I truly amaze myself that I haven't written in almost a month. But I have been training and I have been sharing some stuff on the poodle agility list. Next month I will be going to a session planning out my dog's training program. I have so much in mind to do and have so little time and/or motivation to get it done. I'm thinking this planning session will go a long way toward improving that.

I've spent a bundle on lessons and we are improving but every improvement we make, the more I see that we have to learn. Also, it is getting warmer and I know that our training days are limited. I'm hoping it will get too hot before Morgan comes into season. If it is too hot when she comes in, I won't mind missing the training. I have to get busy, though, for the next 6 weeks and do as much as I can because, I'm pretty sure she will come in season by the end of May.

I will catch up later.

Good training

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.

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!

January 28

I need to catch up big time with Morgan's training log. We've done quite a bit of training since our lesson last week and then we had our third lesson today. So I will take it chronologically. After our lesson, I really didn't train at all on Friday but on Saturday, I set up the 2 weave poles and we practice doing them with me rotating 180 degrees around the poles. She was able to dive through the middle no matter where I was standing and as long as there were cookies involved she was happy going after them. We did the jump chute with me NOT dropping my hand and she did it well. We also started doing it with me moving and I was able to get all the way to jump 3. She did great. We did it on both sides and then quit.

On Monday, we went to Tom's house again to practice and he had us drive by the house and Jake was a very good boy and didn't even look up at us. We drove by 3 times. Good boy! After that I took Morgan in and we practiced the teeter. She is way past that part of the training but we still don't have the 2o2o to proceed. we did the weave poles and I tried to use the kix which were kinda yellow but they kept getting lost in the grass anyway. I'm going to need big pieces of something for her to really see the cookies I throw in the grass. That didn't work as well as I had hoped.

We did the pinwheel jumps. Tom says that I wasn't back chaining, but front chaining and I get what he meant. I was doing the first jump over and over. I'm not sure that is what she really wanted me to do but it's what I remember but maybe it got jumbled up inside somehow. To back chain is what we did with the jump chute. We did the last jump first so I think I was really doing it backwards. But, hey, it worked. She was jumping through that pinwheel, bouncing away. I didn't try to get much distance but that is what I'll try to work on this week. I'm not supposed to jump her again tomorrow but on Saturday I'm going to try to back chain it for real. Meagan had us do something completely weird and different today (she called it the devil jumps) but I'll get to that when I write my 'lesson blog.'

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we practiced backing her up on the steps, helping her get in touch with her back feet. I forgot to practice with a ladder but will do that this week. We also have the platform we can use. On Wednesday she was really beginning to 'get it' Tomorrow we'll work those props with her as well as the 2o2o travel plank. The last thing we worked on is 'side' I am trying to teach her to go to my right side. She was beginning to come to the right side when I pointed to it but the left is her default side.

2nd Lesson

Morgan and I had our second lesson on Thursday. It was a rainy ikky day but the lesson is inside in a beautiful building so no problem! Anyway, we didn't practice but one time since the previous lesson so we didn't make much progress. We may have the same problem next week. I had more edits on my book yesterday and today and I have a grant proposal that is due on Monday. Anyhoo, here is the scoop.

Morgan was knocking down bars when she made the turn towards me at the end of the jump chute. I couldn't figure out why but according to Meagan, I was dropping my hand and, of course, Morgan's nose went down with my hand. Duh! When I remembered to keep my hand up, she didn't knock a bar. (It's usually the handler, right?).

I was doing the 2X2 thing wrong too. She was supposed to go through the poles and then I was to throw the food, not being lured by the food by throwing it first. Got it!

Morgan has the worst time on the dogwalk. This was not a problem in the past, that I recall, but now she has absolutely no idea where her hind legs are or that they exist. As a result, it is very difficult to teach her to put just her hind legs on the dogwalk plank. So I'm supposed to put her through her paces with a ladder and her pedestal so that she has more rear awareness. I did that long ago but obviously the lesson did not stick :-) I never was consistent in training this dog. I feel so bad about that.

One thing we did that was successful was the pinwheel with four jumps. Meagan back chains everything so we did the pinwheel with a back chain and Morgan caught on quickly. Once I stopped being so frantic about getting her to look ahead, she actually did it -- "Chill, Mom!"

I've got to teach Morgan to come to my right side. I think I'm going to call it something besides 'place' because it sounds way too much like 'close' which is what I use for heel position. Maybe I'll call it side. It sounds like right so if I teach her directions she won't be that confused :-)

The last thing we did was the A-frame box thingy. Morgan is supposed to pounce in the middle. She is supposed to get in there and then I drop the food for her and then throw it off the front. The idea is for her to pounce in the box and then bounce out. Silly girl spends all her time looking for the cookie. I think I am going to get some of those big cheese balls and see how they work--especially since we're working on grass. I KNOW she can see those things.

Well that's the scoop. I might try to get a little training in before it gets too dark tomorrow after the poodle club meeting.

New Program New Instructor-kinda

Well, I began to fulfill one of my new year's resolutions. That is that Morgan and I had our first agility lesson last week. Yippee! We started everything over from scratch. We won't be doing most of that stuff we've been practicing for the past five weeks but I think that those weeks were worthwhile because it got Morgan to work with me. Today she even gave up trying to get the cat.

Now we are doing 2X2 weave poles. Since we are only working with 2 poles to begin with, she said it is okay to do it with my stick in the ground weave poles. I think this might just be fun for Ms. M.

In jumping we are doing the jump chute but with me standing to the side of the last jump. This worked great at the building but I must have been doing something wrong today because Morgan kept knocking the last jump. I'm not supposed to jump her tomorrow but I want to try one more thing before I give up. Only a couple of jumps in the afternoon.

We are also going to learn running A-frame contacts. It is something she likes to teach and it is something that I wanted to do with my standard poodle. I just think the 2o2o position is too hard on their bodies as long legged as standard poodles are. Anyway, we ARE doing 2020 for the dog walk. Meagan's idea is that you get a little extra time to catch up on the A-frame but not so much on the dog walk. You end up running along side the dog on the dogwalk and they can definitely beat you to the end. She has this cool box that Morgan is supposed to pounce into.

I haven't had any time to practice since our lesson. On Friday I had work stuff to do and then there was the trial set-up and Saturday and Sunday was the obedience trial of which I am chair. So no time for agility. Morgan didn't even go to the obedience trial because she hadn't been groomed and I didn't want to embarrass us :-)

I'm hoping to work a little with her tomorrow and Wednesday so we won't be total screw ups for our lesson on Thursday.

Kathy

Lazy Sunday

I didn't plan on training today but when I decided not to take Morgan for a walk in the park, I needed to do something to compensate. I decided that putting up her stick in the ground weave poles was an appropriate compensation. My hip was KILLING me from lugging all the Christmas stuff back to the garage but I worked through it. I put in two lines of stakes, just about 3 inches apart to simulate channel weaves. When I tried Morgan on them, she just ignored the poles and wouldn't weave through them. I decided that I had the poles too close together since she did them so well yesterday. So I opened the channel one inch. What a difference it made. She whizzed right through them. The problem is that NOW I have to buy one of those little manners minders thingys so that she doesn't get the treat without doing the weaves properly. I don't think she is even aware of the weaves--just the target, right now.

I tried her on the new set up jumps according to Susan Salo method and she did outrageous bounces. I'm very proud of her. Now I have to go back a read about when I can move on to the next stage.

I was tempted to do more on the weave poles but w/o help in guarding the treats, I decided to quit while I was ahead :-)

BTW, it was amazing that once I started training Morgan, the hip pain went away. Now I know the cure for sciatica.