Happy Weekend!

[Calliesmom]

Really, he's that big too? Nice to know, we aren't the only one with a huge sheltie



How big is Cran?

Cran's official measurement at Sheltie Nationals (his second AKC agility measurement) was 18". His first measurement was 17 3/4".

 

[ortegah]

Cran's official measurement at Sheltie Nationals (his second AKC agility measurement) was 18". His first measurement was 17 3/4".

Trax has measured as high as 19" depending on the judge. His official AKC measurement used to be 18 3/8" until we challenged it last year and got him down to 17 7/8". So he jumped 20" for the first few years of competiting. I used to hate it, but now I'm grateful for it because it's made him so much faster and helped teach him to keep his feet up more.

 

[ortegah]

As always Heather great runs from you and Trax!!

Thanks! I feel like we're finally turning a corner

 

[corbinam]

Congratulations on the MXJ, and really nice weekend here! I love watching the two of you run. You're both so fast!

Like the others, I noticed his awesome weaves. How did you train them?

Curious, he seems to run a bit like Lexi--fast, low and wide. Sometimes even when you are cuing deceleration/collection he still accelerates and you get a wide turn (like at 22 seconds in the JWW video). I'm curious, is this something that you work on a lot? Do you get frustrated that you don't get collection from him?

I know that might seem like an odd question, but I keep working and working to get Lexi to understand she should collect even when excited (like at a trial) and it's so frustrating! Sometimes I wonder if I should just let her be wide because she is fast enough to still do well with wide turns! (I wouldn't give up on training, of course, just curious what your take on it is). Do you have any specific drills you use?

 

[ortegah]

Congratulations on the MXJ, and really nice weekend here! I love watching the two of you run. You're both so fast!

Like the others, I noticed his awesome weaves. How did you train them?

Curious, he seems to run a bit like Lexi--fast, low and wide. Sometimes even when you are cuing deceleration/collection he still accelerates and you get a wide turn (like at 22 seconds in the JWW video). I'm curious, is this something that you work on a lot? Do you get frustrated that you don't get collection from him?

I know that might seem like an odd question, but I keep working and working to get Lexi to understand she should collect even when excited (like at a trial) and it's so frustrating! Sometimes I wonder if I should just let her be wide because she is fast enough to still do well with wide turns! (I wouldn't give up on training, of course, just curious what your take on it is). Do you have any specific drills you use?

Well let's see. First question, training the weaves. I have always and will always swear by the weave-a-matic method. I think it encourages fast and faster weaves. Yes we do start out with some channels in the very beginning, but once he understood running through the middle, all the way to the end we went to the weave-a-matics.

Now onto collection vs extension. Well Trax just LOVES to kick his feet out wide and to make it worse, he's probably about 6" longer in body than your normal Sheltie, so his stride is really atypical for a Sheltie. At 22 seconds into the video, I was doing a front cross and of course in order to get a front cross you have to get in front of your dog. Well Trax just sees that as a challenge/race to beat me out and so he just starts flying it seems. We tend to have much tighter collections when we cross behind his jumps. In practice we do front cross after front cross, but in competition, 9 times out of 10 I'll try my best to figure a way to perform all rear crosses. Of course sometimes it's just impossible or not the best line so like in this course I choose to front cross. The frustrating part is around 25 seconds. He goes WAY wide. We could've cut off at least 2 seconds in this course which would've put us very comfortably in first place. Notice the last half of the course though? It was all forced rear crosses and Trax kept his feet up and collected after every jump.

As for collection drills, we do collection drills EVERY SINGLE TIME we are practicing or at a practice jump at the shows. My trainer actually worked with me for a whole summer just on collection and extension cues. I'll see if I can find you some exercises as examples of what we work on constantly. I'll get back to you on that soon

 

[ortegah]

I know that might seem like an odd question, but I keep working and working to get Lexi to understand she should collect even when excited (like at a trial) and it's so frustrating!

Do you have a specific video you could show me? Are you sure it's not that you're excited and worked up? Or perhaps you're cueing too late or not at all? Remember 99 times out of 100 it's really our fault

 

[corbinam]

Do you have a specific video you could show me? Are you sure it's not that you're excited and worked up? Or perhaps you're cueing too late or not at all? Remember 99 times out of 100 it's really our fault

Me? Excited? Oh yes, I have no doubt that the majority of the time it is my fault. And the other minority of the time it's my fault because I didn't train it right to begin with

It does usually appear to be a case of timing. Either I decelerated too late, or showed too much motion. But there are occasions where she gets in this "WHEEEEEEE" mentality and doesn't pay attention.

This video is really the best I have. It's possible that I showed too much forward motion, but I do decelerate and come to a stop and she slices the jump and goes really wide to the weaves (start at 1 minute). After this video I brought her back and just stood next to the jump before the weaves and tried to get her to jump it in collection and she just would not do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9FU747KsLU

I'd love to see any exercises you have!

 

[ortegah]

Me? Excited? Oh yes, I have no doubt that the majority of the time it is my fault. And the other minority of the time it's my fault because I didn't train it right to begin with

It does usually appear to be a case of timing. Either I decelerated too late, or showed too much motion. But there are occasions where she gets in this "WHEEEEEEE" mentality and doesn't pay attention.

This video is really the best I have. It's possible that I showed too much forward motion, but I do decelerate and come to a stop and she slices the jump and goes really wide to the weaves (start at 1 minute). After this video I brought her back and just stood next to the jump before the weaves and tried to get her to jump it in collection and she just would not do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9FU747KsLU

I'd love to see any exercises you have!

It's funny that you pull that video up because last week I checked out your videos and saw this one. In my opinion(and you know what they say about opinions ) you don't give strong enough hand signals. Watch some of the videos of some of the well known agility competitors. They normally have their hands in their dogs faces all.the.time. It's not just the verbal commands but really getting in their face and letting them know in no uncertain terms what you're asking of them. I did go over quite a few of your videos and really to me that seems to be the overall feeling. When I get home from work today, I'm gonna get my daughter to video my drills with Trax so you can see what we do for collection cues because I couldn't find anything online that really showed what I wanted to show you.