Freya to A3 in agility and winner class in ob

Agility

Lots of things has happened since last time. Freya finally rise to A3 and will be competing with Pixie next weekend in the highest class in agility. We have lots of little things to work on with Freya. She has had some problems with jumping again and by this I mean she jumps with a crazy big space of air between her and the bar. But we have lots of time make her work better with that. With her running contact we have worked on turns. We getting close to our target.

With Pixie we have done lots of work with contacts. She has finally started to make as trained in competitions. Our old problem of dropping of one bar in each course has come back to hunt. At this moment it feels like Pixie is a standard 5 fault dog. So yet again we have work to do. This has been really hard on me. We have been used to be one of the top pairs...... Patience, I need lots of it.

Here are our work from last few week:

Obedience

I have almost forgot. Freya got her first prize in open class obedience (OB1). We had a nice trial. Only thing she didn't do was going down from my side. This has never been a problem in training but I guess she was little too tense to listen properly. Otherwise she did super. Her healing is just so good. I need work on our full turn it didn't look nice when I saw it from the video. Little things to work on but we on our way higher classes. Here is our work from the trial:

At this point we have started to do all the new tasks coming in the winner class. So far so good. Especially our directed retrieve is super cool!!!! Freya was born to do it!!! Sit-down-stand has been super also. I have worked on her head position to make her look forward. This has also worked also super good. Our only challenge right now has been scent discrimination. Freya has had way too much speed and she brings usually the next one from the right one. Too much speed and not enough concentration. So I have started train it again from the start. So that's a little bit of our ob work. Here is video of distance control from today:



Next time full text about dog dancing! Pixie and I have started Michele Pouliots dog dancing online course. I have been so excited about our new sport! Next week I will go check Nordic Champs in Helsinki to get new ideas.

That's all for now!!!!!

Marianne, Pixie and Freya

Testing some new things and working on old ones

Do as I do protocol

There has more and more studies coming out about social learning used in dog training. Recent topics has been mimicry where dog are teach to copy a behavior from another dog. Second hot topic has been copying a behavior from an example from human ( Topa et.al 2006). I was fascinated by both topics. I have shown my younger dog always performance of my older in obedience. I know she probably wouldn’t pick up the whole thing but I have always thought she might learn something. The most interesting was the copying protocol. Ken Ramirez had a nice lecture in the new training frontiers in Clicker Expo Europe and this inspired me try this with my own dogs. Plan was to use this method in dancing routine.

I have started to my work with the basic protocol where you use 3 familiar behavior that are under a cue. I chose sit pretty, lay down and volt (dog goes around counter clockwise). Behaviors needed to be easy demonstrate with my own movement. First step was introduce copying cue. I did my behavior first and then I gave “Do it!” cue followed by my cue to dogs wanted behavior. I repeated all 3 tasks in random order with this protocol in short session. It took Pixie about 4 repeat to start reacting to copying cue. In of my first session she was able to repeat all three behaviors from my example. Freya had problem of starting always the sit pretty behavior before I got time to give her behavior cue. She will need another session to figure it out. Although I did with her a copying test without any commands and she did three different touch behavior correctly. So I can’t wait use this to behavior they don’t know! So much fun!

Obedience training with Freya

Our open class test is getting nearer and nearer. I have worked on our tasks through and I’m trying make as full behavior chains. Box training has had its testing phase as it worst but I think / hope it’s starting to be over. Freya has worked really well under different distractions and has started ignore a ring guides commands to me. We have still work ahead but everything starts to look really good. Especially healing and sit-down-stand during healing. I have managed to build very high drive healing that is also really accurate in turns and position.

We had box problem a month ago that Freya went around of mark post on the front. After I fixed that we had a problem going around big mark object. She just stopped seeing it. I tried to show her where it was but still she could start running around the training area without any goal to do something. It took few session and we got the basic going around behavior back. Then I wanted make a sure she watched the mark cone on cue. I put few mark cones all over the training are and started walk around then took straight line randomly to each cone. On the second try Freya tried to go around the first mark cone which was behind me. But this was goal of the exercise to make her focus her look to mark cone that is straight front of us.  

Clicker Expo Europe 2015 - just pure fun!

Clicker Expo Europe 2015

Wow!! I had one the best days of my life. Expo was very well organized by Positive Animal Solutions. We had wonderful expo shop were we could fill our library with dog training books and dvds. I bought a big pile of them to get even more information but the best part was still the lectures. There’s lot of topic choose from. I wanted to see as many of faculty speak as possible. My plan really paid off! Each speaker had gave a lot to think and learn even though some topics were familiar to me. One person I waited the most was Ken Ramirez and he sure didn’t let me down. He was just super at giving lectures. Very lively and I got lot of insides in both topics I went to hear. Actually all the lecturers were just super! So big thanks to the whole faculty!

I learned so much new training techniques and also new stuff for my old training tools that it will take some time to get everything in use.  Since I have come home I have made new training plans for own dogs and I have started design a puppy class. My plan is to build up more course plans as digest all the things I have learned but first my own dogs will be my little test animals. I have tested already some training protocols like Do As I Do. It is still an ongoing progress but I have had a little taste of it how it works. One thing I have also given deeper thoughts has been back chaining. I have used is a lot but I had little wakening in Cecile Kostes lecture how I can use it with even more power. I will tell more about the things I have learned but now I show you few things we have done since I came back home.

Platform work – Michele Pouliot

Platform work has been something I have read about many times but always thought that I wouldn’t have any use for it. This time I wanted learn more about it and I found out that I would have more than one thing I could use it for. My goal is to teach Pixie more dog dancing tricks so we can enter to a competition and I will use platforms to teach Freya a working dog trial recall. So I started to do some foundation work with my dogs. Here is a bit of our work so far:

Paw Crossing

I have seen paw crossing trick many times but finally I had energy to start building it up. I used had target to get the paw movement going. Now later on I learned that it would have been better to use a target stick because the dogs got really stuck to any movement of my hands. In the end I got what I wanted. I want to make this work with a verbal cue and with a leg cue. So far I have given the movement a cue but still use hand as a help but most of the time my dogs don’t need it. Here is a video of our second session:

Orijen Tundra

Pixie waiting for Platform training

It has been also wonderful to test our new sample from Orijen. This time we had a new Orijen Tundra. This is grain free kibble with lots protein that is comes from multiple sources like venison and goat. My dogs went just wild with it! It smelled very yummy for them and we did all our training above with it. I use a kibble for basic training to keep my dogs calmer and in right drive to learn new stuff. Also by this I can control better the energy in take. Orijen Tundra was almost too good but it gave my dog nice high drive to work. I love to use high protein treats in our training and Orijen Tundra was just a perfect for it!