With Dally, I expect to qualify during a trial with her. It hasn't always been that way, but now she's known as "Dependable Dally". (Though she does keep me grounded at times, don't worry--I can't get cocky with her.)
But with LaMesa, it's a crapshoot if we'll qualify or not. We're still not 100% a team and still trying to figure each other out. That's OK--she's only 3. It just some times gets frustrating when I see other "young" teams very successful. But I know that time will come for us, too....soon....I hope.
Hamilton was a frustrating weekend with LaMesa. We're back to having weave pole issues. Whomp whomp. It's back to weave pole boot camp.
Case in point, our Excellent 12" Jumpers course on Saturday:
(Our Standard run on Saturday I left out about four obstacles. Don't ask me what I was thinking--I had just run that course perfectly with Dally. But I figured out that I was off course by the time we hit the table. Oops. Oh well, it was a good laugh for all of us.)
Sunday's runs with LaMesa were probably the most frustrating I've had in a while. Standard started with another weave pole pop-out, followed by a few missed obstacles. She did nail a tough discrimination that her sister didn't make, so that was a positive.
Finally in Jumpers, just when I was losing all hope, we somehow pulled off that rare Qualifying run. That's right--no "just one thing", no knocked bars, no popped-out weaves.
It felt good to know we actually can put together a full, clean, smooth run. I know we still have a lot to work on--my timing is off with my front crosses with her now that I'm doing those more than rears. I had wanted to throw in a blind with that course like I did with Dally's run, but I wasn't fast enough because I was worried to take my eyes off of her. I need to trust her, and she needs to focus a little more on the obstacles than me.
So now we'll work on weave pole boot camp and a few other things. We will be doing one day at the Derby City Agility Association's trial next weekend, then three days at the Hoosier Kennel Club trial (my dad's trial) the weekend after. We'll also be attempting FAST again for the first time since I first trialled LaMesa at the Hoosier, so that ought to be interesting.
OK, so I'll admit some times I'm not much of fan of tails (unless they're attached to certain dogs, like Porter and Stout), but I am a fan of one mighty Pembroke Welsh Corgi with a tail--Keebler.
Keebler's owned by Dr. Roger O'Sullivan and his wife, Elissa. I got to know the O'Sullivans very well last year when Roger drove Dally across the country to Reno with five other dogs, including Keebler, for the 2012 AKC Nationals. Keebler is a rescue dog, but she was more like a diamond in the rough. She's so fast, so smart, such a good girl. Roger's been hitting agility trials every weekend in hopes of qualifying her for the AKC Invitational, which is hard for a popular breed like the Pembrokes. Even harder--Keebler jumps 12-inches, while majority of the other Pembrokes jump 8-inches. Yet she's still in the top 4 (the top 4 in each breed is invited to compete as the best of the breed).
Well, now Keebler's been invited to compete in the Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge Eastern Regionals at Spa Beach Park in Tampa, Fla., on May 4.
How awesome is that?? I rarely see any Corgis at these events! She'll be in the weave pole challenge and maybe the agility (I can't remember for sure).
The event won't be televised live on national television, but it is being recorded for television for some time in June. I'm sure Elissa will let me know when it'll be on, and until then, her sons are with Roger right now and I'm sure they've been instructed to record every moment of Roger and Keebler's domination.
Go, Keebler, Go!!!
(Photo from Elissa's Facebook, by Calvin Clutter, taken at AKC Nationals 2013.)
The other day I shared some quick take-homes from the Foundations part of Dawn Weaver's seminar that I attended a couple of weeks ago. Today I'd like to share some take-homes from the first day of the masters portion (thank you to Merinda for these notes, since I couldn't keep up with them and work LaMesa).
Never reward for stalling/stopping--you must reward in movement (make them do something)
Your signals to your dog should be natural, not trained.
Trained handling will break down in the ring
To shape a jump, you have to go in deep
Don't stall your dog on turns--apply the brakes before and then accelerate (think of it like a race car--break before the curve, then accelerate into and out of)
On pivot turns, look where you are going next
Shoulders should be 45-degrees ahead of the dog
The closer you are to your dog, the tighter the turn he'll make
The farther away, the bigger the arc
Bigger dogs need more turn signals
Don't rehearse what you don't want--if you want your dog to be fast, practice with him being fast. If they're slow, stop and go on to something else to encourage speed.
And then there are the weaves... On Saturday we had a set with weaves. I didn't feel the entrance was particular hard, but I had worked both LaMesa and Dally on the weaves that morning before the seminar started and LaMesa was having issues staying in them, so I knew this would be difficult.
Sure enough, LaMesa would nail the entrance, then pop out of the weaves. And every time, I would continue to run forward some, then immediately turn around and try again. Dawn pointed out that doing this was rewarding LaMesa for coming out of the weaves because it's action and excitement. So her suggestion was to freeze as soon as she pops out of the weaves. You want to freeze for at least five seconds, look at the weaves, and wait for her to offer to go back into the weaves on her own. Once she does, say "Good girl" then re-try the weaves again.
The first few times, it took LaMesa a while to figure out why I stopped. She'd bark and bark and bark at me. Dawn said, "Let me translate for you: 'Move, dammit!'" I broke down because I was frustrated. LaMesa was reacting to me being ahead of her in the weaves (we were working on doing blind crosses for the next jump), and that's why she would pop out (yet she'll stay in them if she's ahead of me).
I explained everything I had been doing with our "weave pole bootcamp" (weaves while I'm running beside or behind, weaves while Dally's bark and Matt's throwing a football, weaves while Dally and Matt run the opposite direction and I'm still at the end, etc.). She said all of that was great, but if she was messing up and I reacted as I had been, I was undoing everything. So now that I knew about pausing for five seconds, things will start to get easier.
Since then, I took the Stump Kids to the BFO practice field last weekend and worked on sprinting past LeMesa (and Dally) in the weaves...if she popped out (which she did a couple of times at first), I immediately stopped and faced the weaves. She got the point quickly and would go back into the weaves. Finally, towards the end of our session she'd stay in the weaves and I was able to do blind crosses with no problems (and this was in the rain, with other dogs working all around her and Stout barking)!
Needless to say the instruction with the weaves was well worth the extra money I spent to get the working spot!
A couple of weeks ago the Stump Kids made the trek to Grammie and Grandpie's house for the Christmas holiday. But just because we're here for holiday celebrations doesn't mean time off from weave pole training, right?
I'm lucky in that my dad keeps the equipment trailer for the Hoosier Kennel Club's agility equipment on our farm, which means when I'm home I can pull out things like jumps and weave poles (contact equipment--there's no way, but jumps and weaves, yes) and work the dogs on the farm. So, that's what we did--dad helped me pull out the weave poles and we set them up in the middle of the barn yard, with the horses out in their fields, snow on the ground, and my sister's dogs barking next door. For LaMesa the barn yard usually means running around, having fun, barking at the horses and chasing the barn cats, so I figured this would be a great way to train for distractions, plus to train on different weave poles.
LaMesa did struggle a little with a few things--I think the poles aren't spaced exactly at 24" like the weaves she's used to, because you could see her rhythm get knocked out of whack when she'd get going. But, I was proud of her for really concentrating and trying to do all 12.
At one point dad pulled out part of a set to add three more poles because he felt that it would help her with finishing her weaves to do more than 12, which I agree is a good theory. However where the base was set was on uneven ground, so when she would hit the base, it would rock to one side and she had a hard time staying in. I'd watch her try and try--you could see her body bending to try to make that one pole, but when it moves on her at the last second, she missed the last pole. No worries--I removed that last set of three and had her try just the 12 (rather than 15) and she was just fine.
Here are a few videos of her weaves...my dad was learning how to record video on a IPhone for the first time, so don't mind any of the rocky views.
Yesterday I enjoyed a nice lunch break during a cloudy, cold day when I met up with Matt and the Stump Kids at Harrods Hill Park, a park near my old apartment. Matt brought the weave poles and we set them up by the walking trail (and, yes, there were people actually walking/running along the trail at this time). LaMesa was fired up to see me when he pulled up next to the car.
It was hard to get LaMesa to focus on me at the beginning. She was still revved up when I got the weave poles set up and Matt had a tennis ball for Dally, which meant she wasn't focused. Matt immediately started throwing the ball for Dally when we weren't ready for those distractions. It took a little bit of time, but I did eventually get her to come back to me and weave.
After a few minutes of weaves, we took a short break to walk over to the nearby creek so she could get a drink and relax. When we got back to the weave poles, she was ready to work.
This time Matt was able to video us with my phone:
And here are a couple more videos from our session:
It's interesting that this time she struggled with what were usually her easy weave entrances, which were the 90* left hand turn wrap-around entrances. I wanted to try a few things yesterday, which included running hard and fast towards the 90* entrance--which you can see she struggled with.
The last session we had, we made huge progress towards me not having to run alongside her--I could send her into the weaves and then hang back after the first couple and she'd finish all 12! So this time, I wanted to simulate if I had to speed up to get to the end of the poles for the next obstacle, so I'd take off in a sprint as she was weaving. She stayed in all 12 and maybe even sped up a little more! Nice!
So we had an interesting session, but it was good. I enjoyed my lunchtime weave session with the pups, so I'm hoping we can squeeze in a few more before Matt hopefully starts a new job.
This past weekend, the Stump Kids and I traveled with the Brews Brothers and Merinda to Springfield, Ohio, for what I had hoped would be a better weekend of agility than in Tennessee last month. Well, it turned out better for Dally, but not so good for Mesa.
So, we'll start with LaMesa first.
LaMesa went 0-for-4 on the weekend, but she has proven that she's come a long way from where she was in 2011. She made her debut in Excellent A Standard with clean runs...minus one bobble from me and missed weaves the whole weekend. The weaves were our nemisis the entire weekend for LaMesa--I don't know what that was all about because she nailed them in the back yard every time we've worked on them and she nailed them in Nashville last month. We could nail a clean set of weave poles to save our lives, well, except for our Open JWW run on Sunday, but we had already blown our one refusal allotment on a missed out signal by me (note to self: keep that darn arm out until she commits!) and had an extra refusal on the weaves before she nailed them.
But, on a positive note, LaMesa handled very difficult courses very well and she didn't knock a single bar! The Excellent Standard courses had a lot of twists and discriminations, and she handled them beautifully! Check out her runs: Saturday and Sunday Her Open JWW run on Saturday
So now we're working on weave poles (which she nailed 95% of her weaves last night in the back yard, of course) and trying to figure out why she tires out towards the end of her runs. She is in great shape, so I'm thinking it's mental exhaustion from excitement and lots of thinking...hopefully this will change as she matures in the agility ring.
And, yes, I am learning to not correct my own errors in the ring with Mesa--let's just go and have fun right now, the clean runs will come! I am still very proud of how she handled the courses and how far she is coming. She's a lot of fun to run, but I still have to remember she's still very green and she's a different dog than Dally.
As far as Dally is concerned, she definitely redeemed herself from her slow, worrisome runs at Nashville when she qualified only once just because of her slow times. We came out of the Champions Center with 40 PACH points, QQ #11 and an Excellent Standard Q, and three first places!
Saturday she was turning and burning through the courses. I even found myself running out of breath cheering her on through the weaves through each run because we were going much faster than I thought we would. Saturday's Standard run was great--fast weaves, fast climbs on the A-frame and dog walk, and a fast teeter! (And we all know I've been having problems with her dog walks and teeters.) We finished 11 seconds under standard course time.
Her Jumpers run on Saturday was a lot of fun--we were the very last team to run that day (the standard ring was empty and most the building was empty), so my friends were awesome in cheering us on through the course. I think Dally even got a kick out of the cheers and kicked it into another gear! See for yourself.
Sunday she was still riled up and finished her Standard run 17 seconds under standard course time! (No video as the rest of the Posse were already walking the jumpers course for 12-4", I kid you not, but you get the gist of the course by watching LaMesa's Sunday run.) She handled everything very well, with the tight 180 and the tunnel/dog walk discrimination.
Her Jumpers run, however, wasn't a big success as far as Qs go, but it was a lot of fun. For some reason, on a fast, tricky, but fun course, Dally decided to come out of the weaves at 10. I was shocked that it happened, so I stood up for a moment and then decided, OK, fine, you don't want to weave, we're gonna run! And run we did! I just took off through the rest of the course and made her chase me, just to see how fast she could run it. She did great, only bypassing two jumps after my front cross (little turd!!). Everyone was amazed at how fast she could really run. It was a lot of fun, and we celebrated with the tennie afterwards because....well, why not!? She ran fast, she had fun, agility's supposed to be fun, right??
After this weekend I feel more confident about Nationals than I did a month ago. We have one more trial (one day in Louisville) and a couple of weeks of regular classes before Nationals (countdown is on: I'll be flying to Reno exactly a month from today, and hopefully by then she'll have arrived with the rest of the gang). Until then we're going to continue working on conditioning, with a few weave pole exercises thrown in for good measure.
By the way, there is a great photo from the photographer at the trial that shows how much fun Dally was having this weekend. And a fun photo of LaMesa from the same jump that I just might have to order.
