADCH), but I'm not really counting on it this time.
     Yes!  Well, we didn't get either Q, but I was completely thrilled with Jonah.  We didn't have any mistakes to fix (can't do anything about a blown contact!).  The only issues other than the A-frame that one time were episodes where Jonah got nervous and stopped to try to identify a scary sound.  He always got back moving quickly, though.  Mostly I was just pleased that both of us were relaxed, excited, running fast and having a great time.  Maybe we'll get a Q in January.
4.  Our other trial this month has some potentially big runs which could allow us to:  1)  finish level 3 standard and get our CL3-R title, 2) get our first level 3 colors Q!  3)  finish level 3 jackpot and earn the CL3-S title, 4) finish level 4 snooker.  I'm going to be really ambitious again and hope for 2/4 Qs, like I did in October.  I think that should be reasonable, but we'll see.  
     Yes yes yes!  This was Jonah's first perfect trial where he Q'ed and won all of his classes.  He didn't have any major problems at all:  just a few DW contacts that were a little messy/slow (but never even close to a blown contact), and he was a little low on enthusiasm in his colors run.  Anyway, we finished Standard Level 3, got our first Colors 3 Q, finished Level 3 Jackpot and finished Level 4 Snooker.  I couldn't have asked for anything else.

5.  Develop a long-term plan for 'stepping up our game.'  I'll let you know the thinking behind that one soon, but we have big things ahead of us, and I want to make sure we're ready!
     Well, no.  But I did just email Grace to initiate her help on developing a plan.  


So, now we can think about what we want to accomplish in December.  Here are my thoughts:
1.  Develop a long-term plan for 'stepping up our game.'  We didn't do it last month, so now's really the time.
2.  Take Jonah on a social outing at least once each week.  I have no excuses not to since I don't have school.
3.  We only have one trial this month, CPE at Riverside, where we'll have shots at Wildcard, Snooker, Jumpers and Jackpot.  We'll have shots at finishing Wildcard Level 3 and Jumpers Level 4.  It would be our first Snooker Level 5 and our first Jackpot Level 4 Qs.  I 'd like to aim for 3 Qs.  For Snooker, since we're in Level 5 now, I'd be inclined to go for a more ambitious plan if it's reasonable.  
4.  I want to improve our on-side weave entries.  I think we just need lots of practice.
5.  I hope to have the teeter back up to full height and have Jonah still racing over it happily.

Great Class

Tonight's class was lots of fun.  Jonah was super excited, but in general he was able to handle himself with few problems.

We ended up chatting a bunch at the beginning of class instead of having our normal 'warm-up' period, so we jumped right into the first course.  It started with a tunnel to the DW.  Jonah was barking and leaping like mad, flew threw the tunnel, raced onto the dogwalk and then...I don't know what happened.  My classmates said it looked like he put his back left foot off the edge.  As I looked over, I just saw him scrambling like mad and then falling.  I stopped stunned but he landed on his feet running and took the first few jumps he came to before racing back to me and barking at me like, "Mom, come on, why'd you stop?" We started over and he showed no hint of nervousness at going back on the DW.  After that the course ran fast and fun.  He was great and attentive, racing through the technical sections with tight lines and good speed.

The second time through the course we were supposed to change our handling techniques.  My different handling generally worked but it was a little messier.  I started by layering the tunnel and DW with a tire and jump, so I was about 15 feet away.  No problem at all.  Next was tackling this section:

The first time I had sent to the the chute, picked him up on the landing side of 2 on my right, pushed to three, and then rear crossed seven.

The second time I went to the takeoff side of 2, picked him up out of the chute on my left, invited him in over three, handled him on my left through the weaves, blind crossed the end of the weaves and then did another blind between 5 and 6.  I was worried about getting ahead enough to give him space to land off 3 and shape his path to the weaves, and I almost pushed him past 3 altogether.  It was enough to make him drop the bar at 3.  Oops.  The rest worked well except the blind before 6 got him so excited he '1-hit-wonder-ed' the A-frame.  He did get in the yellow, but just barely.

The A-frame is funny.  At home, extension is good.  At the USDAA trial with the high A-frame, extension was good.  With the lower A-frame at CPE and in class, though, when he's really hyped up extension is not necessarily good; it can make him just do one hit on the down side, which can lead to a missed contact.  I have to keep working on it.

Our last course was just a speed circle, as we were short on time (2 weeks away from agility is too long! There were lots of trial brags to share :) ).  Jonah was great.  People commented on how fast his weaves were.  Good boy!

Trip Recap

Sorry I've been quiet of late.  Dave and I were away for a while and when we got back it's been time to jump right into the last push for school.  Today was the last official day of class for me, although I'll have to go back in for a few various things in the next couple weeks.  At this point, only 3 papers and one final exam stand in my way of vacation!  That will mean more time for Jonah, so hopefully the weather cooperates.

First off, here are some pictures of our trip.  Dave and I added three new states to our lists:  Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  I've now been to 32 states.  Someday maybe I'll get to them all.  My father-in-law has done 45...that's pretty good in my opinion.  Anyway, here's some of what we saw:

There's a lot of land in Oklahoma, so if you want a new house you just build a new one.  And leave the old one right there to fall apart.

Things were flat.  And dry.

This was in a big salt lake that was mostly dried up thanks to the big drought.  I guess the water got too shallow for this guy.

Beautiful bluejay on the tree.  Too bad my zoom's not better.  Of course he flew away when I went closer.

Cool red-clay cliffs on the edges of the salt lake.

A salt plain.  They actually gather salt here and sell it.  Yummy?

As we drove west things got less flat.

...but they were still dry.

I decided this is where I would want to live if I were a mountain lion.

We went to the alabaster caverns.  Dark, but cool.  The caverns were over a 1/4 mile long.

   

We went to a windmill museum.  How cool is that?

A 1900 General Store at the windmill museum.  Quaint, eh?

1901 homestead house at the windmill museum.

Windmills.

TX!

Back in Oklahoma at the Glass/Gloss mountains.  Luckily for them, it rained (they need it)!  Unlucky for us, as the picture quality isn't good.

View from the top of the mesa.

Another mesa.

Cool shape.  How does nature do that?

After this trip we went up to Philadelphia for our actual Thanksgiving meal, and then we got back home to a very happy and excited puppy.

In agility news, I've spent most of my outdoor time raking the agility area.  It's in good shape now.  Jonah's been doing well, but we haven't done anything too difficult.  I have everything on the edges now for raking, so we do big speed circles:  weaves on one side of the square, DW on the next, then the teeter and then the A-frame.  He loves it.  I'm especially pleased with his increased speed and independence on the teeter.