Reflection

This Wednesday was the first Dog Agility Blog Action Day that I did not participate in.  This blog has really fallen off since I started work this fall.  I still really value recording progress, but I find that I only have a few 'free' hours each day, and I want to spend as much time as possible with the dogs.

Last night I took Jonah to class, and had such an amazing time.  He's fantastically fun to run...at practice.  This year things have really changed about my vision of trialing.  Nationals shook me into questioning whether he really likes it or not.  After being on a fast and furious trail schedule up to that point, I've only done I think five runs at trials since the beginning of June.  Granted, he did run quite well in a few of those runs.  But then we bought the house, and I needed to spend weekends doing projects, not going to trials.  I've peaked at the 2013 schedule and I do think I'll get back into it.  I definitely want Nika to trial when she's ready.

As for Nika, I'm pleased with how she's doing.  Check out this video.

Far from perfect, and my need to support her for the backside meant my front cross handling was pretty clumsy, but in general I'm happy.  She finishes her Attention class this week and I think Dave's going to do a CGC class with her next.  Before we know it, spring will be here and she will start agility training more consistently.  I can't wait to do running contact training with her!

On Sunday, Jonah and I head to our very first seminar!  It's on gamblers, with Lo Baker.  I'm happy I finally get to work with her, and I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll have a lot of fun.  Going to a seminar was one of my 2012 goals.  We've failed to meet most of those goals, but this one we should be able to check off!

Pre-Thanksgiving

Work has been taking up a whole lot of my time lately.  We also have been crazy getting the house together, as we had Dave's family here for a pre-Thanksgiving meal this weekend.  It all went well and the house is getting to be in good shape.  I have had time to spend with the dogs, but blog time has been on the back burner.  Oh well.  Here's a sense of what's been going on:

1)  Nika and Dave are about half way through their Attention class.  They work on footwork for Obedience, heeling, and that sort of thing.  I don't have any plans for her to be in obedience, but it's good for her to be in class.  The neatest thing of this session is...

...her litter mate is in the class!  I might have to come one week to see her.  Dave says they are clearly sisters--the other is slightly bigger and has more white, but I guess they look a lot alike.  So cool!

2)  I had to miss agility class this week.  The week before was a lot of fun and Jonah was running really well.  He's such a star.  This week is Thanksgiving so there won't be class...so much lack of agility!

3)  However, we have been doing some fun things at home.  I don't have any contacts up, but here are some of the exercises I've put together:

I did this with Jonah this morning, and it was fun.  Lots of ways to do it.  I think it worked best when I pushed to backside from my right and then took off, picking him up on my right again.  I guess that's a Ketschker, but I don't usually do them quite like that--this time I kept my hips always facing pretty much in the same direction so he crossed in front of me and then spun around behind me.  Fun.

We also played with 180s and threadles with this setup.  Good practice, with 3 basic jumps.

With Nika, I kept the same setup but did the more logical order, just like a little circle.  She was excellent and I could get some decent distance, staying in the middle.  I was also able to get in front crosses between 2 and 3 or on the landing side of 3.

I wanted to do this setup with Nika for rear crosses, and she was quite brilliant with that, too.  I'd start at 1 with her on my right, then have her run out in front of me at 2 (still in the circle direction, so the back side of 2 on the map), and then I'd pick her up on my left for 3.  First I just did the rear cross at 2, but quickly we could do all 3 obstacles and she was fantastic.  She's so much fun.  So fast, so drivey.

We've done some other setups, too, but I'm going to try to tire the dogs out some more before I head to work.  Here's for lots more fun in the coming days!

Trial, Hurricane, Surgery...

Sorry again.  It looks like this blog is going to take (well, already has taken) a major downturn now that I'm working full time.  I just want to spend all my time actually with the dogs rather than writing about them.  That said, here's a quick update on some things:

Jonah has been running well at class. We've had a recurring problem with weave independence at DogStar.  I've been pushing him with some difficult asks, like having him weave directly away from me while I stand still.  He gets to pole 10 consistently, but can't quite do that last bit.  It's good to have something to work on.  Other than that, he's been really good.

Nika graduated from Advanced Beginner class last week and she's doing well.  There's a CGC test at the end of November that we're thinking about putting her in.  Right now I think the biggest challenge would be meeting people and standing for brushing.  She gets a bit overexcited and likes to jump/wiggle.  We'll see.  She's doing great.

We went to a trial at Muddy Paws this weekend.  I'd signed up for Standard and Colors.  His standard run was good.  He was excited to be there, actively wanted to go in the ring and he ran fast.  He stayed focused the whole run, too.  There was a really fast jump line into the weaves and he missed the entry, but other than that it was a really great run.  I was pleased.  Then we waited and waited and waited, and eventually we just left at 1:00, as there were still 75 dogs to go before us and we had to get home to pick up a rug before the place closed.  That was disappointing, but you can't control those things.  CPE trials just run really, really slow.

Hurricane Sandy came through yesterday.  I took down all the agility equipment before the storm and moved it over to the new house.  It's not set up, but it's all there.  Exciting!  As for the storm, it brought down a lot of branches and one big tree on the fence.  We lost power a few times, but never for very long.  So, we lucked out on that one.

Nika got spayed and had her hernia fixed last week.  The surgery went well and she's recovering nicely.  She didn't even need the silly Elizabethan collar!  The biggest problem now is that we still have to keep her quiet for a few more days, with leash walking only.  She has a ton of energy, so that's difficult.

So, things are good but busy busy busy.  Hopefully I'll get to post again soon.

What's Been Happenin'

Nika continues to be brilliant.  She's the star of her class for sure.  Now she does all the regulars very well (obedience things, heeling, etc) and we're teaching some other tricks.  She targets at 25' distance, she backs up, we've done some hind leg awareness exercises, and we're learning "jump" and "off" to have a command for when she jumps on people--that's our weakest thing right now.  She's so friendly, but people don't always like being jumped on.

As for agility, she's doing awesome with her pre-agility exercises.  She's great with running heeling and does very well with transitioning from handler to obstacle focus.  She has excellent table performance, jumps her jump at many angles including backside, lets me put front crosses in, does obstacles from distance, etc.  Rear crosses are difficult.  I started teaching her rear crosses, and it's going a little slowly, but it's good to have work to do.  She's a great girl.

Jonah is awesome, too.  At class this week we did one course where I worked at really extended distance, not moving hardly at all.  He weaved directly away from me, did a nice "right-tunnel" off the A-frame, and did lovely jump work with me barely moving.  Everyone was super impressed (I heard "did he just...wow" at one point), and I very pleased.  At one point Grace teased everyone that she would have me go first and then make everyone handle the way I did.

Fun times.

Today I'm going to move some agility equipment to the new house.  We're working on the fence, and hopefully it will be done in the next week or so.  That will be very exciting!

Dave's Guest Post

Nika and I went to her new class for the first time tonight. Well, it was Nika's second time, since she went with Katie last week, and it was the third week of the class altogether. Anyway, we got there a little early, but "Some Nights" by fun. was on the radio, and I like that song a lot, so we listened to that. I often wonder what the dogs think of the music in the car. When it's just me and a dog, I tend to turn the music up fairly loud. Does that sound louder to dogs than to humans? Is it uncomfortable? They don't complain. I do at least keep the volume down low enough so that it doesn't hurt my ears, which I don't necessarily do if it's just me. Since dogs hear better, does that mean that they just hear sounds that we don't hear? For some reason I always assume that to hear things we don't means that everything else must be amplified. Also, I wish that "fun." didn't have that period in their name. It's very hipster and it makes it hard to write sentences about them.

Class began with me talking to the instructor and the bait bag mysteriously falling to the floor. I realized this, but too late: Nika had already finished the two string cheeses and most of other treats. I don't think she stole the bag off of me, but she certainly didn't hesitate to take advantage of the situation! Fortunately, we had some extra treats in the car, and they were a kind that I could break up into thirds, so we made it the whole way.

We practiced heeling, sit-stays, down-stays, sits and downs with hand signals, and recalls during class. Nika did really well at all of them. She's funny though, in that she'll bark at me if I'm not giving her something to do. She can quietly do an extended stay, but if she gets ignored for any amount of time, she gets demanding. That means that we really did spend the entire hour working. The other two handlers and their dogs maybe spent 35 minutes? When the teacher talked they would listen, and their dogs would just sit there next to them. Not Nika! She wanted to work the whole time. Fortunately extended stays give me the chance to at least look in the teacher's direction while I'm walking away from and back to the dog and feeding her.

It was fun. We'll go back next time. I think we should teach her off/jump on command, and then try using off when she jumps on people. Hint, hint, Katie :-)

Go to the Head of the Class

Dave's out of town so I got to take Nika to her class tonight.  Wow.  She's so smart.  I'm really impressed.  Of course I've worked with her a lot at home, but we always do short sessions, and I often work her with a lot of distractions where she's not 100% focused.  With that in mind, I didn't have super high expectations.  This is a new class, a higher level, with new dogs...all reasons to be distracted.  Well, she was awesome.

We started warming up with some heeling.  Sure, every now and then she'd look around or get excited and leap out of position, but in general she was right with me.  It's funny not having Grace as our teacher, because the new teacher didn't know us and when class started she asked if I knew what heel position was.  I'm certainly no obedience expert, but I know what heeling is :).

After 5 minutes or so the teacher had caught on.  We all worked on heeling and while the others were lucky to get a few steps in, Nika was working on turns, sits, downs and any rally signs I could remember.  She was great.

When we practiced sits and downs, I realized that she's gotten a little rusty with hand signals only.  She's great with verbal only, and great with both verbal and hand, but we need to work more with hand only.  Good to know.  After a few repetitions at class, she was quite sharp again.

For recalls, we were the only dog who got to do recalls out of a stay rather than standing with the instructor holding the dog.  Again, she was picture perfect.

We worked on stand and stand for exam.  She's gotten good with the verbal only or with the hand signal only for stand, but she's not always great at staying right in heel position for it.  For the exam, she wiggles if she's not lured.  We'll keep working on that.

When we practiced stays, I was actually able to get her to break her stay when I jumped up and down.  Another thing to work on.  Otherwise, though, she was excellent.  I could run away from her, go anywhere away from her, get far away, go around and behind her, bend over...jumping was the only thing I could think of that made her get up.  Even then, it was the third jump before she got excited enough to break the stay.

At the end of class we practiced some targeting and spins.  I haven't done much targeting with her lately so I'll have to go back to that.  She was good so long as I held the target but wasn't as great when it was on the ground.

We ended class a few minutes early and I had her play on the teeter (which was really low) and a skate board.  She was good with both.

Overall, she was just such a joy to work with.  So bright, so focused, so happy.  We took a number of tug breaks during class, too, and she was eager to tug.  I'm so excited to see how she does with agility.  I think she'll be a superstar!

Also, yesterday we went to an English Shepherd gathering.  It was lots of fun.  Pictures and a longer post to follow!

I'm a Terrible Blogger.

Sorry.  Work has changed my life a lot.  I really like my job, but I find that I want to spend every minute that I'm not working or commuting playing with the dogs rather than writing about them.

Here are some things that have happened since I last posted:

Jonah and I have worked seemingly endlessly on his table.  He's fantastic at home, but at our trial this weekend he still failed to lie down.  We got a jumpers Q with a pretty quiet but otherwise unproblematic run.  Standard was also a little on the slow side, and then had the table fail.  He had a beautiful running A-frame, but that was about the only part of the run that was anything special.

Jonah's classes have been going pretty well.  I feel like I'm not 100% there mentally because I have to rush so much to get there after work.  I need to focus on letting go of the day and giving him everything I have.

Nika graduated from Beginner Obedience last night.  She and Dave have done a really good job.  I'm not sure they've decided what class to do next.

Here is a bit of a photo dump:

Me and Nika after my triathlon this summer.

She used to be so small!

Nika and my dad make funny faces.

Silly puppy face.

Nika and the family in Plymouth after Dave's, my dad's and my uncle's tri (I had dog duty).

Our soon to be house (next Friday!)