Dog Walk Training

I have been working with chaos on his DW a bit lately, trying to improve his speed across it and also having a tunnel under it.

So far its going reasonably well. His speed is much better, no hesitating and no creeping up it or along the top. We have got a new DW here so we have got the opportunity to train on 2 different ones which helps. I do need to train with him on others though in a different location. You can see on the clip below though that he is much more confident.

He is also understanding his end position better, he was having a tendency to stop short with 4 feet on instead of 2 on 2 off, likely to be caused by me inconsistently rewarding him at some point. I have ensured that he only gets a reward now for 1. going quickly across (no hesitating) and 2. for stopping with 2 on 2 off. He has certainly improved although sometimes he is gong that quick he stops off it altogether so it is still a work in progress and we need to conquer the see saw nerves. He is happy enough on mine (typical)

Next weekend we are at Dartford show with all 3 Malis in action, im hoping he will be a bit more confident than when we went to Tunbridge Wells.

Below is a video of Heidi learning a new trick, thought id share it with you :)

Culverstone Obedience

This weekend we had a bit of a different 'dog' weekend. On Saturday I took Brenda over to Paws in the Park at Ardingly. She had a go at the Dash n Splash and loved it! She got so excited waiting to have her go, bouncing up and down like tigger and barking. She had no hesitation and just jumped straight in! After her go at that we walked around the show and did a bit of research at the have-a-go events as we are doing a have-a-go obedience ring at Dogs Live next month.  I got plenty of ideas for how to run our ring anyway so it was certainly a successful day out.

On Sunday me and Kody went to Culverstone Obedience show. We are only really having a go at the moment to see if it is something we will take a bit more seriously. The bonus of this show was that it was 20mins from home. 

We had a lovely day at the show, it was bigger than any obedience show I had been to before and only our second open show. (I did a few with Brian when he was much younger). Kody seems to really love obedience, I think maybe more than agility! I entered us into Pre Beginner and as i still haven't taught him a retrieve we did introductory as well so that he could do 2 classes. His Pre beginner class went well apart from his recall, he came straight forward and went round the back of my legs instead of stopping. His heel work was lovely though, losing 2 1/2 marks on lead and 1 1/4 off.  His stays were clear also. I was amazed to find out that we had come 8th in the class and as we lost less than 10 points we also got an award of Merit!

In the introductory classes the exercises were all done on lead and I think this caused Kody to be a bit confused as to what I wanted. his heelwork was good and his recall was very good but he broke his stay as we never train that on lead! 

Both judges commented on how well he works and said it would be a shame if we didn't take it further so I guess I had better train him properly now!!!

 

Congratulations go to club members Georgie and Dolly who came 7th in Beginner Bitch and their first show together and also 7th in Beginner dog with Skye!

Tunbrige Wells

We finally have a van again, after looking at loads and them not being right we decided to fix our current one which has now been done meaning I could take more than 1 dog to a show. We don't actually have any kennels in it yet though as I need it empty later this week to move something big so I used 2 crates and decided to take Heidi and Chaos. (Kody is doing obedience next weekend so he isnt being left out)

This was our first 'down south' KC show. It was huge! So many people and dogs and rings and we did actually see a few familiar faces which was nice. I can honestly say though it was not one of my favorite shows, I do prefer smaller ones.

Chaos started off not too bad, a bit distracted in the C1-3 jumping and got 5f for a refusal. In the G3 jumping he was even more distracted, got 5f in the weaves and ran past a jump. His agility was clear but his DW was very slow, he stopped on the up plank for a good few seconds before creeping along it. I didn't check his time as im sure he would have got time faults from this. He really isn't coping with the bigger shows, he is happy enough walking round and saying hello to people and dogs but he cant cope with having to que and dogs lunging everywhere and it puts him off when he gets into the ring. I think I have worked out his DW issue too as its very fast at home. The aluminum see-saws have spooked him a couple of times which has put him off and I think this has made him unsure on the DW as he expects it to move and combined with him being worried about being at a show he has just slowed right down. We will need to try and train on a few dog walks I think not just ours here and I am going to get our club an aluminum see-saw so he can train on that too.

Heidi-well she hadn't been to an agility show for 6 months and she doesn't train with me now only Conor so it was always going to be 'interesting'. In the G4 agility she was screaming with excitement on the start line! She had a couple of poles and missed the weave entry on one of the sets but it wasn't terrible. Her next to jumping courses were a bit wild, a couple of poles, some nice bits and a missed weave entry in one as she didn't steady herself to get in them.

Below is a video of Chaos at Lincoln (only just managed to get it on the computer!)

FAB-Kent

This was the first show we had done in Kent since we moved. It was very local to us and although we don't usually do many non KC shows it was so close it seemed daft not to. I only took Chaos again as we still didn't have a van sorted. He ran in his agility class first. His DW was quite slow but he ran the rest of the class well and although he had been bothered a bit in the que he wasn't put off once in the ring so an improvement on the previous week. 

We went to que for his jumping shortly after and he was obviously worried, there were quite a few more people around compared to earlier on. We did our run which went well until he got spooked by the judge stood next the tunnel and then he wouldn't go in it.  We missed it out and continued to the end and he was ok. At this point i decided it was probably best to head home so just headed off to see how he did in the agility results and was amazed to find later that he had come 1st in that class!!! It obviously wasn't as slow as I had first thought.

Show catch up - Lincoln

We have been to 3 shows since I last posted.

Lincoln was the first one. I went with only Chaos to this show. He competed on Friday and Sunday and I judged on Saturday. I really do like this show, it was lovely to catch up with people we hadn't seen since we moved, we managed to visit our dogs breeder Jan on the Thursday on the way up, had some lunch with her and took Chaos for a walk with Tiva and Reo (Bridget's dogs) and then headed off to the show. Chaos ran really well on the Friday, he got a bit spooked landing on the see-saw in one class but came 5th in G3 agility!!! He had an issue with the tunnel under the dog walk in another class and ran past a jump in his his jumping class but certainly not a bad run.

On Saturday the rain came...I was judging and was totally soaked through, thankfully the sun came out in the afternoon so it wasnt too bad.

Below are my courses from the show:

On Sunday Jan and Anne came up to the show to watch all the Bonvivants running and brought Bronte, Cedar and Caper to watch. Chaos wasn't running so well on the Sunday, he did his jumping but was a bit distracted, coming out in the weaves then in his agility he got up and walked away from the start line, I brought him back and set him off, he did a couple of jumps and just stood and looked at me so we left the ring. I think being at a bigger show had made him more worried so something we need to work on with him and im hopeful having somebody else queuing should help him.