On the adventures and training of Cinnamon Snapdragon, a papillon destined for greatness.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Birthday boy! and agility and tricks

So much going on, that I haven't had time to update!! Last Sunday was Cinnamon Snapdragon's second birthday! A few of his friends came over and we went on a two mile hike.

birthday hike

birthday hike

birthday hike




Afterwards we made BLT sandwiches and Dragon got two pieces of fried bacon to celebrate his two years. We napped for an hour and then went to visit more friends, where he is being slowly introduced to their new kitten. He was on a tie-down in the living room with his mat and a bully stick. He settled down nicely and the kitten ended up approaching to within a foot of him that day. He thought that it was a wonderful birthday!

Agility update: The mini-teeter has finished serving its primary purpose, to build his confidence with the movement and banging noises. I introduced movement and height very slowly (after first spending months training with a wobble board) and used high value reinforcement (boiled chicken and rubber balls). It has gone so well that now he has teeter-suck instead of the more common tunnel-suck. Earlier this week I raised the pivot point to about six inches. Next session, he zoomed over the teeter so quickly that he skidded down the contact instead of stopping at the target, and then took another three tries to recover and run it comfortably again. So I will lower it back down to four inches and just use it to practice running a teeter in sequences. We will continue our careful, diligent practice with the real teeter at the agility field.

On the other hand I brought out the mini-dog walk and put the PVC "hoop" right at the bottom and we were able to practice our running contacts. I think that I wasn't careful enough when initially teaching them and that's why he ended up jumping the contact zone in class a few weeks ago. It's extremely difficult for me to click/reward only when he's running and not when he does a little jump because it's so fast. Also I'm limited in the locations available to practice running across a raised plank, and don't have anywhere where he would get full speed like in class. So the running contact failure so far isn't a problem with the method per se (get him to run across it and slowly raise the board, rewarding only running), but rather with my application of it. However I'm a big believer in developing muscle memory and I'm hoping that the hoop will be a huge help.

Speaking of methods not working, I tried using the "go and throw" method of teaching the dog to run forward as fast as he can, but it doesn't work for Dragon because he's scared of the toy hitting him and runs out in a curve like a border collie. Oh well.

Recent tricks we've been working on: weaving backwards through my legs, coming to front from a distance, verbal discriminations with my body turned sideways so he can't cue off subtle body language, and moving from my side to circle around a big inflated ball and stop directly on the other side (for treiball, but I'm teaching it just for fun here and there). On the last one I again have to watch my body language -- if I hold my arm out for too long as I'm signaling him to head out, he will circle too far around. If I lower my arm back down after he's committed to circling the ball but before he reaches the center, he generally hits it dead-on.

2 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday Little Dragon! :)

    I wish I could say I've been as busy with Elli -- turns out our backyard isn't big enough to keep doing alphabet drills without her crashing into the garden or the side of the house, haha.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you!

      It's tough when you don't have space! We don't have a functional yard, so I practice on the (quiet) street right outside our apartment. I'm planning on renting the agility field every once in a while, too, since now we're at the point that it would be very useful.

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