Not much to post this week because I just didn't get out. It rained most days and I had interviews today but it was cold and rainy today.   I have really good intentions to train but most days I am just so busy or so overwhelmed that I just don't get around to it. Morgan's attitude, of course, doesn't help much.  I'm sure if we get out to train tomorrow she will be great.

Oh yeah, I am so bummed that I either forgot to put a stamp on my entry for Charlotte or it came off but I got my entry back in the mail 2 hours after the closing. Boo Hiss. I guess that means our debut will be at GCOC. Great. I am going to try to do a whole course with Morgan but will only do part of the course with Pen.

Although I did not train Morgan much at all this week, we did do a little agiltiy training on Friday. Morgan amazed me. She did the weave poles and did the weave poles and did the weave poles. She acted like they were the best thing she ever learned.  She is beginning to single step the weave poles. I think what is next for her is to move her to the second set of six poles but we will see if we get that same enthusiasm as we had on Friday.

She also handled a very small sequence beautifully, although neither Morgan nor Pen took the front cross I tried.  It shows me that they need more experience with the front cross before I move on.  My thinking is that I need more work on rear crosses but Sue Garret says not to do it until we have a dog who will drive through a jump.  Before they will drive through the jump, they have to get the foundation stuff first.  I always want to skip kindergarten but I know that it will just kick me in the but later on, making it so much harder, if I do.

I am cautiously optimistic about the March trial.

Beginning Again in 2013

Well, it is 2013 and I am once again attempting to blog about my training. I am a little motivated becaues I showed Morgan in Freestyle (at least I tried to) and obedience two weekends ago with various levels of failure.  :(  In freestyle, Morgan KNEW her routine. She did it very well and seemed to be enjoying it half the time.  On the day of the show, she ran out of the ring twice and still did not perform the dance while on lead.  I was so mad at her but also a little apprehensive because I planned to show her off lead at the obedience trial the next day. It turned out that she did not leave the ring, nor did she dive for the toys or cookies in the Figure 8. However, she looked like I beat her every day and twice on Sunday.  She never looked at me and she wandered off so far on her off lead heel, I thought sure she was going to leave the ring. All this in spite of getting multiple commands and much praise.

Today I gave a workshop for fellow obedience instructors on attention.  We did a lot of proofing exercises and I think that the dogs learned a lot from it. I KNOW that Morgan learned a lot from it and she was very confident in what she had to do. I HAVE to do more of that with her. I'm still convinced that her lack of performance is a lack of confidence even though she does know th eexercises.

My goal for Morgan again this year is to work on our relationship.  I need to be more vigilent about not giving her opportunities to do wrong and I giving her more opportunities to do well. Just a few minutes ago, she came to me with a toy she wanted me to toss for her.  I took the toy stood up and asked her to heel.  I decided to toss the toy after she heeled in position for the length of the hallway and kitchen.  When she did, I tossed the toy and she didn't go for it. I realized that I did not say her release word when I tossed the toy.  I praised her madly for not gettint the toy and then I released her and tossed the toy again.  We worked on her not anticipating today and she was good and was waiting on her release word.

She often has moments of brilliance. I once though she was an every other day dog to train. I'm beginning to think she is an every 3 days dog to train. ;)  She did well today but that may also be in part because I left the boys at home.

More about Morgan's training. I think I'm going to try to post once a week since I obviously suck at posting every day.

I posted this on obedience poodle list to get feedback and thought it would be good to put it in Morgan's blog as well.

The first is of me training Morgan in the 12-step heeling method.

http://youtu.be/PbvA00ldwUk

We are at step 15. What you do is heel starting

with one step, dog touches your palm with her nose, and then do two steps,three steps and so on to 12 steps. Then you start over with one step for the next set of 12. We have completed the first 12 steps and we are on to the next set of 12. I see a lot of mistakes in this video. First, I didn't once reward her at step 12, next, I turned back and looked at her when she lagged instead of stopping and starting over. I know there were other problems but those were the ones that stood out to me the most.

The next video is of Morgan and the dumbbell.

http://youtu.be/7YaTByubsBw

We have been having so much trouble with her kicking the dumbbell and chasing it that I have tried to throw it into a corner. That has helped with the kicking but it has also slowed her down. Mistakes I made here are so many that I don't even want to start listing them. The ones that I hate that I did were the ones where I lost focus on my goal. I wanted to concentrate on a clean pick up. Instead, I got annoyed that she was going so slowly and tried to speed her up. I even threw a play toss -oh so WRONG.

How the heck am I going to teach her not to kick the dumbbell when I reinforce it by throwing a play toss. Not only that, you will see that I even gave her a treat after she kicked the dumbbell. ARRRGGGG!

Morgan's weaves were AWESOME today and she was definitely having fun. I think tomorrow I'm going to have to bring out the jumps and tunnels so that she can have a blast. 

I also asked one of my training buddies to help me with distracting Morgan .  Again, she did AWESOME.  My friend even touched her on her set-up and she stopped looking away after 3 tries :)  There may be hope for this girl yet :)

Morgan did 15 steps 12 plus 3 more with enthusiasm and in proper position today. YAY!

Morgan and I have been working on agility, obedience and freestyle. While we have no ambitions for showing in obedience any time soon, my  hope is to have her start showing in agility this fall and we will have a freestyle performance in  October.  One thing I have discovered about Morgan (can you believe I'm still learning about how to teach this dog?) is that she get adrenaline pumping and she cannot think. I still do not think she pays attention to words but I need to work on that--word discrimination. I like that 20 times a day for 20 day tip that Chris J taught us in a workshop. 

So far Morgan is doing 6 straight up weave poles some of the time.  I see that I need to start working sequences with her again since we were lousy with it on Wednesday and I need to still work on the jumping work including strength training.

My biggest problem with Morgan is that she doesn't see the point of most things and she doesn't understand why there are rules when she does have fun.  What to do, what to do