Agility Dogs

That god is cruel and unforgiving. I have forsaken that god for another! They are just not listening yet.

That's a really good point. Interestingly though, since I got Xena's AAC title (Aust Agility Champion in ADAA) winning has started to matter. Not because I want to beat other dogs, but because now that we have 'all' our titles (I know I can get multiples) it is a good way to measure our progress. Divorced from the contact discussion I've started to look for more speed on course - I'm finding that the 'extra' steps Xena takes because of my handling make a MASSIVE difference. eg: 2 steps past a jump, turn, 2 steps back - .8 of a second. Do it 3 times on a course - 2.4 seconds. That's our goal for the next 12 months - to get rid of all the 'extra' time we lose on courses.

From a non-breeders perspective I am probably dragging this off track a little, but for me it comes back to what the owner wants out of the dog and whether they want to manage an entire animal. If I had paid for the dog I would not be keeping it entire just so that a breeder can use it. There would have to be a better reason (like health, development etc etc.), but in my case it would not happen because I would be neutering at around 14 months for a boy. IFF I had decided to keep him entire and the breeder wanted to use him then I would be asking for them to pay for the health testing and any other associate costs. As long as there are no risks to my dog then I woudn't really have an issue with a stud fee one way or the other.

I would have listened. I knew everything. With hindsight I made my life very difficult by not listening to experienced people who knew better. Now that I know more I listen more.

Rex came to me to teach me a LOT of things in a very short time. He taught me how messed up a badly bred and unsocialised dog can be. He taught me the value of training and building a relationship with a good mate and how this can overcome a lot of things. He taught me that sometimes holding on is not the kindest thing to do. He taught me how to cry. Xena came to me to teach me the joy of having a best friend and that not all obesessive stalkers are evil . She has taught me forgiveness and about fun. She has taught me there are not shortcuts to training and she has reminded be about what a sense of achievement feels like. Xena is my beautiful girl. CK came to me .........well, he just came to me. (Sorry buddy.) He came to teach me to always look behind the obvious and that with calm can come great strength. He has taught me sheer joy for the sake of living, even when it seems that things suck. He has taught me patience and the rewards of looking after your animals well - especially when they suffer an injury. He came to make me a better dog trainer - that there is more than one way to an end and that what helps one dog prosper can break another. Wikki........After 36 hours I'm still wondering why Wikki came to me. I'm hoping we are going to go on an amazing journey together and the early signs are very good. She is going to reinforce the lessons of patience and humility that the others have taught me I am sure. Time will no doubt reveal all.

What Vicki said. Further to that in ADAA if you ASK for the dog to go back on the contact (ETA - tell the dog, not ask the judge) then the judge can deem it training in the ring and should Disqualify you from the ring (as opposed to eliminate you from the event and let you finish the run.)

The second one is definitely a fault. Not sure about the first one. I think you'd get away with the first one - very hard to tell the timing of which feet given they would be so close together - if they weren't I'd be seriously concerned for the saftety of the dog. Even this way - still concerned. Being pedantic - the second one is elimination, not a fault. The dog has incorrectly completed an obstacle with a fault you cannot go back onto the obstacle. In ADAA this would be classed as training in the ring and you would be excused.

LOL try telling a lot of people that. I'm constantly arguing with people (especially small dog people) that they don't have a running contact, they have a dog that runs its contacts and just doesn't happen to jump. It's not until they start to have problems they agree. I know my competition contacts suck and are a work in progress, the dogs rarely miss in the ring, but they don't stop. I DO NOT have a running contact. LOL.

Interesting some of the costs they have on there. Obviously they are not recommending people go to them for obedience classes. LOL. I had a look at what doing a class with my new pup would cost me and ruled it out instantly. Pup will be coming with me to flyball, agility and frisbee and will work off to the side so it will be socialised and trained well, but I was looking for some other environments to take it to. I think some of the costs are very conservative - especially the vet bill side of things. eg: I choose to get Chiro check ups every 4 months or so - $70 each. My girl had an injury earlier this year - $400 for a torn shoulder muscle. You need to consider how active your dog is going to be as well. Active = potential for injury.

Jules, if it were my dog I'd have Poppy in a crate for 24 hours - not running around with the other dogs. If she were still not weight bearing after that (or I had not seen a significant improvement) then they would be off to the vet. As for the clinic - unless one of mine were 100% by Thursday they would be having the weekend off. (And have had the weekend off trialling for injuries I wasn't sure about.) PF is right - BC's (and I'm sure other high drive dogs as well) will run regardless of how injured they are, I think we need to look after them that little bit more. Xena had a badly torn muscle in her shoulder and had six weeks out. I couldn't take her to flyball because she would just got nuts in her crate trying to get out and play - the worst thing she could have done for her injury. It turned out that she must have had the injury for a while and not let me know - she was running on 3 legs. When she came back she was absolutely flying - much quicker than before and she hasn't slowed back down.

I am feeling your pain. My little girl arrives tomorrow night and it feels like an age until then. I can't imagine waiting until the weekend! Her flight gets in at 11:00pm and I should get to meet her at about 11:30pm. ;) I think I'll leave introducing her to the rat bags until Thursday morning. I've tried to tell them that they have a little sister coming, but whenever I say sister CK runs over to find Xena! ;)

I think if you are not going to compete then as long as you stick to a few criteria then all is good: 1. Needs to have softish rounded edges so that it doesn't hurt the puppy's mouth. 2. Should not be at all brittle - this will stop it from shattering in the puppy's mouth. (This would be bad.) Especially a consideration in cooler weather. 3. Should fly as consistently as your throwing will let it. 'Flukey' frisbees are dangerous as they dogs need to twist and turn at the last minute. That's about it. The discs the lady (not sure who you are talking to, but I'm also in the club) mentioned are my personal favourites and what I use, but at the end of the day if they meet the above criteria then you'll have a ball. If anyone is keen to play frisbee have a look here: www.bark.asn.au or PM me. Cheers Tony

Nah, he's not. He's a Trumagik boy. Tag is his Dad though. Now that we are finally over the whole 'if I move I get in trouble' thing we had going on he is starting to show that he is a bit like Dad at agility.

+1 That's an abbreviation I haven't seen before That is good. Thanks for the ideas all. We have one of Winpara's puppy coming to join the household. Not sure of her Kennel name just yet, but her call name will be Wikki. She is CK's half sister and a full sister to Tassie's Rory. (from a previous litter of course.) Picking her up from the airport at 11:30pm Wednesday.

Hi all, Does anyone have any 'must dos' for a new puppy? My new little one arrives on Wednesday and I'm really keen to avoid many of the mistakes I've made with my current 2 rat bags. (And make a whole heap of new ones.) I'm just making a list, but any input would be greatly appreciated....... Shaping, shaping and shaping Crate training Propreoception (sp) exercises Puppy jump bumps Play and recalls Are all at the top of the list. Anything else you think I should add in for starters?

Awesome! Well done. We had another good night at agility, if not a great one. Xena managed a few second places and two cards, plus a couple of near misses with just one fault. This was the bet of her runs: CK had a challenging night - he got spooked by some dogs on the side of the ring in his first run, but managed some nice work through the night and finished with a messy opening, but a really nice gamble to finish and get another card towrards his games title. This is his gamblers run. Have to thank my beautiful OH on the eve of our 12th wedding anniversary - what better way to spend it. LOL.

WOW - over half way. I think its fair to say that I kind of under estimated how we would go in most respects. Turning point for us all was Linda Orton-Hill's visit in February. Gave me some much needed direction to take the next step and has given CK a new lease on life. The other turning point was starting to run more ANKC trials. Because I didn't get all wound up about whether we would get cards or not I just ran for sheer joy and OMG has it been quick!! CK Next year I really want to work on how much value CK has for agility and his understanding of what I am asking for. Tick. If we can get that right he should just about have his SAAD title by the end of the year and maybe even his ADX and JDX titles, plus whatever games we play as well. I wrote this thinking it was a pipe dream. We aren't doing enough ANKC trials to reach ADX and JDX, but he already has AD and JD so you never know. SAAD is only a couple of cards away and he is averaging 1 if not 2 cards every ADAA trial. Almost Tick. I'd also really like to get him in the medallion stakes round at next year ADAA GP. Might have just missed this one. Oh well. I want to get him turning on the box a lot more quickly and to improve his times so that he is the consistent 4.5 second dog he has the potential to be. Will 4.8 seconds do? LOL. I've kind of given up on the box. To fix him will mean 12 months out of the ring and at this stage I'm not keen on goig there. I also want to work with him so that he understands what I am asking in the freestyle frisbee ring. We might even do a bit of dancing on the way to this one!! We haven't done a lot of frisbee this year, but have been doing heaps of tricks in our training sessions each morning. Dancing might be retirement plan for when we aren't doing agility any more. XENA In agility I want to learn to run Xena really hard. The only thing holding her back now is me - if I get it right she runs clear, I'm not happy with clear though - I want clear and fast. I'm going to have to step up if we are going to achieve that one. Tick. The last three trials we are averaging close to a 70% success rate. She has her Aust Agility Champion title with ADAA and is slowly working her way through her ANKC titles. (Slowly becuase we don't do a lot of trials.) I'm especially pleased with this one because I've had to build her back up after an injury early in the year. We need to fix her passing in flyball - after a couple of unfortunate incidents she is a little unsure of herself so we need to build her back up. Once we do that she will keep running consistently low 5 second runs like she does around the little dogs now. We have a plan and have her back in our quicker team with good success. Almost tick. Finally I'd like to really nail her freestyle routine in frisbee. See Mr CK's comment. She still loves it and is better than ever, we just suffer from a lack of practice. Just one more FDM card would be nice as well, but I won't get greedy. Oh well - can't do everything!

;) Funny you should say that. A couple of months ago we were having real trouble getting around advanced courses (ADAA version of Masters I guess) so I asked if we could work on hard courses. It didn't take wrong to realise that the reason we sucked so much on hard stuff was that we didn't have many of the basics right. After heaps of work along the lines of what you've mentioned above we are now running clear more often that not. I think we all need to kick the habit of doing the sexy stuff sometimes and just go back to basics. ETA - tugging in position is our current project. :p we have quite a way to go.

After all the challenges CK and I have had he is FINALLY starting to look almost like a real agility dog!! In a couple of places he actually started to use the speed he has. It's going to get exciting when I finally convince him it is OK to run hard all the time. I'm so proud of my boy. This is the dog who in January had one more chance or he was going to retire from agility because he just plain didn't enjoy it. He broke his elbow at 4 months and spent the next 10 months being told 'no' every time he moved. It has only taken me another 2 years to convince him that crazy is OK, but the job is not finished.......

I have to admit I gave up on the idea of obedience before I really got into the exercises as such, but the book was really good. I liked how it explained the theory behind clicker training and still use a number of the exercises as part of our basic 'foundation' work.

you can teach them to walk upstairs..........backwards. If you don't have a table with stairs on it (cool training tool) start by creating a history of reward for standing at the top of a normal set of stairs the stairs facing the bottom. Put a cue on this. If you do have a table and they are already able to do 'table' then you are half way there! Ask them to then come one step down with their front feet only. Then cue them to the top of the stairs - they will just drag their feet back, again, reward in place. Once they have that move onto 2 steps and probably at the third step they will move their back feet onto the top step. It is simply a matter of asking for the same thing again. I'm not sure if it helped that the dogs could already walk backwards, but it may have. That said it was quite a challenge for them to think about where their back feet were - especially my girl who is a bit smaller.

i'm not going to watch this at work. My OH refuses to watch it with the sound turned up. I love this clip and often think about it when things are not quite going right.

That is so awesome for such a young dog!! Well done!!

I like that - very cool. :p

This has been an interesting read. I just have one quick question......... Time and time again I've read on this forum that when someone who prefers to use positive methods questions the use of a pinch collar or other physical corrections they are told they are closed minded and need to have a full tool chest. :p , Yet in this thread when someone who relies on aversives to a greater extent is questioned as to why they don't consider some types of reward appropriate or why they would discount them entirely that is somehow not right? I personally lean towards a positive approach, but my dogs are still corrected (sometimes physically if warranted) if I think it is appropriate. Both my dogs will work without the need for reward (either food or toy) and once they understand the game and have a value for it they are two of the driviest, yet most controlled dogs around. All that said, I do understand the need for 'perfect' behaviour in working/service dogs and can see why other methods are useful. I'm just not sure that I'd rule out ANY method/tool, especially for a pet or even performance dog where owners don't necessarily have the luxury of rehoming (not a negative - service dogs are there to do a job) the ones that are not up to the job/don't respond to the methods used.