Sunday, December 28, 2014

Freya's agility training

Slalom training
Freya is almost 1 year old so couldn’t resist on starting to train slalom.  I decided to use the same technique that I had used to train Pixie. I put clear plastic rails on the slalom sticks to create a tunnel for the dog. This time I used leash with a help to make her stay in “the tunnel” the first few times. On first session my goal was to make Freya understand keep in the plastic rails. This part went pretty easy.
Second session our goal was to make her do the slalom from both directions and to see does she change her focus from the rails to slalom sticks. This is the most import point in slalom training. When the dog changes the focus straight to the slalom sticks, it is time to start removing them. Our second session was super and Freya’s focus was on the slalom sticks but I only took 2 goes from both sides and left it there.
On our third training session I did first slalom with all the rails on the stick and after I started remove them 2 at the time from the middle. I ended the session with only two rails on the end and on the beginning. Freya was just super. She got the idea of slalom super fast and even tried to accelerate towards the end (this didn’t work out yet). We need to build a little bit of muscle in woods to make hold herself better in the slalom.  Freya has still some weakness in her back part of body and I think she is still growing a bit. So at this point our slalom training will be hold back to wait her get more body control. 
Running contacts
This has so much fun and Freya has been so cool!!!!!! We have started to do running dog-walk between two obstacles so that it will start to work as a part of a course. Also I have started to make handling maneuvers to the end of dog walk. I have made runs behind a jump and ask her to turn with a turning cue. Freya was super in this training session. She didn’t try to jump too early from the dog and turned really well in the end of DW and straight towards me. I always start and end RC session with straight line runs just keep her good spacing to a contact zone as good as possible.

I have also have done now our first real A-frame session. At this point she has just run it over to get used to the obstacle. I could only watch with great fear when she ran the A-frame to first time today. She jumped from front contact zone straight to other contact zone. She did hit the contact but this way of doing the obstacle was totally unacceptable. So no reward and she got another try. This time she really ran the contact obstacle with two canter strike on both sides. This was what I hoped it would be come. After doing a nice ground work with DW, the A-frame seems to come together pretty easy. Freya did 5 nice runs over the A-frame and each time did perfect. Now need to just make as part of course training so that I can do whatever I want and she will do the same way every time.  

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