agility dogs(?) and nosework
In honor of my dad, I spent the whole day Sunday with my dogs *g*
Eri, Wren and I went up to Sherry's place for the fun runs. Eri did both the jumpers and the standard courses. Wren did a bit of work in the jumpers arena.
Actually, Eri and I started out with just 4-5 obstacle sequences since I hadn't walked the course and I didn't want to throw him off by worrying about where we were going. Then I strung a few more together until we did the whole course at the end of our turn. So now my baby boy has done a whole novice course with all the bars up and everything. He was having some very odd jumping (for him) where he wasn't in the right place stride-wise to take off, so he just took off anyway. The good news is that he's quite the athlete. The bad news is that he needs to think a bit more about his jumping on a full course. Time to crank up the length of the sequences we do in practice. (I haven't mentioned it, but he's now running the sequences my class runs with some minor tweaks for extreme angles the we're still introducing...and he's successful most of the time!)
Wren did single jumps and then jump-tunnel. She really loses her mind when the toy is 'available', so that's what we're going to be working on for the next ten days while she's here during her family's vacation. Well, that and lining up on both sides of me since she insists on coming to front probably 98% of the time! She is keeping her bars up at 20" and she was taking the tunnel with so much speed that I actually had to put to back into its tunnel bags twice. She's a little scary, she's so intense...
When Eri went out to the outdoor arena for the standard course, I wasn't sure what would happen since there were dogs 10' away from him on the other side of the fencing. He was interested but the instant I asked for his attention, I had it - WOW! What a difference from Brinny or Colton. I'm impressed. He did all the equipment I feel that he knows well enough (so no weaves, DW or AF since it was at full height) to take on the road. He did everything including the teeter very nicely although again, there were some bars down and weird take-offs at jumps.
I was really impressed with both of them - it's the first time they've ever done any agility anywhere other than the CAT barn! They were both able to focus on me, recalled perfectly at the end of their runs, kept up (mostly) their criteria, and were generally agreeable and wonderful the whole time we were there (although both do bark when I take the other away from the truck!)
When we got home, I gave Brin his bath and brush and then we went to a local school to do a nosework practice. I threw some pretty hard stuff at him and he was a rockstar.
The first area was the outdoor basketball court. Two hides on opposite sides of the court with a pretty stiff breeze blowing through. From the 'start line', he made a bee-line for the nearest hide and then went around the perimeter, passed the second, did a head-snap and nailed the second one. That was a pretty large search area with not much topography for odor to get caught up in. I was impressed.
Second up was an entry area where the hide was under the edge of the non-slip mat. The wind was gusting all over in this area and he took his time checking all the corners of the entryway before dropping down to search the floor. But I kept my mouth shut and after checking the opposite end of the mat, the bottom of the doors, and the other mat, I think the wind gusted just right to bring him directly to the spot where the hide was.
Next was an outdoor lunch/garden area where I'd put the hide in between two boards of a raised bed. From the start line, he tracked up the direction of the wind right to the correct bed. It took about 20 seconds to narrow it down to the boards and then to get the 6" away from the corner before he indicated, but he was right on it.
We did a few more searches including one in the garbage area of the school, another entryway, the heat pumps, and then the last one was a new challenge - the edge of a drain surrounded by lawn. He knew the hide was in the lawn somewhere, but the odor was getting sucked down into the drain instead of coming out over the lawn. He got into the right area and then got pretty grumpy that he couldn't get enough odor to nail it down. I let him work through it and he finally realized that it was "in" the drain. Once he got that part, then finding the right corner and indicating was about 5 seconds - really nice working through the problem!
He's really into this whole nosework thing. I like that it's giving him a mental challenge as well as a physical activity that stretches him but doesn't hurt him. The tricky part is for ME to figure out what hide location will be challenging in a particular environment on a particular day. I have to keep track of what kinds of searches we've done and how he's handled them in what conditions - there are a TON of variables! Often something I think will be difficult simply isn't to him. Other times something I think will be easy, he'll find challenging because of environmental conditions that I haven't taken into consideration. The learning curve on this is pretty amazing.
Eri, Wren and I went up to Sherry's place for the fun runs. Eri did both the jumpers and the standard courses. Wren did a bit of work in the jumpers arena.
Actually, Eri and I started out with just 4-5 obstacle sequences since I hadn't walked the course and I didn't want to throw him off by worrying about where we were going. Then I strung a few more together until we did the whole course at the end of our turn. So now my baby boy has done a whole novice course with all the bars up and everything. He was having some very odd jumping (for him) where he wasn't in the right place stride-wise to take off, so he just took off anyway. The good news is that he's quite the athlete. The bad news is that he needs to think a bit more about his jumping on a full course. Time to crank up the length of the sequences we do in practice. (I haven't mentioned it, but he's now running the sequences my class runs with some minor tweaks for extreme angles the we're still introducing...and he's successful most of the time!)
Wren did single jumps and then jump-tunnel. She really loses her mind when the toy is 'available', so that's what we're going to be working on for the next ten days while she's here during her family's vacation. Well, that and lining up on both sides of me since she insists on coming to front probably 98% of the time! She is keeping her bars up at 20" and she was taking the tunnel with so much speed that I actually had to put to back into its tunnel bags twice. She's a little scary, she's so intense...
When Eri went out to the outdoor arena for the standard course, I wasn't sure what would happen since there were dogs 10' away from him on the other side of the fencing. He was interested but the instant I asked for his attention, I had it - WOW! What a difference from Brinny or Colton. I'm impressed. He did all the equipment I feel that he knows well enough (so no weaves, DW or AF since it was at full height) to take on the road. He did everything including the teeter very nicely although again, there were some bars down and weird take-offs at jumps.
I was really impressed with both of them - it's the first time they've ever done any agility anywhere other than the CAT barn! They were both able to focus on me, recalled perfectly at the end of their runs, kept up (mostly) their criteria, and were generally agreeable and wonderful the whole time we were there (although both do bark when I take the other away from the truck!)
When we got home, I gave Brin his bath and brush and then we went to a local school to do a nosework practice. I threw some pretty hard stuff at him and he was a rockstar.
The first area was the outdoor basketball court. Two hides on opposite sides of the court with a pretty stiff breeze blowing through. From the 'start line', he made a bee-line for the nearest hide and then went around the perimeter, passed the second, did a head-snap and nailed the second one. That was a pretty large search area with not much topography for odor to get caught up in. I was impressed.
Second up was an entry area where the hide was under the edge of the non-slip mat. The wind was gusting all over in this area and he took his time checking all the corners of the entryway before dropping down to search the floor. But I kept my mouth shut and after checking the opposite end of the mat, the bottom of the doors, and the other mat, I think the wind gusted just right to bring him directly to the spot where the hide was.
Next was an outdoor lunch/garden area where I'd put the hide in between two boards of a raised bed. From the start line, he tracked up the direction of the wind right to the correct bed. It took about 20 seconds to narrow it down to the boards and then to get the 6" away from the corner before he indicated, but he was right on it.
We did a few more searches including one in the garbage area of the school, another entryway, the heat pumps, and then the last one was a new challenge - the edge of a drain surrounded by lawn. He knew the hide was in the lawn somewhere, but the odor was getting sucked down into the drain instead of coming out over the lawn. He got into the right area and then got pretty grumpy that he couldn't get enough odor to nail it down. I let him work through it and he finally realized that it was "in" the drain. Once he got that part, then finding the right corner and indicating was about 5 seconds - really nice working through the problem!
He's really into this whole nosework thing. I like that it's giving him a mental challenge as well as a physical activity that stretches him but doesn't hurt him. The tricky part is for ME to figure out what hide location will be challenging in a particular environment on a particular day. I have to keep track of what kinds of searches we've done and how he's handled them in what conditions - there are a TON of variables! Often something I think will be difficult simply isn't to him. Other times something I think will be easy, he'll find challenging because of environmental conditions that I haven't taken into consideration. The learning curve on this is pretty amazing.