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

Agility training takes on a new aspect when the handler can’t run and walks at turtle speed. I haven’t seen a foot doctor yet to diagnose my inability to properly use my right foot, but suspect I have torn something at least slightly important in the business of locomotion. I was hoping I would be better after some days of icing, nsaids, and not running. I see  the local agility podiatrist on Thursday, hopefully she will give me some shortcut to recovery! I haven’t stopped training but the focus on how I am training has certainly changed.

The e-frame training is pretty easy as over the last week Scoop has gotten much more enthusiastic at being able to send independently  to a jump or tunnel 30 feet away so I can have a different e-frame approach, while walking or standing still in a perfect position to see Scoop hit the contact. In fact Scoop’s independence at sending to obstacles was getting a little TOO easy, so I am also reinforcing lots of lineups at my side and perfect stays before I send. I don’t want him to anticipate that each time he returns with the toy he is going to get to tear away from me to a distant obstacle.

I don’t really want him to anticipate anything other than that he should be waiting nicely for my directions at my side. I decided I needed to add more obstacles to send him to, so now I have a table, a couple jumps and 2 tunnels. Scoop gets rewarded for frame performance with a toy, then he returns to me to tug. I ask for the toy and line him up straightly on whichever side will facilitate a straight send to an obstacle. I walk  a step forward while sending him, so I have a little bit of forward motion on each send. If he does not line up straight on my side and wait for a release I just start over, ask again for CLOSE (line up on my left) or SIDE (line up on my right) and either release him to tug, give him a cookie, or send him out to the obstacle and on to the e-frame. This of course works for any kind of independent obstacle performance I might want to work on with a moving approach to an obstacle from another obstacle. I have also been doing a bit of teeter and weave work this way as well using the stationed obstacles. Since I want an independent performance on all my contacts and weaves, this is valuable training. However I like to mix it all up and move around as well when I am training these obstacles. Right now I can walk slowly to a new position, but I can’t get there fast.

I filmed some of Scoop’s frames yesterday, and I almost look like I was trotting, though I thought I was barely walking. I didn’t film the stays and lineups, makes for too long of a video. I have the beep turned off for the moment, and I have a stride regulator in the middle. The bump is at the edge of the contact zone, and if Scoop hits it instead of the zone, it applies pressure and he gets a beep which I don’t want. So no sound right now.

I have been playing around with placing the toy 15 to 20 feet from the bottom of the frame, or tossing a toy as Scoop comes over the top of the frame.  Today I liked the toy tossing better than stationary placement. I felt like it made him dig in and drive over the top better. The bump is on the frame in all these reps, I am going to do some more tomorrow with the bump placed on the frame randomly and the beep on the E-frame on. I only recently added the bump to the middle. When Scoop did his flatwork it was without a bump. I felt like I needed a visual aid for both of us after I put the frame to 5.6, hence the little bump.

Today I am pretty happy with where the frame training is going.  Hope you are as happy with your pups A-frame training as I am with mine.

NJG