Pixies' dog dancing depyt

Dog dancing - finally we entered a competition. This has been a dream for a while. Pixie has done lots of tricks for her whole life. Finally I had time to train and take part in dog dancing. We really started training for this routine about three months ago and made it to its final from 1 month before the trial. We had also heat during this time so we couldn't train our routine in arena or with music. So I did lots of work by training the routine by myself and Pixie did little part on our living room mat.

Last Saturday we finally hit the ring. I had never been to a dog dancing competition so all was new to me. Competition started with 10 minute time to get to know to ring. You were aloud to bring your dog with you. So we did some distraction clicker training for few minutes and then I took my headphones and walked the through the routine without my dog. After this it was waiting for your turn. To my surprise it took some time to write the commentary after each performance. So you had a lot of time between each performance. We did few tricks as warm up routine and then we went to wait our turn to waiting area. It was really scary to walk in the ring for the first time. I just knew, I had to just start doing our routine see how it goes. We did few mistakes but in the end our team work looked good and total performance was fluent. End result 177/ 200 point and winning of the beginner class!!! This was more than amazing start in this new sport. Now we just need to work on new routines and head for the next class.

Here is the video of our routine in the competition:

That's all for know!!!

MPF

Quick note from Jaakkos training from yesterday

Agility training with Jaakko

Pixie 2011

It had been a long time since last training session Jaakko. Pixie had had a 3 week brake from agility do to Freya’s kennel cough. We had course with 36 obstacles. First round we did a competition run. We did pretty well. At one point we had few dropped bars from my bad handling. Next we did some talking about when to choose front cross or blind cross. This lead to interesting conversation about the dogs’ line. Do I see the realistic line or the perfect fantasy line? This was a very good note. I often think too much about “fantasy line” and get frustrated when we don’t achieve it. This really gave a good aspect to think when I train and plan my actions in a competition. There are just few things dogs really can do and some things you have accept. Some turns are tight and some will have longer curve to it. You just need see beforehand to make right handling maneuver.

Pixie 2011

Other matter we had was rhythm. I had few spots that I started to run way too early and made Pixie work in inefficient mode. When go too far it makes Pixie a little bit unsure and this shows in the speed. It very small change but it could be difference between winning and losing. It is my job to give my dog support as much as it need even though Pixie can do many things on her own. This is something I need to remember before I just start running fast away from her and have to wait her on another spot without any movement. We need to learn to keep the flow in our motion. 

Here are some nice runs from 3 weeks ago. Pixie did two clean runs:

That's All for now!!!

MPF