Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Living room ob and search work at fake ruins

I got a autumn flu last week. So I needed get dogs some activity without wearing me out. So we got a change go to fake ruins to train search. This was Freyas 2nd time at this place. She had two persons that in the hiding at the first round. First person was pretty easy. She was hidden in a concrete tunnel. Freya needed to enter it from a little hatch. She did just brilliant.

Second person was hidden in a wooden maze on a open field. First she got a scent but couldn't find a right pile. When she located the right pile she needed to find right route to target person. It took a while but didn't give up and found a way in from the roof the maze. Freya has really got a talent to searching. I have really started warm up to a idea that this would be one our sports. She loves to run and find people.

After this training I really got sick and I needed to do even more quiet training. So it was time to enter our living room to a special carpet training. Big pile of treats and clicker only thing you need to make dogs days super as ever. My plan was to teach some basic stuff. I ended up training more one thing together.

Freya trained her sit, down and stay while healing. I can only say that she was super good. I got finally stop fast and accurate. I did this with turning strait back at her few times and after that she got the idea. I did find out that she got little depend on the hand movement so needed also train healing while my arm was moving in different directions. But in the end we got it all together. Now I just have take this all to different places and make it work as well it did at home.



Second thing Freya work on was backing up a figure 8 between my legs. It took only one little finger target help to make her go backwards and rest just went like a charm. Circle round my right leg was much easier than the circle round my left leg. We are now at a point that she can make the whole figure 8 with few rewards. It will take just a little bit more training and we will have it. I o'boy she does it fast!! :D

Third thing we worked on was object retrieve. I used gloves, phone cover and wooden stick. I wanted Freya to learn to return any item I wanted. This is one part for SAR work where she need to find object left by humans and bring them to me from marked area. She has done already research part but our retrieve hasn't been good enough that Freya would return the items to me straight away.

Pixie worked on a working dog trial recall and retrieve. The difference from ob is that she need to come in front of first before she goes to healing position. This actually worked really well. I did first just position in front of me and then I did recall from few meters. Retrieve training I started from the front position and gave her the dumbbell and moved few cm just to make come to me again. After few of these session I did the whole retrieve chain and to my surprise Pixie just did it right!! Smart girl!! Now we just need to take it to bigger scale and get few more session. I think that will it.

So even when you can do lots of things in your living room. Even if you train for competition level work.

That's for now!!!

MLPF

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Agility update and summer feeling

Pixie has been so cool in agility. I have been inspired by the videos from European Open. I noticed the speed and freedom of movement in during the courses. Especially Jenny Damn and Lilly video really impressed me. I could see that I have a brake on all the time in agility. So got really a boost to change a bit of our way of working. We have been training ever since more faster ways move on the course. I have bed habit of staying and waiting Pixie and also to try to make her slow down all the time. I have know tried to make our work faster and more fluent. So far so good!!! I so hope we get to experience one day WC or EO. Pixie is a dog that has all that it takes to be successful in those competitions. We just need to take our work a little bit father again.

I can only just say that our training has really change since these feelings from the videos. I have found the fire to do agility again. Pixie has also grown a lot in a year. As team we have had our very downs and we have had to rise and fight again. But I can see know our goal and route how to get there. I think there still be up and downs but Pixie deserves to get a ticket to conquer the world.

We have a dream. We have a destination, We have a goal. We are ready for the journey.

Freya has been working on jumping technique. She has improved millions miles! She has done basic work out and the rising series. She has been super! Her back legs are starting to work. Still not perfect and still we need physiotherapy but we are getting on a right directions. She has also started to work on the running dog walk. I have just tough her run over a plank. First she just run pass it but soon she got the idea. We will how this project will go on. Start was ok.

We also spend 3 day at my parents summer cottage. Three days of full of swimming and running. Here are some feeling from our little holiday: