Morgan and I have had some good training sessions. We worked the Monday after our lesson at Tom's, we worked again at home on Tuesday, Thursday, and today.
Morgan has had some trouble with the 12ft. jump chute. She either runs around the first jump or she breaks her stay and takes all the jumps knocking several down on the way. I tried to fix the first problem by moving up closer (in front of the last jump). That worked fine until I moved behind the last jump. Same problem. Then I did a kind of reverse back chain where I stood in front of the second jump, then in front of the third jump, then in front of the fourth jump, and finally behind the fourth jump and it worked like a charm. I asked her to sit so I could send her in the opposite direction and before I could get halfway there, she had broken her stay. Now she was raring to go. So I worked on the stay problem by coming back and treating her for staying as I walked away and when I turned and faced her. I finally got two lines of 4 12ft jumps with a start-line stay AND all four jumps. We quit after that.
Interestingly, my low rep dog has turned into a high rep dog when it comes to jumping. She loves it.
We are working on doing the weave poles from both sides with a jump. She is having trouble with the off side weave entry. After about a gazillion reps (which she didn't seem to mind) she was doing the correct entry and the jump without hesitation.
We also worked on the jump, jump, box (running contact stuff). Today, she was doing it like a real champ. She acted as if she knew she was supposed to get four feet in the box. I think we will practice just the box tomorrow to reinforce that all four feet should go in there.
The last thing we worked on today was the threadle and serpentine just to see if I could still remember how to do them :-)
Tomorrow, no jumping --more weave poles, some more plank work, practice on front and rear crosses w/o equipment. Won't have much time between the conference and the bb game but we will get some time in before we have to go to our lesson on Sunday. I'm encouraged with her progress.
Training Morgan, a six year-old standard poodle in obedience, agility, freestyle, and hunting.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Today's Lesson
Morgan and I went for our first lesson in 17 days. I decided to skip a week to have extra time to practice and then we had this monster snow storm last weekend in South Carolina, no less, and I didn't get any extra training in any way. I had planned to go to our lesson on Thursday anyway but it was cancelled because our instructor was sick. Luckily we were able to make up our lesson today. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and it would have been fun to have our lesson outside.
Anyway, we had a good lesson and Meagan is great, she just takes us from where we are. Today we started out with having Morgan do a jump chute with 5 jumps, 12 feet apart. Of course we backchain everything. The trick is that Meagan put the jumps at full height so Morgan had to jump 26 inches. I don't think I have ever asked her to jump 26 inches. We did the last jump first. She refused to jump. I put her further back behind the jump and I went further away on the other side of the jump facing her. I called her over the jump again, she came but she knocked a bar. Progress but no cigar. The third time was the charm. Then, she did the last two jumps without a problem. I set her up for three jumps, went beyond the last jump to call her and she ran around the jumps to get to me. This happened twice. So I came in closer and stood in front of the last jump and had her try the second and third jumps. She still refused the same jump. Finally we just had her do the jump she kept refusing and she got it. We did the backchaining sequence with the three jumps one more time and she got it again and we quit there. She was obviously unhappy with having me so far away from her to do the jumps. We'll work on it this week.
Next we did the weave poles. She is still in the two weave poles and I am trying to not beat myself up for seeming like a retarded trainer. Everyone else seems to learn so quickly about how to train 2X2 weave poles. I guess I should have bought the videotape because I don't seem to be getting it. Morgan, however, is doing what I ask :-) Today we were supposed to do front crosses in front of the tunnel going in both directions (on the left and on the right). Morgan did beautifully entering from the right, but we had a problem with entering from the left. Meagan said that with the 2X2 method that dogs have the opposite problem dogs trained the traditional way have in that right entries are breeze, left entries are more problematic. So our task is to work on left entries 3X as often as we do right entries.
We went from there to running contact which Morgan is pretty much getting. I didn't have much opportunity to work the 2-jump - box grid with her in the past week and a half but she did quite well with it at our lesson today. I just have to get better at throwing the food :-). Meagan says that I can delay food if I have to think about whether or not she actually put 4 feet in the box. Morgan REALLY likes this game. I hope that she will love her box so much that we can stick to a running contact and not have to go to a 2o2o.
Finally, we looked at her progress on the down side of the dog walk. She is definitely reaching back with her rear feet to touch the bottom. However, still having trouble with the width of the boards. She wants to get both back feet on but she won't bring her legs together enough (hussy) to get them both on at the same time. We will continue to work on that. Meagan also wants me to get her to put all four feet on the board and bring her forward for the 2o2o position.
It was a good lesson and we will be going back next Sunday. I hope the weather stays pretty nice so we can do some work outside. Gotta go, Merlin and Morgan are asking to come back inside. I don't know why, it is so gorgeous out there (70 degrees). I actually saw a dandelion. We had 8 inches of snow last week! Amazing!
Anyway, we had a good lesson and Meagan is great, she just takes us from where we are. Today we started out with having Morgan do a jump chute with 5 jumps, 12 feet apart. Of course we backchain everything. The trick is that Meagan put the jumps at full height so Morgan had to jump 26 inches. I don't think I have ever asked her to jump 26 inches. We did the last jump first. She refused to jump. I put her further back behind the jump and I went further away on the other side of the jump facing her. I called her over the jump again, she came but she knocked a bar. Progress but no cigar. The third time was the charm. Then, she did the last two jumps without a problem. I set her up for three jumps, went beyond the last jump to call her and she ran around the jumps to get to me. This happened twice. So I came in closer and stood in front of the last jump and had her try the second and third jumps. She still refused the same jump. Finally we just had her do the jump she kept refusing and she got it. We did the backchaining sequence with the three jumps one more time and she got it again and we quit there. She was obviously unhappy with having me so far away from her to do the jumps. We'll work on it this week.
Next we did the weave poles. She is still in the two weave poles and I am trying to not beat myself up for seeming like a retarded trainer. Everyone else seems to learn so quickly about how to train 2X2 weave poles. I guess I should have bought the videotape because I don't seem to be getting it. Morgan, however, is doing what I ask :-) Today we were supposed to do front crosses in front of the tunnel going in both directions (on the left and on the right). Morgan did beautifully entering from the right, but we had a problem with entering from the left. Meagan said that with the 2X2 method that dogs have the opposite problem dogs trained the traditional way have in that right entries are breeze, left entries are more problematic. So our task is to work on left entries 3X as often as we do right entries.
We went from there to running contact which Morgan is pretty much getting. I didn't have much opportunity to work the 2-jump - box grid with her in the past week and a half but she did quite well with it at our lesson today. I just have to get better at throwing the food :-). Meagan says that I can delay food if I have to think about whether or not she actually put 4 feet in the box. Morgan REALLY likes this game. I hope that she will love her box so much that we can stick to a running contact and not have to go to a 2o2o.
Finally, we looked at her progress on the down side of the dog walk. She is definitely reaching back with her rear feet to touch the bottom. However, still having trouble with the width of the boards. She wants to get both back feet on but she won't bring her legs together enough (hussy) to get them both on at the same time. We will continue to work on that. Meagan also wants me to get her to put all four feet on the board and bring her forward for the 2o2o position.
It was a good lesson and we will be going back next Sunday. I hope the weather stays pretty nice so we can do some work outside. Gotta go, Merlin and Morgan are asking to come back inside. I don't know why, it is so gorgeous out there (70 degrees). I actually saw a dandelion. We had 8 inches of snow last week! Amazing!
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