Dog Vegas

Yesterday we were at Dog Vegas in Grantham. I only ended up running Heidi and Kody but that gave me 10 runs which was enough!

Heidi was absolutely manic, having not been to a show for a good while I hadn't expected anything else, she flew her contacts and took 2 attempts at her weaves every time. On the positive she didn't knock too many poles. She did have a fantastic run in the Helter Skelter but we had been eliminated before we started as she had broke her wait without me noticing and ran past the first jump into the tunnel, I took her back and then she ran it clear!

Kody was a very good boy, me forgetting the way and overcrowding him in the weaves, making him come out were the only real issues but it was the first time we had run together. His contacts were spot on which was good. We missed our Helter Skelter run though as I hadn't realised it had moved rings.

So we know what we still need to work on, contacts and weaves-the same as always!!!

Heidi at Hydro

Today we have spent pretty much a full day at Dogwise Hydrotherapy. Brian, Megan and Heidi all had a swim and then I stayed to watch another six dogs swim so that I could photograph them for their new website. I will have a long night ahead of me tonight as I took over 900 photos and need to sort through them all, thats about as many as I take at a wedding!

In between taking all the photos I did manage to get a video of Heidi swimming, or rather Rod did. She has improved so much over the past couple of sessions, I still cannot believe that she is actually swimming. She is such a good girl when she goes and I think she soon may actually enjoy it. Not good news for Kody though as we said once Heidi was happy swimming we'd get him going too. (He'd better get his trunks ready at this rate!)

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Training Continues...

I have realised that re training 3 dogs to running contacts all in one go is probably a bit ambitious so I have had a bit of a re think and have decided to stop doing it with Kody at the moment. Thats not to say we wont try again (more than likely next winter) but I haven't got the time to do all 3 at the moment. Kody has quickly gone back to his stopping on the contacts so there is no harm done.

Megan is doing really well with her A-Frame and Dog walk, I am on a weeks holiday at the moment so we have got lots of practice in this week. I don't envisage any major problems with her although we are still to test them in the ring.

As for Heidi, by yesterday I was totally stuck and had tried everything I could possibly think of and she was just jumping everything. I videoed what we were doing as I usually do and emailed it to Conor for a second opinion and some advice (especially as she is his dog!). He came up with something to try and we have worked on it today and it has gone very well so we will continue our training tomorrow. I think with only having to maintain Kody and Megan's contacts it gives me more time to spend on teaching Heidi what I want.

We have also done some jumping today, teaching both the girls 'in', something we haven't done before and that went well so more on that tomorrow. We have also had the weaves out for the first time in a couple of months and it seems Megan has forgotten them too! This training seems never ending :)

On Saturday we are at Dog Vegas so i'm looking forward to that, it is the first time the girls will be running in Grade 3 (they had to move up when Kody joined us) and I have entered Kody too, I feel a bit sorry for him really, he has a major handicap before he starts, me! I'm not sure yet if Megan will be able to run, she is still in season so unless it comes to an end in the next day or so she will have to sit this one out.

Heidi Swims!

Today I took Brian and Heidi to hydro (Meg cant go due to her season). It was the first time we had actually got Heidi into the pool and swimming. She wasn't too keen at first and did a few short 'panic swims' but by the end of the session we had got her stepping off the ramp into the water on her own and swimming calmly to her ball which was about half a metre away. She would panic once she had got her ball until she could see the ramp again but then swam calmly back to it. She did much better than I had ever expected considering she has such a fear of swimming (she likes water but with her feet on the floor!).

It certainly has tired her out though, I haven't heard a peep out of her all day apart from to eat her tea which she hoovered up in about 10 seconds (again not like her at all!)

Tonight we have some pretty bad weather here, it is raining really heavily and we have had some thunder and I think its due to continue like this until Saturday at least, not that I mind tonight as Glee starts again tonight so i'm quite excited :0)

It's All Gone Wrong!!!

Today was more contact training for the dogs. I increased the height of the A-Frame which proved to be disastrous! Heidi and Kody both had about a 90% failure rate. Heidi was still trying to do the down in one stride but couldn't and so missed the contact and Kody started to leap off from almost the top. We quickly stopped and took a break and I then lowered it for them again but they still mostly missed so I need to come up with a plan of action for them both.

I had planned to start the dog walk today but due to the A Frame issues it made me re think how I was going to approach it with them both. I decided to try laying the plank on the ground and get them running to the end and off it to their toy. It worked really well with Kody and he had a 100% success so I was really pleased. Heidi had gone into one of her crazy moods which makes her pretty impossible to do anything with and so she was jumping the end about half of the time even with it flat on the floor!

I guess they like to keep me on my toes and thinking!

All was not lost today though, Megan has been a really good girl, no real issues with her A-Frame as I increased the height, she just needs a bit more confidence to know she is doing it right. I have started to mark her contact with a clicker and I think that will help. As her A Frame worked so well I decided to keep to my original plan and train her dog walk in the same way. She soon realised if she jumped the end (which so only actually did about 4 times anyway) there was no click or treat. I do need to adjust where I placed the first stride regulator today though so that we are getting it in 3 strides not 4 as I have a feeling when they are removed she will do it in 3 and miss the end but she seemed to be getting the idea today so it was a good start.

I have also done some wait training with Megan today, I have decided to shape the behaviour I want with a clicker instead of trying to make her do it. We did it outside today but not near any equipment and funnily enough it didn't take long for her to work out what I wanted and we had some great results so i'm going to continue with it now and we will have a wait this year!!!

I have added a video of Megan's training today, hopefully it will work (I have been having some issues with Windows Live Movie Maker for a while as it suddenly wont play .mov files from my video camera so I have decided to try out iMovie on my Mac instead).

Not Meant To Be?

Over the past 12 months I have entered 4 of the Winter AgilityNuts shows and for every one there has been a reason for us not to go, last winter we were snowed in for 2, the one in December just gone we had just moved and it wasn't great timing and we were supposed to be going to the one on Sunday but Megan has come into season. I was planning to still go and just run Heidi but I had only entered her into 2 classes so I have decided to give it a miss and spend the day doing training with them all as I think this will be more beneficial. We have entered one more in March, if we don't make it to that one then i'll know not to enter any more in the future!

We have done some more work on the A Frame today and I think after one more session we will be ready to increase the height of it a little. (Especially as Heidi has been flying over it today and doing the down in 1 stride-still getting the contact but not really what I wanted!) On Sunday I plan to start dog walk training as well.

Megan is driving me mad with her wait, I spend more time trying to get her to sit than I do actually doing the exercise! (And getting a wait is even more of an effort) She seems to be getting worse and is just so stubborn. I tell her 'sit' and she looks at me as if she has no idea what im saying. Back to basics on that one I think.

A Good Start To 2011

Today we finally managed to get a good amount of training in. The weather has been dry for a few days so the ground was in pretty good condition. We did some A-Frame training this morning and at the time I thought it went well but I videoed our session and when I looked back there were a few more misses than I had realised. Heidi had been the one with problems on the first day that we introduced the running contacts but today she was a star getting over an 80% success rate. Megan and Kody had quite a few misses but this afternoon on his second session Kody did much better, Megan was about the same. Still I hadn't expected it to be an easy thing to teach them and i'm sure we will get there with it. Brian joined in on the training today too and he had a 100% success rate, clever boy!

We also did some jumping sequences this morning and this afternoon and I'm glad to say there were hardly any knocked poles which is always good news. I must admit I am loving the opportunity to train at home, its so easy to just step out of the front or back door and get on with it (we should have no excuse for not doing any really!)

I have started to look at shows for next year and pretty much planned out which ones we will be going to although there is scope to change my mind on a few as i'd like to try some new ones that we haven't been to before. I'm getting quite excited though especially as some of the schedules are starting to come out, it will be time to enter them soon!

I also managed to get the van cleaned out today and wash all the dogs bedding from in it, something i've been meaning to do for ages, I hadn't realised just how hairy it had all got!

I took the christmas decorations and tree down yesterday, I'm always glad to see the back of them once Christmas is over. Unfortunately though it means back to work tomorrow afternoon.

I took the photo of the boys asleep last night, how cute are they sharing a bed?!