Vickie

can you video your tugging at home & show us. At home, do you see a difference in his tugging between tugging for the sake of it & tugging after doing an obstacle? Is tugging how you reward at home? or do you use food or squeaky?

How long has she been trialling for? Do you have equip at home? and what are you using to reward her in training? If it were me I would spend every second of my training increasing her enjoyment of agility. Reward more often & reward with things better than you have ever offered before. are you training the focus on you? or the equipment? I never want to teach my dogs to focus on me for agility. but I spend lots of time setting them up in front of a jump & releasing only when they look at the jump & rewarding for that. I want forward focus & looking for obstacles. 2 weeks is not a long time to fix an issue like this. I would be working LOTS of small sequences ie 3-4 obstacles and rewarding heavily. Also I would set up some speed circles so that she can always see what obstacle is in front of her, making it really really fun to feel the wind in her hair. If she misses obstacles, don't worry, just keep running. Depending on how she is going by the time of the trial I may look at just doing half a course at the trial rather than the whole course, so that she is more likely to stick with you. For instance if you have managed to increase her enjoyment of agility by 10-25%, then maybe half a course. If you have increased it by more, she may stick with you for the whole course. There are obvious sections on most courses where a dog will lose focus if they are likely to lose focus. These sections will often be after a straight line of obstacles. Dogs with focus issues will often keep going straight ahead when the handler turns. YOu can help by really talking/calling/getting her attention on these turns. Also make sure you are really running & not facing/watching her. If you babysit too much, your shoulders facing her will provide no direction & it will be easier for her to make other choices. Hope that helps & makes sense.

Just wondering if anyone else notices this? My dogs seem to know their relatives. They tolerate things from them that they would never tolerate from others, even of the same breed. Shine loves ALL puppies so until they are about 4-5 months she will fawn over them all, regardless of breed. she also thinks anything mini poodle sized or smaller MUST be a puppy! Trim thinks puppies are rude annoying little things & would rather they just kept away. The only exceptions seem to be the pups that are related to her. Not only does she tolerate their silly carryings on, but she is beside herself with excitement when she sees them. We spent time with one of their relatives this morning & it struck me, again, how excited they get & how they will allow the puppy/ies to do anything to them. There were other dogs there and even another puppy of the same breed...but there seemed to be different rules for the relation :p . I wonder if it is b/c their body language is so similar...

why would you pretend you don't know much? are you afraid of intimidating the instructor? Depending on the class situation, is it possible that you are labelled 'troublemaker' b/c you are taking a lot of other people's time in this process? again, sounds very time consuming in a class situation. It might be worth doing some research on agility foundation so you are more prepared. most instructors will give a basic application for foundations. If you need more detail, there is plenty on the internet ... hell there is plenty right here on DOL

you don't sound like a know-it-all at all. There is nothing worse than feeling pressured to do something with your dog that you are uncomfortable with. Feeling you have no choice but to do what they ask can affect your confidence greatly. I am happy to listen to what anyone has to say, but try really hard to only take lessons/instruction from handlers I aspire to. If I feel (based on experience, rather than theory) that I would prefer to do it my way rather than theirs I will have a word with them privately so as not to undervalue them in front of other students or discreetly sit that section out.

another point. I also know people who are too positive. These people are so busy looking for a positive in each performance that they never stop to identify weaknesses and therefore can never recognise that they need to make changes in training or handling. Almost like being in denial. i made a deal with myself a while ago. I decided I was not allowed to check our course time unless we ran the course clear. I went through a stage where we were having pretty good runs but rarely clear. I was consoling myself with the fact that often we would have won or placed if we had not made a mistake. I see lots of people with fast dogs still doing this. Problem is you are so busy feeling good about the possibility that you never stop to analyse what went wrong & how to fix it. I think this scenario can be equally damaging, maybe more b/c although you are outwardly positive, you have a growing negativity inside that you are failing to recognise. talk about waffle!

I think it is important to note that there is a difference between being generally negative and between being constructively realistic. I know i have areas of handling that need to improve. And I know that there are many areas where I need to train my dogs better. Rather than "I am a crap handler, with badly trained dogs", I can say "I need to stop babysitting weave poles and spend more time proofing my dogs completing them with me at various speeds in various positions". The first statement seems insurmountable to fix, the second is achievable with advice, time and dedication. it is rare for anyone to be brilliant when they first start training anything. I think the issue is our personal expectations of ourselves. some of us are happy to gradually improve and end up competant. Others of us want it all to happen as quickly as possible and aim for the ultimate performance. The second group seem to be the ones with most negativity since they are on a much steeper curve. i find any negativity i have comes not from things I am trying and failing, but from things I know I need to work on, but have not motivated myself sufficiently to actually do them.

if it's any consolation rs, i have never particularly noticed you being negative on DOL . Don't try for others..try for yourself

8 hours is about our max. There has been a very odd unplanned longer time but generally i would organise someone to come over if i knew it would be longer.

Definitely. I think those of us who know people like this do attempt this in a informal manner but it is interesting to consider making it more of goal oriented process. This has given me a lot to think about. thanks also made me reflect on situations where peope have used CBT on me

yes that is true...although some you can tell again & again with no change. someone recently pointed out something to me about the way I come cross. It is a minor thing but something I was unaware of & needed to see it from an outsiders view to be able to recognise that I need to work on it. I am grateful to be told. That sounds good, I think helping them form a plan to work on is a good idea too. ME TOO!! of course

How do you deal with students/training partners/friends that (in training) a.) constantly put themselves down b.) constantly put their dogs down or c.) both Why do you think they do it & how do you help them get over it? The people thing I think is often related to either genuine low self esteem or a form of attention seeking. The dog thing I just don't get at all. I know a few people who do both. Every now & then they forget themselves & forget that "they have a crap dog" and things go brilliantly. i just wish I could video those moments to show them how it could be all the time...if they just modified their attitude.

My precue is to bring my outside arm up. It's kind of like starting my front cross early but keeping my shoulders straight until i want the turn to actually happen. The arm coming up means my dog should be collecting and preparing for a turn. If on long straight stretch, it is very useful to get a tight turn at the end of it. it is also useful to avoid off course obstacles you can see it here: Arm comes up at 9 secs & stays up till 13 secs. You can see Shine collecting & wrapping the bars on the pinwheel You can also see it here at 11, 18 & 26. it is helping her to stay collected despite tempting obstacles all over the place Hope that makes sense.

I have a rear cross verbal that is invaluable at times, especially in Open & Masters Gamblers where we are working at quite a distance. I would be hopeless at left & right. My verbal means turn away from me. I still follow it up with body language & timing is obviously important but it works well and I don't find it confusing on course. Depends on your handling style. We use a precue system and teach a wrap on one jump, gradually increasing the distance. My general rule is that if I am running parallel, my dog should be running straight. Me turning into my dog is the signal for my dog to turn towards me. I do lots of training with just 1-3 jumps & reward every turn. If they turn so tight that they miss the jump, I generally still reward and watch the timing of my turning in the next time. The other thing I am very conscious about is giving the right line into a turn...to the point where I will choose the spot on each bar that I want my dog going over. Sometimes I want them to jump right through the middle of the jump & other times, I will set the line before the jump so they are taking it at an angle or taking it next to an upright. the majority of dogs i see running wide on pinwheels & serps are doing so because their handlers are watching them go round rather than driving to position & providing direction. I was guilty of this for a long time. Most new handlers are.

I think it's only reasonable that breeders make sure you are capable of handling & owning their particular breed and that you do not have misconceptions about what is required to own them. I met someone with a 10 week old Beagle yesterday. I asked them if they would go to training. She asked me if they were a hard breed to train... you must admit that if, for example, you owned a maltese for 14 years, you would need to be differently prepared to purchase & raise a working line malinois...

Maybe but I think it goes without saying that you would only take into account information from people you trust. Yes there will be people with ulterior motives who may lie...but those people also exist as buyers. There are plenty of people representing themselves as something they are not. If I were breeding dogs I would want info from people I trust outside of what they (buyers) were giving me.

I think this is a good idea. Often people only share what they want you to know and it's nice to get an overall view from people you trust. As breeders would you want people expressing concerns if they knew someone who was getting a pup & had doubts about their ability to manage it? I'm kind of in this situation at the moment. Honestly it is none of my business...but it is hard to know whether to volunteer information when you haven't been asked for it...

I think/hope this is a case by case. I am looking at getting a dog for my daughter in the next 12 months. She is only 11. She has already proven herself to be a very capable handler & trainer and it has been her obsession for a couple of years now to train her own dog up for competition. She is fully aware that I will help her with training and obviously it goes without saying that I will be ultimately responsible, but it will still be her dog. I like to think that breeders would be open to selling us a pup for her once they got to know her & saw her abilities as an owner & handler.

I don't have this book, but have some of Jane's older books. I found them very well laid out & full of great stuff. The thing I like about them the most is that she has a "if things went wrong" section after each training segment. I haven't seen this in other books a lot & found it incredibly useful.

:D Yours looks MUCH prettier to me! yes that was my problem too. If I faced it in a trial I would definitely do it the way you ran it (but silly me was determined to get it right the way he did it...still trying ). I found it interesting that Steve did not put that up as an option. I clearly need training on handling a serp from 2 jumps behind.

Trim is delinquent...but it's definately not late onset . She would never take from another animal but considers anything left on any surface without human presence was put their specifically for her very own fine dining. Her worst crime was eating half of my son's 4th birthday cake...made by my grandmother who has never forgiven her. A whole tub of butter took months of dieting to make her trim again (or it could have been the tea cake she had with it). All the topping off a homemade gourmet lamb pizza which never even made the oven was perhaps her most amazing dining experience. If you catch her in the act & give her an "Oi", she will scoff as much as she possibly can before you physically get to her & stop her. Is that delinquent enough??? Lucky I love her so much

;) good idea :p I tried Sequence 1 late yesterday. I found it much harder. the run from the tunnel to the bottom jump at the other end is a killer. LOL, no AF to catch up will help you there . I did video it, but it's really too dark to see (and it was a mess anyway ). I am hoping that my angles are tougher than on the video, I'm pretty sure the spacing is tighter. I'm going to try to measure it out properly today, run it again & hope I don't suck as much ;) . Trim kept checking in as she was unsure...and Shine just did what she thought .

She looks good.

That is such good news

sounds like she's doing GREAT!! where is the video??? As far as the speed thing...just keep running. You will find that you can incorporate some lateral distance as & when her obstacle focus, confidence & experience is where you want it. Dogs have amazing peripheral vision, so long as you are moving in the right direction & your shoulders are telling her where to go, she is likely to keep going the right way, regardless of how fast you are moving. If she gets so far ahead that she is making her own choices, I would let her make them for now. The last thing you want her to do is make her unsure or doubt you. Sounds like she's going to be awesome .