Agility and Nosework

Winning yourself

Last Sunday Pixie and I went to agility competition in Nummela. On first run I took a goal that I would keep my plan even though it seemed to be choice that you had to hurry. I was so happy that I did it even though my plan didn't go totally ok. I won myself on this run. I need to do this more often. Safe way isn't always to coolest :D :D

Second run I trained contacts and on the last one I did handling sequence all over to show myself we could do it. After this they I felt like I had won myself two times even though we didn't actually win anything. But I think this will takes us more forward than just keeping it on the safe zone. When is the last time you took a risk and went off from your safe zone??

Here are video's from last Sunday and week before:

Nosework training in a farm

We went to a farm of Koirataito to train our Nosework skills. We did a scent discrimination line in tack room of a horse stable. It had lots of different distraction smells so it was a challenging environment to my girls. At this point we had only trained in our house and in our back yard. First I loaded them with a target smell (click and smell from a glass jar with target smell). After this I send them to the scent line. First we did was quick rewards as soon as they hit the target. 

Next round they had give a sign that they had found it. We did few round like this and we started to teach target smell expression and a showing after it. My both dogs express their find by laying down. This is a problem if the target smell is high of the ground. I wanted to add a cue that they need to show by nose target the location of the target smell. This action chain came together pretty fast.  Now I just need to built even stronger.

Pixie's homework was to make her express her findings better and start doing more harder tasks. With Freya I need do more straight reward repeats to built up her confidence in her smelling work. She has a strong target expression but this can give you false target expression if she feels unsure. So work a head of us but this has super fun for all of us this far. 

That's all for now!!!

MLPF