Saturday, July 11, 2015

It's all about Freya

Freya’s training


Agility


Freya has finally reached a competition age. Freya has super to train with. Her hardest parts have been jumping. She has done super going around the wing but her jumping cross along the bar has been a challenge. We have done a lot of jumping work to make her take off by the wing and not from the last third of bar. I don’t know how to say this problem clearly in English. But here are some pics from our jumping work and problems.



Running contacts has been our biggest job. This has been a first time I have done dog that has running A-frame and dogwalk. This project has gone pretty well. I have done our work with shaping and using a toy target.  Freya has responded to my training very well. My goal was also to do working verbal cue to turning after contact zone. This process is a still going on but she has done pretty hard stuff already. I think this will be whole life project but I like our work so far. We have done most of our work in contact obstacles so we will see how we will do on whole course.



In overall Freya is very easy to handle and she gets new stuff in just few tries. Slalom entries were done in few sessions. Her ability change her behavior after mistake is phenomenal. If she doesn’t get rewarded she stops and thinks. Usually on the next try she does it perfectly. Our lack off course work shows in our work but I think she will catch up my handling in no time.  She improves every single time. I just need to remember to reward her every time she responses exceptionally good to my handling. My bad habit is to keep running when she is doing super work. Our rhythm on course is getting better and better even though sometimes we have different routes.  :D One thing is that Freya has a very strong jump and this makes it sometimes hard predict where she will land. Good thing from this is that Freya has no problems with bars!

Obedience


What can I say? Freya is a super learner which makes obedience training super easy. She has nice high drive while we work but still she can keep mind working all the time. We have started all ob tasks that will be ahead of us. It’s been really exciting to train because our ob rules change in August. I have had even more motivation because I have had to done lots of work to new create training routines to the new tasks. I have usually tested my training plans with Pixie and then use them with Freya. I hope to built Freya as good as possible and even achieve National Champion level.

Scent discrimination training as advanced really well after I started pine cone training. This has given me change to make more repeats and improve her skills in more difficult situations. Pine cone training has also stopped her from lifting the wrong ones and improved her scent work even more. I have been so thrilled how she works with her nose. I think our Nosework work has also given her more confident in her scent work. Soon we will start to put this all together as a competition task
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Freya’s heel work and sit-down-stand in heel work has been really good. I actually could do heel work with her all the time. Freya has really good energy and very nice contact. Her position work in heeling has becoming better and better. I do lots work sit-down-stand outside to healing to improve her cue discrimination. As I wrote before our next goal is to make her stand without turning her head. I have used a treat target at this point. My plan is to start training her with Z-walk with mark cones. I will test what she likes if I have sometimes a toy behind the mark cone so she would have front target. This will probably keep her from turning around when go behind her. At first this might lower her speed and accuracy when I built the reward but hope it will improve the total outcome.


That’s a little bit about Freya. She has been just a perfect girls scout in training (saying in Finnish). I couldn’t ask for a better training partner! Thank you Jane!


MLPF   

Monday, July 6, 2015

Why do I want to become a WC in agility?

Why do I want to become a WC in agility?


This is a very good question.  I have always wanted to be world champion in agility but never thought why.  What is my real motivation to reach this goal? I took a little while to answer this. My first thought to get fame to my dog. This is really a very shallow purpose because this really doesn’t matter to my dog. Other thing is to challenge myself to become super good at something.  I am also a patriot so hope that my dog can bring honor to my country. These reasons did raise some feelings but not very strong ones. I really got the strongest feeling of becoming the best agility handler.

So how do you become a best agility handler? I need at least 10 000 hours of training. This has been scientifically proved that you need 10 000 practice hours to become excellent in something. Of course people have some skills that can give first advantage in the beginning of carrier but to become excellent in something you need practice, practice and practice. So I have trained now 10 years agility but I haven’t done my job so intensive that I could say have done work worth of 10 000. I have done this my first years with more emotion than really analytical way. So if we got to the National Team we would really need luck to reach it. I haven’t done my “homework” well enough to say that I’m excellent in agility.


My next goal is to change my training and my other life to support more my goal. I have started to write training diary again and also I plan my training session ahead. I want to get the maximum effect from the training each time and analyze my training from videos. I also know that I can learn more agility by training other so it’s time for me to go back to training other teams. I can train with my dogs only a certain amount but I can repeat my skills every time I teach them to someone. Also from teaching other I can see things what dogs don’t know how to do or get a new idea in training when I have solve a problem of my student. Altogether I need to step up my act to reach my ultimate goal. This thinking has given me a lot of more motivation. I have seen better what I can do better to become what I want. It will be a never ending story but this beginning has too sloppy to really take where I wanted. 

Jukka Pätynen / Koirakuvat


Thoughts after National Team Tryouts


I wrote this blog post before I went to National Team tryout. Pixie did the same mistake she did last year and jumped A-frame contact. This was really a thing I didn't like. She has done 2on2off contacts very well in the last competitions and she never makes this mistake in training. So I was really disappointed to her work. She just got too much steam in her head to make it well. We will see if we can fix her drive issues in big competitions. I was happy of my work in the course. I was calm and kept the contact to her. I know her problems come from the running contact training and I'm not sure can I fix her to be a dog that I can trust on the course. I have had to "fix" our problems too much. I haven't enjoyed competing the whole year. Well in jumping we have had our moments but I hope we will get the same feeling to agility runs.


That's for know.. Soon update of Freya.. She has reached competition age!!!!!

MLPF