Ivy turned 3 a few days ago which still doesn't seem possible. This year I went with an 'ivy' theme for her cupcakes. It took ages to make all the ivy leaves out of fondant but I was happy with how they turned out - not so pleased about the colour though and next time I will try a different method of colouring to get them darker. Originally I wanted dark green on pale yellow but it wasn't to be .... thank goodness for Plan B. They did get a big paws up from all the dogs though.
Happy Birthday gorgeous girl !
We leave for Nationals in the morning, driving to Canberra first (I am ignoring the weather forecast which appears to have lots of minus signs in front of all the numbers) and then heading up to Sydney on Tuesday.
It's going to be a bit lonely, as most of my friends have pulled out, but I am still looking forward to having a good time with my girl. Looks like it's 'Boys Week' at home for Liam and the kelpies ..... I am not thinking about what the place will look like when we get back.
I feel totally unprepared for these Nationals - not helped by no training for a week due to the weather here - but strangely enough I really don't care. We will be winging it with our A Frame (one session at full height and no box does not make for a good A Frame performance) but that's just the way it is. Canberra is my 'let's see what the hell she will do in a trial' run and if it is too awful then I have no problems pulling her out of agility at Nationals and just running jumping. Planning on doing the A Frame as many times as humanly possible in Gamblers too. So while preparation has been nothing like I planned and has almost been non-existant, at least it means that I will be more relaxed as I am not expecting to be competitive at this stage. I am hoping that the experience gives me an idea about where we want to go from here in the next stage of our training and some more goals to work towards. Also looking forward to seeing some awesome dogs from all around the country. I will try and update from Sydney if I get the chance.
We had our club trial a couple of weeks back, this is the smaller club that I belong to, still a fairly new club with very few members, and it was awesome to see our small trialling contingent do so well.
From left to right : Dean and Koto (3rd place Novice Jumping), Emi and Niah (1st place Novice Agility), Col and Cindy (Masters Jumping pass), Lynn and Ace (2nd place Excellent Jumping) and me on the end with Atilla (3rd place Masters Agility) and Ivy (1st place Excellent Jumping) I think Liam needs to learn how to use the zoom on the camera though !
Very happy with both Ivy's jumping runs - we had two bars down on the one before she Q'd - one before and one after the tunnel, which are pretty common bars for her to take and something we are working on, but I actually thought it was a better run. Plus it was a full second faster than the qualifying one too. No video this time though so will just have to go with my feeling that it was better.
Ivy guarding her 'loot' - especially the edible part !
Have had a big blonde moment in regard to her passes though - thank goodness I sorted it out the night before the trial or I would have been really disappointed. I was sure we only had one pass to go for JDX, as according to my trial diary we had 4 already. When I got my cards out to check, I could only find 3. So after a lot of 'what is going on here ?' and hair pulling (mine not Ivy's) I finally found a Novice Agility pass paperclipped behind one of her Jumping certificates that I had mistakenly recored as an Excellent Jumping pass. The embarrassing thing about this is that I now have 4 Novice Agility passes and after all my whinging last year that I was never going to get out of Novice Agility ..... well I actually did have 3 passes a couple of weeks before I thought I did, oops ! I have never done this before ... alternatives must be :
1. I am getting old and forgetful.
2. Ivy has had so many one bar down runs where she still came 1st (both in Novice Agility and Excellent Jumping) that it starts to become confusing about which ones are passes and which ones are not.
Hmm, lock in number 2 Eddie ! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
Trial season 2012 is now well underway, although we haven't entered all that many to date. Some lovely jumping runs and 3 First places in Excellent Jumping - although unfortunately only one was actually a Q.
Those damn 'one bar runs' are becoming the story of our lives at the moment .......... the strange thing is she actually seems to me to be jumping a lot better, with a greater degree of control and improved judgement in regard to appropriate take off point - and yet we are pulling more bars. Another of agility's little mysteries !
That last JDX pass seems to be a long way off at times and although I am in no hurry to be competing in Masters with her just yet, it is still a frustrating experience on occasion. She is just so responsive to every little thing I do and I know that this is having an effect on the bars coming down.... whether I am putting unnecessary pressure on her line or not transitioning smoothly between deceleration and acceleration. I am indeed paying for my less than perfect handling at times, that's for sure. But it's fun to have a dog that keeps me on my toes and inspires me to become better at this game we play together.
I had hoped that we would be back competing in agility by now and not just entering jumping, but the running A Frame training has not progressed how I had hoped. Cruz adapted to the box method so easily I think I just expected Ivy to do the same ....... silly, silly me ! For one thing, her natural stride is so different to his, not to mention that damn BC crouch thing that is so hard wired in her.
Damned A Frame - my new least favourite piece of equipment, following the stupid weesaw of course !
Her foundation work on the ground was lovely, perfect hits into the box plus even more perfect hits with the grid. But once we got onto the lowered A Frame, her 'bounce' footwork totally disappeared and she went back to single striding, which was how she was getting into 2 on 2 off to begin with. After revisiting the foundation on the ground and a lot of video, I decided to go with this anyway, changing the criteria to a single front foot hit into the box to mark, followed (hopefully) by her running through it. Problem is I just can't decide if this criteria is clear for her or not. I have gone from removing the box (it made her footwork a little more 'creepy') to putting it back on again choosing clarity over speed. We are almost at full height, but still have around 10cm to go and I am really taking this last bit slowly. She is fairly consistent running through the box, but still occasionally leaps off if I accelerate ahead full steam.
I had hoped to return to running agility at our club trial this weekend, but it isn't to be. I really want to get this right and not rush her. Unfortunately the trial at the beginning of next month - which was my next 'target' for returning to agility - has been cancelled, which means I now have no chance at trialling agility before Nationals.
So even though she has been entered in agility at Nationals, we may very well only be doing our 3 jumping heats as the idea of making our excellent agility debut at this level doesn't really thrill me..... not ruling it out though as it certainly doesn't bother me using Nationals heats as training runs and I don't think it will bother Ivy somehow or other. It's just important to me that she is working on a full height A Frame and I have at least made some attempt to fade the box before I enter her again. I don't expect 100% accuracy first or we will most likely be out for the whole season !
Anyway, what looks like amounting to half the trial year out of agility because I decided to retrain her A Frame contact is not looking like so great an idea at the moment. But we've come this far, so I really don't want to write it off as a mistake and go back to 2 on 2 off - not just yet anyway.
I spent a couple of days helping to rubberize our club's contact equipment a few weeks back so have now become inspired to do my own, once I decide on colours. Very tempted to do pink girlie contacts for Ivy, but as this might not get the paws up from the macho kelpies, I will probably end up going for something more boring and conservative.
Photos to follow when I get around to it, plus hopefully some A Frame video as well.
Ivy had her first working session at a seminar a couple of weeks back - double box work with Laura Derrett. I was very happy with her focus and enthusiasm. At the end of the day she was one of the few dogs still fronting up wanting to go and still tugging like a maniac as well. (Which certainly scores you 'points' with the Derretts, LOL) The joy of a dog that you don't have to convince to tug ! And to top off her tugging frenzy, I was fortunate enough to win the raffle and as a consequence a big parcel of new toys will soon be winging its way down here for the flying feral's enjoyment.
Summer seminars should always be followed by a good hosing, according to Ivy
The seminar was as awesome as always and I learnt heaps. I audited the rest of the days - even though I was pretty sure she would be keen to keep working. I have seen a lot of dogs disconnect in a seminar environment, there are certainly a lot of very quick transitions to working and resting over the day, way more than at a trial, and I can't say I was 100% sure she would handle this. Now I have no doubts for next time.
Anyway, I like to get in at least one or two audit sessions as sometimes I think that I take more in when I am not fussing around with warming up my dog, cooling down dog, checking on her crated, etc. etc.
Did I mention how much I like the hose ?
The timing of this was perfect for me, following on the heels of their e-course that I just completed. Now that I have some more personalised feedback, I intend to go back to the beginning and work through the lessons again so I can pinpoint particular things that I need to work on.
The big one for us would be deceleration - she's great on the flat but once jumps come into the equation then she sees absolutely no need whatsover to do anything at less than a hundred miles an hour.... and as for adding extra strides, why do that when you can jump BIG ! I don't call her my 'Boots n' All' dog for nothing. In the words of Tania Kernaghan :
'If you're gonna do it, throw your heart into it, No holding back at all....' This sums her personality up perfectly and definitely carries over into her agility runs as well.
Gotta love a boots n' all dog ! Don't be fooled by the calm exterior.
So we have some decel exercises to work on over the next few months, along with some other things about my handling that I would like to tidy up a bit. Greg also had some very thought provoking things to say about bar knocking in young, fast dogs ...... another benefit of auditing is that you get to ask questions and also just have a chat at times. So to balance my decel training I also have an acceleration exercise that he suggested to work on and a couple of very specific things to look for when I review her jumping videos.
Hot, Hot, Hot followed by Wet, Wet, Wet here at the moment, which is not very good for training. First of all the dogs were collapsed on the floor inside due to the heat, then the rain set in which turned the dust outside into mud.
A brief period of 'cleanliness' in between the rain, mud and dust
We have our first trial of the season on the weekend. (Which will most likely be last weekend by the time I get this published) I have entered one day only (it's a double) and just jumping. I was so looking forward to getting back to agility again now that our 'weesaw' is sorted out. But the Derretts inspired me to really look long and hard at my contacts so weighed, measured and the A Frame has come up wanting ! I like her end behaviour on the A Frame but I don't love it and I want to love it so time to bite the bullet and retrain a running A Frame. I have started on the groundwork for Rachel Sander's box method as I have already trained it with Cruz and I am pretty happy with the results. I figure if a big striding 600 kelpie can do it, so can a more compact 500 BC - that's what I'm hoping anyway ! It probably would have been a lot more convenient to make the decision in December and train it over the break rather than start now. But who wants to do things the easy way, not us obviously. So no agility for us for a bit, at least until we get the box onto a full sized A Frame anyway. My goal is to get the box onto a lowered A Frame by the end of the month (fingers crossed) and then we will see what we have and it takes however long it takes.
Not to say that 2011 was all smooth sailing in regard to training and trialling ... oh no, it certainly wasn't.
But as an introduction to trialling for Ivy, I don't think she could have had any more fun than she did, plus I have learnt more this year than any other year, mainly due to having lots more questions and needing to find lots more answers- many of which I am still looking for.
We had a break from agility training over December and have just started out again last week - as you can see I had a nice relaxing time, but Ivy was less than impressed that the agility area had suddenly become out of bounds.
Anyway, here are some of the things I learnt in 2011.
1. Video editing.
Up until last year, my video analysis went something like this : record it, watch it, be very down on myself at how crap I thought I handled a particular sequence, save it, never watch it again. The fact that this was 'Pre-Flip' and my old video camera recorded to those little tapes and is a pain in the butt to download into the computer may have had something to do with it, but I can't believe I wasted such a great training tool all these years. And is why I am now rabbiting on about my very mediocre video editing skills that most likely make everyone else roll their eyes and think BIG DEAL ! Because it has been a big deal for me.
I enrolled in a few online courses last year - in particular to work on my mental management skills so that I could stop doing things like being down on myself because I thought I handled a particular sequence like crap. I started with Daisy Peel's 'Mental Management', then moved on to John Cullen's 'The Winning Process'. More on those shortly, as I am trying to stay on task with the video editing, LOL.
Anyway, one of the things I learnt in Daisy's course was how to slow down a clip to half speed, and how to split a clip to get rid of the parts you don't want. Pretty basic stuff, but not something I have ever thought of doing before so have never bothered to find out how. Then on John's course, he talked about making a video montage from your trials to motivate you when you watched it and after a couple of other people shared examples of theirs, I decided to have a go with some of the footage that I have from our first few months of trialling as a record of our first (partial) year in the trial ring. So this is the result.
Even though we have a long way to go, it does make me smile to watch this and see just how much she really enjoys running agility. Especially as the number one prerequisite in an agility partner for me is one who enjoys running as much as I do, if not more. Oh, and to see my new found video editing skills too of course, LOL.
Plus I can watch this back and still see places where my handling was not quite spot on (at times I can almost hear my old ballet teacher yelling 'look at those feet' ) - but it doesn't bother me any more, I no longer feel that I am 'crap' and merely see it as information I can now use to improve. So the next thing I have learnt is :
2. Making handling errors is OK and you are not useless just because you do.
Not feeling as emotionally involved when I watch myself run any more - sure there are still some occasions when I handle sequences like crap, but this doesn't bother me anywhere near as much as it used to - thank you Daisy and John !
3. Goal Setting
Another really useful thing I learnt from both courses. Especially now that I am using it not so much as goal setting to achieve particular things, but to develop my training focus around it as well. In the past I have been pretty much a 'putting out fires' type of trainer where I mainly focussed on what I stuffed up at trials. No more. This doesn't mean I don't give that any attention, but it's not my main training focus. And my computer skills are improving as I can now make pretty spreadsheets and tables and stuff - is there a theme developing here?
4. Help is only a 'Paypal' payment away !
2011 has certainly been the year of online agility related courses ..... which can get pretty expensive and can also make a bit of an online junkie out of you and which my bank account says I will be much more conservative and discerning about what I sign up for this year. But for someone who lives in the great agility wasteland of my state - nowhere near the 'fashionable' clubs where all the up to date agility training takes place - these courses have been like letting loose in a candy store. You want help with training, handling, mental skills and have no one to help you in real life ? Never fear, just give us vast quantities of your money and we will help you. Praise the Lord ...... Agility Salvation !
My favourites courses (so far, LOL) for 2011 :
*Daisy Peel and John Cullen - I am listing these as a 'package'. Daisy's course was a lot simpler to understand and gave me the basics, not to mention really got me motivated, so money well spent. (Plus I like Daisy a lot from her 'conversations' and respect her as a trainer, even though she doesn't worship at the temple of GD like I do but is a LM follower... religion doesn't matter to me !) John's course is in a lot more detail and is an excellent follow on to Daisy's as it expands on a lot of the concepts that she introduced so if you want to get into it in more detail, then you can. Also very professional in the way that he presents his information and very generous in what he shares. Big thumbs up from me !
*Greg and Laura Derrett - Ultimate Handling
I wasn't going to sign up for this one initially due to the cost, but boy am I glad I did ! Freaking brilliant - and well worth the money. Really smart sequences that allow you to get to position early enough to get it right from the beginning. (Well, almost right anyway ) Thumbs up and fingers up too ( in a nice way of course)
*Susan Garrett - Puppy Peaks
Apart from the monthly payment option, the thing I have enjoyed most about this is watching Susan deal with 'issues' (or at least potential issues because she is savvy enough to nip them in the bud long before the rest of us even realise they are turning into issues) that arise along the way and to see that she doesn't necessarily start with a 'perfect' puppy and that she also makes errors sometimes and is not 'perfect' either.
Plus apart from getting an awesome 'blueprint' to train a puppy (must not be tempted!) you can really learn a lot from Susan about good training mechanics ..... being prepared, not wasting time, rewarding in the right place from the right hand, etc. Downside is that it makes you wish you had a puppy to start doing all these amazing things with all over again (must not be tempted !)
5. 'Issues' are not problems and are just training opportunities.
We survived the start line issue and the no longer waiting for release on contacts issue. I blew several runs dealing with these things- a number of which would have been clear if I had let the behaviours go, but it was well worth it and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
The current issue is whether or not the 'just one bar' runs (of which there are numerous) is actually an issue or not. That sounds confusing even to me and I wrote it !
The last couple of trials for the year I didn't enter agility, as we finished our AD and I didn't want to start trialling with a full height seesaw (which she can do but I haven't proofed to what I would consider trial standard) when we are changing to the ridiculous 'weesaw' from this year. Let's not even bother with what I think of that rule change ! So we entered Open Jumping for the first few times instead. Ivy is mad for running agility but she is even crazier for jumping and I think the agility runs are actually a bit settling for her when they are mixed in with the jumping runs. I learnt that entering only jumping runs is like crack to an addict and when you team those with a ridiculous amount of big, open flowing courses that are designed to test very little except how fast you can run and how many bars your dog can keep up while you are running like a madwoman, well..........
The results were : 3 Excellent Jumping runs on 'Yeeee- haaaar' courses with just one bar down on each one. (2 were totally my fault and the other I'm not sure) Another Excellent Jumping run with one bar down on a very technical course - not sure why the bar came down. Two Open Jumping runs on yet more 'Yeeeee- haaaar' courses with one bar down each time - one my fault and the other caused by her catching her foot on the distance tape. I knew something NQR had happened on that run, but until I saw the video afterwards wasn't sure what.
Plus one 2nd place NQ in Novice Gamblers where she ran the opening like a dream but unfortunately it was the gamble from hell (that was set up identically for Masters, with just the tape moved further away) and only one Novice dog actually managed to do it, which was pretty impressive actually.
I'm trying not to stress about the bars a great deal. Ivy gets very excited on 'Yeeee- haaaaar' courses and the more excited she gets, the earlier she tends to take off. She is a big jumper (as in distance), puts minimal strides between jumps and there are definitely going to be 'bad bar days' every now and then. I can accept that.
I love the way she is so confident running agility and I definitely don't want to do anything to change that so I will continue to try very hard not to react when the bars come down. I believe there are some bars that will come down that I can't do anything about, but I also think that quite a few that she dropped over the last couple of trials were my fault (head check often equals bar down) so I am certainly going to try and do something about that this year.
The hardest thing about this 'issue or not issue, still not sure what category to put it in' is that I am so not used to running a dog that pulls bars. I could count the number of bars my kelpies have dropped in their entire trialling career on one hand - so this is a totally new experience for me.
Hence the reason that I can't decide whether I should worry about it or not and something else I need to learn.
For the moment I am taking the attitude that if it doesn't particularly worry Ivy then it doesn't particularly worrry me........... and for every bar that came down in the last couple of trials, there were around 16 or so that stayed up!
6. I think I totally hate 'Yeeeee-haaaaar' courses.
(Just wait, once we do finally hit Masters Jumping I will most likely be complaining about how tight and twisty the courses are, LOL)
Ivy would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas ! She is now off to play with her new tug toy while she is waiting for a batch of (dog) biscuits to come out of the oven. Such is the life of an agility princess !
Ivy got a lovely surprise at the Ballarat trial a couple of weeks ago - a chance reunion with her brothers who came all the way from Western Australia.
What a good looking bunch !
That's the very handsome and talented Dan on the left - a full brother to Ivy from an earlier mating. Dan is an awesome agility dog and if Ivy turns out to be half as good I will be over the moon.
That's the gorgeous and very exuberant Quinn on the right - a half brother to Ivy as they share the same father. The first three words that come to mind when watching Quinn run are fast, fast and fast - did I mention he was really fast ??? Definitely a potential superstar in the making there.
It might not seem all that exciting to catch up with relatives for those who do it on a regular basis (yes, I'm talking DOGS - LOL) but for the little girl who moved from one side of this big country to the other it was an out of the ordinary event that we were not expecting to happen so most definitely 'blogworthy'. Hopefully we will meet up again if we end up making the trip to Nationals next June.
We have just returned from a full weekend trialling at Warrnambool - Ivy had a ball and was just as enthusiastic at the end of the second day as she was at the beginning of the first. Wish I could say the same about me ! We finally managed to break the cycle of 'just one little thing and always something different' in Novice Agility when she won the ring on Sunday morning to complete her title. Best thing was that her contacts were great on every run and she didn't self release once - I even chose a run where she had already knocked a bar to run past the end of the dogwalk and continue ahead without releasing her and she stuck her position perfectly.
Our Summer project (after she has a break for a few weeks) is to really work on proofing those contacts and improve her confidence in driving to the end position that I want. I was so despondent about her contacts after Sale at the beginning of the month, but a couple of weeks of 'extreme consistency' in regard to criteria really appears to be making a big difference to her performance. Now that I have stopped obsessing about speed over the contacts at all costs and am more concerned about the consistency of her performance, her 'slow-ish' (in relation to the end picture that I have in my head) contact performance is suddenly speeding up anyway. Another lesson learned the hard way. I still intend to teach a running A Frame down the track, but I don't think I'm quite ready to take a walk on the wild side just yet.
The 'just one little thing' saga now seems to have taken up residence in Excellent Jumping. We had some lovely runs over the weekend in jumping but just couldn't seem to manage a pass. But very happy with her startlines, serpentines and response to my cues when I actually got to the right position, which sadly didn't quite happen as often as it should. My favourite run for the weekend was probably the most difficult jumping course of them all, where we managed to get a fairly difficult lead out pivot into the tunnel, pulled off a fairly difficult diagonal line front cross, followed by a tight tunnel discrimination and by then I was on such a high that I totally forgot the course and just made up my own - but tragically I had made up quite a bit of it before I realised it wasn't right and the judge yelling out 'go straight ahead' brought me back to reality. Well it felt right to me and obviously felt right to Ivy too as she was having a ball running my course instead of the judge's one which we both felt was far superior, LOL.
Just a couple more trials to go before the 2011 season is done and dusted and we look forward to them both as well as tackling the 'training list' over January and February. Bring it on !
