Handling systems????

I LOVE it
what a great video!
See, she has distance, the dog has drive, there is no excuse you CAN get ahead of your dog and show the dog where to go, get out of the way, get ahead of the dog without losing connection and trust your dog to complete that obstacle, amazing
how the heck do they keep that stuff straight is beyond me, but what a joy to watch!!!

Great video, thanks for sharing
 
Thanks for those videos SheltieChe. LM one very interesting. I was thinking about what Corbinam posted and I can see this is very valid. One of the things I find amazing about dogs is their ability to read us so well and it seems a more natural approach to go with the dog's instinct to follow us rather than try and override it.

The Amanda Nelson video was incredible - it has to be one of the most impressive feats of dog training I've ever seen! That said I do agree with your comments on how non BCs would struggle. I'm imagine shelties would generally need more support to run with that kind of drive if the handler was static whereas BCs are bred to excel at this kind of thing.

It's wonderful to see what can be achieved - so even people with very restricted mobility can compete. :biggrin2:
 
here is info for One Mind, lots of people either went/going to their seminars or waiting for their soon to open online classes
http://www.kelpokoira.fi/one-mind/onemind-system.html
if you look at key points
¨We think that there are six major things that are affecting to dogs in the course: movement and positioning, contact with the dog, chest's laser point, legs, hands and voice.¨
¨The ideas for the first 20 techniques came from the dogs´ natural reactions to handlers' cues. You don't really even have to teach these techniques to your dog. If you know how to do them, your dog will react to them naturally. Because the body language is the same for dogs all around the world, these techniques work with all dogs instantly. For example in summer 2011, Janita borrowed a dog that she had never seen before and showed all the techniques with that dog. The owner was amazed, how could her dog manage to perform all the right moves with these techniques so naturally and easily without practicing them first. Like mentioned earlier, this is DOGS´SYSTEM, and it's based on their natural response to our body language!
EXAMPLE VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3neD6SzDis
Example of how natural this handling is for a dog.¨

IN THIS VIDEO Elina Jänesniemi is handling a dog (not her own) who is seeing agility obstacles for the fourth time in her life. When a handler knows what to do, it's natural for a dog...
 
Thanks again - really interesting link and video. :smile2: I had heard of this but didn't know anything about it so that was great. I can see how this works and it appears less hectic than some of the European handling.

I've noticed that with these type of motion based (?:wink2:) techniques that the handler commits the dog and then moves off while the dog is jumping to the next obstacle whereas with other methods the handler seems to wait around for longer (fractionally)

I was doing some rear cross practicing with Epic this afternoon. He has virtually no experience of following my cues from behind (practiced twice at most) and I used Dawn Weaver's technique of accelerator and direction hands which he has never been trained to follow or seen me do before. He had a 100% success rate going into a box pattern and alternating left and right RCs with go on straight. I'm now a believer that dogs naturally respond to certain cues. :biggrin2:

I know from prior experience with Revel that some shelties don't have the enthusiasm for repetitive training and drilling that BCs usually have so I think a system that can give almost instant gratification in the form of running a sequence at high speed would favour them. I will certainly look into this more and it would be interesting to see whether it would produce excited barking which I think might be the drawback.

I am learning so much from this thread, thanks you guys, you're amazing! :biggrin2:
 
seashel said:
Hey you just know I'm going to ask :wink2: - what is motion based handling? Everyone looks in motion when they're doing agility...:lol:
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Coming from a strict Derrett system, that is the first thing I thought when I someone explained Linda's style to me. I thought motion based? What do you mean? Of course I'm moving. That's silly. Isn't that what I'm doing with Derrett? Moving, stopping?

Yeah, you're definitely not alone. So much, that I think I'm going to go review everything everyone posted to you. Cuz I still don't get it completely.
 
Sealtainn said:
Can't speak for the east, but out west things are changing.

Many, many handlers, top class handlers included, have been shifting to the benefits of motion-based handling. Actually, most trainers I know who used to be GD diehards have all abandoned his ways.
APHS provides a nice foundation for getting through the typical U.S. course of the past; but there is much more needed to handle more complicated courses which are becoming more common & will continue to do so.
In fact, many recognized APHS handlers regardless of geography have already tweaked it so much in order to improve their performance.
OneMind is just one other approach that is doing it's rounds & they will be out west later this year.
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That's what I've noticed since about a year or two ago. Big change. But then, courses have also been changing too (at least what I saw in AKC). What is OneMind? Another system?
 
One more thing. I had to add this. At the agility class that I was trying out, the trainer set up 4 small courses (~4-5 obstacles each). She did it to see where I was at with my training. Basically, she would take the course and have us run it 2-3 different ways, with different techniques and handling systems. The reason I love doing this, is you start to really feel what comes more naturally to your dog. Can he stop and turn this way, versus that way faster? Can he wrap tightly going this way, or that way? Is it easier for him to run fast to a jump, then turn tightly, or slow down, turn tightly, then jump?

I always suggest if you have the space to train with a couple of jumps, to always see which way may be the best way to handle things. It's amazing what you can learn from watching what your dog can do, or at least, what is easier for him.

And besides, it teaches you to do things too. I keep recalling me trying to do a BC btwn two jumps in a straight light. I would typically try to FC btwn them, or RC. But the trainer was saying, I want to see how receptive he is to BC IF you do it correctly. I was doing it badly. Once I did it correctly, she said, "he reads you really well and responded to it wonderfully, hmm....something to train/work on".

It's times like that, that you throw out your foundation and say, "Koji likes it better? It's easier on me if I do it correctly? Let's do it!".

I think this is why I've started to love seminars (and trainers in general), where the trainer doesn't follow only one system. They'll teach you what works for them, but at the same time, they also figure out what your dog seems to like (what you can do - and push you) and works with it.

I'm glad I dropped Derrett. But it was good foundation, I'm not complaining about that at all. Not sure what I'd do next time. Yikes. I may have to think about this.
 
seashel said:
Thanks for explaining that Silaria. :smile2:

I'm guessing then that the European style is motion based then?

What you say about verbal cues is really interesting. In the last couple of months I've stopped saying 'over, over, over' for every jump. I watched one of my training videos back and it just sounded like white noise when the jumps were coming fast. I changed to only giving calling and obstacle cues and kind of presumed that if I ran him at a line of jumps he would figure I wanted him to jump them! Losing the chit chat did seem to make Epic sharper and more focussed on my body language cues - which would be great except that they were probably 90% inaccurate. :uhoh:

Looking back over our last month of shows I believe that one reason for Epic running out in the middle of some of the courses was that the information he was getting from me was nill. I took away the verbal cues which at least gave him some kind of hint as to what was coming and left him with no useful information at all. Me bad! :no:

However I did realise this before the last show and decided to use the 'over' command in places where Epic needed a bit more support eg on turns. This really did make a difference because he wasn't hearing 'over' for every jump enough to tune out but if I did say it then he was looking on for the jump where I was vaguely pointing.

Some people I know have trained heavily for verbal directional commands so they can send their dog left or right from behind or laterally. I can see the value of this on the type of courses I've seen, where it would be very difficult to get in position in front of the dog. One of my winter projects is teaching Epic his right and left and retraining on cik/cap wraps. Even if I don't need it much for agility it still strikes me as a useful skill for a dog to have. :smile2:

We've also started doing shadow handling as warm up/warm down thing and I do this all silently. It's something we both really enjoy and basically fun way to start of finish a session. I confess I've really had my eyes opened as to how closely dogs observe our body language and pick up on minute clues. It's almost telepathic.
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I started doing the same after I ran a NADAC Tunnelers class. Um, it's all tunnels. Let's be real, repeating it over and over again, is well, it's repetitive. For a green dog, it's good. But as you get more experienced, you could probably just not talk at all. I noticed, at some point, I stopped calling all the obstacles unless I need to. I let my body do the rest of the "talking". And then I started to, um, actually talk to Koji. By that, I do mean talk. I will say things like, "oops, my fault", "sorry", "no you were right, go over", etc. Not sure why I do it, but my previous trainer says I need to stop.

It also reminds me when I've had trainers make people run and not use their arms. They had to use their shoulders, body, etc. Sometimes people use their arms too much, so this helps the dog understand better. Weird, right? Yes and no. Think about it. For dogs, the way they communicate is through body lanugage. Which means, they read us way better than we read them or ourselves.

I will say, teaching right/left is great. I always think of the runs, where you go over a DW and at the bottom, there's a tunnel running parallel to the end of the DW. If you have a 2o2o, it's not so bad. But if you don't, left/right could come in very handy as most people with running contacts are behind their dog. I can't teach it as I suck with left/right (I hated Twister with a passion). I do like the concept of NADAC's "switch". Basically it's telling them to go in the opposite direction (or you doing a RC, but not be behind them).
 
Handling systems

I will say, teaching right/left is great. I always think of the runs, where you go over a DW and at the bottom, there's a tunnel running parallel to the end of the DW. If you have a 2o2o, it's not so bad. But if you don't, left/right could come in very handy as most people with running contacts are behind their dog. I can't teach it as I suck with left/right (I hated Twister with a passion). I do like the concept of NADAC's "switch". Basically it's telling them to go in the opposite direction (or you doing a RC, but not be behind them).[/QUOTE]

I love Switch.Joan Myers taught me that with Shadow.I don't think it was a NADAC thing tho but I could be wrong.Switch is changing leads on the flat before an obstacle.I have seen it use at the AKC Nationals.
 
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