I feel like we are definately making progress. We are slowly but surely working our way through the front cross exercises and have now made a start on push throughs. We hit a bit of a snag with the 270 front cross but I think he's starting to get it now. I just had to break it down a bit as he wasn't grasping where he needed to be coming around on my outside arm. Push throughs are pretty straight forward and he's managed those exercises with no problems at all. I think we can start pull throughs this week and get to the last front cross drill. As his confidence grows I'm seeing him put in more and more bounce jumps which is cool. He is extremely light on his feet with his jumping work and is incredibley athletic.

We finally managed to get onto a lowered A-Frame last week and he was running over it very happily. I've ended up with a nose touch on the end which I hadn't intended on training but it has actually worked quite well and has really helped to develop indepenance as he drives into 2o2o. At the end of the day I don't want him looking at me I just want him going straight to his 2o2o position so I'm very happy with how it's going. I think we'll stay on this height at least for another few weeks before raising the height any further.

The dog walk is definately a slow work in progress! He is running the puppy dog walk really well but he is quite unsure when he's on the full size one. His 2o2o is great, no problems there at all. So will just keep on letting him play on the full size one and hopefully his confidence will grow when he's ready.

I think I will be brave enough to try the weavers in the next couple of weeks...

I really can't wait to see him when he's fully confident in agility. Some of the stuff he does around the house with no thought to any sort of caution blows my mind. Colin and I just look at each other and shake our heads. If I can harness that in agility I will be very happy!

Thirteen months

It's hard to believe that the 2008 Nationals has been and gone. It was another amazing experience and I'm glad I got the chance to watch some of the other competitors over the course of the weekend. It was very inspirational that's for sure and the competition gets harder every year. The standard in Novice was incredible.

So now that they are behind us I feel like it's really time for me to push forward with Sonic's training. I still want to focus on front crosses with him over this month as I don't feel like we've anywhere near got those under control on a double box grid. His figure eights are fantastic and he is reading my body very well. If I stand stationary he chips in and does these beautiful tight turns but if I move further out and then take off he takes off right after me. So I'm very happy with his acceleration and deceleration at this point. The double box isn't going too badly however he is still running past a lot of jumps so I want to just build on his confidence some more and when we can do the basic front cross exercise then I will consider moving onto something a bit trickier.

I've also been setting up speed circles for him which have about four jumps, a flexi tunnel, tyre and broad jump in them. I don't want to get him thinking that it's all about slowing down and changing direction all the time. A speed circle allows him to just stretch out and have some fun. It's going fairly well, but once again his confidence is still getting there and he runs around the tyre on occasion.

We haven't progressed at all with the A-Frame as it's is extremely difficult to have a lowered one available at training. I'm using my mini one at home but it's not really the same, although better than nothing. I was working on back chainng the Dog Walk but I was finding that he wasn't happy jumping up any higher on the down ramp. In the end I was getting him to trot across the whole thing so he becomes comfortable being on it. I was able to get him trotting along the top and then accelerated down into his 2o2o position. I have no concerns that the trot won't turn into flat out once he feels in control of himself and happy on that piece of equipment.

Now I think that I seriously need to start thinking about organising Weave-a-matics to start teaching him to weave. I'm hoping that he will pick it up fairly quickly however it may take a while so I don't want to put it off too much longer. I'm happy with how I've decided to teach them this time around, now I just need to put it into practice. There is just so much to teach! When they are up and running you forget how long it takes and how much work is required to put into them to get them into the ring! In saying that I'm loving it. Sonic is loving his agility and I'm having an absolute ball training him.

Training fun

Tunnel fun!

It has been a really fun last three weeks training Sonic. I made some decisions on how I wanted to progress with his training which has given me much more direction. I am also keeping records. Although very basic they tell me what I have worked on and how it went (either great, good, not so good or totally crap…)

The first decision I made was to spend about a month on each handling manoeuvre. I don’t want to get caught in the trap of teaching him everything in the space of a couple of weeks and then just having one confused little pup. So I’ve gone back over Greg Derrett’s “Great Dog Shame about the Handler” DVD and broken Sonic’s training up to fit in with the different handling sections. So the last three weeks I have purely worked on front crosses. Initially I just did the front cross exercise over the figure 8 but have now moved on to a pinwheel and then yesterday we attempted our first double box grid. I have to say that after doing the pinwheel for the first time and having a pup that did it like a seasoned professional, it brings home again the importance of the groundwork. His understanding of how he should react to my body cues is brilliant, and as such all he needs to focus on is getting over the jump. He is easily managing the 500mm height and it took him only a couple of weeks to work up to it. He is reading my body extremely well for his figure 8 work and his turns are tightening up nicely although I’ve noticed that his turns to the left are much wider than his right at this stage. Hopefully that will resolve with lots of drill training. So we will spend another week on front crosses and then provided I’m happy with him it will be onto push throughs!

I am slowly working my way around onto the different pieces of equipment, with the exception of the weavers that I’m leaving until late September. I have reintroduced a target to the A-Frame and Dog Walk as I’m still not totally happy with his position and capability of giving me a strong 2o2o. I’m tempted to rev him right up to encourage the desire but I am wary of the likely hood of over arousal and then total chaos as a by product. I did have a small break through this week when I put a table along side the dog walk. Then I had him getting on higher up which seemed to get a much more enthusiastic bounce down into 2o2o position. However there is no rush so we’ll just see how it goes over the next few weeks.

I have really been pushing the distraction aspect of his training too. He is coping extremely well but sometimes does get overawed by his surroundings. Last week I set up his jump grid in the thick of dogs doing agility and although he stayed focused on working with me you could see that he was struggling to cope with all the activity. Most of the dogs that we train with are high drive working dogs so are extremely exciting to watch. Being such a reactive dog it was a credit to him that he could do anything at all! A couple of bars went astray and he released off someone else telling their dog to go, but apart from that it was a pretty impressive effort for a twelve month old.

Slipper

(Photo's by Cathy Snook)

Finally I have a couple of pictures of young Slipper. Slipper is our last MickSal pup that I've been chasing Dave up for the last couple of months trying to get a photo!

She is such a pretty little girl and looks just like Secret except that she has a longer coat. Dave has only just started doing a little bit of agility training with her although he has been doing some obedience work. Appartently she is showing a lot of potential to be a very nice little obedience dog.
She's a feisty as the rest of them and I'm sure Dave will have a lot of fun with her.

Happy Birthday!

OK, well it is his birthday...

It finally here, our amazing pups turn one year old tomorrow. So I've been trying to give some thought to a proper training program for Sonic as we can now progress through his equipment learning stage. I have actually been referring back to a lot of stuff from Nancy Geyes articles in Clean Run magazine with her training of Sweep. Nancy uses Greg Derrett's handling system, as do I, so it's been really useful. There are some things I will be doing differently but it's been a very helpful guide. I think she is a great handler and trainer.

Over the last few weeks I've introduced Sonic to five jumps in the jump grid set at about 20cm height with 6 foot between each jump. I have still retained the Susan Salo spider on the front as I've been concerned that he was getting a bit sloppy with his style in his quest to go too fast. We've lost a couple of weeks training to crap weather though so I haven't had a chance to do anymore. I'd like to move on to the progressive grid next and the balance grid. I had a good indication that he is getting more confident with his body following a trip down the park a few weeks ago. We were coming back through the local equestrian park which has a three and a half metre wide drainage ditch running through the middle of it. All my other dogs crossed at the bridge but he picked his line and made a concious decision to jump over the ditch, which he cleared with ease. He's been to that park many times before but it was the first time he's ever done that. It would appear that the jump work has really built his confidence in body awareness.

Haven't really gone much further with any other equipment. He loves his tunnels now and is flying through both flexi's and collapsibles without any problem. I haven't back chained the dog walk any further yet cause I'm too scared to... He has started the end of the A-Frame, still doing the same level on the see saw, has gone through a tyre a couple of times and that's pretty much it! When I go to training I feel like I tend to focus more on his sit stays in front of a jump and just building reinforcement for doing the jump right now. I can't wait to get on with it though. These last couple of weeks has been killing me with the rain and ensuing flooding of the Canine grounds. With fine weather forecast for the week I'm hopeful that we can really push forward.

Happy Birthday MickSal pups.

Newsflash

I've just had a very exciting email from Kriszty to tell me that Secret has just passed her herding assessment at the Binnaburra Sheep Trial with Richard. That means she can go onto the Sporting Register and is now officially "Mac's KeepaSecret". Richard has told Kriszty that Secret is showing heaps of potential on sheep and should go very well for her in the Three Sheep Trialing world. So Kriszty is planning to go on with her herding with Secret and will work towards hitting the Novice yard trials some time in the future. I'm sure they will do very well.
I have to say that the MickSal pups are such a talented bunch (not that I'm biased or anything)!

Eleven months and counting

I called into the Canine Association last Friday and put in Sonic’s paperwork to get him registered as an Associate dog. After a bit of indecision about whether to just leave it as Sonic or not I went with my original choice of “Supersonic”. As he does everything at 100mph it felt like the right thing to do. When I get his paperwork and registration number back from Canine I will organise to get him measured. I’m really keen to get it done as I have a small paranoia about him going over 54.5cms…I don’t think he will but I will feel much better for getting it done.

We’ve had quite a few training disruptions of late with the wet weather. He loves his training so much that I hate having to miss it. I’ve been doing a little bit at home but it’s not quite the same. Training itself is progressing quite well. Most nights he is very good and handles the distractions easily. Other nights he has trouble focusing and goes over threshold very quickly. Those nights I just concentrate on calming him down and getting him switched back on. I’ve been training him closer and closer to the action and even spend some time sitting him near dogs doing fun stuff (like charging through tunnels) while rewarding him for being calm and looking at me. For a dog as highly visually stimulated as him it is a big ask, but he normally does pretty well.

He still goes through stages where one week he will do beautiful two on two offs on the end of the dog walk with loads of nose touches and stay on until I release him. Other times he is all over the place and throws a couple of nose touches at me before getting off again before being released. However his speed and enthusiasm is picking up so I guess it’s all part of his learning process and confidence in what he’s doing. It will still be quite a while before I feel confident enough to commence the back chaining process!

Recently I set up two uprights at home 6ft apart with both jump bars set at 150mm height. I was curious to see what he’d do considering that he does 5 jump bumps like a seasoned professional. Interestingly he just could not do them. He would do each one on it’s own no problem, but as soon as I asked him to do them one after the other he just ran around them. Goes to show the impact that can occur when you change the picture on them. All I did was just break the jumps down and I think I got one or two where he would do both but he really was like a fish out of water. I am keen to try it again soon to see if he copes any better!

I have been starting to think about his training program once he reaches 12 months (only one more exciting month away!!). The only thing I’m certain about at the moment is that I’m going to hold off on any weaving training until after I get back from the Nationals in September. That will put him at 14 months so I will feel much more confident that he will be physically ready. To watch him free run you would say he is very coordinated, particularly after experiencing the heart pounding fear of seeing him coming directly towards me full pace and then screaming to a halt only two strides in front of me before zooming off the other direction. However doing new tasks is a different thing altogether and I’m happy to wait. Other than that his coordination when it comes to digging 3km deep holes in my back yard appear very, very good…