Letter J

I trained Scoop on Letter J skills over the past two days, and I think I will leave the setup in place for at least another training session or two. Scoop did much better than I expected. I haven’t done bounce work of any sort since he was much younger, and J drills have diagonal and bend work while bouncing. He seemed balanced when we started yesterday, but I realized at the end of todays’ session that he looked even better. This tells me that he improved on the skills and maybe he can improve even more.  Here is letter J.

I started working each end of the J, first the diagonal lines, photo of Scoop bouncing the diagonal below. I worked both sides going both directions two times each side. A total of 8 passes.

Then we did the bounce circles, and did approximately 8 of those. Photos:

Then I added first the middle jump to the bend work, then turned around and added the middle jump before the diagonal line. Then I went right into the diagonal to the middle jump to the bendwork, and turned around and went the opposite direction. Each pass I rear crossed either into the bend or the diagonal line.

I just want him to look comfortable and smooth when bounce jumping, no effort, no added strides, and on the bounce circles I want to see him bending around the arc. When I put the full drill together he bounced through the diagonal, lengthened on the straightaway, then tucked right into the bounce arc and followed my rear cross cue. He never added steps, looked much different from one side to the other, or even knocked a bar. All that tells me he is comfortable with the challenge. I really like this drill. I got ideas for the setup some years ago from training sessions with Susan Salo.

Here in California we are totally blessed with perfect weather this week. It was 70 degrees yesterday! I can’t wait to get out and play today, in fact I have the whole weekend at home to do whatever I want, and what I want is more J, then maybe K….:)

NJG

Scoop and I had a great time at the Portland AKC trial. I have been to that show almost every year since 1996, and this was one of the best ever. It is indoors on good matting, the same as the AKC Nationals. The courses were fun, the Time to Beat demo on Saturday night was perfect, allowing the handlers to run as often as they liked for $5. a run for charity. Some of the 2010 World Team Members (and coach:)) were at the event and we offered to run other handlers dog for a further $20. donation to the World Team. Those dogs that were willing to go round the ring with us had a great time as did we!

The weekend ended with ISC jumpers which I obviously do not enter with my dogs because as the World Team Coach I believe it would be inappropriate. However fate stepped in this year. My 7 year old BC Ace tied with a team for first in Excellent JWW and the course was torn down before we could have a run off. The ISC jumpers was offered as an alternative for the runoff and we gladly accepted. We ran at our 20 inch height at the end of the class, and thankfully had a fast and clean run on the challenging ISC course as the very last run of the entire show weekend. The grandstands cheered, and Ace and I had a blast.

Scoop was a pretty good boy. We made our debut in Novice standard and got 2 out of 4 legs. The wheel sort of fell off the last two standard runs. A ticked broad jump, refusal on the teeter, a tunnel off course when I was trying to reset to take the teeter, and a couple more bumbles in there as well.  We did get our third Novice JWW leg and got to move to Open JWW the last day. We had a pretty nice run but pulled a bar. You can watch our run here.

It took Scoop a couple runs to get used to the mats and the indoor trial setting as he has never trained in that environment. My bad, I should have made some trips to work in that kind of setting, but we got lucky anyway and he adjusted to the different footing just fine. He didn’t show as much speed or turning ability as he does on grass, and he added some extra strides I wish he would have left out, but fine for his first experience on mats. The first two days they held the FAST class as well and we qualified both times. So the weekend results were fairly nice for my green green boy. 2 Fast legs, 2 standard legs and a finished title in jumpers over the 4 day event.

Today is a training day. Scoop’s 2o2o behavior on the DW and teeter were pretty funky at the event. He stopped short on both contacts and reached back between his legs and nose touched the board. Two things going on there. First, I think the surface change from wood to rubber was something he thought was odd and he just doesn’t have any reinforcement history on that surface change. And maybe a bigger reason is that last week when running the contacts he was stopping with his feet barely off the board in 2o2o, and when he reached between his legs to nose touch, his nose came back almost to the board and I inadvertently marked that exaggerated behavior. Whoops!!

I am going to do a refresher course this week on 2o2o to remind him how far off the board his feet should be and that he needs to touch straight to the ground not reach back for the board. We already had one session this morning and it went well, but I have the plexi target out and we are just working on proofing on a flat board. I need to get the target away again, and proof on lots of different surfaces. This morning we worked wood to cement. I will drag out a long rubber mat to work on later, and I am going to skip wood to grass training for a couple days.

I am thinking about which alphabet drill to work on today….maybe letter “J”.

Thank you Mia for sending the nice photos of Jerry Ross from Santa Barbara a couple weeks ago. Can one ever have enough dog photos? Nah!

If you got to run your baby dog at a show on the weekend I hope you had as much fun as I did and that your dog did perfect start lines like Scoop did, and played every time you asked as well. If you accomplished that then the weekend was a successful one.

NJG

This evening I put up the letter V drill. Easy setup of only 3 jumps. Scoop is really just now learning to decelerate and turn well and the ping pong drills and multiple front crosses gave me places to reward all the turns and then open the drill back up again and run around the 270 pattern. Which letter will we do tomorrow…. we leave for a show tomorrow so maybe something with lots of variation…I will sleep on it:)

Here are just a few of the cool V drills. Enjoy NJG

While I was working on proofing the pages for the Alphabet Book, I realized that there are so many of the letters that I still need to train with Scoop. I have decided to systematically go through each one of the original Alphabet drills over the next month, starting with some of the most fundamental exercises and progressng to the more difficult patterns and drills. Yesterday we started with the letter O. I love this simple setup.  Here’s a couple of the drills I did with front crosses at the side change.

NJG

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