Another week, another fun agility lesson! Only three students showed up today, so our dogs did a lot of work.
We started of course with circle work. We incorporated a tunnel into our circle work again, and added 180 and 360 pulls/outside turns, a front cross, and I also added a lead out once. I had to remember to accelerate toward the tunnel so that Dragon would drive into it. My tendency is to decelerate in preparation for turning a bit to run around the tunnel, but that gives conflicing information to the dog.
We did a number of sit-stay exercises (and I also did a lot of stand-stays). We had the dog run to us and get rewarded in the reinforcement zone. (Dragon is great at this.) We ran with our dogs and encouraged them to race past us for a thrown toy. (Dragon is reluctant to pull ahead of me without a target or obstacle ahead of us; need to condition him more to expect a toy thrown ahead.) We raced our dogs to a thrown toy. (The instructor told us to pick up the toy if we beat our dogs to it, but that would be demotivating for my guy, so I let him get it every time. He was still pretty fast.)
We proofed our targets. The other students are doing 2o2o, but we're doing a running contact. I'm having him run off the board completely toward a target set about 3-5 feet away from the end (to keep his speed up while on the board). I can now run forward past the target and he will stop to touch the target. I'm having trouble adding lateral distance, so that's my homework this week. Also I tried sending him ahead but he was conflicted between going ahead and turning toward me; another weak point to work on.
We reviewed the rear cross foundation on the flat, which is simple.
Dragon had excellent attention and did not try to sniff around except for one spot where he must have smelled a piece of dropped food among the woodchips. During his downtime he chewed on his bully stick on his mat. The weimaraner kept running away from his owner and trying to get the bully stick. Amazingly, Tiny Dog was completely unconcerned when I or the assistant would jump in front of him and catch the weim racing right for him. I gave him a treat every time anyway to reinforce being calm.
After the end of class Dragon and I practiced on the lowered teeter. The end of the teeter is about ten inches off the ground. The instructor commented that she was surprised that he liked that teeter, since the board is exceptionally floppy and bounces a lot after it hits the ground and when it resets. It's a testament to the careful work I've been doing with Dragon all these months. Although he doesn't like it when it noisily resets after he runs off, so next week I will spend some extra time just having him stand by it and giving him treats after I lower it and let it reset. I also had him run from end to end and after he understood how it would pivot and move, he was happy to run back and forth. I'm quite proud of him!
Good boy! It sounds like he's advancing really quickly!
ReplyDeleteI have a question about your running contacts though. Why are you having him stop at the target while you race past? In my mind I'm picturing Dragon needing to decelerate on the ramp in order to stop at a target only 5ft past when with my dogs I personally wanted acceleration on the down plank to a target preferably at least 10ft out.
Great question! Dragon is my first agility dog, so I'm not sure that I'm doing it all properly. :) I probably should start placing the target at a farther distance very soon. The issue is that (a) it's quite dark at the training field, and at this point he needs to be able to see the target easily, and (b) not running into the other students! At home, in the daytime, I've experimented with putting the target farther out. I also sometimes have him run toward a thrown toy, which will be farther out, and often I race alongside him to encourage speed. When we're in class I mostly focus on proofing the behavior rather than focusing on speed and distance, since that's limited. Also, since he's so small, most if not all of the deceleration is after he leaves the board.
ReplyDeleteRunning contacts are hard to teach in a class! Always have to worry about not chucking a ball into the other students!
ReplyDeleteOn a few occassions I've run into the other students while practicing acceleration/driving past. It's definitely something to worry about!
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