Yesterday Magic went to his first audition. It was a photo shoot with costumes. He did great, gave me expression and ears, but we will need to see if he works for the client. (Honestly, while he was cute in the costumes, I probably wouldnt hire him for it, he is too big for the medium size and putting a corgi on the large size would probably be confusing for the consumer) . Then he had a few photos taken with a ball, some just holding it, others catching and jumping. I was only able to see a few of those, but gosh they were cute. I am thinking that the photographer will probably post at least one, so when she does I will share it.
Today was his flyball class. He is doing so well in that class and he just loves it. Well he loves it when he gets to work, the rest of the time he waits impatiently. It's really interesting to me how we are really chaining so much of this training. We are working on retrieving the ball while going around the cone as one part of the training. Then we are working on banking off the board. Eventually they will get put together. In fact tonight Magic got to retrieve the ball off of a lower part of the box off of a bit of velcro. That too will eventually mutate to the actual ball slot. Tonights class we also practices a recall with other dogs moving. Magic has no problem with that. I think they get enough of that type of thing in agility when they are waiting. Such a good boy.
5 comments:
If the cone training is working for you, great, but I thought I would share that in general, that style of training is not used any more, as it tends to produce sub-standard box turns, ending with 1-3 feet on the box rather than a solid, horizontal, 4 foot turn like we truely like to see.
Over-and-back training is probably the most popular, along with wall training.
But like I said, if it is working for you, that is great. I just wanted to share to make sure you are getting the best training like I know Magic deserves.
For me, personally, cone training resulted in spending over a year retraining my first flyball dog's turn after she fell completely apart in her first tournament.
Thanks Crystal! Actually we are doing the over and backs as well, we just didnt have time for them in last nights class. Since this is the first dog I have trained, I honestly dont know hwats right or wrong, and anm just hoping we are doing OK!
Totally understand that sentiment! It wasn't all that long ago that I knew nothing at all of flyball except what my instructor told me. I've since worked really hard to learn a great deal.
I really don't want anyone else who is new to the sport to end up in the situation I did, of spending over a year retraining my first dog because of mistakes I made in training (as contrast, my second dog trained ran completely clean at his first tournament, after only 1.5 months of training, and only in a full line up for 2 weeks).
I know how discouraging it is to get to a point where you have to throw out everything you thought you knew about it and start back over from the begining.
Magic leads an exciting life! A photo shoot one minute, then on to action sports. Impressive.
Also, now you can put "animal talent manager" on your list skills!
I know how you feel about the size thing -- It's why I didn't bother to come up with Secret for this one. I found out at the last Target audition that they don't care what size your dog actually is -- They have to fit into the size listed for their particular breed. Secret managed to squeeze into the Medium, but it looked ridiculous. Even though the Large would have fit her perfectly, it didn't matter because "Border Collie" is not listed on the size Large bag. Come on, like consumers could tell that the dog was wearing a size Large on the Medium sized package? I think they should go for the dog they like best and worry about the "appropriate size" second.
And don't get me started on the fact that Target refuses to so much as look at a Klee Kai. Hmph. I had Kaiser along at the last audition and while they were definitely curious about him, they wouldn't even let him wear their sample stock for consideration.
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