Admit it

[Justicemom]

Let's see I hate
Rally- 3 steps back
Obedience- articles
Agility- teeter, close second weaves, unless you are Birch who thought the teeter was the greatest thing every made and weaves were the bomb. With Birch it was the chute. He didn't understand how it worked and didn't get it. My head still hurts from teaching him that.

 

[Silaria]

Enzo's weaves look great!

Weaves are probably the obstacle I hate most to both train AND teach to a student. They take so long for the dog to make any progress with. Weaves are the ONE obstacle I don't have independent performance on with Edan. I have to run with him or he won't finish them. (I'm trying desperately to change this by October for the TDAA Petit Prix because of one of the games we'll be playing.)

The teeter is the next obstacle I hate training. It's a balancing act (no pun intended) between pushing the dog a little further in the performance but not too fast to scare them. With some dogs that is a very fine line. I've had some dogs that love the wobble board but HATED the teeter.

In Rally, that 3 Steps Back actually caused Edan to shut down in the Rally ring. We trained it hard and he wasn't getting it. He knew I was getting frustrated because I didn't know how to help him (he HATED using a wall). We walked into the ring and he was so nervous I was going to ask him to do 3 Steps Back (it wasn't on the course) that he actually wouldn't perform anything and lagged horribly. It's the only time in Agility or Rally I had to tell the judge we were done and leave because I was getting very frustrated and I didn't want to be mad at him.

 

[corbinam]

Here's a super-beginner story for all of you to laugh (with me) at... for a while, we were having a lot of trouble learning the tire. Jumps were fine, but jumping through the tire? Heck no, you'd think I'd poured gasoline on it and lit a match before asking her to jump through that thing.

Part of the problem was that I was trying to shape it. Betty's "first move" when shaping with a new object is to do a nose-touch to it. Well, when you touch the tire with your nose, it moves and it makes a noise. It is a known fact in Cocker-land that things that move and make noise are deadly traps!

So this goes on for a while (that would be weeks). She looks at it, I mark it and give her a treat. She touches it, I mark it and give her a treat. More touching, more noise, more freak-out. No good.

Finally - in violation of my trainers' strict orders to Shape Everything - I set her up on one side of the tire, walked to the other, and called her to me. She flew through that tire like she had wings, and happily collected her cookies. I swear I could hear her say, "Oh, you just wanted me to jump it? Well, why didn't you just say so in the first place?"

Nice dog, shame about the trainer!

Oh my gosh. Best story ever! That is just too funny. Thanks for sharing!

 

[corbinam]

Here's a question, where do you stand to throw the reward? At the moment I vary it from being at the end of the weaves, to running with her from the start, because Sparrow has a tendency to look back and miss the last pole (I am training on 6). I found if I did some standing right at the end, putting the toy between the last two poles, it helped her to drive forward.

It's a super fine line. Enzo is so in tune with our motion that adding motion is definitely one of the hardest things. In fact, since this video, we went back a step or two. We're still at 6 poles, but I opened them up a tiny bit so that we can build more speed and independence and continue to be successful.

At 6 closed poles with motion he had a really low level of success, so I knew it was time to take a step back.

He is so toy obsessed that this is probably one of the few obstacles we used a toy to train. He gets too excited and is way less thoughtful for a toy than he is for food. It really helped him to drive out (in fact, noticed that he flies through and runs 50' ahead before looking for us so much that we've had to start throwing the toy shorter or even calling him back to us for the reward just so he starts to learn to check in!), but he does lose some of that focus with the use of a toy.

It is a fine line between throwing too soon (the dog pops out early and gets the reward, or the toy becomes a lure rather than a reward) and not throwing soon enough (the dog turns around to look at you). I just try to mix it up. And yes, I've failed multiple times when I've thrown too soon and he's come out

 

[Silaria]

Finally - in violation of my trainers' strict orders to Shape Everything - I set her up on one side of the tire, walked to the other, and called her to me. She flew through that tire like she had wings, and happily collected her cookies. I swear I could hear her say, "Oh, you just wanted me to jump it? Well, why didn't you just say so in the first place?"

Nice dog, shame about the trainer!

Funny story!

As much as I like to use shaping and clicker training, I don't do pure shaping. I tend to lure the first few times to teach what behavior I want THEN switch to shaping to allow the dog to think about what is being asked for and perform the command.

Like you describe with the tire, she really didn't know what you wanted and waiting her out was just causing her (dis)stress. IMO, you did the absolute right thing. Sometimes you have to do what works for the dog until they 'get it'.

 

[tofu pup]

Sometimes you have to do what works for the dog until they 'get it'.

Yes indeed! I am learning so much from this little dog. Some dogs are going to be fine with 100% shaping, and they will "get" things and be really motivated by the game of it... but I think Betty C. does better when I give her clear criteria from the outset. If I ask her to try to "guess", it's too much pressure and she gets worried. But if I show her what I want, she does great.

 

[Sharon7]

With all my dogs it has been the teeter. Faith on the other hand has no fear and instead it's me scared she's going to crash on it and have a bad experience. She has headed for that thing on the course even when we were going to do a different obstacle, and I've had to dash over to hold the end so she doesn't catapult her little self right off of it!!!

Little Ally once launched off the top of the dog walk for no particular reason and fell onto a tunnel below, at a demo at a retirement home that my dog club does. You should have heard the crowd gasp! Thank God she was all right, my heart dropped when that happened, the little twerp.

 

[take4roll10]

The table , but that's just because Bailey is having so much trouble with it right now. She either runs off and barks and gets a refusal or approaches it too fast and bounces off.

I don't really have a physical obstacle that I hate to train, it's my dog's reactive behavior like running off and barking at other dogs in the ring. That's been the biggest "obstacle" for us.

 

[Lanie]

Wow! Enzo looks great. The weave poles are now our most difficult obstacle. They use the channel method where we're taking class and Echo is solid at 6 inches. Anything less than that, she gets confused and pops out. The chute took a long time for us. She didn't like going into anything she could see through. Once she got used to the curved tunnel, she spontaneously started to blast through the chute. We haven't started the teeter yet. I expect that to be a challenge.

Echo graduated from Agility 2 last Saturday. Here's her graduation picture.