Vickie

LL, here you go again...tempting me to hijack a bit. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I got told at a herding seminar recently..."Quit praising that dog! She doesn't need it & you're just irritating her!" I think what he was trying to say is that for her the work itself is the reward & every time I stopped to praise her, I was really interrupting her work unnecessarily and for her it was almost a negative thing rather than a positive one. I see it sometimes in agility too...I'll stop & reward for something tricky done successfully. Sometimes I think she's indulging me by letting me reward her, she knows the sequence will continue & would much rather be doing that. It's kind of... :rolleyes: OK I'll tug if I must, but c'mon, hurry it up...we got a course to complete!

K9: sorry Vickie if I offended you wa sjust trying tyo give you an idea of what it is like inside your dog, motor straining to go, mind holding it back. V: K9: it will be affected onlyu if the dog is trembling as her nerves are turned on, if she is relaxed with an adrenaloin flow, possibly making her wait can elevate her drive through anticipation or frustration. Nope, not offended. But this is exactly the point I guess I was trying to get to...I just don't have your fancy terminology . I guess my question is...can performance be a measure to determine whether drive is elevated through frustration or anticipation.

K9: its not idling, its stopped with one foot on the brake, the other hard on the gas. V: K9: I think when the dog has not been taught to relax in drive, it deminshes drive, turns on nerves & this causes many types of fallout, weak grips, chewing dumbells etc.. Well there goes my attempt at humour...back to lurking I guess. I'm happy to continue to call it idling & lucky for me, I don't need a strong grip & she will probably never see a dumbell. And Yes Myszka, she moves well at least her body does, even if her feet don't . I'm still interested in your reply LL. My comments simply were that in agility, I don't feel that her performance is worse for her IDLING, in fact so far it seems better. Does your girl do it all the time & do you notice a difference in performance?

This is a very interesting thread LL, my girl does that too, in agility & on sheep. Since we're making car analogies , we call it idling! It's interesting to watch peoples reactions to it, some are amused, some amazed & some downright disturbed . I don't like to let her do it too much & try to keep her focussed on me, but some of it is inevitable. Do you think it affects performance? I guess we all use adrenalin in different ways, with my boys, too much of it just made them idiots, but with her, I think she actually runs better & seems able to focus immediately, both in agility & on sheep.

Anyone threatening to kill a puppy for crying/barking 10-20 minutes a week has some very serious issues! Are you leaving at very early hours in the morning? I would report to the police as well...and if you really think he is serious/deranged would be getting someone to look after her on those 2 days.

Actually I think leadouts & how well trained/confident the dog is in a leadout has a lot to do with first bar syndrome. My boys often knocked the first bar and their leadout/start line was far from perfect. I could see the frenzy & panic in their faces to catch up to me and I was often not in an ideal position to help them. I am so far very happy with Trims leadouts. I see no panic in her face & she knows her job. I spend a lot of time working out EXACTLY where I'll be when I release her so that she knows as much as possible about the course before we start. I make a point of a knocked bar in gridwork, but would not on a course. In gridwork, I can set everything up & know exactly why the bar goes down. I actually started gridwork exercises with Noah, who was always a chronic bar knocker, 4 years into his training. Again, I let him know when the bar went down & rewarded when it stayed up. I was able to modify his jumping style & he did start to keep bars up in trials. I wouldn't do this with a dog likely to shut down & I certainly didn't "correct", just stopped & said "Ohhhh...what is this, what happened". Both Trim & Noah learnt quickly that their job was to keep the bar up. I never did it with Zeus, he is a much softer dog.

I don't think it is as big an issue with dogs who are not prone to jumping flat. But I agree, spending months on low height can really only encourage them to jump flat. We started sequencing long before jumping at full height, just using uprights. I'm not sure what low heights offer (other than encouragement to jump flat) that poles on the ground can't. Our club starts at low heights & works up...I just chose not to run my dog there until she was old enough to jump full height. We certainly "jumped" low on occasion, but we didn't "train". We also started our gridwork on low, but progressed very quickly to medium & sometimes large. It'd be interesting to know what % of flyball dogs are regular bar knockers in agility...they are afterall trained continually on low.

Well it either wasn't hers, or it's not on their site anymore... but I found this one http://www.powerpawsagility.com/articles/BarKnocking.html

I just caught up on this, glad to see some great information added... Maverick, I'd love to see the notes from Susan Garrett Hazz, she definitely doesn't look like a flat jumper from that pic I bet she doesn't drop bars normally. It was only your 1st trial. If I remember my first one, years ago, we dropped a number of bars. I'm pretty sure it was my boys turning around...wondering who in the hell that woman with the funny shaky voice was giving them commands Sidoney & FHR, good point about the jumble at the end they are moving towards Poodlefan, that was a great article, I have read the others but hadn't seen that one. You're right...fitness/structure/injury is a BIG one. Office Bitch, I've had plenty of first bars down too, for exactly the reasons you said..and a few others. I read a good article on it, I'll try to find it...I think it was a Nancy Gyes one. Your last point about recreating the adrenalin in training is something we (actually that would be me ) are struggling with right now. Sidoney, we did Julie Daniels gridwork, I have it here, I'll show you. But to be fair I think much of it is just her natural style, as her mum jumps exactly the same. We also waited till she was old enough & rarely train/ed on low heights. I think she will knock bars occasionally, she is very efficient & doesn't waste any space, so sometimes that will probably be misjudged. Another question for everyone...what do you do if your dog pulls a bar? Do you bring it to their attention, or ignore it?

I think I'm somewhere in the middle. My older boys went pretty much everywhere I did as pups & spent a lot of time at dog parks as they got a bit older. Me encouraging them to play with other dogs decreased as we became involved in agility. They still go to dog parks but tend to coexist with other dogs rather than play with them. I usually only enter with them if I know the other dogs there. Generally they are wanting to play ball & focus pretty much on that, whether or not I oblige . With Trim, I have done things a bit differently, for many of the reasons K9 has stated. She is fine around other dogs and will play with some, which I am happy for her to do, at home, or one on one. I have never encouraged her to play in a big group of dogs for lots of reasons...I don't want her to get hurt, I don't want her to learn to work other dogs, I don't feel she needs to deal with the different temperaments of dogs belonging to the average dog owner, many of whom don't have any control over their dogs. When she is herding or at agility, she doesn't want other dogs in her face. I don't consider that she lacks socialisation, she is just focussed on the task. She is not aggressive, but quite clear about her lack of interest in them and I am happy for her to be this way. It's possible I would feel differently about all this if I wasn't involved in sports & if I had a breed of dog who was more likely to want to play with other dogs. Mine all play at home with each other, not constantly, but they do have little romps.

Well that certainly sounds positive. Now I can stop checking DOL every 10 minutes.

Must have some news by now? or soon...

Was having a conversation with Hazz...who BTW has some BRAGS from her 1st agility trial on the weekend...about bar knocking & thought I'd start a thread on it to get some input from others... Here are my thoughts: Dogs can & should be taught to jump properly. Foundation work should include cavaletti work with different heights, spacing & angles. Also gridwork starting with a single jump, teaching the dog to take off right in front of the jump & to be able to land into your space. Also different spacing/heights/angles, so that the dog cannot predict each jump & learns to judge them. Bars are often (probably mostly) knocked due to giving a command after the dog has taken off. As the dog raises it's head to listen, rear legs usally drop to take the bar down. Commands and physical cues should be given before the dog takes off in order that it doesn't have to change leading leg while in the air. This also take considerable pressure off their shoulders/front legs and makes for tighter turns as well. Last jump syndrome (boy did I have heaps of these). I can think of 2 reasons: 1. As a handler you start to anticipate the end of the course & may even start to celebrate your clear run before you're finished. A good trick is to imagine an extra obstacle past the last jump to maintain your (and of course the dogs) focus. 2. The last few jumps are often in a straight line. As the dog is usually faster, they often tend to look back to make sure you're still coming. A couple of tricks, teach a "go on" command that you can give from behind...and sometimes a cross behind works (although should not be necessary if the "go on" is trained) as the dog will naturally turn towards the side you are on, so crossing behind straightens their line back up. For really flat jumpers who do not know where their hind legs are, bands/scrunchies can be put on their hind legs to teach them to lift their feet. Someone else should be able to expand on this theory more. There are a lot of exercises for rear end awareness. Training at a different height to competition. Personally I would make the effort as much as possible at training to jump competition height. We only have a few large dogs where I train & they train with the medium dogs. We all mostly make an effort to put the jumps up & down, so they can train at the height they should. It doesn't take long if everyone helps & I know they appreciate it. That's about it from me, pretty brief, but I'm meant to be doing housework. Hopefully someone will have stuff to add/expand on. Also, the Cleanrun Jumping issue (March 2003?) I think has A LOT of jumping exercises & can still be purchased on the net. It is definitely worth it for anyone having jumping issues.

Wishing you all the best for tomorrow, little Xia.

I have added a clip of Trims agility title run in the photos section if anyone wants to see it.

Hopefully it'll be something minor & easily treatable. Sounds bizarre...foreign body? like a grass seed or something maybe? There's definitely no issue with her activity levels , so good that it's not thyroid.

I've thought about the sewing idea, except they're often different sizes. I like the taking a photo & framing it idea though :rolleyes:

Just looking for some ideas on what everyone who competes does with their ribbons. There was a discussion on the agility list years ago about it & some good ideas, but I can't access it anymore. Mine are all in shoeboxes :D , except the current ones , but I'd like to put them all together in some way. Anyone got any pics of their displays?

I would disagree about the weavers. It is demanding equipment on a growing body. My vet (also chiropractically qualified) advises NO jumping and NO weaving until the dog is fully grown. :D PF

Thanks again everyone...I'm still on a bit of a high. LL, not perfect ;) there's always something to improve. I watched some video a friend took & already have plans for some stuff to work on . PF, no, I'm not giving her all the credit...it has been & was most definitely a team effort. I guess now I qualify for that Open seminar...have other plans now tho... :p FHR, after not having trialled for 2 years, I see a huge improvement in the overall standard of agility. It's great to see & I'm sure Open will be quite a challenge for us.

YAY FOR US!!! Another great day! Another 1st place agility for her title & just one silly awful little fault in her jumping, . She ran like a dream again today. We did the Regional Qualifying Heat as well and while we made a couple of mistakes, it was a pretty good effort for a little dog on her first weekend of trialling. We had a few friends come to watch & cheer us on & it was so nice to share the day with them. Trim got to see her best friend, Sidoney's Xia, and have a play, they were so cute together! I am SO, SO proud of her. I can't wait to do it all again. Thanks everyone...it's so nice to have people to brag to. The smile on my face will stay...possibly forever . Maverick has a heap of brags too, she had some awesome runs today, very smooth & very fast, well done!

Thanks everyone, especially Gusgem for posting this, Well to say we are on a high is definitely an understatement. Actually I am...she's sound asleep . Yep, 3 first places today and they were truly runs deserving of 1st places. I can't imagine what more I could ask of her ...she really is one outstanding little dog who is constantly giving me more than what I ask, each & every time I run her! I can't wait for tomorrow...but I can't imagine it could possibly superceed the fun we had today. Here's a pic of Trim with her prizes & ribbons...isn't she just so gorgeous?

LOL, one day someone took a tennis ball to herding. Trim didn't even flick a glance at it, not really amazing, her obsession for balls pales in comparison to her obsession with herding. She told me later that she thought the other dog chasing it was some kind of moron.

LOL, Trim has constantly tried to initiate games since the day I got her. I never really leave toys around but she always manages to find something...funniest one was a 1cm square bit of rubber from an old tennis ball...took me ages before I even saw it. I guess I give in every now & then & let her initiate play. She knows "that'll do" means give it up. Since my son (18mth) has learnt to throw a ball, she figures he's an easier target these days, so leaves me alone. Now I just shut them both in the back yard & let them be . I don't really have a problem with it. I don't feel it has any impact on her training for agility or herding...or general obedience for that matter. I can see the theory behind the cons, but I see her as a companion before a competitor...and we have fun, so I'm happy.

I'm so sorry, my heart is breaking for you. RIP Kuda