Todays seminar was distance work. I get pretty good distance with Magic, but his criteria for contacts is gone. He leaped off every a frame from about a foot above the yellow. I don;t know what to do with him. We had a good running contact before- its gone completely. I dont want to do 2 on 2 off I think its too hard of an angle. Maybe I need to re-train a down on the ground, or a sit at the bottom. Thoughts anyone?
On the positive side, I can work almost 20 feet away and we can layer obstacles fairly well. The problem is that I didnt do enough foundation work. He was my first agility dog, and well, we did not get enough of the basics. Our classes were pretty much obstacles from the beginning. Which is probably OK for a dog that works beside you (like Grace) but not so good away. And I dont have enough understanding to be able to do it alone, so maybe if I can get Grace into the beginners class I can learn more and know what to teach better? At least that is my goal. So since I really wanted to earn Magics ARCH this year I think we will focus on that. (While I learn more hopefully) So now I am planning on the APDT here in February and hopefully I can afford the one in Des Moines too.
I kind of feel like I am giving up, but I don't want to make our issues worse either.
4 comments:
Does Magic do target work? If he does, give him a target just a bit off the end of the A frame - like 1.5 body lengths away. Then he will HAVE to run through the yellow so he can get the fabulous treats you will leave on the target.
Oooh, we'll have to chat if we both decide to do Des Moines. It was a great trial last summer!
Hope to see you in Des Moines! :)
how did you train the running contacts? if you really trained it well then it wouldn't hurt to go back and do a quick review. If however you think you were just lucky, then I would decide on either seriously retraining running contacts from the beginning or deciding on new criteria.
I really wanted to do running with Lance and decided on Silvia Trkman's method. I spent months on it and while we made a lot of progress it is a ton of work to begin with and lance's body shape did not make it easy. When winter arrived I decided i no longer had the time to devote to the training and switched methods. Now lance has a 2o2o on the dogwalk and a 4 on the floor (down) on the aframe. It hasnt been that long so Lance still has a mat at the bottom of the aframe but so far he loves it and it's much easier for him to understand.
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