I can’t believe the first couple weeks of 2011 are already behind us. The month has been crazy busy. Christmas travel, then a three day AKC show on New Years, then a great seminar in Santa Barbara last weekend. And all my extra minutes filled in with training Scoop, walking dogs and working on finishing (finally) the Alphabet Drill Book. The photos are done, the cover art is complete and looks super cool, and we are in the proofing stage. Stay tuned for upcoming details on purchasing your copy from Clean Run Publications.

Scoop has been a good boy the last few weeks. A month ago I had never done more than a couple obstacles prior to a contact or weaves, and rarely did any after them without stopping for a retrieve and tug game.  I had certainly not tried doing something like a circle of contacts and jumps without stopping to reward each one. A week before the New Years trial I set up a novice contact course and it took a few tries before he could go directly to another contact with a couple jumps in between. He was waiting for the reward and when I tried to send him on instead he would  sometimes run around the next obstacle in anticipation of a toy toss. After a couple sessions of jump, jump, DW, jump, tunnel, teeter, jump, jump, frame he got the picture and happily moved between obstacles.

We have gone far beyond those beginning steps now and I feel somewhat confident that he is going to take the obstacles in his path. I think something has finally clicked in Scoop’s brain about weaving, and he is happily diving into the weaves accurately and with some of the speed I know he has in him. His footwork can be funky sometimes, but I have decided to let it be what it wants to be. I will be happy with enthusiasm, speed and accuracy.

At the New Years show I entered only  jumpers and the FAST class in the trial. I didn’t want to risk doing contacts in a trial without being able to fix a problem should one come up. Scoop was great in jumpers, we got a refusal in one of the three runs, but the other two were clean and fast and fun for both of us. On the second day of the trial we had a fund raising match after the event to benefit the AKC World Team, and I entered 7 times! Actually I entered Scoop 5 times and Ace 2 times, but Scoop and I were having so much fun on our one minute training sessions, that I took Ace’s turns for Scoop as well.

I had Scoop in a crate with me at ringside while I worked the gate. I would go in for our timed one minute on the course and do a set of weaves and reward with a toy toss and game of tug, then a couple more obstacles then the weaves, etc. We did the full novice jumpers course one time and spent the rest of our novice jww runs, rewarding starts, leadouts and weaves. Then we had a few runs in the agility ring and I got to do all the contacts of course, and stop and play after each one, then began to combine themto play real agility. It was just about the most valuable 7 minutes of training that I have ever done with Scoop. He had to wait patiently between each of his runs during the match, then release fast from the crate, get right to work quickly so we could get the most bang for our one minute bucks! I was tired, he was tired, and we had a great time. He played intensely with me, stayed on the start line, did his DW and Teeter with nose touches and ran all the frames accurately. And he did all the weaves perfect too. A good night’s rest was had by all.

I am leaving in a couple days for a 4 day AKC show in Portland. Indoors, on rubber mats, at a huge breed, obedience, & agility show. Buoyed by my success with Scoop at the last trial I decided to enter him in the standard classes as well as jumpers.  I am nervous about the prospects and have been training a lot, even in the driving rain if need be, and I have my fingers crossed that the show will go well. I don’t care about Q’s, I will be happy to have Scoop react well to the exciting new environment, run with confidence on the rubber mats, and that he remembers most of what he has been trained to do. I don’t expect perfection even though I hope we get it:) I have some new videos of Scoop’s frames and some of our course work I hope to put up before we leave  if I get some extra time between work and training.

Thanks to photog Mia Grant using Kristi Cetrulo’s fancy camera, for the great shots of Scoop from Santa Barbara last week! And thanks to all of you for coming back to read my sporadic meanderings about Scoop’s exploits. I wish you the most wonderful of competition adventures with your novice dog this year, I know I am looking forward to each and every one of mine.

NJG

Scoop and I have been busy training contacts and weaves and still saving some training time for handling drills. I even ran a couple full courses with Scoop this past week, hard courses, international style with weaves, threadles, serps and other technical stuff. Since I don’t ever have novice courses up in the field, the only novice jumpers Scoop has ever seen was in the one and only USDAA jumpers course he did a couple months ago before I hurt my foot. He did jumpers and gamblers that first show.

Since I am back to running or at least toddling faster I figured I had better finally try the game to see if he could really do a full course. I normally do 3 to 10 obstacle drills, and it felt scary to try the whole course. I missed a couple serps in the beginning of the course, not trusting that I could run into position, not trusting that he would not knock me down if I was out of position:), and really just not knowing if we could put it all together. But we did, and it was exhiliarating and fun. Somewhere along the rocky road this year I think I might actually have trained my dog to do real agility! Of course we are a very unproven and inexperienced team and we need lots of mileage away from home.

I am entered in a few weeks in JWW and FAST at a New Years trial, that will be a big test for us, indoors and full courses, with weaves, multiple days in a row. I am remembering my first day of trialing with all of my dogs. I remember Riots’ first day I could not wait to get in the ring, and when I came out I was  begging to do it again, I just could not wait to walk into that ring with her.  (Actually I would pay a fortune to do it just one more time!) Wicked’s start in agility was not as memorable, maybe because she was not as fast, and she was also just SO obedient and easy to handle, she made it simple for me. Same with Ace. Now Panic…I remember that day. Or should I say I remember the disaster, the off courses, the inattentive dog, the one who did not show again for two months till he was better trained and a bit more grown up. Scoops’ first time in the ring was calm compared to that chaos. Now it is going to feel like the first time all over again after a three month break. Will he weave, will he stay, will he come when I call, will he be worried about the big barn and the noises and the dirt surface? Don’t know but can’t wait to find out.

I hope you are waiting to experience the excitement and exhiliaration of starting your novice dog in the ring, and I hope both our experiences live up to our lofty expectations.

NJG

Scoop and I trained serps and threadles this morning, and I convinced Jim he had 10 minutes to film me before his classes started. While I am no moviemaker yet, I do think my little efforts are getting better, and if I keep filming myself  this often, my handling may eventually improve too:)

I hope you are taking the time to videotape some of your practice sessions with your pup, I think it is one of the most valuable learning tools that we have.

NJG

Scoop and I are rusty on our handling exercises. I haven’t been able to run drills with him for the past couple months because of my foot injury and travel schedule.The injury followed 10 days of no training while I was in Germany which followed a  month of foot discomfort before the trip where I did again little running and lots of weave training. I have been doing long lead-outs after walking to my position and then adding a few more obstacles which I could send Scoop to while walking. And I did a fair amount of sending to jumps and tunnels to get into position for contact training.

So, now I want to move a bit and Scoop is driving a bit too well into the corners, and thinks it lots of fun to bounce the diagonal lines on my box work. I like that he bounces unless I don’t want the diagonal line. This week I was a bit frustrated thinking he has forgotten how to follow me around the corners on shoulder turns. Along with no running agility, there has been no fast paced circle work, just heelwork circles on both sides at a walk. I was wondering if all would be fine when I could really run my ground work drills again. In the meantime I decided to see what would happen with no bars on the jumps in my box work. I placed all the bars on the ground and just ran him through the jump standards. He followed me through all the patterns wonderfully. Front cross, rear cross, pulls through the box on shoulder turns, 270’s, threadles, it was all there.  So I put the jumps to 12 inches, that worked well too after the ground bar exercises. I was able to move him back up to 26 inches over the course of 48 hours and he looked so much better. I think we just need to train the jumping at speed again, he hasn’t really forgotten his skills, we just haven’t used them for a while.

The teeter training is coming along. I am only a few inches from regulation height most of the time, and I have done a few teeters at full height which you’ll see here on the video. A frame training is not perfect but pretty good. Scoop does the best when I throw his toy as he is coming over the top of the frame. He digs in and pushes off from the contact zone. I made a little movie of some of his training the other day. Not the most professional edit job, or the camera work but hope you enjoy nonetheless:)

Scoop and I have lots of fun every day, usually doing at least 2 or 3 short training sessions. In a few days I leave for the East Coast to teach and will be gone 9 days. I am going to miss Scoop and the rest of my pooches and my training, which once again has just started to gain momentum before it will come to another complete halt. SIGH:(

Hope you are in full swing with your training and that nothing gets in the way of your success.

NJG

Scoop and I did about a hundred low teeters this morning. After the rain started my training was limited to some heel work in the house. Ace helps. He heels on one side and Scoop on the other. In my quest to combine lots of dog training with very few human steps, I thought what better way than to do both dogs heelwork at the same time.  My new podiatrist has been consulted and I have my instructions. The doc says stay off it, and my foot yells loudly no running. The fascia is strained or sprained or pulled a little or a lot, sometimes it feels like a lot, like after teaching, and when I am sitting at my desk, it feels like little.

Back to teeters though.The latest on my training is running a lowered teeter like a flat board. Scoop has gotten his feet all tangled under the teeter a few times while playing bang games, and that made him a bit cautious.  I don’t want to play board games or do back chaining right now, so I am just letting him run the board. If he does not run straight through, I call him off the toy without playing and just start again. The next rep has always been great, so I think he is understanding the process. I am going to do a few more days or a week  of this and then build his 2o2o back in to the full height training.

The results of me spending an inordinate amount of time at my desk and entertaining myself with things other than real work or dog training is really appreciating my favorite internet stuff. These are some of the things I can’t live without on my desktop.

Pandora internet free radio, where you make your own stations. http://www.pandora.com/. My favorite station today is Jakob Dylan radio, Pandora plays his songs and other artists with similar tendencies. I can’t work without Pandora in the background and I have all my special stations I can switch to in a heartbeat depending on my mood.

Picassa, Google’s free photo organizing system that keeps all the thousands of photos and faxes and pdf’s all accessable in one place. Get it for free at picasa.google.com. I don’t know how I managed all my stuff before Picassa.

And my new favorite  software is Microsoft’s Windows Live Movie Maker, it is so easy, I finally feel like I know what I am doing with simple video editing.

Last night while browsing  hundreds of channels on the real boob tube I found LINK TV, a very great find indeed. Documentaries and other great programming like World Music which you can also get on the web at  http://www.linktv.org/.

After watching World Music on Link TV I found the Link tv website and got to listen to a great song from a Swedish band named Tummel. I am going to go into overdose on this song, so I thought I had better spread round the joy, and I found their music video on YOU TUBE of course.

After I did the Tummel search I remembered I hadn’t been to TED for a while, so I went and browesed through some great presentations and good music. I wish I had time to spend a few hours on this site every week!

http://www.ted.com/

After falling over with laughter at Ze Franks’s presentation, I went to his site and blog and I know if this foot keeps me sitting a lot this month, I will be a constant visitor.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/ze_frank.html

And while I am trying to find the blessings in sitting and taking some down time, I will share my latest read with you.  Greg Mortenson’s, Stones Into Schools, his second book about building schools for girls in Pakistan. His first one, Three Cups of Tea is one of the most important books I have ever read and I totally enjoy this second one. A perfect book for a good dose of reality and how not to feel sorry for yourself is to remember all the privileges we are accorded in the USA. Greg is the ultimate get ‘er done guy, but on a global scale and he is making more difference in creating world peace than all the politicians put together.

If you are having a break from training or at least running, I hope you’ll explore some of the places that help me run my life or at least enjoy it a bit more.

NJG