corbinam
Moderator
I think that some dogs naturally just stride through the contacts...mine don't. From the first day that they got on the equipment (well, at least at a decent speed) it was clear that they needed some sort of contact criteria.
How fast things can change (agility performance)
- Thread starter k9kreationz
- Start date
Performance
But they still need contact work.Any agility instructor would tell you the same thing.
But they still need contact work.Any agility instructor would tell you the same thing.
k9kreationz
Forums Celebrity
Yes, only at trial.
k9kreationz
Forums Celebrity
Confusion and a plan
I had my very first club practice. Ohmigod, tiring! And today, I am exhausted. We pulled out every piece of equipment so we could learn about USDAA games. I was told they typically only pull out jumps and weaves. I was bummed to hear that as I was hoping I could practice contacts in an outside environment, but during a practice.
Here's what happened. We got in two "gamblers" runs and DW/A-frame practice while everyone else was doing Snookers.
My first gamblers run, I was working on the A-frame. I have to figure out a way to teach running contacts w/o the square pvc pipes over the contact zone. Why? Because when I'm at a club training, or show 'n go, I won't be putting it on the A-frame. I tried the thing that Stuart did with Bentley, target at the bottom, but not directly at the end of it, so they drive down and to the target, not keep their head up and jump. That helped a lot when I was training after my runs.
My second run, I tried the DW, dear gawd that boy LEPT off. About a foot from the contact and sideways (stupid dog, since there was a tunnel over that way). At first I thought I pulled him off from running around the tunnel, but my friend said nope, he jumped off WAY after that.
The only good thing (and again, could be because it was training, not trialing) was that Koji held his stay. I walked out both times about 15 feet. Went back to reward heavily, walked out again, stopped, breathed, turned towards him, breathed and released. I wanted to be sure I wasn't giving him any sort of physical cues. So frustrating.
When I use a target plate (training DW yesterday), Koji did great. My friend said that Koji is still cued by my "wait" command though. He's slowing down when I say it, whenever I say it. It's still in progress and I just continued his target plating w/o a cue afterwards. Ashley, I'm going to try the double targets, but didn't want to move the jumps yesterday cuz I wasn't sure if we were done with them or not. I should have though, cuz they WERE done with them. Oh well, another day.
HOWEVER, I am taking the advice of Dr. Shelli (and Sharon as she too suggested breaking this down long ago) and seriously going back to basics. I am also thinking about taking an obedience class to get Koji to be more obedient in general life. Right now, I am working on Come and Stay. Everywhere.
Yesterday, I also did a walk with a meetup dog group. There was about a dozen dogs and Koji. At first, he lunged and barked at all the dogs. As we were walking, I'd go up front. Put Koji in a stay and allow all the other dogs to pass by. He was sniffing correctly, he was looking, but checking in with me. Awesome. Need more of that type of stuff to help with his craziness.
I have read everything everyone wrote here. It seems like the main thought is to break things down. Go back to basics. Stop trialing. I decided to withdraw myself from the AKC STD run. I am keeping the JWW as this will be a good way to see if he stays. I have a month and a half for that show. I am also going to do the 3 USDAA runs as it's my club hosting that one. That ones about 4 weeks away, so I'll get a check-up on his contacts, but I don't expect anything at this point.
I have also looked into private training, a new trainer, and fun runs, but the sucky part is that everything is about 60-75 miles away. And with gas the way it is right now....add another $55 onto anything like that. i.e. I can utilize a training center for a whopping $5/hr. Too bad its 75 miles away and will now cost $55 including gas. So I don't know what to do. On the upside, with the amount of hours I'm putting into my club, I'll get a lot of free runs next year.
Sigh. Money is a big factor. I would buy a more gas efficient car, but considering mine is paid off, that's hard to justify.
So, the confusion lies with how to get the training in w/o spending a grip of money every week. The plan is to go back to basics. And by that, I mean obedience training. Agility will come afterwards. Also, I have 5 weeks left of paid training. After that is over, I'm going to re-evaluate where we are (obedience and agility wise), and decide what to do with my money at that point.
Again, thanks everyone. This truly isn't an easy decision at all! I want to continue agility and trialing, but it seems I bypassed all the essential foundation (non-agility) training and need to work on that. Maybe the break will do Koji some good and realize that we work together. Not alone.
I had my very first club practice. Ohmigod, tiring! And today, I am exhausted. We pulled out every piece of equipment so we could learn about USDAA games. I was told they typically only pull out jumps and weaves. I was bummed to hear that as I was hoping I could practice contacts in an outside environment, but during a practice.
Here's what happened. We got in two "gamblers" runs and DW/A-frame practice while everyone else was doing Snookers.
My first gamblers run, I was working on the A-frame. I have to figure out a way to teach running contacts w/o the square pvc pipes over the contact zone. Why? Because when I'm at a club training, or show 'n go, I won't be putting it on the A-frame. I tried the thing that Stuart did with Bentley, target at the bottom, but not directly at the end of it, so they drive down and to the target, not keep their head up and jump. That helped a lot when I was training after my runs.
My second run, I tried the DW, dear gawd that boy LEPT off. About a foot from the contact and sideways (stupid dog, since there was a tunnel over that way). At first I thought I pulled him off from running around the tunnel, but my friend said nope, he jumped off WAY after that.
The only good thing (and again, could be because it was training, not trialing) was that Koji held his stay. I walked out both times about 15 feet. Went back to reward heavily, walked out again, stopped, breathed, turned towards him, breathed and released. I wanted to be sure I wasn't giving him any sort of physical cues. So frustrating.
When I use a target plate (training DW yesterday), Koji did great. My friend said that Koji is still cued by my "wait" command though. He's slowing down when I say it, whenever I say it. It's still in progress and I just continued his target plating w/o a cue afterwards. Ashley, I'm going to try the double targets, but didn't want to move the jumps yesterday cuz I wasn't sure if we were done with them or not. I should have though, cuz they WERE done with them. Oh well, another day.
HOWEVER, I am taking the advice of Dr. Shelli (and Sharon as she too suggested breaking this down long ago) and seriously going back to basics. I am also thinking about taking an obedience class to get Koji to be more obedient in general life. Right now, I am working on Come and Stay. Everywhere.
Yesterday, I also did a walk with a meetup dog group. There was about a dozen dogs and Koji. At first, he lunged and barked at all the dogs. As we were walking, I'd go up front. Put Koji in a stay and allow all the other dogs to pass by. He was sniffing correctly, he was looking, but checking in with me. Awesome. Need more of that type of stuff to help with his craziness.
I have read everything everyone wrote here. It seems like the main thought is to break things down. Go back to basics. Stop trialing. I decided to withdraw myself from the AKC STD run. I am keeping the JWW as this will be a good way to see if he stays. I have a month and a half for that show. I am also going to do the 3 USDAA runs as it's my club hosting that one. That ones about 4 weeks away, so I'll get a check-up on his contacts, but I don't expect anything at this point.
I have also looked into private training, a new trainer, and fun runs, but the sucky part is that everything is about 60-75 miles away. And with gas the way it is right now....add another $55 onto anything like that. i.e. I can utilize a training center for a whopping $5/hr. Too bad its 75 miles away and will now cost $55 including gas. So I don't know what to do. On the upside, with the amount of hours I'm putting into my club, I'll get a lot of free runs next year.
Sigh. Money is a big factor. I would buy a more gas efficient car, but considering mine is paid off, that's hard to justify.
So, the confusion lies with how to get the training in w/o spending a grip of money every week. The plan is to go back to basics. And by that, I mean obedience training. Agility will come afterwards. Also, I have 5 weeks left of paid training. After that is over, I'm going to re-evaluate where we are (obedience and agility wise), and decide what to do with my money at that point.
Again, thanks everyone. This truly isn't an easy decision at all! I want to continue agility and trialing, but it seems I bypassed all the essential foundation (non-agility) training and need to work on that. Maybe the break will do Koji some good and realize that we work together. Not alone.
Confusion and more
This is just my opinon but to me if you keep trying everything that everyone is telling you here on the forum then you are screwing your dog up more.You are trying this because someone said this and so on.So you are trying all these different things to teach your dog and none of it is working.To me that is telling me FOUNDATIONS, FOUNDATIONS, FOUNDATIONS.You can enter all the trials you want but to me that is money that could be spent on a private lesson, seminar.I do not claim to be an expert trainer but I do know enough if you are having that many problems and everyone is giving you all kinds of advice and nothing is working again go back to FOUNDATIONS!!If you put the double target down that will come back to bite you in the behind even more.I am taking a step back with Sting and doing more ground work and not trialing till May except for the trial I am entered in at the end of this month because it was to late to pull him.Good Luck for what ever works for you.
This is just my opinon but to me if you keep trying everything that everyone is telling you here on the forum then you are screwing your dog up more.You are trying this because someone said this and so on.So you are trying all these different things to teach your dog and none of it is working.To me that is telling me FOUNDATIONS, FOUNDATIONS, FOUNDATIONS.You can enter all the trials you want but to me that is money that could be spent on a private lesson, seminar.I do not claim to be an expert trainer but I do know enough if you are having that many problems and everyone is giving you all kinds of advice and nothing is working again go back to FOUNDATIONS!!If you put the double target down that will come back to bite you in the behind even more.I am taking a step back with Sting and doing more ground work and not trialing till May except for the trial I am entered in at the end of this month because it was to late to pull him.Good Luck for what ever works for you.
k9kreationz
Forums Celebrity
Sharon,
I'm not sure what you define as foundations. Agility foundation? Obedience foundation? Flatwork foundation? Nor if you read my last post.
But for me, I realized I need to back to the major basics. The basics you teach a puppy. Obedience. Impulse control. Obstacles names, etc. In all honesty, I'm not even worried about contacts, because I doubt I'm going to work on them right now. It's not important. Koji has so many other issues we need to work through, contacts is the last thing he needs. I'm putting that on a LONG hold.
Also, I honestly do not have the money for anymore training. Especially for "good" training. Including gas, it'd cost about $70. Privates would cost about $125+. And that's for one 30-60 minute session. I just do not have that money. So, agility is on hold. Period.
You're right. I have way too many opinions on how to teach contacts and agility in general. And yes, that includes yours. For now, no contacts, no agility training. He will do the trials in April that I talked about, then that's it until Gerry's June seminar and Daisy's August one. Those may have to be shelved too. Maybe not Daisy's though, since hers is about contacts.
I'm not sure what you define as foundations. Agility foundation? Obedience foundation? Flatwork foundation? Nor if you read my last post.
But for me, I realized I need to back to the major basics. The basics you teach a puppy. Obedience. Impulse control. Obstacles names, etc. In all honesty, I'm not even worried about contacts, because I doubt I'm going to work on them right now. It's not important. Koji has so many other issues we need to work through, contacts is the last thing he needs. I'm putting that on a LONG hold.
Also, I honestly do not have the money for anymore training. Especially for "good" training. Including gas, it'd cost about $70. Privates would cost about $125+. And that's for one 30-60 minute session. I just do not have that money. So, agility is on hold. Period.
You're right. I have way too many opinions on how to teach contacts and agility in general. And yes, that includes yours. For now, no contacts, no agility training. He will do the trials in April that I talked about, then that's it until Gerry's June seminar and Daisy's August one. Those may have to be shelved too. Maybe not Daisy's though, since hers is about contacts.
HopeShelties
Forums Enthusiast
As an aside, Daisy is coming here in June to do a seminar. Saturday novice-open, Sunday excellent. I'm debating whether I'll participate just Sunday, or do Saturday as well with Ember, or just audit both days. Depends how the finances look. I'll do AT LEAST the auditing though.
k9kreationz
Forums Celebrity
What is she teaching at that seminar? If it's contacts, you'll have to tell me what she talks about so I can get a feel for if I want to participate in August. Hopefully I'll have some time to figure things out with Koji before the actual seminar. And hope we're back in agility training. 
Confusion and more
You answered your own question in your first line.Both .Good Luck.
You answered your own question in your first line.Both .Good Luck.
HopeShelties
Forums Enthusiast
I would assume handling and coursework by level, as it just lists novice/open, and then excellent.