New Weave poles

I set up my new stick in the ground weave poles for Morgan today and she did quite well with them. Today she remembered her love for the white bumpers and she raced through the weave poles to get the bumper. YAY!

However, I think I need to back up a little because she keeps missing the first pole. I've got to go back an build more value for this first pole, darn it. My thinking is that this should only take a couple of training sessions--especially since I now have turkey!!! :)

Weave Poles

We started training weave poles again and Morgan is doing great. She was zooming throught those poles with lightening speed and then I had to move the poles together. She slowed considerably. As usualy with poor Morgan, I moved to much too fast but I have to hand it to her she was having fun and didn't quit on me. I finally made more subtle changes and she did great. We have a lot of things to work on before we can show so I should stop being so impatient :)

She usually does cookies in the hall with great enthusiasm but today she was distracted and can only think that it was becuase I set up the weave poles (in the same ring) before I started playing cookies in the hall. She WANTED to do those poles. LOL.

Where does time go?

I see that I haven't posted since OCTOBER!!! What an awful blogger I am. Here are some highlights of Morgan's training:
1) She would not perform her freestyle routine without food so we ended up pulling our act.
2) She managed to get a leg in Rally Advanced even though she had no attention and she left the ring on a 270 right.
3) We never got more chances to practice swimming and I never finished the forced fetch with her.
I have had such a rough time training this dog that I had just about given up. Then I remembered how much fun we had 2 summers ago doing the Sue Garrett Recallers' Class. So I signed up for a new class. That is the good news. The bad news is that I haven't really done anything with it because I have been so busy taking care of Caroline's dogs and fetching and hauling stuff from Caroline's house to her rehab site. She had a total ankle replacement. I've had a lot of other things to do as well so my time has definitely not been my own. It is not how I wanted to spend my break and I'm beginning to feel a little resentful about it. But there are still 9 days until Christmas and I have another 2 weeks after Christmas that I can catch up with my class.

Morgan has been doing well with her agility class. I have been better about practicing her 2o2o and she has enjoyed the class. I just bought some stick in the ground weave poles so we can practice them at home. Tomorrow, I get to pick up a bunch of agility equipment from my friend Diane who is off to a job in the middle east for three years.

Seems like a lot happened in 2 months, huh?

Freestyle demo and practice

I didn't report on our demo. Morgan was part of a freestyle demo that Peggy and I did for our club last Thursday night. I loaded myself down with cookies and off we went. At first we did our singles routine which was done to Flashdance. I JUST got the choreography for it done two days before so to say that we weren't ready for prime time was an understatement. However, Morgan didn't do terribly. I think she liked being the center of attention but it didn't keep her focused on me. The chicken helped.

During the pairs routine, she was just the tiniest bit better. At least she didn't start a fight with Matt like she did today in practice. Well, she got in his face and he didn't like it at all. There were parts of the routine she did really well and other parts that were bad. I felt encouraged because none of the moves was awful.

However, today, with no audience and no chicken, she was simply terrible. She wouldn't do any of the moves and those she did do she did slowly and without any enthusiasm. This dog is so very frustrating to me.

Freestlye practice

This morning we did our freestyle practice like I used to walk the excellent courses in agility. We started at the end. I told Peggy that Morgan wasn't getting the ending becuase we have spent most of the time doing the opening. I told her how I remembered the course in agility by walking the last five obstacles, then the last 10 and then the whole course. It worked great.

So today, we practiced the last section of our routine. Morgan was finally getting it. Yay!!!! She even seemed to be having some fun. On Wednesday, we have to practice our single's routine.

GCOC agility match/Poodle Club Match

I took Morgan to do the agility match because she isn't ready for an agility trial yet. I decided that I would do four obstacles and get the hell off the course if she stayed with me. I fed her cheese like a pez machine before I went into the ring and put her cheese away before we went in. I do believe that she really likes all the running and jumping in agility so she didn't seem to care that I didn't have food. She was brilliant. Took direction easily and changed her path when I asked, didn't knock one bar, and even did a rear cross which I kinda bobbled. :) I was very proud of my girl.

I judged obedience in the poodle club match today but I was determined to take Morgan through her paces in rally and obedience. I literally yanked her out of the motor home and 5 minutes later we were in the rally ring. I gave her cheese before we went in and I took a small piece in with me. She did fabulously. I am so pleased. Her heeling in Novice was absolutely gorgeous (I did have chees in the right hand that I transferred to the left when she did something particularly well. However, on the off lead heel,she didn't miss a step. Yay, yay, yay, yay!!! I think my girl is beginning to understand the game.

Freestye and Obedience

Today, Morgan did very well with her freestyle lesson in conjuction with Peggy Singletary. Our pairs routine may work out yet :) I also did a teeny bit of work on our individual. Peggy gave me some good ideas on the individual routine. I think we can have some fun with it.

Today, MOrgan's heeling was BANG ON! And I didn't feed her until her heeling pattern was finished. YAY!

Freestyle 9/26

The freestyle routine we are doing with Peggy is coming along. Today, she wanted to change our hand movements and get rid of the treats. I told her we had to do one thing at a time. I hope she doesn't change anything else in the routine because I am geting dizzy with all the changes and I may just quit. While I am getting frustrated with Peggy, Morgan is cooperating better and seems to be having fun with me which is FABULOUS.

Generalization

I learned something very interesting about Morgan and it has taken me 6 years to figure it out. The dog has a heck of a time generalizing AND LOOKING DOWN! It is amazing about the looking down part because it took her six months to realize there was stuff above her head. She was living with a toy and a mini and looking down was what she did. When she looked up, she never looked down again (unless I dropped food there :)

Today,I tried to practice our freestyle routine with tiny little pylons as compared to the big ones we have been using. She never saw the pylon and would not look at it when I tried to point it out. It seems she thought 'It is small, it is insignificant and I don't want to acknowledge it.' I realize some of her reaction was confusion but that knowledge didn't keep me from losing my temper with her. I started out with the clicker and why I didn't just shape the behavior, I do not know. It would have made the session so much happier. Yeah, I do know why I didn't shape it, it was because in my head, she already knew this sequence and I only had the clicker to increase the number of times she would need to do it. I was not willing to go backwards with her.

She eventually got it but not after I yelled at her "What is wrong with you?" 'Well what was wrong is that I don't generalize and you are going to have to teach it to me again, stupid,' (she probably thought).

I really wish I didn't get so mad at her. She is such a smart dog but I just have not figured out how her brain works. I can't do high reps with her and she loses attention quickly and when she is confused, she just checks out.

Training Pen is so much more fun.

Freestyle

Morgan is doing a lot better with her freestyle routine. I think it is because she did not have any distractions. I think that I need to train alone for a little while and then get back together with Peggy to practice. Morgan and I need about 5 more sessions alone before we rejoin Peggy and Matt and I think, then, we will be able to do so much better with the music.

Swimming

Morgan hasn't been up to a lot since I last wrote. Most of my training was cancelled because I was so immersed in work, I didn't get to train the way I want to. We did do weave poles on Monday. We were in a different room and I opened up the poles so that she would be successful. When she was, I quickly closed the poles back up. At first I closed them too much and she was having a difficult time. Then I got it just right and she had a couple of very successful entries. I still haven't been able to get the poles straight up. She pops out after the first two poles or she will do the first four poles and skip the last two. It's hard to figure out what I am doing wrong. Maybe it is time to go back and look at the video :)

Friday, I was very pleased with her heeling. I used the technique we did in Pen's class (run away if she looks away) worked like a charm. She thinks heeling is fun now. I think I will have to mix it us a lot more to keep this girl interested. We will start doing more proofing next week.

Today, I was most proud of her. She would not go into the water and the water was too icky for me to wade in. I was about to be bummed. Then one of the women who is training her puppy had him retrieving a duck and Morgan was very interested. I didn't think she would retrieve it because she has left ducks in the water before. However, we had the added dimension of a cute little puppy retrieving right before her eyes. Yep, she started going in. After she returned with the duck, we would throw it back out and she would whine about the duck being out there and eventually, she would go out to it. The last couple of times, she actually swam to the duck. I was so proud. YAY! She may be a duck dog yet.

Augusta Match

I took Morgan to Augusta today to practice our Novice routine. The good news is that she did better than she has at any trial as far as heeling is concerned. The bad new is that she had very little attention and the even worse news is that I hadn't even planned on doing what I did with her. I think the reason my planning was put in the hopper was because we could not use food in the ring. That just discombobulated me. I didn't have a plan after that. However, the minute I lost her attention, I should have stopped and waited for her to realize she had done something wrong before I continued. I should have only done heeling until she paid attention to me. I didn't need help with SFE or Recalls. I could have done 3 heeling patterns. ARRRGGGG! All that driving and entry fee just wasted on a forgetful mom. No more matches that I can find until October. I really beginning to think I won't EVER get this girl in the ring.

No more NRMs

Today, I tried not saying anything to Morgan when she messed up her weave poles and it was like night and day. If she missed her entry, I would not throw the bumper, but I would smile at her grab her collar and enthusiastically send her again. She seemed to stop and think, why no toy? Then she would actually alter what she was doing the second time and fix it. It seems my NRM must have interfered with her problem solving. All she could think about was what she did wrong. With no reward and silence from me, she started thinking about how she could get me to throw the bumper again. YAY! After all, isn't that the point? I thought by saying something I would let her know when she was going wrong but it seems it is better to let her figure it out for herself. I started seeing her think about her mistakes much more today. I hope it continues.

A quick note

I've been doing a tiny bit of training on the weave poles. Two weeks off has made me go back to where we were three weeks ago. I probably realized this before but it is finally sinking in, Morgan does NOT like no reward markers. What they do is to turn her completely off. "If I'm wrong I don't want to play." I'm really not sure what to do about that. I have heard people say that we should make training so that the dog is never wrong. Somehow that does not make sense to me. I think we learn best from making mistakes. I go back to the Diane Bauman advice I got 17 years ago. If I see that the dog gets something wrong 3 times (or that she is confused), then I make it easier and then work up to the next level. The trouble I have with Morgan is that I cannot do many repetitions so the learning is SOOOOOO Slow. Now I can't tell her she's wrong? WTF? Okay, I'm getting frustrated here so I have to sign off. I'll sleep on it and see what I come up with in the morning.

Time off

We had a little time off with me preparing for a trip to New Orleans and trying to catch up with all my school work before I embarked on the journey. Then I was gon for 5 days. Bottom line, I haven't done much training at all since the show n go.

I did take Morgan out and did a couple of weave poles with her yesterday when the sun was shining. (only time this week so far). I moved the poles closer so that they are just 1 inch (maybe 1.5 inches) apart. Interestingly, Morgan can now do the left side entry better than the right side entry. When she did a couple of left entries correctly, I quit. We'll work on the right side entries again when the weather gets a little better.

I took Morgan with me to the chiropractor's and we stopped at a strip shopping mall with a pet store. Morgan and I tried to do some attention work and heeling without treats. I had to resort to my Terri Arnold training with a pop when she looked away and praise when she looked back. IT WORKED! It took a few pops but she learned pretty quickly that looking away was not an option. Yay! We had to do quite a few turn arounds on the heeling for her to 'get' that I wanted her to pay attention with heeling as well. This she isn't as good at yet. However, before I quit, I made sure that she paid attention for about 6 steps and sat when I stopped. I wanted her to look up at me too, but that didn't happen. However, it was good enough and I know I need to do it again very soon to solidify it in her little brain.

All in all both were okay sessions. I think she is learning something. My only complaint about what I am doing is that I am not doing enough of it. That said, my first goal is to do something consistently every day outside and inside. Then we'll work up to the 'more often.'

Morgan's Show n Go experience

Today, I took Morgan to a show n go. At least we thought it was a show n go.
The flyer said that it was a B/OB Rally Fun match. It ended up being a B match. However, I told the judges that we wanted to show for exhibition only. Anyway, my goals for this show n go were to treat it like a trial in that we set up crates and chairs and water, etc. just like we were at a trial; to get her attention on me and see if she would play with me. Success on both accounts. Yay!

I had decided that I was going to take food in the ring because the goal was not to see how she would perform in competition but to train her out-of-ring behavior for now. Problem is that even though we could show for exhibition, we couldn't bring in food. I decided then to see if I could trick Morgan into thinking I had food. It worked for the on-lead heeling which was EXCELLENT. She realized that I did not have food for the figure 8 and that is when her performance started to fall apart. I gave her a pop out of sight of the judge but it didn't help. We tried off lead heeling and when she didn't halt, I put her back on lead. It was pretty bad but not as bad as her performance in Charleston. I guess there is something to be said for that. I had just lost all attention.

We tried Advanced Rally off lead, the thinking was that we did great at the agility show n go yesterday off lead and maybe if she had more to do in the ring she would do better. NOT. She was fabulous on the right and left pivots, the 1,2,3 steps in front position, on the moving down, and just about any exercise we had to do. Problem was that in between those exercises, she wandered off. She came back on command but she never really heeled. We had the offset figure 8 which had nothing in the bowls but she had to inspect the bowls but responded quickly to the 'leave it' command.

I learned a couple of things. I can get Morgan relaxed enough that she can pay attention to me outside the ring. In fact, she can play with me outside the ring, which is fabulous. I can get her relaxed enough so that she leaves other dogs alone. Also, I put her in a sit stay with my friend holding her leash and she didn't move the whole time I walked the rally course. Her out of the ring behavior is now at a point that I am VERY pleased. At the trial at the end of January, she was so horrible-jumping on people, sticking her nose in other dogs' crates. It was embarrassing. She doesn't do that anymore. Yay!

We will work very hard on training without food and playing in the ring. We will reinstitute the daily 5 minute training that we did with Sue Garrett's class this summer. As far as PCA is concerned, she will be entered in Beginner Novice so she can get her title. Even if her heeling does not improve, she will probably qualify for that. J I'll do the parade with Merlin on Tuesday and the Parade of Champions with Morgan on Wednesday. That is enough for me to do and surely enough money for me to spend J This takes the pressure off of trying to get her ready for PCA. I need goals but deadlines tend to be recipes for failure for me with my dogs.

Kathy

Agility run thrus

I took Morgan to the agility run thrus today. It was REALLY hot so I knew that might be an issue for her. I got her out of the car early so that she could see what was going on and get a change to get Ho Hum about it. She was VERY good. She even lay next to the Bouvier under the tent. I was very proud of her. During her run, she did the first sequence very well except she did kinda fly off the teeter. I would have liked more control. We will have to work on that. She was not as fast as I would have liked her to be and she dropped a bar (my fault for turning her too quickly). She did the dog walk and a triple. Even gave me a 2o2o on the dw. Yay! In all, I was happy with her performance. I didn't sign her up for a second run because it was just too hot.

Obedience Training

I taught my fun and games with Novice class tonight and brought Morgan with me. She stayed in the car for the first 30 minutes and then I brought her out after we practiced all the Beginner Novice exercises. I was charged with doing the heeling pattern while their dogs did their stays. Morgan was VERY ADD. It took about 10 minutes to really get her attention. I tried the heeling pattern 3 times before it was relatively acceptable to me. One of my students stated that she looked very unhappy and really did not want to do that. I told her that it was my fault that I used a lure way too long. I took out a cookie and gave Morgan one and palmed a second one and we did the heeling pattern again. It was like a different dog took over her body. She was animated, and she heeled like she does in practice. It was beautiful.

We have a shown n go to attend on Sunday. What I plan to do is to get her there early enough that she will relax and then I will take her into the ring with that one cookie palmed in my hand to keep up her attitude. I don't want her to get used to this hang dog performance because there are no cookies. In this case the time we have had off from obedience has been a little too long (over a week). I think she needs at least one day off but no more than three.

I have to say that I am really discouraged and feeling anxious about PCA. I am hoping that as usual, when I feel discouraged with Morgan, she redeems herself somehow.

Done.

Trying Again

I am an awful blogger. I just can't seem to get in the habit. That's the same problem I am having about my training. Anyway, I'm trying something new this time. I will try to do a blog right after I finish training. Also, I will try to keep it short and sweet so that I know I will do it. I'm going to try to limit myself to 5 minutes for each blog. Hopefully, that will work out better.

I just got finished training weave poles with Morgan. We are up to 4 poles, slightly on an angle and about six inches apart (width). Morgan is drilling through them like a champ. I don't know how they figure it out but she has and she is so funny, she turns her head to go through the poles. I've seen other poodles do this. At first I thought she was trying to rub her head on the poles but that doesn't seem to be it. It is just what she does. She was losing momentum with the bumper I was using so I pulled out a new toy and she went nuts over it. She started out really gung ho about her weave poles but started slowing down after a couple of reps. I just played tug with her, moved the poles closer together, and started again. Bingo. We did a couple of reps and while she was still energized, I quit. I put the toy away (she was still trying to grab it). I figure it will be good for about a week and then I'll have to come up with something else :)

All done (in less than 5 minutes). This may work.