Agility Revival

I’m super pleased how popular and well attended the UKI nationals were – they are definitely the biggest, most competitive actual competition in the country. Now, because they will never move from Florida that means I’ll never go, but it makes me happy to see fabulously trained dogs actually GOING for it, not just trying to get a Q on pinwheels. Agility is still alive, though it seems mostly on the east coast. I certainly would not have been prepared to run those courses, not the distances or the skills. We just don’t practice the more complex stuff these days (or actually running courses!). Navarre is built for and prefers more straightforward courses, and Asher is still just a baby in terms of what we’ve worked on – and obviously Bryn hasn’t done anything along those lines. Maybe someday, when the arena is up and we can practice more.

Bright did a lot of international stuff when she was young, and I wasn’t worried about it because she was so thoughtful in what she did, and she enjoyed the twisty stuff. I still don’t want Asher doing backsides and threadles at full height (such a nutball), and I’m just focused on enjoying Bryn going forward and enjoying extension. Maybe someday, but, once again, no real reason to focus on it other than personal enjoyment, no place to use those skills other than Florida. Still, fun to watch, I love that there is still agility being done to that level in our country.

As usual, when I watch agility done really well, the most successful teams have independent skills – but the the handler works every obstacle, every line – and that never fails to work. Work the obstacles to get the lines you want, and don’t get frantic and chaotic, you have plenty of time to get where you need to go even if you stop and work everything. This shouldn’t be news to me, it’s the same damn lesson every time I watch a big event – WORK EVERY OBSTACLE. Maybe I should try that …

Back at home decided to teach Bryn the aframe this week, and, as expected, it went pretty smoothly. She already had the concept of coming down to the end of the board, so I just lowered the aframe and shaped it, then quickly moved it up to near full height so she didn’t practice anything weird at the lower heights. At least so far she looks very comfortable and hitting nice and comfortably with good rear separation even in some easy sequences. We shall see how it goes.

So, yeah, with the aframe checked off the list, the only thing left is the weavepoles, and I’d like to wait a bit longer for those. I think she’s been grown for quite some time, so I’m not terribly worried about it – but I’m also in no rush and like to go all the way through the process fairly quickly, so I want her to be ready.

Weirdly, without really working on it at all, she can suddenly collect and is responding really nicely to handling – no huge super flanking maneuvers like she did when was young. Where did THAT come from? And I have no idea how to handle a dog that actually collects, I find myself just standing there while she’s like, ‘Where are we going?’ So used to waiting for my big drifty boys to actually come into the line I’ve set! Moved the jumps up a bit, so 14 inches and that has not been an issue. Worked on a bit of jumping form with one jump this week, and she can extend those little legs at the ‘higher’ heights (16 inches), I wasn’t sure. We shall see if her form remains solid. 16 inches is really easy for her, I really hope she doesn’t measure up, such a shame to have to run my little girl in preferred – she’s got such little legs, I can’t imagine her jumping 20!

Bryn keeps being remarkably … easy. I don’t know what to do with an easy dog! She picks things up really quickly, changes her behavior if she’s not rewarded, thinks about what she’s doing and retains her behaviors without an issue. She thinks agility is super fun and has no issue with repetition or worry. She is just one fun little agility dog.

Her brother is making her look bad in herding though, Robin has him trained up and he’s going up for sale soon – he’s so fricken cute! He also didn’t end up with a ton of hair, and I’m not sure how big he is, but he’s got little legs too.

I really want someone I know to buy him, but he’s going to go for thousands of dollars, not that I know anyone that needs a trained herding dog anyway. But, yeah, fully trained and on whistles and everything. Bryn doesn’t even have flank commands yet! Oh well, she knows more agility than him, anyway …

Bonnie also met another Bryn brother – this one is a smoothie! I would never have guessed:

Navarre continues to be easy for me to run, but not so much for Dot – so we’ll see how the trial goes next week – Dot is very competitive, she doesn’t like it when it doesn’t go well! And Navarre is just happy doing whatever. But the good news is that Dot is getting a puppy next month, so I’m not as concerned about having Navarre as a back up if her current dog can’t run because of his health issues. Because when you’re 90 you get whatever you want! Dot is amazing.

Asher … oh Asher, we have now gone back and retrained the dogwalk like 8 times since our break over the summer, and he continues to act like he’s never done it before. SO FRUSTRATING, and it’s stressing him out – I know I’m running out of patience. We tried some props and other things this week, but in the end went ALL the way back to a board on a table to a bowl of food, step one. And, once again, he was like, “Oooh, you mean this!” Oh Asher, I adore you, but your constant need to have everything retrained by the VERY BEGINNING is really not fun at all. Maybe this time it will stick? Time will tell. So haven’t worked on much other than that, which just seems silly, but hey.

That’s the thing about agility vs herding training, I’m programmed to train in very small increments for agility – to only train with an excited and fresh dog, to get the behavior and then stop and not touch it again usually for at least 24 hours. This works very well for agility, I find I can progress quickly through a behavior with very little actual training time, and the time we are training is positive, fun and special. Herding trainers have very different concepts, and, oh, do they like to just keep going and going, way past the point where I ever would. But the thing is, they are two different sports – you only need your agility dog to run for less than one minute, while herding dogs need to keep it together for often 20 minutes at a time (and I’m talking competition, not actual work – if they’re actually working, they need to keep it together for hours!). I recognize that it is not beneficial to only train in very short periods of time as the dog will never gain the mental and physical stamina needed in a different sport. Still, I don’t like it, I can see when a dog is not fresh, not crisp and they’re struggling and I would have stopped long ago. I still have not reconciled the aspect of herding, and is one of the many reasons I still think agility is a lot more fun.

Did practice a bit with Asher and Bryn at Maddy’s. Worked Bryn’s outruns mostly, I also wanted to try to get her to pace herself and stay off the sheep better, but wasn’t getting the response I was hoping for. I was pleased with her outruns though, assuming she’s in the right frame of mind she was doing some pretty nice at least 1/2 field outruns where she was lifting gently. Of course, once the brain exploded, there was much buzzing of sheep, but her natural inclination is to actually pace herself on her lifts if she feels in control. Call offs were a little fuzzy, need to work those again. Definitely no lack of enthusiasm and I felt like she was trying to work with me, not through me.

Asher looked good, worked on correcting for racing into his lifts at a million miles per hour, and he was getting the idea. Driving looked good, looked at responding to things when I ask, and not five steps later. We even did a little shedding, which he’s really happy to come through, just isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do with the sheep afterwards (very smartly thinks they should go back together!).

No particular herding goals in the near future, or even any clinics or anything on the calendar. I do hope to try trialing again in the Spring with Asher, but we shall see. Been working in ‘his’ field at Maddy’s recently, where does tend to actually do everything like he knows what he’s supposed to do. It’s in other locations that he struggles, like even up in Maddy’s upper field. But it’s cold and wet and muddy, I’m okay taking an outdoor breather.

Dogs did have their massages with Maddy, we had to push back a couple weeks – Haku continues to be quite a mess, unfortunately. I have an appointment for him at the vet next week, I want to see about adding some pain and/or anti-inflammatories and see if that helps him.

We did an agility trial – with a good surface for once! Ridgefield surface is always a bit of a surprise, but it was really nice this weekend. We did a LOT of agility – I had entered both boys in four runs a day. Dot and Navarre were supposed to get some mileage, but she ended up hurting her leg, so she couldn’t run him – so I had to run my own dog. Navarre is so EASY. And to think I used to say he was a wide turning dog, he’s got NOTHING on Asher. Navarre doesn’t turn well, but he makes me realize how much work we have actually put in when Asher is throwing his body around like maniac.

It was good that we had a lot of runs, Asher got taken off several of them, and we were just training the whole time. Which is fine, that’s really the level that he’s at right now, he’s a total and complete baby. He will definitely be waiting until that magic age of four to pull his shit together. In the meantime, I didn’t care about off courses, no collection or bar knocking – but if he was just throwing himself around with no thought at all, we left. And Asher BROKE HIS STARTLINE. I’ve never in my life had a dog break a startline, well, not like that. I was completely turned around and leading out, not even looking at him and here he comes. Did he honestly think that was going to work? He was pretty mortified and actually ran back and put himself back behind the jump – dork.

So lots of knocked bars, lots of missed weaves (but not pulling out, go figure!), and lots of not responding to collection whatsoever. I definitely did not feel like we were a team for the most part, it was back to the ‘water weenie’ stage where I was just trying to hold on for dear life and cram him through things. But you know what that damn dog could do no problem? Contacts. Including TWO nice running dogwalks. Go figure. His teeters were really solid, and not a missed aframe. So at least the one thing we’ve really been working on actually stuck … for at least this trial.

So, yes, we will be going back to the beginning of collection and thoughtful jumping – SO MUCH FLINGING. And actually working courses, which we have not been doing. He just needs his foundation refreshed for the dog he is today, not the much more thoughtful dog he was when he was younger.

He did squeak out a few Qs: Open FAST, 2 Open Standard. Which for 8 runs is less than impressive, but he did have some nice stuff – and some runs that never happened because the brain was not engaged. I think I may enter him in another trial in December, which gives a month to try to pull our shit together. Might not happen, but he’s still awfully fun even if he’s not qualifying – assuming he’s not just throwing himself around. I am pretty darn sure Bryn is going to start trialing and leave him in the dust, but hey.

As for Navarre, most of the NQ runs we had were my bad handling (not supporting things!) or courses that were ridiculously tight. He was pretty perfect, including not running around ANYTHING. He’s so easy and chill in agility, running him after running Asher feels like we’re doing it in slow motion. So different than Navarre in herding! He ended up with a T2B, Double Q, Novice FAST title and an Open FAST leg. I don’t know if Dot will ever go back to running him, but I’m super glad he still gets to run – soon he’ll be seven, and that’s just crazy.

Bryn got to come in and had a blast playing at the practice jump. Oh, that girl has no actual startline, all you have to do is wait 3 seconds and she’ll break. Which, I’ll admit, I find so cute and funny. I assume she’ll get it someday, but she’s so damn excited to do ONE jump – ha! She is so mature about the trial environment. She doesn’t get worked up about the dogs running, and while she likes to give people hugs, she’s not frantically trying to greet people. She mostly just hangs quietly and maturely. I keep thinking that maybe she’s stressed, but as soon as you ask her to work she’s all animated and happy – but she’s just very relaxed hanging out in the trial environment. She’ll be coming up here in no time, so, yeah, it will be an adventure.

Haku got adjusted at the chiropractor at the trial, well, all the dogs did. Hopefully we can do Haku next month again (and that the other dogs would stop doing stupid things would be nice). Sucks getting older, poor little guy.

Lots of agility projects to work on right now, so it would be nice to have an arena to do it in! We shall see, I’m hoping at least by next February …