2008 - The year that was

As we roll into the last week of 2008 I find myself reminiscing about the year that was and all the training milestones that Sonic and I have achieved in his (almost) 17 month existence. The hours upon hours of training that as agility enthusiasts we pour into our wonderful fur kids. Being the fourth destined for serious competition agility dog in my household my expectations of performance levels are pretty high. I'm a big believer in if your going to do something, do it to the best of your ability. Some don't like the level that agility has gone to these days, however like all sports, many people are inspired to be their best. It's great to see people running dogs in agility for fun but I don't think that those who aspire to train for the ultimate dog and handler combination should be critisised for that. Personally I find watching these amazingly fast dogs run around an agility course breathtaking and I doubt I'll ever tire of it. Those magical moments when it looks like dog and handler are reading each others minds. I am privileged enough in Perth that we have a few of these combinations and I'll always be inspired by them. I really look forward to the day when Sonic and I are able to compete against them and pit our skills against theirs. And may the best team win!

Sonic and I have been working our backsides off on jump drills recently. Partially because I believe they are the cornerstone of skill building and partially because I want us to do well at the Greg & Laura Derrett seminar in about four weeks time! I'm a combination of excited and nervous about it being as Sonic is going to be the youngest and most inexperienced in the group that I've been put into. There may well be some things that we can't do however we'll just sit out the bits that I'm not comfortable with him doing. I have no doubt that it will be great fun though and a wonderful start to the 2009 agility year for us. The experience of Greg and Laura and the opportunity to have that imparted on us will be invaluable and I know that Sonic and I will only be the better for it.

Fun photos

Sonic and his paddle pool (very popular this time of year...)

I finally got Colin's camera off of him so I could download a few photo's that he kindly took over the past couple of months. It was great to get some of him jumping. I think they are very cool and he looks like he is loving it!

State of Excitement

Currently the favourite toy in the Phillips household!

Recently I’ve been having lots of conversations with people about over arousal in our dogs. Sonic and his siblings all have extremely high levels of arousal and are quite a handful to say the least. It is interesting that quite a few people have said to me that I must have the laid back one of the litter as Sonic is very calm and controlled when he is at agility training. This always makes me chuckle to myself as they may have a different opinion if they saw him in other situations. This morning being a prime example, when Colin and I took them down the beach for a morning run. When we arrived in the parking area at the beach and lifted the back of the wagon Sonic started screaming. I’m not talking just a little whining, I’m talking full volume hysterical screaming. If you can imagine the noise a dog may make if someone was trying to remove one of his legs without using anaesthetic you would be close. This continued while the other dogs where allowed out of the car and is also generally paired with his body shaking and trembling. I won’t let him come out of his crate until such time as he calms down. Otherwise the problem just escalates. Once he has gotten control of himself we all head down onto the beach where they all have to lie down on the sand and wait until they are given a release cue. By this stage he is normally reasonably calm and we all enjoy a fine time in the sun.

Contrary to popular belief his calmness and control at agility training can be attributed to the “Control Unleashed” work that I did with Sonic when he was a youngster, and still continue to do to this day. He did not come out of the womb this way. I spent many, many, many hours working on calmness and relaxation techniques and now follow a training protocol before all of his training sessions that allows me to get him focused and ready to work. There is the very odd occasion that I have not been able to get him to settle into whatever work I’m attempting to do with him, however it is very rare. I am extremely grateful that this book came out when it did. Trying to train him when he is over arousal would be impossible and not even worth attempting.

As we move to the end of December I have good news in that Sonic’s skills on the exercises from Greg Derrett’s “Great Dog, Great Handler” DVD is coming along extremely well. I was a bit worried last month as it was a bit of a mess, but he is really coming along now and should be getting pretty comfortable with most exercises before we get to the seminar. Even if he gets them right the first time, I normally go back and break it down to tidy up turns and build his understanding of positional cues (and improve my own handling...).

I made a decision to give away our current weaving training as it was. Susan Garrett has very conveniently brought out a DVD on weaving which is the 2 x 2 method, done over a period of 12 days. I have always liked this method and she has now refined it further than when I first tried it with Riot back in 2005. So when my DVD arrives in the mail I will get straight onto it. This means he may or may not be ready for agility at the Western Classic, however I have entered him anyway and if I don’t think he’s ready we’ll just pull him out. I am really looking forward to the day that I can compete with him but I’m not going to do it if he’s not 100% ready. He’s got a long career ahead of him and there is no rush.

Scenes from an agility field

As Colin has now become designated agility videographer I had him do some filming at training yesterday afternoon. After much fiddling on Windows Movie Maker (only getting slightly carried away with background music and effects!) I have managed to produce a quick video on Sonic's dog walk and a small jumping sequence.

Highs and lows

The highs and lows of agility training continues! I was laughing with one of the girls at an agility trial last weekend about how humbling dog training can be. Some nights I'll go to training and it will feel like Sonic and I can do no wrong. Every jump drill is spot on, weaving exercises go really well and contact training is driven and accurate. I come home thinking about how ready he is to start trialling the minute he turns eighteen months old. Then the flip side, when we have nights that nothing goes right. Last week being a prime example when Sonic and I could not even manage one of the most basic double box grid exercises. I went home thinking that we may be able to manage a novice jumping course by the time he is about five years old...

Walking dogs

Riot & Sonic (otherwise know as high & low maintenance!)

It's been a busy couple of weeks with owning my big fluffy border collie Riot feeling a bit like having a pre-drivers licence adolescent, as I drive him to in store appearances at Better Pets and Gardens and to dates with a very pretty border collie girl who has come all the way from Tasmania to hopefully have his pups.

In between running around for Riot's social life I have been focusing on some good old agility fun with the Sonic. I am very pleased to announce that I no longer "hate" Sonic's dog walk! Yes, we appear to have managed to conquer the trotting down on the descent ramp issue. Last week at training after about four reps on each side with the jump bar in place I took it away and he ran the whole thing. It was a very gratifying experience. I knew he was feeling confident as he had gone from cautiously taking the jump on the way down to leaping it from a distance (obviously a good sign), but to actually have him run down minus the jump was great. I will still keep the jump bar in for a few more weeks before totally phasing out just to make sure the behaviour is well and truly established. Interestingly enough this training method never worked on Riot.

The A-Frame is still on its way up. I will probably hold off raising full height for another month or so. He can do 12 weavers but I hate his style, if you could call it that. So after some consultation with others who have been teaching weavers recently I will break them back down and see if I can get a better action through them. I'm not sure how long it will take but I don't see the point in continuing and hoping that they get better as they are.

The jumping grids are going well and I'm contemplating running him in Novice Jumping at the Agility Club's members comp this week. I'll check out the course first and if I think it's nice and simple I will give him a run. It's going to be quite a while before we attempt Novice Agility so we might as well do some jumping in the meantime. Sonic loves stretching out over his jumps so hopefully it will be a nice open (easy) course.

I am pleased to say though that my puppy is still a total nutcase. At 15 months I thought there was a possibility that he may have started to grow up and be a little more "settled" or slightly boring even. Oh no, not Sonic. I still can't sweep in the house without closing the blinds because Sonic wants to kill the broom, he still destuffs all his cuddly toys for evening entertainment, loves to jump on our bed in the morning to play "kill the hand", belches loudly at any given opportunity, digs holes to China in my poor grass, turns going in and out of the dog door into a life threatening experience for every other dog in the house who is silly enough to try and use it at the same time and finally, turns a pleasant walk around the local streets into a crazy throw yourself at the passing car thrill ride... And I wouldn't want him any other way :-)

The Derrett's are back!

Greg & Laura Derrett have been invited to Melbourne and Sydney in January 2009 and I'm extremely happy to announce that Sonic & I have secured a working spot in Melbourne. We get one day with Greg and one day with Laura. I put us in the Intermediate group as that is the most appropriate level for him at this stage of his training. It is going to be a dash in and dash out trip as we arrive on the Friday, do the seminar on Saturday and Sunday, then back home on Monday. I am really looking forward to it and I think it will be a great experience for both of us. It is still the only handling method that I have any interest in using and the more I watch some of our Perth handlers who use the USA methods the more I feel like I've made the right choice! Sonic has shown me (as did Riot) that if you handle with consistency and use your positional cues well they eat it up like childs play, unlike the mistakes and confusion that is caused by some of the other styles.

As exciting as our first big trip together will be I reacon there is a good chance he is going to chuck the biggest paddy ever when it comes to his first plane trip and I have no doubt that everyone in the freight area is going to know about it too. I also have my reservations that he is going to very happy about sleeping in the car by himself at the hotel where we are staying. However he is going to have lots of travelling on his agenda over the next year when we start competing so he is going to have to get used to it whether he likes it or not! Past experience has shown me that is doesn't take long for them to figure out that it is not that bad.

Training is still rolling on well. We have established fairly solid weavers if I stand in certain places and don't move outside those areas...so have now broken them back down to three and am teaching him entries so he can start to find them for himself without my body position being of any relevance. Once again the clever puppy has picked this up in a matter of a couple of sessions, although I will spend a good couple of weeks on it before we move on. Then I need to work on him driving through to the end with me being behind him, etc, etc, etc.

The A-Frame is coming along pretty well and we are not too far from hitting the full height. He is following a really similar pattern in that whenever I first move it up another notch he slows back down again and then over a series of nights builds back up to a nice speed. It has definately shown me the importance of making the effort to raise it up slowly and how much better the end performance is likely to be. I see so many young dogs creeping down the AF and I really don't want that when a bit more effort can make so much difference.

The Dog Walk had still been bothering me and I have been giving lots of thought on how I can break him out of that horrible trot down the descending ramp. Then I remembered being shown how you can put a jump bar in to force the broken stride. So over a series of sessions I introduced an upright set up about halfway along the down ramp and away we went. Everytime I've increased the size of the dog walk he has slowed back down but once he feels confident I am getting a run across the whole obstacle and into 2o2o position. I will most likely leave the upright there for the next couple of months to help build the behaviour and leave it there while I continue proofing changes to my position. But I feel really confident that once he gets the idea that he can run down the ramp and not trot he will be happy to do so. I was just so paranoid that the trot would become a behaviour that he was really comfortable with and it would be impossible to get him out of it. Such a small thing can win or lose you a class these days. I am very happy with his 2o2o now and he is going into it with no apparent hesitation or confusion.

I have decided that I am going to enter Sonic in the 2009 Western Classic which is in the beginning of March next year. At this point it would be his very first trial. I have little doubt that he will be ready for the jumping classes but we will see how agility goes. The entries for the Classic close in December and I don't want to not put him in if he is ready. If he's not ready then I can scratch him on the day. Kriszty and I have discussed the possibility of putting them both in the Masters and Apprentices team on that weekend as Simone will be away in Canberra for the National Border Collie Show so if we want to run the team it's our babies or nothing!! The team has really just been the Masters for the last couple of years so with Secret and Sonic joining Terra and Riot it would truly be the Masters and the Apprentices again...