Leashes at Willards Woods

After our lesson yesterday I took Jonah over to Willards Woods and he was fantastic.

I kept him on his leash, but I had my bait bag with treats.  When we'd see a dog from a ways off, I would get his attention on me and remind him that I had deliciousness in my bag.  I would let him check on the other dogs, but if he didn't come right back to me I would just say his name and give him a little cookie.  I made sure the leash was really slack.  Then, when he got close, I let him say hello but I kept no pressure on the leash.  A few times he wanted to actually run and play with the dog, and at that point I would unclip the leash and let them have fun.  If he didn't want to play, we would continue on our way after the initial hello. He was so amazingly perfect I didn't know what to do (but he got lots of cookies)!  We met 10 dogs with no stress at all.  At one point, 3 dogs came rushing at him all at once:  a big happy golden, a lab puppy (maybe 3 months?) and a little puggle.  They engulfed him and the little guy was jumping on him.  This would often overwhelm Jonah a little bit, but he was great.  Wow.  I don't know what to make of the whole situation other than I hope we have lots more experiences like this.

My concern is that, at trials, it's not practical to have him on a loose leash all the time.  Space is simply too crowded.  He's so hyped at trials and I'm nervous and the other dogs aren't necessarily friendly either.  It's just a crazy environment and I can't expect him to behave like a rock.  He's a real, live dog after all.  Hopefully, though, the more practice we can get in relaxed situations, the better he will react in more hectic ones.

We got our pairs partner assigned today.  I did a little stalking (looking on a photographer's website and searching for the dog) and found that it's a very nice looking little cattle dog.  Not a big crazy looking BC.  The handler looks really nice too.  So, that's reassuring.  Gulp.  

Fun Private Lesson

Yesterday Jonah and I had a great session with Grace.  We didn't have any other dogs in the ring, so it was just us and focusing on our own skills.

We started with a fun jumpers sequence of 11 jumps.  It included a threadle, 180, forward send to a wrap and other fun challenges.  Jonah was excellent.  The only 'mistake' we had was a dropped bar on the send/wrap when I slammed on the brakes and he was startled.  My fault.  One other time he turned left when I was ambiguous about the send (I'd envisioned him turning right).  Grace said that as I was slowing I actually drifted left, which he picked up as a RC cue.  Again, my fault.

The fun part was that Grace had us handle one section a few times and timed each one.  It looked like this:

My first inclination was to FC on the landing side of 3.  It was tight and Jonah had to slow way down, but his line was very efficient and it ran well.  5.8 seconds.

Next I did a RC over 3, so he turned left and ran the longer route.  This way he was able to really dig in after making the turn and had a lot more speed going over 4 and 5.  The longer route was costly, though.  6.1 seconds.

The third way I did this was to have lateral and forward distance over 1, drift into the pocket between 2 and 3, rotate towards him and send to 3 with my left arm as I'm facing him.  Then I tucked close to 3, did a BC and picked him up on my right as he wrapped 3 to the left again.  Thus, he was running essentially the same path as last time, but the BC encouraged a shorter wrap.  It was also 5.8 seconds.  

The first handling was definitely the easiest for me, but I think he might have liked the BC best because he didn't have to put on the brakes so hard.  Anyway, it was lots of fun to have a stopwatch on us.  My perceptions of what was fastest weren't always the reality.

After working through this sequence we did some gamble work.  It was just a box of jumps, where you sent the dog across the box ahead of you (you can't go into the box), and then have the dog do a 270 and jump across the box the other way:

Conceptually pretty basic, but it proved to have some challenges for us.

The first time Jonah did not send out to 2.  He started that way but got concerned when I stopped at the line and turned back to me.  We need to work on forward sends (and we did, today, if you read our last post).  The second time and from there on out he got 2, but he was not as confident as I would like.

The first time we tried to go across the box 3 to 4, we got it.  It was a bit of a timing game, where you had to wait long enough for the dog to commit to the correct side of 3 (without support Jonah would have come in the gap between 2 and 3), but then you had to get moving to show movement forward and not let the dog curl in over the backside of 1.  As I said, the first time we got it, but subsequently I screwed up the timing a few times.  

I realized that I could sort of cheat a little bit.  If I was patient, I could wait for Jonah to come back towards me, coming past 3, and then I could re-set the line for 3 and 4 starting with a send out to 3.  This worked pretty reliably, but it would be nice to not have to do that.  I think I'll set this gamble up again some time.  It was a nice one--not too hard, but hard to do really nicely.

Then, at the end of our lesson, the dog in the next slot came into the ring and Jonah didn't bark once!

We're Alive

I have some updating to do, I realize, but first I just want to review the session we did this afternoon.

First we did this gamble.  Jonah was very good.  The hardest part was getting the second jump, but he only missed once, when I stayed well behind the line (it was 21 feet from the line to the second jump):

Next we took the tunnel to the contacts and did discriminations.  Jonah was super except one time he took the DW instead of the tunnel when the tunnel was closer to me.  I guess he has a little bit of DW suck.  Also, one time on the A-frame he ran down the ramp and his nice 2-hit rhythm broke down.  He was still well in the contact zone, but not a perfect performance.  All his other A-frames looked super.

Then we took the tunnel back to the jumps and did this gamble:

He was pretty good with this, too.  A couple of times he turned towards me after 2 and sometimes it wasn't a smooth turn from 2 to 3, but generally it was quite good.  I like this gamble.  I decided that if I were ever a judge I might set up this as my gamble:

Sometimes Things are Really Hard

Grace brought her older dog out today while Jonah ran at class.

It was much less dramatic than yesterday, thankfully.  Jonah did bark when he first saw Rommy, but nothing too bad.  I thought he was actually going to run alright, but it turned out that even just having a happy, relaxed senior dog in the ring was a huge distraction.  Here's some footage.

Aside from the problems with the second jump (so weird!), he clearly takes a look as Rommy moves later on in the course, and then he barks on course, which he never does once he's started.  He was generally slower and more distracted.  It wasn't too terrible, though.  I'll try again :).

Our later rounds were just me and Jonah on the course and he was good.  He did pull a bar.  I have it on video but don't have time to upload it right now.  Even looking at the film I can't tell why he pulled it except that he had to chip in a lot, but he pulled it with a back foot so who knows.  It just might be one of those fluke things that happens every now and then.

It was a good lesson--not for the usual reasons, since Jonah didn't have any beautiful and super fast runs as I might have liked, but I feel like it was excellent practice for him to work through having another dog around.  I'm thinking we really might have to scratch the pairs run in late January, but I think we'll be able to do it down the road if we just keep practicing and he gets used to the idea.

Ups and Downs of Socialization

Yesterday Jonah and I went to DogStar to practice running Pairs.

It was kind of a disaster.

Jonah barked when Grace brought her dog in, and I thought that was pretty much to be expected, but then he slipped out of his collar and was free, sniffing the other dog's butt.  Luckily he was great, but it was a bad start.  I thought I tightened the collar enough but soon he slipped it again.  I think from now on I'll just bring our agility collar/leash to classes since our 'around the house' collar pulls over his head too easily.

So, for our first run we went first.  We just did a super easy loop around the outside of the ring.  Jonah looked a little concerned that there was another dog in the ring at first and he started a little slow but picked up speed and looked really good.  As we were heading back towards the 'exchange area' the last obstacle was 6 weave poles.  Jonah saw the other dog and just got super excited and distracted.  He ran past the weave poles twice before he even saw them.  Goof.  At least he wasn't running over to the other dog--he was just clearly over stimulated.  After he did the poles he sat nicely and I handed over the baton.

I thought we were free and clear until our 'partner' dog started...and Jonah decided to follow!  I wasn't holding onto him tightly enough and hadn't gotten the leash hooked on yet, so before I knew it both dogs were in the tunnel, with Jonah chasing the other!  Yikes.  I called him and he came back afterwards, and thankfully the other dog was very generous and didn't react.  I was really shaken after that.  Yarg.

We did do two more runs as a pairs team and both of those went smoothly aside from some excited barking.  Still, though.  It was not what I'd had in mind for the lesson and I was pretty disappointed.

It was encouraging that Grace doesn't think we're crazy to try pairs, though.  She said that we just have to be heads up, because he won't be the worst dog out there.  That was encouraging.  We aren't the only crazies :).  The thing is, I know Jonah would never go after a dog to hurt it, he's just talkative.  The concern is if another dog is aggressive and Jonah's barking sets the other dog off.  So, we just need to be careful.

Things we learned:
1.  I can (and should) have Jonah on leash the whole time except while he is running his part of the course.
2.  I need to think about where I throw my leash when I run so I can get it easily after we finish.
3.  If I go first, I need to tell my partner to please wait until I have Jonah on leash before she/he starts.
4.  We need to plan out where the dog who is not running will wait while the other runs.
5.  Pairs is a time + faults scoring, so you can Q if you knock a bar or something so long as you're fast enough (I've never actually read the Pairs rules yet since I haven't run it yet).

After the lesson I was feeling like I needed to give Jonah more socialization (even though in class we talked about the fact that our time in VT may have made Jonah overwhelmed and he might need a few days to recover), so we went to Petco and Willards.

It was like he was a completely different dog.  He was perfect.

At Petco he walked confidently ahead of me up through the automatic doors and met a nice lady coming out, who ooed and ahed over Jonah and petted him while he smiled politely.  We got his food and went to the checkout counter where he met three more nice ladies who all pet him happily.  I was very impressed.  Good boy.  He didn't look shy at all.

At Willards I started with him on leash but, as always, I wimped out and let him off because he wanted to run with the first dog we met.  They had a grand time and we walked (well, the dogs ran, the people walked) with them for the rest of the loop.  We met several other dogs and Jonah was as friendly and happy as could be.  I think he was sucking up after the lesson.  I hope it lasts.

Tonight we go back to Grace's and we're going to spend some time in the ring while another dog runs and also have another dog in the ring with us while we run.  Should be...exciting!

January Goals

This month is going to be different than I had planned, as I didn't get into one trial so I added another at the last minute.  I'd been thinking I'd put USDAA on the back burner for a while, but we're going to get gutsy and try to get our Starters title.  So, our big thing will be to see if Jonah can be civil for pairs.  If his manners are alright, I'm not too worried about any actual challenges the course will give us.  I entered as a draw since I don't know anyone going to the trial, but hopefully we get a good partner.  Sue has told us that she's had her partners screw up a bunch, but I really hope we get lucky.  The fewer times we have to run pairs the better!

So, here's a look at December:
1.  Develop a long-term plan for 'stepping up our game.'  We didn't do it last month, so now's really the time.
     Er, well, sort of.  I think I'm just a little too structured about this.  We'll keep going to classes, fit in private lessons whenever we can, go to trials and keep working forward.

2.  Take Jonah on a social outing at least once each week.  I have no excuses not to since I don't have school.
     Yes.  Things were a little funny schedule-wise since I was traveling a lot, but we did get over to Willards a lot this month, and it was good.  We met some nice dogs and Jonah was very well mannered.

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.  
     Yes!  We got all our Qs, all 1st places, earned our first Level 4 title, and earned 50 points in Snooker.  Jonah was great and it was overall a fun day.

4.  I want to improve our on-side weave entries.  I think we just need lots of practice.
     Yes.  There's always room for improvement, but we worked on this a bunch and Jonah is doing much better.  It's neat to see such clear progress.

5.  I hope to have the teeter back up to full height and have Jonah still racing over it happily.
     Yes.  Now I have to manage the opposite problem and make sure he doesn't fly off.  He's super happy and fast.


As for January:
1.  I'd like to practice running Jonah with another dog in the ring, in a pairs-like setup.
2.  I'm hoping for a successful first pairs run.  It would be excellent if we got the Q and finished our Starters title, but so long as we don't have a terrible experience I'll be alright.
3.  Take Jonah on a socialization outing at least once each week.
4.  Bring the pause table inside and practice with it frequently.
5.  Build a weave entry trainer and use it inside.
6.  Take advantage of our contacts still being outside as long as they're there.  Maybe even do some discrimination practice.


We'll see what the weather does.  For now, it's cold but there's no snow in the forecast.  Should be a good month!

Happy New Year: 2012 goals

Jonah, Dave and I just got back from a few nice days in Vermont.  It was generally a nice time except that now I'm sick and Jonah didn't know what to think of the guests we had.  There was a fair amount of growling and some barking at two men who he decided he didn't like.  It was stressful for everyone involved.  Sigh.

Anyway, now we're back.  Tomorrow we have a private session with Grace and we're going to practice Pairs--having another dog in the ring, taking turns while one dog runs, passing the 'baton,' etc.  Hopefully it doesn't blow Jonah's mind too much.  If it does, I'll scratch him from our pairs run later this month.  More on that all later.

Now it's time for a look at the year ahead.  I do monthly goals, but it's nice to have a long-term look, too.  I wish I'd done this last year because I can only think that we would have far surpassed any goals I would have set then.  We'll have to see about the goals for this year.  Maybe now I'll be too ambitious.

A look back at 2011:

• We went to our first trial!
• Then we went to 19 more trials.
• We took lessons at three different facilities, loved them all, but have now found a home at DogStar.
• We earned our first title...
• ...then we earned 13 more titles.
• We started USDAA.
• We made friends.
• Jonah got attacked...
• ...but he now loves group lessons.
• We trialed in five different states.
• We went on vacations.
• We went running (I know this isn't a blog about me, but I'll just add a few things I did this year:  I did my first triathlon and won my age group with a time of 1:10.  I did my first 10k and my first half marathons, and I was the fastest woman at a 5k trail race.  woo!).
• We got weave poles.
• We built an A-frame.
• We learned running contacts for our A-frame.
• We went camping.
• We went hiking.
• We went swimming.
• We went kayaking.
• We did lots of other things.

Basically, 2011 was a great year.

In 2012, I would like to:

• Have our first pairs run without any calamities.
• Earn our USDAA Starters Title.
• Earn our CPE Level 3 Title.  
• Go to CPE Nationals!
• Earn our CPE Level 4 Title.
• Earn our USDAA Advanced Title.
• Earn our first USDAA tournament Q(s).
• Go to a workshop.
• Have fun.
• Stay healthy.
• Continue to work on socialization with other people, dogs and cars.

That's not a long list but it's some big goals.  I'd like to think it's reasonable, but life can always be unpredictable.  Wish us luck, and we hope you have a wonderful year, too!