Practice is Magical!

Teaching at the arena here has been just wonderful. I love being able to both set up what I want for classes and work on things with my own dogs. We’ve actually been TRAINING – holy crap! And what a difference even a little planned training can make. Not, “Let’s just do a minute or two before/after classes”, but “let’s spend the afternoon hanging out and training!”. Oh yeah, I LOVE to train – now I remember! And, boy, do my dogs need it. Things that I thought they knew, they definitely do not. But, with practice, they’re remembering.

Worked on starting up some more international skills with both Bryn and Asher, Bryn can now do a push and threadle (which was surprisingly easy considering the flanky issues)! Asher can now do his threadles/pushes on 20 inch jumps (and often in sequence!)! Bryn can actually serpentine too now, it’s amazing what actually breaking down the skills and training then can do. Bryn can even now get through that stupid box figure eight without flanking off through the box! I’m now having an issue that she’s not just carrying on obliviously to everything and I actually have to PUSH her to things, not just stand there like a lump, what a novel thought. And she can turn so tight when she wants to. She still has flanking issues, but we are actually making progress, and that feels good.

Running dogwalks are also making progress, I don’t want to jinx it, but with more frequent and targeted training, Asher is acting like he might actually have a consistent performance again. Still a work in progress, and since Bryn isn’t driving out to things as much as she used to, struggling to get her to run and TAKE the tunnel right in front of the dogwalk, and things like that – I’m not used to that! Bryn’s weavepoles are getting way more independent, but she struggles with holding onto entries with speed and not skipping the second or third pole (typical baby dog stuff). We’ve started working on more discriminations, opposite motion, difficult rear crosses and pushing past the entry.

Continuing to work with the online jumping program, I’m not complaining that it’s been a very slow moving class. Asher continues to prove he can actually think about what he’s doing, and Bryn is being a good demo dog of what it looks like if they DON’T actually think about it. Simple exercises, I don’t know if they’ll transfer or not, but good mental and physical work for both of them. One of the more interesting exercises for especially Bryn was working on wrapping a leaf barrel with barriers, shows how much she relies on that flanking behavior as she had to completely change her trajectory to actually send straight into the ‘channel’ to go around the barrel. We will continue to work on it, I’m not unhappy with her jumping, she’s fairly natural.

Bryn is also doing a bit better with impulse control, we have more solid stays – but not as solid as they should be. She is doing better with biting me when frustrated or overaroused … but, yeah, still working on that (she’s so damn CUTE when she does it!). I find it freakish that both Bryn and Asher will just quietly and patiently wait their turn when I put them out in the viewing area of the arena while I’m working other dogs (though Asher DID just jump the wall the other day – dork). Haku and Navarre … oh hell no, you have to put them away. I did absolutely nothing to train this patient behavior with Asher and Bryn, so it’s a mystery to me where it came from – and Bryn is neither quiet or patient, so it’s particularly baffling.

I entered Asher in a USBCHA trial in May, in pronovice. Now that … is going to be a hot mess, I’m pretty sure. But never say I’m not willing to throw away $40 as long as it’s a local trial and I get to hang out with fun folks while I make a fool of myself. I’m feeling disillusioned with herding at the moment, right now everyone is telling me that I need to work on correcting the dogs, and I just don’t want to. It’s not fun. I don’t disagree with the advice, that the dogs are simply not responding to things that know how to do perfectly well. And they are not responding because they’re reacting to the sheep and feeling anxious about losing control. But if they would actually LISTEN they would see they can maintain control of the sheep a lot better by actually doing what I’m telling them to do. But, yeah, I just am not wanting to have those fights, so I haven’t been practicing. You know where you don’t have fight with your dog? In agility, and I’m just in happy agility mode where there are no sheep to make the dogs’ brains explode.

Navarre and Asher had their … second? Third? AKC herding trial with Carol. They hadn’t trialed since last year, and they have actually been PRACTICING (unlike me!) lately. So it was a good test to see if their performances improved since last year – and they had! Much more understanding and teamwork with the dogs, they really enjoy working with Carol (who does not mind at all being strict with boys, who definitely need it!). I was thrilled that Asher got both sheds on B-course, which he’s never done in competition before. I believe he was the only dog that got any sheds over the weekend, he got his shedding prowess from his dad, who is just awesome at it. Navarre still isn’t quite clear on the concept, but he had some nice stuff anyway.

Boys were trying, still had some goober stuff (and probably always will!), but Asher came away HIT on Sunday, what a good boy! Carol says Asher is really good with A-course, because he’s so responsive with the tighter area. She said he struggled more with B-course and being farther away. Navarre, on the other hand, can be way too much with the tighter A course spacing, feeling more comfortable in the big field. Both boys are about 1/3rd of the way to their herding championships, which I assume Carol will finish with them at some point. I don’t know when they’ll go again, maybe in May, we shall see. It should be noted, Carol ran both boys for two days with lots of rain and hail AND a partially detached retina – now that’s hardcore.

Took a little jaunt over to Leslie’s to get the dogs in a new location and new equipment for agility. Asher was a nut, would yank out the nails on the weavepoles when weaving, but was trying. I had Shelby run him so I could try to take some pictures, he acted … pretty darn untrained. That might be true. Bryn actually did pretty well, weaving looked good, no problem with a new teeter. Aframe was more iffy, but she improved with confidence and she was happy and pretty comfortable. I feel she’s been in a bit more of a ‘sensitive’ phase at the moment, especially with other weird dogs around. Not sure where that came from, but I’ve been using my dogs as demo dogs in classes in Hopewell a lot, and it’s interesting with just other people and dogs around how much more tentative Bryn gets. Using her more as a demo dog has been really good for her – AND she tends to be better at acting like she’s ever been trained, unlike the boys, who can tell I’m not 100% focused on them and act like goofballs.

Bryn had her third and fourth days of trialing in AKC and her confidence is increasing by leaps and bounds! Bryn got her first ever title, going three for three for her novice jumpers title. We even gave Open a try, but her brain kind of imploded. It’s kind of funny, at trials she’s really trying to drive to the next obstacle, but especially in novice standard the next obstacle is never the one right in front of the dog – which seems backwards. So lots of her shooting out and taking logical looking obstacles that aren’t actually the course. I don’t blame her though.

Things Bryn DID do at the trial – ALL the weavepoles! Teeters with no hesitation AND waiting for release. Startlines! Tables! Tires! So many things! She did, technically, do her dogwalks, but not at all like she was trying to do a dogwalk, the hits were crap. But could have been worse, I was happy with her first two standard runs. She even qualified on her first run, but second run too many off courses – ha! She got more confident and happy and excited to be there, I think she’s going to be such a fun agility dog. Really pleased with her, and I so adore running baby dogs, no matter how amok they go.

Asher had some really nice relatively thoughtful runs too, including finishing his open standard title, so finally all in excellent – complete with dogwalks that he was TRYING to do correctly! Now, he’s hitting with his FRONT feet, which is awkward as all get out, but that is a dog that is trying SO HARD to be correct – god I love him. Even qualified in his first excellent standard run (though Navarre beat him by like 3 seconds as Asher was SO inefficient). He dropped one bar, which was the first bar of the first run, but then kept them up. Jumping was flingy and frantic, but one step at a time. Contacts and weaves were mostly good, but he did pop out with a tough rear cross (but got it the second time!). Some odd course lines which he did really well with, I almost feel like we’re out there together. He still gets SUPER high at trials, squealing before we go in, but I think he’s growing up.

Navarre was kind of a dork, making things up, but maybe I’ve been working with the young dogs too much and forgetting that you really have to be SUPER OBVIOUS when running Navarre. He did beat Asher in excellent standard because Asher is so ridiculously inefficient, which is silly, as Asher is much faster. But that’s how it goes.

Navarre is seven now, which is crazy. He’s a big, not very flexible guy – so I don’t know how long of an agility career he’ll end up having. Perhaps longer than Asher, as Navarre takes care of himself! We definitely lost a lot of time during the pandemic, but it’s okay. Yes, he SHOULD qualify in AKC … but he’s still Navarre. Love that big goober, he’s my comfortable pair of slippers … but maybe more like those big slippers that look like teddy bears, that are kind of hard to walk in. Still, comfortable.

We also went to a herding ‘camp’, which was just three very long days of random private lessons where you had no idea what the other people were working on. Mostly it was just exhausting, and I don’t think I’ll do it again. Carol came out and worked the boys for most of the weekend, they are primed and ready for their next trial with her. Asher especially is really seeming to trust her and work with her better. Navarre … is Navarre. He CAN do good things, but sometimes … doesn’t. For whatever reason. Still, he enjoys the opportunity. Mostly planning to hand off the dogs for herding at the moment, I have not had the opportunity to practice and don’t feel really inspired to do so right now. It makes them happy, so we will continue, but it’s on the backburner for me at the moment.