Another dual training day

I had a late start to the morning which is beginning to be a habit during my vacation. Anyway, I did some writing when I got up and then off to do agility training.

We tried the jump chute first. Morgan did it perfectly the first time out. We did it again and it was again good but she dropped a bar on the next to last jump. We tried it again and she dropped the very same bar. We moved the jump because we figured out that it was just a little off. Didn't matter, she still dropped the bar. When we switched sides, she was dropping bars on a couple of jumps. She isn't even up to her full jump height. She is just a lazy jumper, I think. Anyway we ended up with her clearing all the jumps with me running along side her and we quit on that note. I'm not sure what to do about dropping bars. I think what we will do is to stagger the jumps. That probably means that we have to stop trying to get her to bounce and start her to thinking about getting her feet in the air.

On the weave poles, she did more than she ever has before and right after we gave her high praise and lots of cookies, she decided that she should pop out of the poles or just quit doing it. I told Tom that I was thinking about quitting while she was still interested and we probably just went too long with the weave pole. I have to remember to stop on success and we should have stopped with the jackpot. I'm learning how to teach this girl.

On the teeter, she did great but after a couple of tries on each side, she found it really difficult to sit and stay for me to call her to the end. I finally was able to get her to do it once and we quit. It may take us forever to learn anything if I have to quit after one or two tries.

What I probably have to do is to do each obstacle twice and rotate for at least three sets. That may help.

In obedience, we did some more heeling but this time off lead (but with a cookie). She was great but again, after doing one big circle, she started to lag. For now we will do one big circle, have a party, rev her up and do something else. I have to remember to make everything a party or at least interesting to her. She did very well with my 30 second wait after leaving her at 20 feet. Tomorrow, we will move up to 40 seconds. Finally, we did some tugging--not so great but better than before and the broad jump.

I am desperately waiting for her dumbbell and I don't know why. I can do what I need to do with a bumper. I just want to start with the happy, happy retrieve and work up to the FF. I want her to think obedience is a game. Today, while I was putting up equipment, I put her on a down stay and threw hot dog pieces in front of her. She stayed like a champ. However, she was really eager to eat those pieces once I released her. Good Dog!

I may not get to train tomorrow but if I do, I will remember to blog.

Dual training day

Today, Morgan and I tried to make up for lost time by doing obedience and agility on the same day. It seems I last blogged about 10 days before Christmas. We've had some really rainy weather so we missed some agility lessons but we have done some work that I missed blogging about.

This morning the obedience plan was to work mostly with Merlin because he is entered in the obedience trials that I am the trial chair for in January. He failed miserbly at everything but I hope to whip him into shape before we have to show :-) The plan with Morgan was to see if I could get her to tug, to put the clicker back into our heeling practice, and to make her wait longer on her recall exercise.

Morgan is not an enthusiastic tugger. It takes a lot of work to get her excited about tugging and I need to spend more time training her on it. In one article I read, they said to get a rawhide chew or something to encourage tugging. Well, we got plenty of those for Christmas so we'll see how the tugging training goes. Today, I tried it with Merlin's 2nd favorite tug toy--the stuffed orange gecko. She got in a couple of good tugs but wasn't really "into" the game. We'll try it next with the rawhide.

I had better luck with the clicker. Nobody said she wasn't food motivated. She did beautiful heeling in a circle for me and only once got out of position. I still have her on the pinch collar but when she lagged and it pinched her, it seemed to de-motivate her. I think it is because it usually pinches when she pulls and she wasn't pulling and she didn't quite know what to do to make it stop. She didn't figure out that lagging was the same thing as pulling to the pinch collar. I think she may get it when she figures out that when she is in correct heel position, it will no longer pinch her. A few more tries with it and the clicker and the light bulb should go off.

I started shaping the waits on recalls a bit more. I left her on a sit stay and walked about 20 feet away, waited to the count of 20 and went back to her, praised her, and gave her a treat. Then I went about 30 feet and she was up within 5 seconds. I dropped back to 20 feet and decided that I would hold there for the next week or so and build up time. After I have a minute at 20 feet, I'll move to 30 and so on.

So obedience went okay. I just have to keep reminding myself that I have to have a plan and execute my plan.

In agility, we started with helping Tom and Jake with control exercises. Morgan amazed me. She was there to distract Jake. However, she was awesome. She never lunged at him, she stayed by my side and as long as she did she got praise and cookies. Good girl. We worked the jump chute first. She dropped bars toward the end the first couple of times so we stretched out the last two jumps and that worked better. She would stop and turn to look at me every time I said something to her. Even if I told her to go on. We will need to work on that. For the time being, I'm not saying anything. When I don't speak, she does the entire chute w/o a problem. Once we worked through that, we went to the weave poles. She starts off gung ho and actually got a couple of the straight up weaves--we both cheered and gave her cookies and it was if she said --well that's enough of that, and she didn't do as many when I sent her again. My motto for Morgan is quit with success and quit while she still wants more. However, I get caught up in her successes and forget that. We practice again tomorrow and maybe, I will remember :-) We had the same problem with the teeter. She does it great the first couple of times and, of course, gets bored with it and her performance falls off. I've got to think of a way to keep her engaged so that we can progress to the next level.

I'll try to keep up with my training for the next couple of weeks. It always helps to write it down.

I'm trying to think if I missed reporting some training. I cannot believe that it has been so long since I last blogged. Yes,I did miss reporting my obedience training last Thursday but it was so minuscule that it really wasn't worth mentioning. I trained Morgan a little after my Novice class on Thursday. We did fronts, which she sometimes gets and sometimes doesn't. I really need to put a clicker on that. We also tried some fast moving downs which also should be put on a clicker. There seems to be a theme here. I did a no-no. I started training without a plan and without my equipment. Morgan had a blast but she really didn't learn much during that session. Of course, it was all my fault. The other thing that was all my fault is that I ordered a dumbbell that is too large for her. I ordered the standard size thinking that it would probably be okay. When I got it, the dowel was way too thick and the ends were bigger than I wanted. But we'll train with it and I'll buy another dumbbell that we can really work with. I was disappointed because I am really ready to teach retrieving. I'm tired of having only one retriever in the house :-)

Today we did agility after being rained out on Saturday. The first thing we tried were crosses---remember we didn't know how to train them last time. Well, we were a little smarter today but neither of us had done our homework on learning the proper way to teach it. Anyhow what we did today was to start out with a front cross. After all I said was expert at that. Sure enough, the first time I did it, she got it. Cool. We tried it again and had the same result. No doubt freestyle and rally training helped there. Now for the rear cross. Because she had made that turn with the front cross I thought we would get some speed up so she could get in front of me for the rear cross. Nope. She knew just where to go--that jump on the left but skipped the second jump straight ahead-three times. Okay re-group. We then changed it to a tandem turn with her on my right. She did it perfectly. Tried the rear cross. Nope. Then we put a cookie behind the second jump, she did the jump, got the cookie and then she did a spin to get to the jump on the left. She did that twice. Then we took the cookie away from the second jump and put it behind the third jump--the one on the left. Lo and Behold, she did it! Somehow the light bulb went on and she did it. I don't know what it was that did it but success is sweet. We tried it a second time just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. She nailed it. GREAT!

She also did great on the weave poles. Tom said she went further down the line than she has in the past. My grommet strip thingys came in the mail with the misfit dumbbell so we can set up our own weave poles in the back yard if it ever stops raining.

The last thing we did was the teeter and she is doing so well on the teeter. The problem is that we don't have the 2o2o we need to proceed to the next level. More motivation to get that stupid travel board built so we can practice 2o2o. I think I'm going to buy a couple of heaters for the garage and start working with her in there on these kinds of things.

Anyway, that's the report. We do agility again on Thursday and tomorrow we will do obedience and freestyle.

Rusty Morgan

I can't believe it has been 9 days since I last posted a blog. I guess it is a testament to how much I have been doing. Unfortunately, it has been raining a lot and I've been very busy. I spent three days writing and not leaving the house for much of anything last week. We did go obedience training one day but since I cannot remember what we did, I guess there were no ah ha moments for Morgan.

We missed training Saturday because I thought it was raining. I can never tell if it is raining unless it is pouring and I hear it in the vents and chimney. Anyway, Morgan and Merlin came in from pottying and they were both wet so I figured it must be drizzling. However, Tom said that it was dry at his house. Anyway, we went to train in his yard this morning--no rain but very overcast.

It was a hard day for Morgan. She didn't do well with the time off. We tried the teeter first and as soon as I started to run beside her, she decided to jump the yellow part. I went back to feeding her a cookie just before the hop. Did that for a couple of times. Then, I slowed down and gradually built up speed until she didn't try to hop the yellow any more.

Next we tried a jump sequence and she did that well. But then we decided to teach a rear cross. A really bad decision because neither Tom nor I really knows how to teach a rear cross. Morgan didn't get it. None of us did :-) We'll read up on it and do better next time. Should have tried the front cross because I'm really good at that one :-)

Finally, we tried the weave poles. Tom has the weave poles set up so that the first five poles are staggered about six inches apart and the sixth to the 12th poles are in a straight line. As long as the poles were six inches apart, Morgan did well going down the middle. At the first pole that was in a straight line, she popped out. We moved the target to right in front of the first straight pole and she got it but when I switched to work her on my right side, it took several tries before she got it again. After a couple of tries with no reward, Morgan still tried to convince Tom to give her treats when she didn't deserve it. She does a really pretty sit with excellent eye contact. Hussy. After she got the sixth pole correctly, we quit.

As I said, a very rough day for Morgan's training. I ordered the grommet strips from Max 200 and they shipped yesterday. I bought the stake thingys from Lowe's on Saturday and I charged up my drill to fix the travel plank on Monday. So as soon as it stops raining, we should be good to go in my backyard for weave poles, 2on2off, and jumps. The backyard has a LOT of ruts so I have to be careful when training that neither one of us steps in one and hurts herself. The plan for the spring is to get someone in to level my back yard and then plant some sod. I could use that second job right about now to pay for my dog training habits.

We're doing obedience tomorrow in the morning and planning Merlin's video entries for freestyle. Unfortunately, Morgan's dumbbell is in the same shipment as the grommet strips so we can't work on that yet in obedience.

Morgan and I trained in agility today. We haven't done anything since I last wrote --with Thanksgiving and me trying to do the chapter edits on the book getting in the way. Anyway I was a little discombobulated because I didn't have the control for my e-collar and I was sure we would spend our time chasing after the Divine Ms. M. However, I put the e-collar on her anyway and off we went. She ran off twice but came right back when I called her. Yippee!

The first thing we did was the weave poles. She is getting better at it--even ran through a couple of poles that were in line with one another. The next thing we did was a jump sequence that Tom set up and ran it the same way we did the previous set up however it was facing a different direction but Morgan did it brilliantly. Except for the first time when she took the tunnel without going over the jump. I said aahhh and she tried to get away from me by going back through the tunnel. She saw me on the other side and turned around in the tunnel to go the other way and there I was again. It was so funny. She couldn't get away and finally gave up and played my way.

We then decided that we should try a pinwheel. As I remember with other people's dogs, she could do it one way but the opposite direction was a problem. It was at this point that Morgan discovered that Tom was the keeper of the treats. She couldn't get one if she didn't do the sequence right. She gave him perfect fronts, she looked into his eyes longingly, anything to get him to just give her a cookie. Tom stood firm, though. She, again, decided it was better to do it our way.

Morgan discovered something else today on the teeter that I'm not sure she was aware of before. She did an excellent job on the raised teeter that was actually tipping a bit more this time. I tried to call her and she came when I was half way down the teeter but we had to work through me moving further and further away. When I got to the second table and called her, she ran to me and I cheered and patted her on the back and she started jumping up. She made Mommy happy! I don't think she ever cared that she made me happy before but today, she wanted to make me happy again. This is a major breakthrough. If she can actually work up some enthusiasm for making me happy, that is truly half the battle. I've got to get some better treats so I can jackpot her when she tries to make me happy.

Morgan and I trained on Monday for obedience and freestyle and today for agility.

Our Monday session was rather abbreviated because I got up late and had to go into the office. We did some set ups and first steps with attention, fronts, cheese ball game to a front and some jump training. I'm trying to train Morgan not to take off too early. I probably need to put down some cavelletti poles to help with that. For freestyle we just went over a couple of things -- going around me, leaps, backing through my legs and both of us backing up and coming through my legs from behind (her favorite thing). She is really responsive to the food but not as crazy as she has been. I've been using the prong collar on her and it has reduced a lot of pulling and barrelling around.

In agility this morning, I was encouraged. We did the drill on the teeter and she did not really try to leap over the contact areas but made a couple of big steps. I added in an 'easy' and she slowed enough to get to the table w/o leaping. She did that a few times on both sides and I was happy. She didn't do as well with the weave poles today because we added in a couple that were not staggered. I think it is going a little too fast for her so we will back up a bit and start to bring the first six closer together. Gotta order those strips to practice in our own back yard.

What I am most encouraged about is that she did a fabulous job on the jump sequence. We started with the last obstacle, the tunnel, did it a few times and I went back to the first jump. We did jump, jump tunnel. GREAT. Then, jump, jump, tunnel jump. Finally we added another jump that almost closed the circle. She did GREAT. What was really very encouraging was that she didn't try to run off but once, to see a neighboring dog, I gave her a nick with the e-collar and it took a couple of seconds and then she came running back to me and went right back to work. Yippee!

I've still got to do those lesson plans but Ms. M is doing great. I'm very happy with her.

Well no freestyle training yesterday. I just couldn't fit it in with all my meetings and school visits. However, this morning we had a training date with Jake the Border Collie. Tom is working on his handling skills with Jake and I think I helped with that a little.

Because Morgan was a loose cannon on Tuesday, yesterday I put on her e-collar and let her wear it all day. This morning I spent about 10 minutes training her to come with the e-collar. She kinda got it and then we were off to Tom and Jake's. When it was Morgan's turn, she immediately started looking for the kitten that was in the screened porch on Tuesday. I called her and pushed the e-collar control. She hesitated but soon came to me. We tried it a couple of more times and she was really good.

We started with the training plank which she completely ignored. She couldn't seem to keep four paws on it to begin with. It is hard to teach 2o2o when the damn dog won't even keep 4 on. We have to work on that which means that I need to get out our plank, fix it (the feet are on wrong), paint it and practice. It's a beautiful day today, maybe after I put in a couple of hours writing, I will feel motivated to reposition the feet on the plank. As I recall, it takes about 5 minutes. She did it right once and we moved on.

Next we went to the teeter trainer. Today, she actually showed signs of wanting to hop over the yellow parts. I had to treat her just before the place where she started to hop (easily discernible because of her paw prints on the teeter) to slow her down. It worked like a charm. However, to prove that lessons learned are not transferable, when we tried it in the opposite direction, she tried to hop the yellow parts again. ARRGG! By the forth or fifth try, she was getting it pretty well. We have to limit reps with Morgan as she loses interest REALLY fast.

After that we went to the weave poles. Tom had set up the staggered weave poles open about a foot wide. Morgan tried to cheat to the target a couple of times and then realized she wasn't getting the treat until she did it my way, finally ran through all six poles, no problem. We'll move them close together on Tuesday.

Last we tried the sequence that she just didn't seem to get last Tuesday. However, we started the back chaining from the tunnel (last obstacle) rather than the jump (next to last obstacle). Duh! She did the tunnel 3 times, then jump tunnel twice, then jump, jump, tunnel twice. Finally we added a jump after the tunnel. I had her go over the last jump a couple of times but then went back to the very first jump so the sequence was jump, jump, tunnel, jump. She did it! Twice! I was very happy with that and quit on that note.

What I was even more happy about was that she stopped trying to run off after she went through the tunnel. She came to me for a treat. In fact, she finally showed Tom what a smart dog she is--not always ballistic. I was very proud of her behavior toward the end of our session. I hope I get more of that because it reinforces my belief that she is trainable.

I took Morgan with me to my class a little early this evening. One of my new students was already there working her Aussie. When I took Morgan out of the car, I put on her prong collar. She made a couple of feeble attempts at pulling on the lead but remembered the collar and decided not to. We played a couple of attention games. Did a tiny bit of healing. We played tug and I tossed around the tug toy. She went after it and brought it back once. After that she wouldn't bring it back if I tossed it.



Here's the funny thing. At home, she annoys me continuously by bringing me a toy to throw for her. I suppose that she is just like her biological mother who only wants to do things when SHE wants to do it. However, I don't think that is the case so much with Morgan. I truly think that she doesn't understand the game. I'm hoping this problem will be solved when I finish teaching the fetch. I really need to get to it, though. I've been dragging and dragging my feet on this one. That's because I still don't have a plan for her training and I really need to sit down and do that. I have a few days off next week when I can probably spend a couple of hours really mapping out her training plan.



I do want to brag. In my novice class, my students encouraged me to get Morgan out and see if she could do a Novice routine. I told them how horrible she was in Pre-Novice. But I did take her out and put on her prong collar and took out her string cheese and we went into the ring. She did some AMAZING heeling both on and off leash. Of course, her stand for exam was perfect and even her recall was fabulous. So she made a liar out of me. But we all laughed when I pointed out the I had food AND a prong collar on her.

Morgan had the last laugh, however. While I took off her prong collar, I failed to take off her leash before putting her into her crate in the car. When I got home (15 minutes later) the entire handle had been chewed off her leash.

We made it to the building at 7:03 this morning and I started searching my training bag for a prong collar. I started both Merlin and Nimue on training collars very early. Nimue at 7 months and Merlin as 22 months (when his show clip was shaved down). Morgan is 5 years old and I want to tell you, she was none too happy about that collar. She looked very resentful and didn't want to move. The weirdest thing was she couldn't make herself sit straight on her front. Too funny. I'm sure she will get used to it. I use the prong collar as a self correcting tool. If she pulls on it she feels it, if she doesn't pull, everything is honky dory.



Anyway, we worked on fronts and heeling. I see that I have to get that focal point going a little better because it is what killed me at the trial last week. Well, one of the things. I realize that I am taking Morgan way too fast for everything. It is so hard not to do this when I am so eager to get her in the ring and she has so much to learn.



Last night, one of the things that I did to slow myself down was to reconfigure my goals. My new goals for Morgan are to debut her in Obedience at the Lumberton trials in April and hope to finish a pre-novice title at home at GCOC. I will show her in obedience until June and then start to show her in agility. She will make her agility debut in June at the poodle club trials. Those are our goals. Now I just have to make some solid lesson plans to get us there.

Today Morgan and I met a fellow club member to practice agility. I spent the first part of the training time helping with his dog and letting him tell me some of the agility practice he was doing. Then we brought out the wild child. I told him we had to start from the very beginning with her because I have done nothing for over a year--more like 2 years. Anyway, we started with the trainer he set up for teaching bottom on the teeeter. He and I have the same problem with a dog who likes to fly up the teeter and not worry if it comes down before flying off. We're following a plan he found on Clean Run. She took to it very nicely. There is a table at either end of the teeter with a little give (about 1 inch) on the downside of the teeter that is resting on the table. The dog is to travel down the teeter to the table and rewarded on the table. I think the next step is to create a little more space on the bottom end and start teaching them to bang the teeter. But for now Morgan is eagerly walking the teeter and getting to the table for her treat.

We next tried a 2-jump sequence on lead. She did quite well with that. He suggested that we take her lead off to see how she would do (the bars kept falling off with the lead on). The minute she knew she was loose, she was off like a bat out of hell. He has a kitten that was on the screened porch and she went bonkers over it. Not a good idea. She wouldn't come when called and I had to chase her down. Not fun. This actually happened a couple of more times when he or I let loose the leash. ARRRGG! We absolutely must start working on the recall. I'm warming up the e-collar as I am blogging :-)

The next sequence we tried was to add the tunnel to the two jumps. She didn't do the tunnel the first time but got it the second time. I tried the sequence a third time and she wouldn't go into the tunnel. Finally I tried back chanining it--one jump, then the tunnel. Bingo! Twice more and then I tried adding the second jump. No tunnel. Back chain again -- good. Second jump, no tunnel. I didn't understand why she wasn't getting it. (Now in between she has run off a couple of times--what a nuisance). Then a light bulb went on. I tried to keep up with her going over the jumps and when she approached the tunnel I veered toward it and tada she went into the tunnel -- Yay!

I learned something about Morgan that pleasantly surprised me. She is actually paying attention to where I am because the reason she was missing the tunnel was becuase she was pulling toward me instead of the tunnel but when I stepped toward the tunnel so did she. Hmmm. Handling her may not be as hard as I thought.

The plan for our next training session. Do more of the teeter training. Straighten out the jump tunnel sequence. Get her to focus on the obstacle more and start doing a turn to the right and to the left on jumps. Work on weave poles.

It was fun getting out and training Morgan although it was so hard leaving Merlin in the car the whole time. I feel like I am punishing him for getting older.

Okay, so I haven't been much better. Just wanted to post about Morgan's performance in Pre-Novice at the poodle club specialty. She actually did a lot better 1.5 years ago than she did on Thursday. It was dismal. How dismal was it you ask? She got a 97 out of 200, that's how dismal. She acted as if I weren't even in the ring most of the time. All she could do was look out of the ring to see what everyone else was doing. Needless to say we need a LOT of help on focus and attention. I think if I had been able to focus her, she would have done a decent job heeling.

My new goals for her, since I never made any progress on the old ones, are to get her ready to show in Novice (probably Wild Card) by our May trial and for agility by our Poodle club trial in June. With these goals in mind, I need to do some SERIOUS training. I'm going to continue to train Merlin but will start with the UKC utility exercises because I will try to get his UKC-UD and if his eyesight and brains hold out, maybe a UKC UDX just because he can jump at the veteran's height in UKC. His training, however, will be much reduced and Morgan's, much increased. Sooo, I shall be blogging quite a bit more on her. That said, I need to go to bed early tonight so I can start bright and early in the morning implementing my plans.

Okay, it has been months since I wrote last and at least two people have called me on it so here it is, Morgan's latest training notes. I have been working on a freestyle routine for her because we are having a freestyle competition next weekend in our own training building. Morgan was supposed to be entered but I sent her entry to the wrong e-mail address. ARRGGG! She will show at the match and do a demo during the competition--maybe.

Anyway she has learned most of the tricks for the routine in the last month. I'll describe her routine. Our music is "What a Feelin'" from the first FAME movie. On the slow part, she heels (kinda) in a circle to the left and changes sides and heels in a circle to the right. She has gotten right side heeling down pretty well but I have to have treats for her to do anything so far. She is still learning how to stand on her hind legs and spin in a circle. She does it better turning to the left than she does turning to the right. I think I will skip doing the right spin for the match this weekend and start working on it after the competition. Then, we do the rally 1, step, 2 step, 3 steps front and she does a right finish just as the faster music starts. I skip around in a circle, stop and then she circles around me as I turn in the opposite direction. Then she weaves through my legs. We have had to work on getting her to put her head down. If she lifts it up, she can knock me down--not good. I tell her 'head down' and she knows that from the grooming table :-) After the weaves, I skip in the opposite direction, go down on one knee and she cicles around me. I struggle up and bring her toward me and she leaps over my left leg and then my right leg--she does that twice, finally she does a half spin to the right (on all fours) and backs up between my legs and then we back up together. She does a half finish and comes in through my legs from the back and stops--I throw my hands in the air--times up!

This has been a great routine to train but I'm still luring her half the time. I have NOT taught this dog to offer behaviors and I do need to back up and have her learn that becuase the cookies are all too important to her. She learns and REALLY fast but we are both dependent on treats and I HATE that. I just have to stop it.

Okay, more later. I have a really early morning tomorrow at a conference and I have no idea what I'm going to wear.

Well it has been a while since I posted. I cannot believe how long it has been and I am wondering what I've done since my last post. On June 6 and 7 I was at an obedience trial with Merlin who bombed both days. I know I did training on June 9, 10, and 11. She went for a bath at Caroline's on June 12 and I picked her up on the 13th. We trained on the 14th. Last week, we trained just two days. I took her the third day but I was so late getting there, it got too hot to work.

Miss Morgan can now run to her crate from about 40 feet. She sits when I put my hand on the door although this is not as automatic as I would like it to be. I've been mixing up her other training a little too much to see much progress so I'm going to have to pick out a few things to work on until I get her to feel really confident in them and then add on to her repetoire.

Today, we did crate training, broad jump, attention, sit stay, and front. I will put her schedule together for the next few days. We head to Savannah on Friday for yet another trial for Merlin. I decided not to enter her in pre-novice because we really do not have heeling together before we do anything anywhere else but home. I hope to get in some training while in Savannah but the excitement of a trial will make it a challenge. The doggies will have a week off starting next Monday as I am visiting my parents for a week and they cannot have dogs.

That's all for today. I'll be a little more organized tomorrow, I guess.

Salon Treatment

Morgan had a day off yesterday because she was receiving her beauty bath at her breeder's. She looks MARVELOUS. Today, I slept in -- decided to do training at home. Maybe later today.

Catching Up

I have been the the building twice to train this week and keep forgetting to enter my blog notes. Morgan remembers all of the Stage 1 crate games that we played and we are ready to move on to stage 4 but I think I need a partner to accomplish stage 4. I think I will start training her in her new crate that I bought at the hunt test that is supposed to be more portable than her verikennel. I'm hoping that I can get her so happy to be in her crate that I can put her back in a canvas crate before long.

She is doing great with the attention training as well but I haven't done the Terri Arnold official training. We are still do focus and I think I will do that for the next couple of weeks before I move on to those stiff stationary exercises.

For three days in a row, I have hand fed her which is part of the focus strategy. I know that the training and feeding ahs already improved our relationship. I envision great things from her.

Crate Games and Focus -- Day 1

I took Morgan and Merlin to the building today -- a little later than I had hoped and it was already hot out there at 8:30. Anyway, I put both of them in crates but started work with Morgan first. Merlin was very good and did not whine once while I was working with Morgan which is unusual.

We started with crate games. I opened the door with my left hand and fed Morgan "high and in the back" with my right hand. She didn't know what was going on at first but after a couple of tries, she was anticipating the cookie. She was supposed to sit up in the crate to get the cookie. Trouble is there isn't a crate in the building (or at home for that matter) where a 23-in dog can really sit up, so she had a slouching sit. The reason she was to sit was so that no part of her would hang out of the crate and even a slouching sit accomplishes this goal. She learned REALLY fast what was expected of hernad we zipped through stages 1-3 in 20 minutes. That included letting the door stay open, picking up the leash, putting on the leash, and finally giving her permission to come out of the crate and waiting until she went back into the crate to feed her. I was amazed that she went back into the crate in about 20 seconds. Yay! I just knew this would be the spot where we would get stuck. She got a jackpot. I took a break and trained Merlin a bit.

After the break, I brough Morgan out of the crate and we started our focus work. I started by doing the on-off switch work which she already knew but was eager to play. She takes my non-verbal cues like I yelled at her. As soon as I stood still, she stopped. Amazing. Also, something to remember when doing agility :-) We then did the connect with me game where I clicked and treated every time she looked at me. She loves this game. Finally, we did a close recall where I say Morgan, come with her only inches from me and me on the ground with her (actually I sat in a chair which put me at eye level with her almost. Lots and lots of food, just repeating Mogan come. We'll see if it works better than an e-collar :-)

The last thing we did was a Terri Arnold attention exercise with her making eye contact with me for 10 seconds. We did that about 5 times. The session was over.

I am so excited about how easy it is to teach this dog anything. Teaching her is not going to be the problem. The problem will come when the cookies fade away and she decides that she won't play the game with no pay off. I won't think about that right now, I'll think about that later. Right now, it is exciting just training her.

Bad Start

Well, I haven't done anything in training for Morgan in days and I feel really badly about that. I took her to the building on Friday but left her in the car because I went late, it was hot and I was pretty brain dead after training Merlin. The usual excuses.

I slept in this morning because I averaged 5 hours of sleep on Friday and Saturday nights due to the trial in Spartanburg. However, tonight I will go to bed early so that I can get up on time and go train and walk Morgan.

What I did for Morgan's training today was to watch the videos I bought last year and never used. I watched to crate training video, which she really needs and I watched the In Focus DVD. I got some great ideas for both dogs and will make my training schedule for this week based on those ideas. Actually I am doing a syllabus tonight of a 6 week training for Morgan and Merlin that I plan to stick to like glue. Today was a day of rest but tomorrow, we start my master plan in earnest.

Rally Training

Today some friends set up an Advanced Rally course and since Morgan hasn't done Rally in about nine months, I though I'd see where she was. Well, she was where she should be after not being trained for nine months. She didn't know what Front means, she didn't do an automatic sit promptly on the 1 step, 2 step, 3 step, and her attention was all over the place. The second time we did the course, she was better. She knows all the signs -- well let's put it this way she has been introduced to all the signs MANY times. She was just inattentive and because I didn't have tasty treats, she was not about to try to give me attention.

I'm putting together a list of training needs for my girl. She really needs EVERYTHING. I have to start from scratch with her. Luckily, she does have the foundation and she knows low to learn. I will construct her training program over the weekend -- make a weekly syllabus and go from there. One thing I know I am going to do is the Crate Games tape. I am so tired of having to convince this dog that she should go to her room or get in her crate.

Kathy