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Thursday, August 23, 2012

LG Slayte NA, NAJ

We've been to two trials since my last post. Aug 11-12 weekend was a really solid weekend for Slayte. He Q'd in both FAST runs. The novice sends were not an issue at all. He Q'd in both novice JWW runs and one standard run. The first JWW run was completely clean and smooth and second was good too except that he missed the weave entry. Those two Q's finished his NAJ! His standard run on Saturday was really good too. Contacts were all really solid. In Sunday's standard run, I did a front cross before the aframe which shortened up his stride and he ended up missing the aframe contact. He also self released off the dogwalk because the tunnel was calling to him. Qing 5 out of 6 runs was just incredible for the baby dog! Enzo q'd in standard on Sat and just missed a double q by one bar in JWW. Grrr.

Last weekend was just horribly hot. Close to 100 every day and more humid than normal for around here. I don't function all that well in that kind of heat but the dogs did ok. I ran Enzo 3 days and Slayte two days. Enzo only q'd in one JWW run and one standard for the weeked. We missed a double q by one bar again! On Friday Slayte had a bar and would only do 10 weaves in T2B. In open JWW he did the weaves but got an off course tunnel. Then in standard he had a flying teeter flyoff. The teeter barely tipped before he came off the end. Not sure if he was too excited or thought it was the dogwalk. He did hesitate a bit at the top of the upramp of the dogwalk. I also pulled him off a jump because I overdid it on turning cues. Such a big difference between Enzo the missle and Slayte the gumby dog.

Slayte's T2B run on sunday was pretty nice so I bought the video even though we didn't Q. He was about 3 seconds behind the fastest 20" dog who is a really fast BC. I tried another front cross before the aframe and that shortened his stride up again. But hey he got his weave entrance and he did all 12! Lol. We can't really practice weave entrances at a lot of speed in our yard. He does fine in class so all that should come with experience. In open jww he did good except for blowing by the weaves and then popping out at 10, twice. Novice standard had another course that teally needed a front before the aframe. I didn't want to do that and I haven't practiced severe pushes off the aframe so I just let him come off in front of me and stepped behind him. Also missed the weave entry again and didn't stay on the table. Good enough for a Q in novice so that finished his NA! Really proud of him running so well in the heat too.
Also bought a video of Enzo's JWW run from Sunday because it was one of our better runs in a while! He got first place in this run too.


Saturday, August 11, 2012

Slayte's first time in AKC Novice

On July 29, I ran LG in AKC Novice standard and JWW and he got his first two Q's! Hooray for the baby dog! Neither run was perfect but jumpers was clean. All the mistakes were handling induced and lg did his job. It is a little strange for me to go out with my baby dog and actually have him do exactly what I would expect him to do! Enzo was a wreck in standard the first time I ran him. Enzo didn't want to lay down or sit on the table, refused the chute and I completely forgot to expose him to a panel jump. Probably didn't perform his contacts correctly either. This time I made sure to prepare lg for the things that we forget to train properly. Enzo ended up moving into Ex JWW very quickly but it was several months later before we could Q in standard.

Lg's stopped contacts are also way more solid than any other dog I've trained. I did two things differently. First I trained the behavior without a nose target. Our puppy class instructor Geri, had us teach the end position on the teeter first. No props just hop on the end into 2on/off. I did have him lay down on the end at first since he didn't want to shift his weight back before. It was much harder to teach and took longer but I think he understands better. The other thing that I did differently was to fade food rewards early on. I feel like my other dogs would get "ringwise" when they quickly realized they weren't getting a cookie in the ring. So sometimes Slayte gets rewarded with a toy and sometimes he gets to continue. Time will tell but even in these early stages I can see that the behavior is much stronger.

Here is his JWW run. I over pulled him on that first turn because I was worried about the jump to the left. That is a typical Enzo move. Hard to switch gears for me. The closing line was pretty hard. It was a very slight zig zag. I was hoping to run it as a straight line but that didn't quite work out. Not suprised. The rest was great and he nailed the weaves. I just need to remember to not rush ahead at the weaves.


Then Standard. I tried to shape his approach to the dogwalk and over did it a bit but it worked out fine. He did a great stop at the end. I probably released him a little too quick but I got excited and said Yes! as soon as his front feet hit. His aframe contact was borderline. He was doing great on the aframe and then he started one striding so when I marked that he started shortening up a little. That started just a couple weeks ago. Last night in class our instructer told me that maybe I need to stay closer and that seemed to help. He drove really nice to the table, didn't fall off, and stayed when I led out! Awesome! I didn't really handle the next part well. I ran up too far before rear crossing the chute so he didn't see it at all. In hindsight, I led out far enough that a front cross before the chute would have been easy. We still got the Q though since you can have faults in novice! Love that. I really want to get out of novice and open quickly so I don't have to wait all day! The waiting is painful.