Agility Training Continues

Despite the heat, Porter has been doing well in agility. I bought him a Chilly Buddy Cooling Jacket and a Ryobi portable fan. It's been really humid, which is odd for this area, but he hasn't wilted like he used to.

Today in class he really rocked a short sequence we did. We had to miss last week and were not able  to get there super early to let him sniff it out, but I was still very pleased with his focus. He was into the hot dogs I was offering and focused well on the toy stuffed with them when it was used as his reward. No taking off on victory laps or running over to the pool.

Here is the short sequence we did. Porter was first up.  The black line is him, the reddish line is my path. I didn't lead out past 2 since I wanted to run with him a few steps before the front cross to give him more speed. Number 3 is a wing jump and sometimes he's a bit sticky on my side with those. He has such a large stride, plus I wanted to be sure he was fully committed to #3 before doing the front cross, so he did land far and swung wide. In the future I'll work on turning earlier so he knows where he's going before he takes off and can adjust his stride accordingly. But once he realized where I was and what my body language was telling him he quickly came back to my right side. #4 is another wing jump and I was pleased he did fine with that. Again, he went out farther than he needed before the tunnel, so I need to trust him more and turn earlier.

The second run through I was a bit jerky in my movements for some reason and I caused Porter to knock down the bar on #3. But the third time was our best performance. Very smooth and much more efficient.

We also worked the weaves today. Porter is currently on two sets of poles 15 feet apart and doing well. I really need to practice with him at home. If I did he would be doing a full set of 12 by now.

For the A-Frame his modified running contact is really coming along. He downs on a target a stride length past the A-frame. I was able to keep running a couple of feet past that point and he still hit and stuck his down where he was supposed to.

I switched his swim lesson for Wednesday instead of being directly after agility class for a few reasons. One, I have to rush to pack up and drive over to the pool. It's not far, but on a hot day I don't want him walking on the asphalt over there. Two, we share the pool with another dog on Tuesdays so Porter needs to wear a life jacket so I can leash him. This keeps him out of the other dog's face who really doesn't want to visit. Wednesday it'll be just us so he can swim without the jacket and get an even better workout. And three, I'm hoping it eliminates him getting antsy towards the end of agility class when he knows it's almost swim time. He starts to lose focus and try to get to the pool.

Agility Update

With summer in full swing our 10am agility class is heating up. I purchased a Chilly Buddy Cooling Coat a month ago and it finally just arrived. It seems to fit Porter well and is really light weight. He didn't seem to tire out as quickly at yesterday's class but it's hard to tell if it was due to the coat or not. We had a private lesson this afternoon at 4pm and he was dragging even with the coat, but it was quite a bit warmer than yesterday.

Porter's contacts are coming along. I've decided to do a down after the A-Frame (Four on the Floor; Modified Running Contact). Down is his default position so it comes so naturally to him. When Indi took lessons with Ann Croft and she taught us this method I didn't think it would be a good choice for her, since Indi hates to down in a lot of situations. But for Porter, this is perfect. I was considering doing Rachel Sander's Box Method but I don't have the DVD yet and my instructor doesn't teach this method as a regular part of her classes. I'd still like to learn about it, but for now the down is going well. We are doing 2 on 2 off for the dog walk and teeter and things are progressing nicely with that, too. I can walk quickly past his target or hang back and he still hits his spot. I need to vary my speed and lateral distance even more, but we'll get there.

Porter's flatwork needs work!! He's a bit distracted so I need to just take a long line out to a park and really work on it. I'll probably toss in some of Leslie McDevitt's ideas in there to help him along.

In our private lessons I've been working on Porter following his line. He tends to skip the last jump in a short sequence to get into heel position. Even more so if it's a wing jump. When we can practice several in a row he does better, so we'll just need to stay on top of it.

I finally found a toy that looks like it's working and it's really helping with this issue. This Rip and Tug toy can hold treats inside and the dog can break into it to self reward. Porter will follow a normal toy and chase it but then either 1) ignores it once it's "dead" or 2) grabs it and runs victory laps while playing keep away. Neither is good for his training. But with this toy he gets the thrill of the chase and then when the toy is dead he stops and lies down and self rewards. No running off with it or getting bored and walking off to sniff. It also keeps him mostly pointed in the original direction if there are more obstacles for us to do once I've rewarded him for the first part. And so far, the food hasn't flung out and all over the field on accident as it can do with some other stuffable toys.

He's doing ok with his 2x2 weave poles, but would be much farther along if I practiced at home more. This new toy will help with that practice as well.

Porter's sense of timing is amazing. In the last ten minutes of class yesterday Porter started to get antsy and became pulling like mad in the direction of the pool (which he cannot see from the agility field). He knew his swim lesson was about to start. He never does this on Wednesdays after our private lessons since swim is only on Tuesdays.

6 Months Old!

Porter turned 6 months old right before Christmas. I'm amazed how much he has grown and how fast the time as flown. It seemed like ages when I was waiting for him to be born and then old enough to come home. My husband remarked the other day how Porter is exactly what we were expecting and hoping for, based on the things we heard about the breed.

I also realized that he is now old enough to compete in Rally (or traditional obedience) but he's no where ready! This gave me a wake up call. I should have been working him more on rally. Not that I expected us to enter a ring this early, but he should be closer to being ready than he is. My main focus is on agility, but dogs cannot compete until 18 months, so I shouldn't put rally on hold in the meantime. Plus I can easily throw in a few rally moves here and there in the house whenever I want and it won't get in the way of his agility training time.

I started working with more of a purpose on his rally moves and was pleasantly surprised at how well he did. He's still in the very early stages and I am rewarding him quite a bit, but he readily completely the moves and stays focused on me. I think all my heeling work as paid off.

So my goal this year for Porter is to get him ready to trial in rally. We will also be working on Nose Work and working towards getting him on birch so we can do his ORT. He needs to be a year old at least, IRRC, so we have some time.

I love the shadow of his tail here with all the feathering

Another goal that has recently come up is to get Porter in the show ring. His overshot is almost gone and I am hoping that by the end of February his teeth will be perfect and he can compete in the Silver Bay Kennel Club show here in San Diego. I don't feel comfortable handling him myself. Who really wants both parts of the team green? Yikes! Right now the plan that we are working on is for his breeder to handle him on Saturday and another local breeder/handler to show him on Sunday. We'll be practicing with his breeder next week since I really haven't worked with him on her stacking or gaiting.

Since the weather has really warmed up in San Diego this week we hit the beach a few times. During our first trip Porter finally swam! He didn't mean to but ended up a little farther than expected while retrieving a stick. He turned around and realized he could touch so he swam back to shore. After that he was smart/stubborn and refused to go past a certain spot and would just level the stick out in the water. Some retriever! :) In this picture he is turning back and was about 2 feet shy of the stick. You can see the tiny ripple the stick is making just past him but he wasn't having any of it. He still happily ran in the water the rest of the trip...just not too deep.

 
On a fun note, Ian surprised me with  a Gopro Hero HD camera which is used to take videos of sports from the first person perspective. You can mount the camera on a helmet, your chest, your surfboard, etc. I *love* gadgets. I love dogs even more and when the two collide I'm in hog heaven. Yesterday I mounted the camera to Porter's collar and we headed to Fiesta Island Dog Beach. Here are two quick clips of his day.


This first video just shows him fetching a stick we found.






This clip show off his recall. It's still in the works, but I was very happy that he left the large group of new dogs and came to be from so far away.






Be prepared for many more videos! My vision is to video tape him doing agility :) I need to monkey with the mount a little since parts of the video (like when he was running full force) are too bouncy and hard to watch. I'd like the camera to be more steady so we'll see what I can come up with.