Obedience going forward to OB4 level

Box training

Freya doing some rally-ob

Freya has been working on the tasks in OB4. It has been so much fun. First we started to work on the box task. Freya needed to learn to run straight to emptiness. I started to work on it with a foot target which I moved to different locations and distances. My goal was to make learn to focus her work straight forward and also to go as long I stopped her with cue or she reached the target mat. I also teach her to go straight to nose touch to wall. This training was to help her handle the situation where she need to run against a wall in small competition. So far my plan has worked out really well and she super focus when we do the forward sends. Time will tell what challenges are ahead. First will the markings on the ground. This will be our first distraction challenge.

I have done the running part separate from sending forward. I have put Freya straight in front of me and starting send to left and right to the box. Freya has finally got the idea of running in the middle of the box. She has been super. Her speed and accuracy has improved million times. It has so fun the work with her. Next is to back chain the two part together. She has learn this little change to the task really fast.

Going around with sit/down/stand and retrieve with jump

This task has been my favorite ever! So many little things to train. I have mostly trained the positions in the wood by going around the trees then I get easily few repeats with nice brakes. Having brakes between positions stops usually gives more quality to the work. Freya can to max of three super good stops. So if I want to keep them super I need train them as less as possible in one session.

Other part has been the retrieve with the jump. First we have worked on retrieve part. Freya needed to learn to lift the dumbbell from down to up. She usually has pushed to dumbbell little on to the ground first and then picked it up. This created a problem that the jump came to fast to her and it didn’t look good enough. We started to work this problem by putting the dumbbell to little stool which she had to picked from to retrieve. It took only few tries and Freya started to change way she took the dumbbell to her mouth. I took this helped retrieve behind a jump from where we started work on rest on chain. Freya improved work superbly. I think we going to a right direction with this. Next step is to try all these chains together so little backchaining work ahead.

Distance control

We have been working her technique a lot to make even better. I have done some body balance training and also work with the back legs. I have tried to improve the control in her body. It has started to pay off and she has done super work. I have done technique from close up from 5 m and then 1^st changes from 20 m or more. So I’m trying to work the distance and control in separately. So far so good. I have also used a mat to get her better sense to keep her hind legs still. There are so many little things you can improve at the same time to work your way to the end goal. Years I have make me better at braking skills apart to make awesome together. We have still long way WC level work but it fun to try improve even the little things in our distance control.

Recall with stand and down

Recall has also a lot of element that need to be trained separately. Stops can be work on walks and also high speed recalls. Then we have try to make stops more interesting with recall game with two people where the dogs runs back and forward between two persons. Then you can make stop and give backround reward behind the dog. This little game has helped to make the stops even better. We usually do about 4-6 runs or less. This game is also a very demanding physically so better keep the repeats low to get high quality performances. More is less!

That's all for now!! I hope to get some awesome pics of Freya doing OB work because she is just a perfect ob princess <3

 MPF

End of Year 2016

Last part of 2016

New has begun and new winds are blowing. I want to take look at the last part of the year 2016. Both girls had some brake from agility and we focused our work to other sport like obedience, rally and nosework. Our goal was to really get into the training and enjoy other sports than agility. This has been a very successful brake and we got lot of progress in all of the task we did.

First of course was a reaching of big goal in obedience which was to get a 1st prize result from the winner class (OB2 FCI). We finally did it with Freya on our Indenpence day 6th of December. Freya did wonderful job at trial even though we got a zero from stay. There was another dog that yelled before the task started and in the end came out of the ring. This was just too much for Freya and she stood up and went back down. So something we need to work on. Otherwise she did her work pretty well. Here is some video of her work in that trial:

Kong Prize and testing some new Acana kibbles

I had some luck in the Clicker Expo and won the raffle at the Kong stand. My girls won 12 toys form the Kong company. This was an excellent prize. My girls just loved the prize. They have with us in training ever since. One thing I also got was a Wobbler which is a plastic toys that you can put kibble and dog has to push to get it out of it. The Wobbler was big hit Pixie and loves playing with it. Here is some video how it work. This was also first time she tried Acana new Kibble Cobb-Chicken Greens. 

Wintery Scenary Dec. 2016

Our Acana Kibble Cobb-Chicken tasting went well with Pixie but my younger dog Freya didn't really fancy it.  Cobb- Chiken is grain free kibble that is one the new tastes in the series. Freyas favorite was the new Acana Classic Prairie Poultry. This food contained some oats but this seems to be ok grain for both of my girls and gives them carbohydrates to high speed performances like agility. Classic version has also freeze dried liver which might have been the winner taste for Freya. I liked it also that you could get bigger bags like 17 kg which is nice when you more than one dog at the house. We have tried bigger bags of both foods to my dogs but their favorite has been the Prairie Poultry. We will see what we should try next.

So new year has begun and lots new plans have been done. I will tell more about it later on. Next post will be update from my coach course with SAGI and from our Nosework Scent test tomorrow!!


MPF