A little scent work today.
I am not sure what happened over the last 1.5 years, but Valor has been showing stress when we practice or trial at scent work.
The only thing I can thing of is that right after losing my sister the trial we went to was Credence, Valor and myself. Credence added a lot of stress to that trip.
We have since not done an away trial just the two of us.
I decided that we are going to step back in training. 1 hide make it lots of fun. Lots of praise and treats.
Today's fitness exercise was straight sits. You want a nice 45⁰ angle spine, their feet should be straight. The front feet should not sit between the hind feet.
I need better videos.
This is credence.
Movement puzzles or The 2 bowl puzzle.
This video is after the introduction to a cone.
You start with two bowls kind of close. You place a treat or a piece of kibble in one bowl. As soon as the dog looks at the other bowl you toss a treat in the bowl.
Once your dog understands going from one bowl to the next you spread bowls.
Once they are doing that you add a cone they should got around the cone.
You keep increase the distance and the obstacles.
Teaches the dog to think and solve problems.
It was Encore's day today.
This was take 3!! I had issues this morning with the camera. LOL
Our goal was to compete in March for her level 2 rally title, but I want to work on having her level 3 ready when we compete, so I am going to hold off until the July UKC competition instead.
Hard to see, but I have his 2on2off contact training ramp out and I am working on a wait then go for jump and tunnel. I wish our living room was about another 5ft longer.
Does your canine partner tend to work better on one side than the other?
Purple Reign clearly works better when I handle him on my right side. This winter I want to have him focus and for me to handle him better when on my left.
The hardest part for me with agility is remembering to give cues before he is finished with the obstacle. This is something I really need to work on if we ever want to compete.
Today I set up one jump and worked on cues.
Purple Reign is doing awesome. Now I need to step up and become better with my cues.
Encore is such a smart girl. She learned to turn the touch lamp on in a matter of minutes. Lol
When I set it up on the shelf she went over and turned it on. Lol
I bought a new agility training tool. It is a 6ft travel plank/ contact trainer. I want to teach 2 on 2 off with Purple Reign.
I am glad I have the remote treat dispenser so I can work on getting him less focused on treats in my hand.
This is our first morning using it.
360 left and right
I have not had any time to work on Encores 360 lefts and rights since Andreas did the video earlier this month. I worked on them yesterday. As you can see she is doing pretty good (with a treat) going to the right. I think it is harder for dogs to have the pressure put on them when we turn to the left.
How does your dog do preforming these behaviors?
It has been so cold that I have not done much training as I don't want my older dogs outside in the cold. This morning I decided we could do a few minutes of training.
As you remember Andreas did the video of "Around" with Encore. This is our 3rd time working on this behavior.
I am really impressed with her progress.
UKC Level 1 Figure 8's signs 137 and 138
In rally you are going to see lots of cones being used. working your dog to tightly walk around them is going to have huge benefits in the long run as you move up in levels.
In this video Andreas demonstrates Charlie walking around the cones. Don't mind the tight area we have a riduculously smallliving room to work in. He then shows you how to work with your dog using Encore and only one cone.
Post up videos of your dogs working cones.
