Uma and Malcolm's agility blog

It's been a while

2009-06-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a really long while, in fact.
Baby's all grown up, dogs are alive and kicking. I'm apparently not the most consistent blogger in the world.

But I want to brag :-)

Uma has been catching lots of discs recently. So has Eden.
I dunno how this came about but we actually just missed a big agility trial and went to a disc dogging qualifier event instead. But it was worth it. Uma qualified for the USDDN World Championships in Cartersville, GA. I'm considering going, though I haven't made the final decision yet.

So here's one of her routines from last weekend

And here's Eden's better routine:

Aren't they both cute though totally different?

And Eden is about to make her agility debut two weeks from now. We'll see how that goes.

Two in One: Cute Baby and Frisbee

2008-09-17T03:41:00.000-07:00

Here's cute baby picking up Uma's third place trophy from the qualifier on Sept. 6:

fot. Malgorzata Kalbarczyk

fot. Malgorzata Kalbarczyk

Here's Uma working on getting that big trophy:

fot. Malgorzata Kalbarczyk

Eden working hard on her 7th place finish :-)

Cute baby with handsome daddy:

Cute baby being generally cute:

Don't be fooled by cute baby Irminka wearing blue. She is a girl, I'm simply not a huge fan of pink clothing. I didn't buy anything pink for her when I was pregnant. But we have received some pink clothes and blankets as gifts from friends, so now she does own some pink stuff as well.

Uma goes silver!

2008-09-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

Uma goes SILVER!
So I haven't been blogging much... mostly on account of not doing much doggy stuff. Agility is really still on hold, though I do practice once a week, sometimes twice if all goes well.

Anyway, Uma and Eden and I played frisbee on the first weekend of September. I entered Uma in the last disc dogging qualifying event on Saturday in Open Frisbee and Eden in the Young Dogs category. Eden was Eden and did all I could expect from her, she took a 7th out of 11, with a pretty lousy catch ratio and really wide arcs on all her returns with the frisbee. But I'm proud of her anyway, she was clearly having fun and enjoying herself and so was I. She is an aussie with all the border collie problems (low catch ratio and wide arcs) and without the border collie advantages (speed and intensity), but she has this amazing cuteness which actually encourages me to keep on working with her. And I'm not giving up on her.

Uma did well on Saturday, taking a third in the qualifier and therefore qualifying for the finals on Sunday. She had already qualified for the finals in June with Karolina, but because the two have not been training at all since that time, Karolina gave her back to me and let me compete with her. I think Uma is the only dog in the history of the DCDC Nationals to have qualified for the finals in the Open category with two different handlers. She also qualified in Toss & Fetch with Karolina.

The national finals took place on Sunday, where we did even better. On Saturday she had some 5 or 6 missed catches in each routine and on Sunday I think she had just one miss in the second freestyle.
In Toss & Fetch I jammed the first throw straight into the ground, but luckily Uma was quick enough to allow me to do 6 throws. The remaining 5 were good and she caught them beyong the 30-yard line.

This gave us a totally unexpected second place in the finals among a very talented group of dogs. This means Uma is the 2008 Reserve Polish Champion!!! How cool is that?!?!

All right, the girl who won the champonship is 14 years old, which puts our achievement in perspective, but still...
Another Aussie, Lexus, won the Saturday qualifier and came in third in the finals. Wieslaw & Lexus were really the most amazing team out there with probably the most innovative routine I've seen. I'm actually very surprised we were scored higher than they were on Sunday. Karolina and Negra had awesome freestyles and blew their toss & fetch round which put them in fourth place in the finals. But their freestyle rounds were to die for. The complete results are here: www.dogfrisbee.pl

Oh, and the weekend after that we took Eden to a herding instinct certification. This was pretty much a formality, because she works sheep on a regular basis, but she needs the certificate in order to compete in herding trials (it's a prerequisite) and I'd like to try to do a ranch trial with her next year. Of course she passed and received a very nice written description of her working style, which ended with the judge praising her stamina and fitness: "dog in excellent working shape." She was also entered in a conformation show on the same day, where she did not do anything and received a long and detailed description which ended with the conformation judge scolding her for being too lean: "chest too deep, too much tuck up, dog in too much of a working condition." Oh, I love the irony.
Not that she deserved to win anything, she has blown ALL her coat and looks kind of like a tailless rat.

Happy first Birthday Eden!

2008-07-20T01:41:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe but Eden just turned a year old. My little puppy is growing up. She still acts like a puppy and looks like a puppy (I constantly hear questions like "So how much more is she going to grow?") and I think she'll keep that puppish grin forever. She's a cutie and possibly the sweetest dog I've ever had. She's most certainly the most undertrained dog I've had, but hey, well... at least she's happy. Isn't she?

Here she is

2008-07-11T01:14:00.000-07:00

The world's most beautiful baby :-)

not dog related - -remodeling update

2008-06-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

Totally not dog related, but have to post it somewhere. Our kitchen, a work in progress...

Here's what it used to look like when we moved in:

Here's part 1 of the demolition stage:

Then we had the wall between the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom pulled down to create a breakfast nook:

Concrete on the floor:

Floor heating has just been installed:

Floor tiles and wall tiles & paint on the walls:

Cabinets in the process of being installed. The countertop still needs to be cut and adjusted:

Here Janusz is installing the oven:

And here the row of cabinets is almost ready, there will still be one more cabinet below the green one on the right hand side. These pics are taken from the breakfast nook, which is at this point empty, we need to get a table ;-)

some book/dvd reviews

2008-06-24T00:23:00.000-07:00

My due date has passed, but no baby yet. So I am officially 10 months pregnant ;-)However, since I have wrapped up everything at work that means I have some time to do stuff that does not require a lot of moving :-) Yep, for the first time in about a year I've had some time to read stuff that is not related to my dissertation (which, BTW, I have completed, submitted, it's over and done with and if all goes well and the reviews are favorable I should be PHinisheD in September).

I had been looking for a really thorough running contact program for Eden. I started out wanting her to do a 2 on/2off, but after putting quite some effort into it I just don't think she has the speed and impetus to be successful with the method I used for Uma. The basic problem turned out to be her slowing down on the descent ramp, a problem which I easily solved with Uma by upping the motivator used to reward the dog in the 2 on/2off, that is switching from treats to a game of tug. With Eden, well, the promise of a game of tug does not cause her to lengthen her stride. Noth that she doesn't like tug. She just doesn't see the point in running full speed for her game of tug.

So after some deliberation I ordered Ali Roukas Canova's Running Contacts DVD. And... I love it :-) The biggest problem I've encountered so far with all running contact methods is that they were somehow incomplete. It seemed to me that they all skipped some basic step. Or, as I think is the case with Silvia Trkman's method (or the renditions of her explaining the method that I've seen on tape, as I haven't had the pleasure of working with her)they are too mechanical and don't allow the dog to completely understand the task, to think it through. Ali's method is very detailed, thorough and it just makes sense.

In summary, she does two things at the same time and completely independent of each other:

a) she teaches the dog long striding on contact obstacles (yeah!) by using a hoop to go under, a toy reward at the end and restrained recalls toward the toy. She is, however, very much aware of the fact that if the hoop was to go off, the dog would be very likely to jump off the yellow. So the hoops are just an element of the method, something of a management tool, while the most significant part requires quite a lot of thinking on the part of the dog. of course, she starts out with a low dogwalk and increases the height gradually.

b) Simultaneously with the hoop stuff she teaches the dog to touch a touch board with two front paws. The secret is TWO front paws, as it makes it much easier to distinguish a correct performance from an incorrect one when two paws are the criterion. She teaches a kind of "pounce" on the baord, by holding it in her lap as she is squatting down on the ground. Another ingredient which, I think, adds to the success of this method is NOT transferring the touch board to the contact obstacle quickly. In fact, she uses the touch board as an obstacle in itself while working simple jump/tunnel sequences. Again, what I have found a problem with attempting to teach running contacts to students was the transition from the board on the ground to the board on the contact onbstacle.

I still need to view the DVD again, think about it etc. but I feel encouraged to just try the entire method, section by section.

I also ordered Linda Mecklenburg's book on jumping, because I loved her articles in Clean Run, but missed quite a few of them. I also love it, though the one thing I wonder about is whether the fact that she teaches everything when the dog is NOT excited and with minimum speed involved will not hamper Eden's speed on course even further. It's one thing to work with a naturally fast border collie, but with Eden I do have to worry about getting the maximum speed out of her. But again something I'll have to chew on.

Oh, and a little video of Eden doing frisbee from last week:

Karolina tries to squeeze in a practice session with Uma every week, which keeps me motivated to work with Eden. I am 39 weeks pregnant in the video, so all that can happen is I might induce labor. Which would ba a GOOD thing at this point :-)

8 months and 2 years....

2008-06-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

A friend once told me that pregnancy lasts 8 months and 2 years. Well, I am into the 2 years part now. 39 weeks, to be precise. I am really tired, heavy, huge and uncomfortable.
So basically, forgive the blogging hiatus.

Dog Chow Disc Cup 2008

2008-06-03T02:03:00.000-07:00

As I'd mentioned before Karolina had been practicing with Uma for a disc-dogging competition. The competition was this weekend in Wroclaw (very looooooong drive from Warsaw). I was, of course, worried sick about Uma, since, as we'd calculated, she'd never spent a night alone (without me or Janusz being there) in her life. The dogs always go on holidays with us and the only times she gets to stay with Janusz is when I'm away at a conference. But, to make a long story short, Uma clearly didn't miss me one bit and handled the situation like a pro.

Uma was initially entered in the Starters division, but at the last moment Karolina decided to move her up to the Open Division. There was also a separate Toss&Fetch event, which they entered as well. There were 27 dogs entered in Open and 47 in T&F, but there were quite a few no-shows. All in all, they were OUTSTANDING, placing 2nd in Open Frisbee and 9th in T&F. Since this was a qualifying event for the Dog Chow Disc Cup Finals (the Polish National Championships) and the top 3 dogs in Open earn a place in the Finals, they have already secured themselves a spot in the finals. Pretty awesome for a debut. I admit I was not counting on them doing so well after training together for such a short time. It would have been sufficient if they just had fun and did their thing. The Q was the icing on the cake, so to put it.

The major drawback was the weather, there was a heatwave passing through Poland on the weekend and Karolina decided to pull her labrador Negra from the third round, as she was worried about Negra overheating herself.

I really wish I could have been there (too long a drive, too hot, too dangerous for the baby), but I am really excited about how well Uma did, about how much fun the girls had and about how much fun all my friends had and how well they did. The disc-dogging competitions are dominated by border collies, but they 2 Polish Aussies entered in this one did so well! Uma was second in Open and Lexus, a beautiful, black tri was first in Starters.

The results are here: http://www.discbusters.com/disc_cup_07_2ls.html
and I'm sure there will be pics and films soon.

EDIT
Yes, there are some pictures and film clips!

These two awesome pics are by Lukasz Kowa:

Here's a clip of Uma's first freestyle:

It looks like there's only ONE missed disc at the most there. That is pretty amazing!

And here's a link to both the freestyles and the toss & fetch. The second freestyle was much worse with regards to catch-ratio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3YEpHVm8q0

And a link to Karolina and Negra's first freestyle (she pulled her from the second). The first one was AWESOME:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvM13ZSX3L4

EDIT: Forgot to mention that Karolina and Uma also won the BEST FREESTYLE award. Way to go!

weekend attractions

2008-05-13T03:21:00.001-07:00

There's really been a lot going on... Really. The demolition works on the house are continuing and although the guys are really working hard, it's obvious that it will all take longer than expected. We're willing to make some sacrifices, divide the entire undertaking into stages and such, but we really want to have a bathroom, a kitchen and a bedroom ready in about a month. So keep your fingers crossed.
Since uploading photos on blogger is quite a chore andd they're totally NOT agility related I have some pics here if anyone's interested:
http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j312/youstinker/demolka/

In general the panelling is gone, the floors are gone, the heating pipes have been replaced and the water pipes have all been replaced. The walls which we planned to demolish have been demolished by now. BUT we still need drywall, floors (though I'm willing to go with carpeting in the living room for a while instead fo the hardwood I had planned) and well, a kitchen and a bathroom. The construction team has increased in size to 5 guys this week, because we really want them to speed up.

As for the weekend, I had entered Uma in agility on Saturday, because it was almost in our backyard. The judge was someone I'd sworn I'd never show under, after the trial in Bydgoszcz last September. He does not have a clue about course flow and such, is very inconsistent with his calls etc. There were only two runs planned, jumpers and standard. We off-coursed rather quickly on the jumpers and did very well in standard A2 (one of the nastiest A2 courses I've seen) up until the penultimate obstacle, which Uma backjumped (not that it was her fault). The A1 course was very easy (no weaves, no teeter) and there were quite a few clean runs there, including several by some good friends. The A0 courses were easy which was nice, because the three girls from our club for whom it was a debut trial did well and felt encouraged.

As for me... I want to be able to RUN!

Here's Uma in the weaves:

photo taken by Joasia&Junka

On Sunday I entered Uma in an obedience trial, which is not something I usually do. In fact, it was her first official trial in Poland. She has her American CD and 1 CDX leg, so she's got some experience, but FCI rules are completely different. She was entered in the "0" class here, because that's where all dogs have to start and she placed third with a score of 96/100. I am tempted to enter her in class 1 some time soon, but it looks like there's nothing coming up. I have a video of her run. Yeah, I know, the "0" class IS very easy.

Aren't we an AGILE team?

2008-05-07T00:08:00.000-07:00

demolition continues

2008-04-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

The renovation project has reached new and unexpected heights. At this point we have no water and no heating and I'm staying with my mother until that changes. My four dogs and her two cats in a condo on the ninth story of a high-rise. Cool, huh?
Well, there's even more cool stuff. The drywall people who started work last week did not show up for work this Monday. They dodged Janusz's phone calls and we finally called from my cell, because they don't know the number. So well.. no good explanation, just: "something came up, we won't make it this week at all." We panicked for some thirty minutes, discussed our options (what guarantee do we have that they'll actually show up next week?) and decided to search for a new team for drywalling and floors, since we're so short on time. And amazingly, we did manage to find a team willing to start next Monday. That still adds another week-long delay to the schedule, but these guys seems a lot more responsible.

Agilitywise, not that much going on, I'm doing some simple sequencing with Eden and she's doing not bad at all. I'd like her to be faster, but it's not that she's not trying, she's just who she is. However, her front crosses are coming along nicely, we're doing some back crosses on tunnels (nothing yet on jumps), working on turns etc. I did a couple of sessions on the dogwalk and yhm... I have to figure out the bumper thing. Either she slows down before the stop, or she keeps her stride (as the bumpers suggest), but doesn't get the stop. I would like for her to jump into position and freeze, just like Uma does.
I have a taped and timed session of Uma's dogwalks, where our average speed is about 1.7s. I know Silvia Trkman has 1.3-1.4 dogwalks, so that still leaves room for improvement for Uma. But I can't complain, I think what we have is pretty nice. That is unless I mess up in competition, which I sometimes do.

The recalls (which are first in the clip) are the slowest:

In general I have tons of clips with various stuff. Here's a bit of Eden doing sequencing:

Here's something really cool. Uma and Karolina have practiced disc-dogging for a total of three times so far and here's a clip (taken by me, posted by Karolina) of their third session. Yeah, it's still not what it could be, but it's so nice to see how they're becoming a team and having fun together:

And here's a bit of Eden disc-dogging. She takes off way too late on the overs and in general does not have a nice jumping style. However, my floaters for the overs are also pretty horrible in this video (and I had felt so confident about them!), so I guess we jusst need to get our act together. She won't be a star, but she's enjoying herself and I'm finding working with her quite pleasant. So why not:

I also have sheepherding clips for all the dogs, but I'll save the for another update :-)

disc-dogging

2008-04-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine offered to take Uma to a frisbee competition in June, which is a very cool thing, because a) Uma loves frisbee and b) June won't be a good month for frisbee competitions for me. Uma already has some experience with disc-dogging, but since I'm left-handed and Karolina is right-handed they need to practice a bit too get their act together. I have a couple of pics from last week's session, taken by Lukasz Kowa. As you can see, I'm also playing around with Eden.

So far it looks like she does NOT have Uma catching abilities and she clearly is not as powerful a jumper. I am not asking her to jump higher than just over my leg, like in this pic (so some 10 inches maybe), but she is still consistently taking off way too late, no matter when the disc is released. I am going to try to think of some ideas for getting her to take off earlier, but what I'll also do is get her preliminarily x-rayed as soon as she turns a year old, for the sake of making sure that it's not a physical problem. Maybe she's just not a bouncy Aussie and that's it.

Mostly we do a lot of rollers:

And here's Uma, I really like this pic:

especially the fact that you can see her slobber as she's opening her mouth to catch the disc. Dammit, she's a cool dog.

Meanwhile I've started Eden on the A-frame with stride regulators, hoping for a running contact. I still have to experiment with the placement of the bumpers a little bit, since I at first placed them too high, but it is looking promising. I do need to get this flimed, since it's important info for my training. She's actually pretty nice on the downside and the problem seems to be a lack of good drive on the upside, for which I guess I need to practice the "ready, steady, go" game, which is not something I've done with her yet (though I should have). Same goes for dogwalk, stride regulators on the descent ramp seem to be doing the trick, she is cantering over the center plank and I want more speed on the ascent ramp now.

What I do have filmed is parts of a nice herding session with Eden. She's overflanking, especially on the come-bye side, but she's covering nicely and not getting in their butts too much. The barking is driving me crazy, but supposedly it will go away. We'll see. Her breeder told me to work her on some less dog-broke sheep and I am planning to do just that, very soon :-)

congrats to myself and Uma :-)

2008-04-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

OK, this is kind of funny. The rules for qualifying for the WC in Poland are somewhat complicated and involve a series of three two-day trials. The trial this weekend in Plock was one of them. The only one I am attending this year and only for one day (we're taking childbirth classes on Saturdays).
And, if I'm not mistaken (the rules are very complicated), it turns out Uma's Open Agility run was the fastest run of all the jump heights (34.41s), which means she earned herself 5 points towards qualifying for the Worlds. And admittedly, it is kind of ironic that she earned those points based on speed with an almost immobile handler, who is 7 months pregnant :-)

trial in Plock

2008-04-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

We spent one day a-trialling in Plock. It was cold, rainy, I didn't get was I was looking for (a clean run in standard A2), but it was a good day all in all. I got to have some fun with my dog, socialize with friends and turned in decent runs, though it's really hard to call them runs, maybe something closer to walks, or wobbles.

Here are two of Uma's runs. This is A2 standard, where she popped out of the weaves (yes, I know I could have avoided that back cross on the weaves):

And her Agility Open run where she missed a contact zone. In our defense, it was raining hard, I did some stupid things, I was slipping, she was slipping and well, shit happens. But other than that I think it's a decent run, though a couple of wide turns in the opening:

The runs were filmed by Toska, who is the owner of this awesome blue merle pup, who quickly became Eden's best friend (actually, Eden has tons of best friends):

And here's a cleaner version of Eden playing ball with me during the trial:

These pics were taken by Marysia Pajzderska, owner of Una, who turned in a beautiful and very fast clean run in A1. The blue merle Aussie is Aquilonis Livin' La Vida Loca, who is half Mistretta and on the other side if a Jack (War Drum of Imagineer) granddaughter.

There was also a third run, Jumpers, which I don't have a video of yet, but which was the most eventful run of the trial for me, since on the home stretch, just beforoe the last obstacle, I slipped and fell in a rather spectacular manner. Well, it was wet, the grass was practically non-existent after a weekend of running in the rain and well.... my balance ain't so good either. So as I fell I heard a gasp of horror in the stands and everyone came up to me and started asking if I was ok. Well, I was OK, but it might have been a sign that it's time for a break. I was really hoping on doing one more trial in late April, but it looks like it may not be meant to be.
Which is why I appreciate this one even more :-)

some updates

2008-04-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

I've been neglecting the blog again, mostly because I haven't been doing much agility. I have been doing a lot of herding with Eden and Malcolm, some obedience with Eden and Uma and some disc-dogging too. The downside of agility is that there is always a lot of lifting that has to happen before you can actually do anything ;-) I have set up some weaves in my backyard for Eden and have started her using slightly offset weaves + some luring. She's looking pretty good at this point and seems to be developing nice footwork. Footwork was what I was worried about the most after messing up Uma's. Uma is fast as lightning but she double-foots with 24" spacing. She single-foots nicely with tighter spacing, but here in Europe it's always 24" ;-)
I finally put Eden on the low dogwalk with a target on the ground, which she nouse touches for a 2on/2off. I had been practicing the nouse touching behavior for quite a while on stairs etc. and felt it was strong enough to use on the dogwalk now. Well, it is, but unfortunately the problem I was afraid of has popped up - that is she slows down on the descent ramp before stopping. I've been recalling her over the dogwalk to get her to lengthen her striding, but it isn't working. I think I'll try try using stride regulators (not for a running contact, but for lengthening her stride on the descent before the 2 on/2off. I don't want a running contact on the dogwalk, because I'm terrified if how easy this is to mess up with a fast dog. She's not that fast, but even now when I run alongside her she outruns me easily - that is until she gets to the descent ramp where she slows down. I would like to have the stop there (if I need it), but to have nice long striding on the descent.

I'm toying around with the idea of doing a running contact on the A-Frame, well, because it's not as long as the dogwalk, so I feel it's easier to get it done.
I've been doing a bit of sequencing on low jumps (and with tunnels). And, honestly, I'm a bit disappointed with the speed I'm getting from Eden. I'm afraid this might turn out to be a larger issue and, honestly, the think I like doing least is trying to push a dog for speed. She's a bit strange, because she really does want her ball/tug, but she doesn't get the idea that she has to go faster to get it. It's not like she's hopeless, but I would like to have a bit more going on there. She is, however, very flexible and seems to be careful with her feet, so I don't foresee many knocked bars in her future.

All in all, I think she's more into herding than anything else. Will do. Maybe she'll be a good teacher for me.
I've also beein doing some obedience work with her and she's coming along nicely, though of course, there's still a lot to be done. But I like her attitude for obedience. Here's a bit of us working on heeling together:

And she's got such a sweet smile :-)

Aussies & Agility

2008-04-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

I've been following the results of the AKC Agility Nationals and it's been a very good year for Aussies! There were 4 Aussies in the finals of the 20" category and a few that missed it by the skin of their teeth. Lisa and Dust, my favorite team, finished 23rd out of approx. 200 dogs and deserve a huge round of applause. Lisa has some film clips on her blog and they are impressive!

Nonetheless, I have to rant a little bit about a topic I feel strongly about, that is Aussies and agility, and well... this is an agility blog so what better place ;-) And I know it's a political topic, but what the heck
The reason is that friend after friend and acquaintance after acquaintance who started out in the agility/performance world with Aussies or with something else and expressed the desire to get an Aussie as a second dog at some point is getting a border collie instead. Conversely, I also know of a few people who got Aussies for agility and are somewhat disappointed with what they have. Not that they don't love their dogs, of course, we all love our dogs to pieces. Yes, it's hard not to agree that there is a higher likelihood of getting a dog that can be highly competitive when comparing the average border collie to the average Aussie and I've been reading my Aussie and agility lists ever since I got hooked up to the internet (1998?), so I've witnessed all these arguments being rehashed, but here's my biased tak on this anyway.

I really think hardly anyone breeds Aussies for performance events like agility/frisbee/flyball. Breeders are divided into three main camps, the strictly conformation breeders (who, of course, will claim that temperament is also of primary importance for them, but suffice to say the various definitions of good temperament are not necessarily compatible), the strictly working breeders (as in working stock) and the versatility breeders (breeding for what they call "the total package"). My observations of strictly working bred dogs are non-conclusive. I've seen some that were awesome and I've seen some that basically just trotted along the course without much enthusiasm. Yes, they have been bred with emphasis on cooperating with a human, but well... chasing balls and tugging with passion are not required traits for stockdogs. So I've seen quite a few who simply run to please their owners, but would much rather be working cattle than waiting for their hot-dog tug at the end of the run. Nonetheless, I still think their structure and physical attributes are usually better for performance events than those of the typically show-bred dogs. I've seen some really enthusiastic show-bred Aussies in agility that simply lack this little edge which they would have if they had a bit less bone, a few pounds less, a bit more length of back and a bit more angulation in the rear.

So-called versatility breeders would seem to be the ones to fill the gap, but I don't think they always do. At least not most. Aiming for a balancing act between working ability and good looks and an outgoing temperament does not necessarily lead to fast and driven dogs. Plus, I have the sneaky feeling that many so-called versatility breeders are really interested in conformation, but they understand it differently than the typical show-breeders and aim for getting an Aussie that looks more like the old-style Aussies. BTW I love this type of dog, I just don't think these selection criteria for breeding dogs are necessarily going to produce a good performance line. Of course, sometimes they do!

And then there's the perennial question of WHY would anyone want to focus on performance events requiring drive nad speed. Wouldn't that be in some way unethical? Aren't breeders supposed to be breeding dogs that look and behave according to the breed standard? How can you choose to reproduce an Aussie that wants her frisbee more than her sheep and claim to be preserving the breed? And the breed standard has nothing to say about weaving, catching frisbees or doing swimmer's turns on flyball boxes. It describes appearance, temperament and working ability. In fact, I've heard the accusation (many times) that the really nice agility dogs have ATYPICAL temperaments for Aussies. They're hyper, hard to live with and generally nuts. Actually, I have not found this to be true regarding the best agility Aussies I've met (or owned). Usually, if they're hyper and over the top, they're not going to be biddable enough to get the control required by sports like agility.

And then the question of is it possible to breed for traits that are required in events invented by bored middle-class city slickers? Working instinct and style are clearly inherited, as are nice heads and fluffy coats. But are speed and drive inherited traits? Not to mention things like weaving style or catch-ratio in disc-dogging ;-)
Maybe they're not, but I still think that if you breed fast and biddable to fast and biddable, you're bound too end up with more dogs that are fast and biddable than if you breed nice head to fluffy coat.
And in a way the split between conformation lines and working lines shows how differently people can understand "breeding for the standard." I'm sure responsible conformation breeders and responsible working breeders are absolutely certain that they're both working for the good of the breed and yet they end up with such totally different "products."

But because hardly anyone breeds Aussies strictly for performance events it's VERY hard to find a good one. Yes, I'm sure many pop up in all kinds of breedings, but if someone is looking specifically for an agility dog (intense toy drive, food drive, good structure, focus and biddability), then it is a lottery. And because no one breeds with non-stock performance events in mind, people looking for an Aussie for such events turn to border collies.

the big move

2008-02-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

We've moved. Finally! The house is huge, but it will require a lot of work to get it in shape. For a myriad of reasons, most of them financial, we have to be living here in the new house as we undertake all the renovations. There's old wood panelling on all the walls and that will have to go, the floors will have to be replaced completely, we need to install new appliances and new cabinets in the kitchen. So it's going to be quite a project. But the dogs are really enjoying the fenced in yard and the extra space inside. It would be nice if we could get most of this done by the time the baby arrives...

I have a couple of clips of Uma from Lack. One is of our unfortunate jumpers run with three bars down and the other one of a more fortunate standard run. You can really see how slippery the footing was.

And a very cool picture by Hania Gajewska:

People still usually can't tell that I'm pregnant, unless they know that is, but I feel as if my belly has doubled in size in the past week and I'm really starting to have problems with things like getting in the car and such :-) The next trial within driving distance is on the first weekend of April and I can't help but wonder if I'll actually be able to run by that time. I'm certainly not feeling very agile now, but I'll probably enter and see how it goes. I'm officially six months pregnant and the baby is due June 24th. We know the sex and have a name and all is going as well as it could be expected to :-)

Eden has just turned 7 months old, but I think there's still a long, long way to maturity. Somehow, she seems to me the most puppish of all my dogs at this age, but maybe I've simply forgotten how it used to be. She's still pretty tiny, she's shorter than Uma at the withers, so she's maybe 18 inches at the most. She'll probably go up to 18.5-19, but certainly no more than that. I've had two really large Aussie girls (Mira and Shansa were both over 21"), so I appreciate this. She is still very, very amazingly outgoing and friendly to both people and other dogs and all kinds of animals. I have yet to see her snarl or growl at anything, she's not protective about her food or toys. In general, she's just a very EASY dog. I don't know what I've done to deserve such an easy dog, I guess I should be getting progressively more difficult dogs as my experience increases but well, here's Eden and she's a lot of fun. On sheep, I'm probably able to do more with her now than with my other dogs. But it's not me, it's just Eden. She doesn't dive in, she doesn't bite, she has very natural circling, she's very easy to push out to get distance and she doesn't shut down when I put pressure on her to push her out. She actually downs when I ask her to. She has cut down on the barking, though she's still not a silent worker. She's a natural at getting sheep out of pens and she actually seems to have a somewhat natural outrun. But really the coolest part is that I don't have to balance all the time between a correction strong enough to get the dog out of trouble, but not so strong that she'd shut down. She really doesn't shut down, plus she's rarely in trouble. I do weird things, which I seen when I watch clips of us together, I'm still gree, but she still manages to get me out of these situations. And she looks very cute doing it :-)

I'm planning on getting a clip of our work every month or so, so that I can track our progress (or lack of it). For now, I'm tempted to take her into a bigger pen:

We also still don't have internet (we should get hooked up in no more than 10 days) and I am suffering from withdrawal syndrome :-) I wrote all this at work instead of actually working :-)I am behind on all my e-mail, so please forgive me if I don't respond immediately. I'm also behind on work... Well...

trial in Lack

2008-02-11T01:06:00.000-08:00

We went to a very nice trial in a very very nice and warm indoor arena this weekend. The footing was slippery, but most of the more experienced dogs coped well, the younger ones kept slipping and sliding out of the rinig. Uma coped pretty well, she happened to drop three bars all weekend, all on the same course, an otherwise very nicely run JWW round, where she had a speed of 4.6 m/s (that's a very good speed).
She did qualify with a first place in Standard A2, which gives her her first leg towards A3. This was a nice opening to an otherwise uneventful weekend.
I messed up most of our other runs with sloppy handling, either resulting from lack of training or inborn ineptitude. I'd love to blame my pregnancy for it, but the truth is that was not the case. Well, at least I did get some ideas for what I need to practice.

I did set up a kind of plan minimum for this year, which is to get her into A3 (so two more clean standard runs). Hopefully, this much I can do, big belly, baby and all.

I did get to meet some nice people whom I hadn't seen for a while, including a friend from Wroclaw with her 4-month old baby. The baby was awesome all weekend long, and she gave me some hope that YES, you can bring a baby to trials and everybody will survive this experience. There was also another mom with a 6-month old and the organizers even set up a separate "baby changing, breastfeeding room." I have to say I'm not going to pass up on these trials in the future even if the club doesn't get new carpeting ;-)

some updates

2008-02-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

I had big plans for entering Uma in tons of trials before my belly gets too big, but it seems like it's just not meant to be. First of all, it's just dead season, there's hardly anything available within driving distance. I did enter her in something last weekend, even though she had not practiced for a while because of her injury and the trial was a 6-hour drive. BUT... the car we were carpooling in to split the gas costs broke down on the way to the trial. Of course, it had to be in the middle of the night, 4.5 hours from home and 1.5 hours from our destination. I guess it had to be fate.

I am entered in something next weekend, much closer to home, but on horrible carpeting. But it should be fun anyway and I hope she can cope with the footing and I can cope with the trip. I tire pretty easily now, as I get used to the extra kilograms.

Meanwhile Eden turned 6 months old. Yes, it's amazing how time flies by. I guess by this time I feel pretty confident about knowing her, her strengths and weaknesses and such. First of all, she's an extremely EASY dog. Anything I try with her, she just does it. Anything I ask for, I get. This is really the most evident with sheep. At this point, she works very close and I'm a bit afraid to push her out more, but other than that - she just goes out there and does it. And she doesn't cause wrecks and she doesn't nip and she actually listents to me. She's an active, energetic dog, but she's not hyper or high-strung. I do complain a bit as well. I don't like the fact that she tires pretty easily and there are moments when I'd like MORE intensity, but in general I think there's good stuff there to work with in basically everything. She seems to be a truly versatile gal.

It does help that she's amazingly cute and endearing. She's little, as in short, which adds to the cuteness factor.

I have a little vid of us doing some puppy agility stuff, very low jumps and a tunnel:

Eden and sheep

2008-01-12T06:33:00.000-08:00

Since we're having an unusually warm winter this year, I couldn't resist not letting Eden play with sheep a couple of times, just out of curiosity what she'd do. No pressure, just pure fun. I have a few pics a a film clip.

Here's the clip:

Uma is bored.....

2008-01-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

Uma cannot jump, play ball and do all the other things she'd really, really like to do. So to keep her occupied I've tried lots and lots of different things. Check out the movie clip I made to show off what my three-legged beast has been doing:

However, my goal is to get her to walk on her front legs, that's a Silvia Trkman trick. I can't practice it now, because it's her right front leg that's hurt, but when the stitches come out...

New Year's resolutions

2008-01-01T05:37:00.000-08:00

I guess my New Year's resolution should actually be to start blogging regularly. I haven't written for two months. Urgh.
A lot of stuff has happened in that time and there's probably no point in summarizing everything. I went to a pretty cool seminar with Anton Grygar (Czech National Team coach) with lots of challenging exercises and I'll try to sit down and write about that (New Year's resolution).

Uma has been broken for a while and will probably remain broken for a week or two more. She cut her pad on a glass bottle some idiot left out on the big empty field where I let all the dogs run every morning. Cut is not the right word to use, she literally slashed it. I think she must have jumped down on the piece of glass, which must have been sticking in the ground at a right angle. Anyway, lots and lots of blood, absolutely everybody was covered with blood by the time we got to the car and then by the time we got to the vet the car was soaked in blood as well. It's healing up pretty nicely, but it will still be a while before she's back to running and jumping. I really, really hate this long break, because I get a feeling that every time we take a break longer than 2 weeks, it takes me as long as the break took to get back in sync with her. There were lots of things that came up during the seminar that I'd like to work on right now, but well... I have to wait.

Eden is 5 months old by now and is a sweetheart. I really, really like her. She is usually very confident and outgoing, loves people and so far I haven't noticed an ounce of aggression in her. No growling, no resource guarding, nothing. I appreciate that. She might not have Uma's intensity, though I can see some intensity developing, but she does have something that makes working with her very easy - FOCUS. I can't say I've put much effort into developing it, she must have been born with it, but when she knows we're doing something, she does not care about other dogs, other people, space shuttles launching, whatever. She also learns quickly, often it's a couple of tries and she catches on what's expected of her. I also think we've really bonded in the past two months. Last night I was trying to comfort the dogs during the midnight fireworks (nasty). The first thing Eden did when she heard the blasts was run into her crate. But then she peeped out, saw me on the bed, ran up to me, snuggled next to me and we watched the fireworks together. That was sweet. Malcolm couldn't care less about the fireworks and Uma was concerned, though not panicking.

I've been doing little bits of agility stuff with her, but probably not as much as I should have and all very, very lighthearted and playful. We've been bouncing on the little teeter and she absolutely loves it, she offers the behavior whenever she sees the teeter. She can do tunnels and go between uprights and of course I've been doing some agility stuff on the flat - like front crosses, running beside me, stays etc. I admit it's probably around a half of what I had been doing with the older kids, but I completely don't feel the pressure to hurry up with her now. Maybe I should? ;-) I've been doing bits of frisbee stuff, catching rollers and bringing them back and little bits of obedience too.

I think she's pretty well-behaved. Ok, so she probably pulls on leash, because that's something I really suck at teaching, because I don't use leashes much, but she waits at doors, sits down for petting, waits for my OKs for most stuff. She's not a horror to have around, I can take her to friends' houses, shopping etc. and I don't end up dealing only with the puppy.

She's also very pretty, or so I think.I actually have it with all my dogs - that is I enjoy just watching them move and looking at them and admiring how pretty they are. But I think she's got that little something which makes her extra pretty :-)

The fact that she doesn't have a tail makes her move very differently from the others, she's got more "typical aussie" up and down bounce. But I have to say I enjoy the tails and I don't think I'll ever go for a tailless dog again. Not that I don't love her little butt, but there's just something missing. And I don't know, I may be misinterpreting this and may not have enough data, but I think this bouncing movement of most aussies, which they lose when you leave their tails on, is something that slows them down a bit, because there's additional vertical movement in places where there should only be horizontal movement. It's just a personal observation based on watching tailed and tailless Aussies run agility.

Now here's my plan for her contacts, which I've altered a little bit from what I did with Uma and (half-heartedly) with Mal. I started off by getting her to touch a clear piece of plexi, then asking for multiple touches. That was easy. The moment I put the plexi on the end of the stairs, Eden's nose touched the plexi, but her butt came tumbling down the stairs and ended up on the floor as well. She dilligently kept her nose on the plexi, but clearly did not understand that the rest of her body also matters in this game. So so far I've blocked the option of her butt tumbling down by putting a contraption made mostly from an ironing board which keeps her butt from falling. At the same time I am working on her hind end awareness, by teaching her to back up, do a swing finish and doing so-called "perch work" - front feet on a perch, back feet moving around the perch. I'll now be increasing the number of stairs she has to run before the stops and varing my position.

Then I'll want to do this on a dogwalk board, starting by having her jump up from the side and get into contact position and then sending her to the contact position from several feet, then increasing the distance. I do not want her running contact equipment before I have excellent brakes on her. She does not have natural brakes.

Now if anyone has gotten this far, you deserve a juicy piece of non-doggy gossip, so here goes. We're expecting a baby in late June/early July. It's something that I had wanted, though I admit that pregnancy is not all it's cracked up to be. Not to mention feelings of guilt towards Uma (whose training will be wasted for at least a while) and Eden (who deserves to be getting more out of me than she will be). We're also moving to a bigger house around March and I should be defending my doctorate around late May. So quite a lot of stuff for one year... Happy New Year everyone!

measuring progress

2007-11-05T23:20:00.000-08:00

Uma and Malcolm just turned two and a half years old. What this means is that Uma (not Mal, who took a long long break) has been competing in official trials for exactly a year. Her first official trial was and ASCA trial in November 2006. Looking back on our year in the rings, it's a bit difficult to evaluate progress, because of the multiple venues we've competed in. Since there's no ASCA here in Poland, obviously we stopped competing in ASCA once we moved back. We also did a bit of USDAA in the US and stopped one Standard leg short of her AD jusst a week before I moved back here. She has all her open and one elite title in ASCA and just recently moved up to A2 in FCI, which I consider to be the biggest achievement so far, because FCI courses are a lot more difficult than even the Elite ASCA courses. But all in all, it's hard for me to evaluate progress on the basis of titles.

What has really helped me to see the progress was watching a couple of our runs from about a year ago. I can see how handler-dependent her contacts were and how she'd slow down on the descent ramp. But what really really stands out is how fluent and able to work at a distance from me she has become. It's experience and trust and just A LOT of work that has gone into this.
Here are a couple of our runs from an unofficial trial in the "0" class in Poland, taken last July. We've come a long, long way since then.

I had the feeling recently that she has really sped up recently and, after watching these clips I think this is indeed the case. Admittedly, it has cost me a few off-courses here and there as she is not a forgiving dog and if I'm late with a cue, then we do get an off-course. But I think it's still worth it. I really feel like we're on our way now and ready to do anything.

Me adjusting my timing will now be the most important thing for me to work on, as that's were we lose most of the runs we lose. And we still have that weave pole technique issue to (hopefully) solve. And our dogwalk down contact which tends to break down after several runs in a row... But we're on our way.

Meanwhile, Malcolm is a different case and requires a post of his own :-)

And what's up with Eden?
Well, Eden is happy being a puppy. I am happy teaching her all the little puppy things which she should know, like sitting politely and waiting and not jumping up on me. Of course, there is a bit of agility stuff that I just cannot resist NOT doing when I'm in Pecice with all the dogs, but basically I just work on her attention and recalls while she's there. OK, and I couldn't resist doing some tunnels ;-)

film clip

2007-10-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

very dark and you really can't see all that much, but well. Better than nothing. Uma's standard run on Sunday.

a good weekend

2007-10-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

Uma had a very nice agility weekend. On Saturday she had a clean A1 round for 1st place. It happened to be her third qualifying run in A1, so she is now officially in A2! I moved her up for today and she had an awesome run in A2, but the judge called a questionable dogwalk contact. I was pretty sure it was there, but then again. Oh well, next time. She was turning tight and I was handling nicely.

Malcolm was not getting his dogwalk today, so I guess it is back to basics, but he had very nice Jumpers runs. We actually had a pretty funny Jumpers situation. I first ran Malcolm, who knocked one bar (good enough for me to be satisfied with that run) and had a time of around 31 seconds. I then ran Uma who ran clean, but when I came back to check the results it turned out she had a time of 37.7. I was shocked - this was clearly a mistake, no way was she that slow, this may not have been our fastest run, but hey, she is ALWAYS at least 4 seconds faster than Mal, even if she slips, falls, whatever. It turned out that somebody had been videotaping that run and the entire movie was 27 seconds long. So I went to the office with that person's camera and showed them the film. I was granted a rerun and she turned in a 27 second run. I think she may have been a tiny bit slower the second time, but it was good enough for a second place after a WC competitor.

She got ALL her weave entries (5 out of 5) all weekend long as did Malcolm! Uma did not get her dogwalk contact on her last run, which was a bummer. However, the dogwalk was in the same spot all weekend long and it was followed by an open tunnel. So that last run... she just couldn't contain herself. The dogwalk contact has been our weakest one for a while, so now that will certainly have to be something I focus on. And there are no trials coming up for us until December (there's just nothing closer than 7 hours driving time). So that gives me 6 weeks of training before I actually have to use that contact again in competition.

Eden was being cuddled all weekend long by lots of aunties and uncles and she seemed to really enjoy it. She wasn't spooked by anything, was clearly relaxing, but was pretty responsive to me. So she was a perfect little puppy. There was a 4-month old Aussie puppy there and she was SO much bigger than Eden. It's unbelievable how quickly they grow!

It was an indoor trial on carpeting and it was pretty slippery. Malcolm seems to do a lot worse at indoor trials, because, for some strange reason, he get more excited and loses his head in a building and is a lot more laid back outdoors. Uma slows down a bit on the carpeting, which, in this case, was not such a bad thing.

Here's the A2 course we ran today:

Uma's teeter

2007-10-19T03:05:00.000-07:00

I missed a few practice sessions with Uma because of her pad injury, but she's back to normal now. I'd been working on her independent teeter performance ever since August, when I noticed that she would wait for me at pivot point. I went back to plexi-targetting, then removed the plexi and proofed her performance by varying my position. The one thing I still need work on is the strong stop when there is HUGE speed. She will miss the position (barely, but still) if I am way ahead of her and she's coming at the teeter with increased speed (off a tunnel). Here's what it looks like at this point. I like it.

And Eden....
Well, like you guys said in the comments to my previous post, it is not particularly productive to obsess over the nature vs nurture thing, but I honestly cannot help doing it. Especially, since I own two littermates, who are as different from each other as can be in temperament, I just find myself looking for these little suggestions of what's to come. And definitely I'm negative about this - I obsess about the behaviors which may possibly turn into something bad a lot more easily than about those which might turn into something good.
It also seems that I tend to forget certain experiences very easily. I almost panicked a couple of days ago when Eden spooked on hearing dogs barking at the agility place. I complained to everybody I met that I'd broken my puppy and was doing a lousy job. And then Wanda, Jinx's owner, reminded me how all three of our pups (Uma, Malcolm, Jinx) panicked when they heard an airplane flying high high above their heads when they were about 3 months old. And this stage passed, they surely wouldn't sppok at this now.

eden's first week at home

2007-10-15T23:17:00.000-07:00

Understandably, this was a very Eden-centered week for me. I was getting to know her better and instilling some basic household rules in the little pup, all the while trying not to neglect everybody else.

Eden is very, very nice. I guess the nicest thing about her is her almost total lack of fear for well... pretty much anything. She plays with the big dogs, she However, this very lack of fear is also something that I'm afraid may get her into trouble.

She is willing to please, she is both food and toy motivated, although, being the little puppy she is, she often loses focus. I'm doing a lot of play retrieving and just plain playing with her at this point to strengthen her drives and lengthen her focus. I am not obsessed with teaching her perfect heelwork by the time she's 6 months old or anything of the kind. Basically, I just want attention and the ability to play with me on my terms with any toy I provide.

And of course, she gets into trouble. One thing I know know very well by now. If you have the slightest suspicion that your puppy may need to go pee (but tell yourself "no way, she just peed 30 minutes ago").... your puppy NEEDS to go pee. Go with the ever so slightest suspicion or you'll be wiping dog pee off the floor. She gets her little puppy teeth on just about everything and has to either be confined or supervised. Supervising is tiring. Right now I am watching her meander between a row of binders on the lower shelf of the bookcase and her toy. And I have to get up to suggest the tug toy is a better idea...

I'm back and she's playing with the tug toy. Little puppies are cute but ..... oh so tiring. But now I'm starting to suspect she might need to go pee.

Yep, she did.

Eden had a lot of firsts (well, or so I think)this week. I took her for a tram ride and a bus ride to see how she'd cope. She did just fine. She met a very well-behaved horse and lots and lots of variously behaved dogs. We went to a pet store, several parks and visited a couple of friends' houses (for short periods of time).

The biggest mystery about having a puppy is not knowing what it will grow up to be like. I'm really not sure how much of my dogs is me, my work with them and how much is them. Even the two older sibs are total opposites of each other and, after all, they have the same genes and were basically treated the same way when they were pups. What's more, I did not guess correctly what they would be like as adults when they were pups, which is still a source of jokes among my friends and the owners of the other sibs. Maybe this is what's making me a bit apprehensive about Eden. I still have absolutely no feeling for what she'll be like as a grown up. Will the focus develop? Will the strong retrieve drive stay? Will she want to please? Will she be obnoxious? She's not now, of course, she's sweet and cuddly, but who knows. Will I catch certain bad habits in time to stop them from developing?

I remember with Uma I got this conviction that this is THE puppy who can achieve ANYTHING I want from her when she was about 4-5 months old. But then, I had Uma right from the time she was born, so maybe it will take longer with Eden. And, after all, why do I need to know this? I know she most certainly will be unique and I'll love her no matter what she's like. But I cannot stop looking for signs of things to come.

Here's a short vid of Eden targeting:

Eden

2007-10-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

There are some decisions which take years to make, which you ponder on for ages, carefully weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each possibility. I've always prided myself on being that kind of person, the rational kind, who tries to do the right thing.
And then, there's a whole different breed of decisions. Decisions based on nothing more than a gut feeling. On pure instinct. Sometimes you end up regretting them, sometimes they turn out to be the best ones you made in your life. In this case, what can I say. We'll see.

Anyway, here's Eden.
Officially she's
Malpaso's To Die For at Myriad
If anything, this wasn't rational. I have two dogs under the age of three (heck, they're under the age of 30 months), should be focusing on finishing my dissertation and well, I just lost a dog that was my heart and soul. But when I saw Eden's 8-week-old pic, this one, to be precise:

I knew I was gone for good. As was Janusz, which was probably the final straw. I asked Mirjam, her breeder, to keep her for me until I was ready for a new dog. Like 6 months maybe.
Duh.
She arrived in Amsterdam (thank you Anneke for chaperoning her on the plane trip) exactly one week ago and was supposed to stay with a wonderful friend, Silvia, in Germany however long I wanted. Well, I got in the car on Sunday and made the 1300 km (800 mile?) drive there and back in 30 hours.

So here she is.
I'm not quite sure what to do with her, but she most definitely has found a place in my heart.
I admit I am kind of scared, because she has found her way into my life at a tough moment. She'll never be another Mira and I am afraid there's nothing that can follow Uma with regards to ease of training and pure speed and biddability. But I think the best way to go about this is to just let her be Eden. Let her be a puppy and find out, in due time, what she's good at and what she'd like to do.

She's got an amazing personality, very bubbly and outgoing, social but not too easily distracted. I love her natural retrieve and love how easy-going and self-confident she is with my other dogs. It's like they know they were meant to be together :-)

On a side note - Uma cut her pad on some glass in the park :-( Very nasty. Thus, no agility for us this week.

Congrats Lisa & Dust!

2007-10-03T09:24:00.001-07:00

Well, Carrie Jones didn't get an individual medals at the worlds, the Polish competitors didn't either (Magda with Mac had an absolutely awesome standard run in large with a 13th place and there were some steady but slow runs by the smaller dogs).

However.... I just got word that Lisa (whose blog is linked from links on the right-hand side of this page)WON the ASCA agility finals with Dust (Diamond Dust of Imagineer). Way to go and black dogs rule :-)

I met Lisa at the ASCA trials she put on in Ohio last year for the Buckeye Australian Shepherd Club, so basically, all the ASCA titles my dogs have are the result of Lisa's organizational skills, which are really impressive. Lisa wanted to trial in ASCA, but there were no ASCA trials in her area, so ... she organized some. And not just a couple, but I think she organizes 5 or 6 ASCA trials a year. Amazing! Our club here in Poland puts on one trial a year and I'm totally exhausted after that. So 5 or 6 is unimaginable for me.
I watched Lisa get Dust's final leg for her ATCH (a gamblers leg) and I am so glad they managed to get that darn gamble at the Nationals! (Well, I assume they did, they won the whole thing, so they must have gotten the gamble).

big events elsewhere

2007-09-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

I've been glued to my computer screen and bascially very unproductive since Friday watching the FCI Worlds in Norway. Well, watching the courses, results and some of the clips available on youtube and on Eric's site(http://fci2007.agilityvideoservice.com) discussing with friends and cheering on the various teams. I wanted to try out some of these challenges so badly that I set up the Large Individual Jumpers yesterday. Hmmm...... three off-courses on my first try with Uma :-) OK, so maybe we're not quite there yet... But now I have tons of motivation and lots of ideas for practice.
There's a little bit of a controversy surrounding the mysterious non-appearance of the Polish Large and Small teams. Two dogs which qualified, Christine, a terv from the Large team, and Scotty, a border terrier from the Small team, never made it to Norway, for reasons unknown to me. Apparantly, all this happened at the last moment, no alternates were called on and the Polish teams simply did NOT run. This is so very very very Polish. Only the medium team ran and placed 16th out of 23, the last teams with no off-courses.
Anyway, congrats to the American Large team for Second Place, their runs were awesome and I am still crossing my fingers for Carrie Jones and Jive who are in contention for the individual medals.

The second event, not so big, but very cool, is the ASCA Nationals. I can't wait for updates from New Jersey! Lisa and Dust are competing in the ASCA Agility finals, as is Adriana with Certik (who, I think, is also in the stock finals on ducks). Victoria, with Mira's sister Rosie and Mira's niece Sylvie, is in the Obedience finals. Mirjam with Twix are in the conformation invitational (and finished #1 conformation bitch for 2007), so I am keeping my fingers crossed for everyone.

Training-wise, this week I spent two sessions on weave pole drills and the easy command into the weave poles after a line of jumps, playing around with the spacing of the jumps to get her to slow down and not crash. In the first collection drill I did, she broke a wooden jump bar with her chest, so... maybe this IS indeed what we need. I've also been doing tons of general weave pole drills with Uma, less with Malcolm, who gets bored more easily. In the WC course I discovered the need for stronger call-offs on long lines of jumps, so that will be something I work on now.

I'll see if I can embed a youtubte video posted by someone else of Malcolm last week. This is Jumpers, if the clip works. The barking isn't him, it's some dog at ringside. Let's see:

Malcolm's big day

2007-09-24T01:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I trialled at the same place (Bydgoszcz) where the National Championships took place two weeks ago, so the trial I sadly didn't make because of the tragic and and unexpected events that took place that night.

I really wanted to go to this trial, although it's a 4-hour drive, and I made it. This time the weather was sunny and warm, very unusual for late September in Poland. We ran in T-shirts.

I took both Uma and Malcolm, even though I wasn't sure he was ready yet, because well... I didn't feel like leaving him at home for the entire day. I trialled Mal in Pecice, but before that the last time he had been entered was in... I think March. In an ASCA trial in Ohio, where he lept off contacts, nosedived off the teeter and acted like a total horror. So we had issues to overcome. In Pecice he was decent, hitting his contacts, but missing weave pole entrances and popping out. OK, and barking.

And yesterday... well, somebody switched dogs on me. He didn't put a foot down wrong. There were three runs (exams, standard and jumpers) and he took a third and two seconds to go FIRST in the combined standings (as in - HIGH in TRIAL!). So this is now officially Uma and Malcolm's blog, because it looks like he's back in business.
There was a large crowd of spectators, as the trial was organized at a regional fair and Malcolm was just enjoying himself immensely. When he finished a run, people would applaud and he would just smile at everyone and look pretty :-)

The courses were a horror. The judge is a new judge who has just branched out from Schutzhund and Obedience into judging agility. I call this "the new judge syndrome." He does not have a feel for the sport, yet he wants to prove that he KNOWS all the difficult challenges. So he stacks them up in one course. The result is a mess and a course that is not fluent but very, very cut up and nasty. Uma was doing her best, but in each and every one of our runs there was a little bit of a problem, where I was just a tad second late with my command. And with those tight courses, that means an off-course. Mal is slower than Uma, who is possibly the fastest Aussie I've seen and definitely the fastest I've had, by approx. 4-5 seconds on a Jumpers course and 6-8 seconds on a standard course. That gives me exactly the time I need to be in the right place and gives me a bigger margin for error.

So what these courses told me was that with Uma I really, really, really need to focus on her turns and my timing on turns, because that was were we messed up. And weave poles still. She really needs to learn to collect herself before entering weaves and I think I'll use Lesley Olden's method for teaching "easy" for that. And I'll get started on it THIS week. Now.

Lesley sets up an exercise where the dog first extends her stride and then has to suddenly collect it. She puts in "steady" (my "easy") just before the dog had to collect. I think I'll do that and then add the weave poles as the next obstacle after the collection over the jumps. Then I'll take out the jumps and leave the "easy" command. This would be the exact opposite of what I'm doing now (trying to increase speed into the weaves), but I think it may help.

I have read comment's from Greg Derrett's seminars about the dog shifting her weight back onto the rear as a necessity for good weave pole entries and I'm sorry I've never seen him explain this in person. Because I can do that with Uma on contacts, while doiing tricks etc... but I don't think she gets this when entering weaves. This may also be one of the reasons why she can even hurt her face when hitting the weaves at full speed.

Anyway, here's a course that Malcolm ran clean and Uma had an off-course after the weaves. I still don't see how I could have handled this any differently, it was just a nasty course and I'm glad this was the only off-course we had.

a week passes by

2007-09-16T12:46:00.000-07:00

This is mostly a blog about Uma with whom I am currently doing the most agility and felt I needed a training blog to keep myself focused and to keep friends updated on what we're doing. But Uma is not my only dog and the stories of their lives are just as important to me. So Mira's story had to interfere.

For those of you who asked - Mira died of a ruptured brain aneurysm, which I didn't know she had. Brain aneurysms usually do not give any symptoms, sometimes they can cause headaches. But with dogs, it's a tough criteria to go on for diagnosis, as they usually don't complain. So I didn't know there was anything wrong. Now I am analyzing the minute changes in her behavior to see if there were perhaps any clues, but the truth is.... there just weren't. I really didn't even know what an aneurysm was up until last week.
So I was packing the car for the Polish agility championships, a trial I had really wanted to go to and do well at. It was 3 in the morning, it was dark, it was raining. As I was carrying the stuff to the car, the dogs were all running around me and suddenly Mira just fell. Just like that. No warning. I thought she had just stumbled, but she was unconscious and having what resembled a seizure and which stopped after a few seconds. I tried doing CPR on her, I woke up Janusz, we put her in the car and sped off to the nearest emergency clinic. She died in my arms. When we got to the clinic the vet only confirmed the death and kept the body for an autopsy. That's how I found out about the aneurysm.
The vets tried to cheer me up by saying that if a ruptured aneurysm doesn't cause instant death, then the dog ends up paralyzed or in a coma. I didn't feel particularly cheerful, I couldn't even drive I was crying so hard.

No need to add I didn't go to the nationals trial. They told me it rained all day long.

Understandably, it's been a very tough week. Possibly the worst one so far in my life. As they say, misfortunes never come single. When one thing in your life gets screwed up, then all others follow. We had 3 sheep mysteriously killed, I started a lousy and very stressful job (which I need to give up ASAP) and finally came down with the flu on Friday. Clearly, stress related. I'm usually pretty optimistic about life, sure I've been sad at times, but never, never like this. I still can't put into writing what I feel about Mira's death, so I won't. For now, at least.

Anyway, I guess I wanted to prove something to myself, so I took Uma to a trial today. My flu and all, driving alone, drinking warm tea from a thermos, all bundled up in a blanket, as pathetic as it gets. Come to think of it I'm not really sure what I wanted to prove. That I've survived? Anyway, two of the worst runs of my life, with off-courses in places where you'd never think an off-course was possible. Uma wasn't listening to me, I wasn't moving, it wasn't working and I didn't feel like chatting to anyone. All I proved is that when you've just lost a dog and have the flu, you should stay home.

Mira

2007-09-12T02:49:00.001-07:00

K-Aus Don't Be Fooled By Mira CDX ADC CCGC RV-E JV-E GV-E DNA-CP
04.02.1999-09.09.2007

I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and forever cry.
I am not there. I did not die.

Pecice - a few film clips

2007-08-29T23:38:00.000-07:00

I have a few random runs taped from last weekend's trial, thanks to Pawel. I HATE watching myself run my dogs, because the runs always look worse than I remember them. I can see LOTS more room for improvement. But I know it has to be done for educational purposes. And this to examine my weave pole handling. I am most disappointed about Uma's teeter in this one - she is clearly waiting for me. And about my very stupid handling of the dog-walk, tunnel sequence which almost made her go off course. And very wide there. And of course the entry into the serpentine. Anyway, here's Uma in the standard run:

And here's Malcolm in Jumpers. He actually got the weave entrance, but popped out, probably lack of committment on my part. Other than that, not bad and he's looking decent.

Here's part of Uma's Touch N GO run, Pawel didn't catch the first part.

And here's Mira's Jumpers run with the refusal at the number 3 tunnel. I know I had my back to her and started moving sideways a bit, but really, really, she SHOULD know better by now ;-)

Uma's weave poles and my handling

2007-08-26T13:20:00.001-07:00

I had attributed Uma's hesitancy on weave poles to the change in the spacement of the poles from the American 20" to the European 23.7" But it has been pointed out to me that the fault may lie in my handling. I tend to get tense, cower over the dog and stay very close. In general, it would seem I don't trust the dog to do her/his job. The truth is that I had a weave pole entry issue with Mira for a long long time. It only went away after I started trialling in ASCA where refusals don't count, which would make the theory that it's my nerves causing my reactions and my dog picking up on that. I don't think I have a weave pole entry issue with Uma yet, but I may very well start having one if I don't find a way to comfortably handle her the same way as in training. The countdown is: this weekend: 1 missed weave pole (good entry though) out of 2 last weekend: 2 out of 2 clean entrances and weaves 2 weeks ago: 2 out of 4 OK, so maybe there is a problem. This weekend I know someone was taping my runs, so hopefully I'll have access to that and will be able to see what's happening there. Last weekend Karolina taped only Uma's weaves in the standard course, which were slowish but clean. I don't see myself messing up too much here at the entrance, I am letting her find it on her own. I get closer to her towards the end and she clearly slows down there.

trial in Pecice Aug 25th

2007-08-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

Yet another one-day trial, this time hosted by our very own club. What that means is A LOT of work for me, nights spent filling out score cards, days spent buying everything necessary for the trial and lots of nerves. Our biggest feat before this trial was filling in a huge pothole which appeared on the (unpaved) drive into the field. My back is still sore.

My biggest worry was that the entry was too large for the time we had (120 dogs) and we would end up running well into the night... And there's no lighting there. But you can always count on the "rule of 15%" (which I heard about from my best friend who's organizing her wedding. She said that she's inviting more people than she has room for, but she's been told that about 15% of guests never show up). Anyway, I'm back home and it's only 8 PM. Which means we finished ahead of time. Everything went great, the people fro mour club worked their butts off, there were volunteers from other clubs too.

I ran everybody in Jumpers and Standard (Uma, Mira, Malcolm) and Uma in the game class we had for fun - Touch N Go. Uma was clean in the Standard run and took a first place!!!

Here's the course:

We had a tiny hiccup after 12, probably with more of an arc than needed to go into the serpentine at 13-14-15. But it was nice.
Malcolm didn't get the weave pole entry (5 faults) and Mira had a refusal at 13 and I honestly don't remember what I messed up there, but clearly something went wrong.

The Jumpers course was NOT nice. Really, number 11 is where it should be - NOT on the other side of this jump. This made for a very hard weave pole entry which Uma did not miss. But I did the very same thing I did a few weeks ago, amazed by the fact she actually made the entry I kept back and she popped out. So we had to redo the weaves. Malcolm also missed a weave pole, but was clean otherwise (yes, I know, obvious weave pole issues) while Mira, who really has weave pole issues, got all her entrances. Here she had a refusal at the # 3 tunnel. Yeah. I know, a pretty lame place for a refusal. Otherwise, she was good.

In the Touch N Go class there was an entry of, I think, something like 60 dogs (altogether, no jump heights). I only ran Uma in this with the idea of holding her contacts and counting to 3 before releasing them with all but the last contact which I wanted to quick release. I did just that and she ended up second out of all dogs (of course, clean). Possibly my proudest moment :-)

Anyway, it was a very good day for all my dogs. Uma was the best, but Mal and Mira were doing nicely too. Since there were 8 Aussies entered in the trial, Ula, owner of Asti, donated a prize for the best Aussie and Uma took that home with her too.

HOWEVER - sending her ahead of me in weave poles until the very, very end. That's what I have to work on next. And I asked a friend to time our weave poles here and they were at exactly 3 seconds. She also timed them last week and they were at 2.6 there, so it was much much slower this week. Bummer. I still haven't figured out what to do to get her to single-step these 60-cm distances between the poles.

trial in Vetrkovice Aug. 18th

2007-08-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

I'm back home, we got back late last night after an eventful weekend of training and trialling and some other quite unexpected events.

On Thursday Wanda and I went swimming in the lake with the dogs and.... while we were playing with the dogs in the water somebody swiped my wallet (driver's license, credit cards and all) from the car. Of course, I know I shouldn't have left the damn thing in the car. Yes, I really do.... Anyway, all of Thursday afternoon was spent at the police station in Vitkov trying to convince the Czech police to issue me some form of document which would allow me to drive home without my license. Luckily, my English-speaking Aussie friend Martina was kind enough to go there with me, because the language barrier was insurmountable. Czech and Polish are similar but it seems official Czech (the kind used in police reports) is far removed from the spoken language. And I spent Friday searching the surrounding area for the wallet, hoping the thief dropped it somewhere after taking the cash. Anyway, not too much fun. I was so stressed I got a fever, headache and a stomachache all at once.

I still decided to trial on Saturday, practically dragging myself out of bed and definitely NOT running very fast. There were two runs - jumpers and standard. Uma WON the Jumpers (class of 36 dogs), being 4 seconds ahead of dog number 2. In standard she knocked two bars (both were my fault, she placed 4th), but it was still a beautiful performance. She had a time of 32 s and the next dog clocked in at 38 s. The Jumpers and the Standard results are always combined at the end and it turned out she also took a 1st place in the combined classification (nobody had 2 clean rounds). So all in all, it was a very nice showing, especially bearing in mind my state of mind....

trial in Ostrava and camp in Vetrkovice (Czech Republic)

2007-08-19T02:08:00.000-07:00

We went to a trial in Ostrava before the camp in the Czech Republic - it was a tempting trial to enter for me, because all they had were two standard runs (so-called exams), so I got two tries at Uma's second leg for her A1 in one day.

However, it was raining very hard, the trial was outside, it was very slippery and on the first run Uma didn't hold her dogwalk and A-frame contacts. I think she was trying, It's just that I don't think I've ever trained in such conditions and on such equipment (the contacts were rubberized) She also dropped a bar in that run.

Her second run was much better, it looked like she learned what to do with those wet contacts, her dog walk was still very iffy, but it was a qualifying run with a first place and a time of 34.18.

Which doesn't change the fact that now I know I need to practice contacts also when it's raining, with particular attention to safety issues, she certainly needs an easy command before she goes on the teeter when it's that wet.

The Czechs are well.... so similar and yet so different. It's not my first time here in the Czech Republic, but each time I'm here for longer I have similar issues. It seems to me when training they rely more on instinct than on methodology, which is not exactly my strategy for doing anything. But then again since it's so clearly instinct and intuition which I lack as a handler, then maybe it was the right thing to do to come here and see what they have to offer. The camp starts tomorrow morning.
----

And an update after two days of agility camp. Sadly, in terms of the ideas our instructor has to offer, it is disappointing. Mainly, there's just a set up that everybody in the group (4 dogs, not a big group) has to do. If you do it correctly, there's a "vybornie" ("excellent") comment and if you don't, then you do it again until you get it. If you don't get it after some 4 or 5 tries, that's pretty much it. Our instructor, who will remain nameless here (but the instructor is a multiple WC participant), because I don't want to spread bad news about someone over the internet, rarely gets up from her chair. I honestly cannot understand the purpose of these exercises... Anyway, the only good thing is that the sequences are interesting, I can experiment with different handling strategies to see which one works for me and well... that's pretty much it. I get a good workout, Uma and Malcolm (who's in a different group) also get a good workout.

I've been spying on the less advanced classes to see how they teach certain beginning stuff and I am amazed. I am absolutely amazed at how it is possible that this country has had World Championship medalists, both in the individual and team categories.... It seems there is no theory whatsoever, there's just plain running. Contact zones are taught by physically placing the dog on the zone and yelling "zona" (zone), there's a variation used for running contacts which includes rolling a ball off the contact (and yelling "zona"), weave poles are taught by luring the dog with a ball. They begin agility with sequences, not individual obstacles. To be honest, I did not see many excellent weave pole performances at the trial in Ostrava and I did see A LOT of missed contacts, so the methods are well... not working. I don't know, maybe it's the fact that there are SO MANY people competing, that there have too be a few good ones in the bunch? It is true that for a country as small as the Czech Republic the sheer number of people practicing agility is overwhelming. There can be three FCI trials in the country (which is the size of well... maybe Massachusetts) on the same weekend and they all fill. Maybe it's the fact that they have so many dogs to choose from, there's just bound to be a few really good ones in the lot.

Update after 4 days...
The disappointment continues. There is absolutely no commentary whatsoever. Several of the sequences were well known setups (like serpentines, threadles, 270s), they also seem to love geometrical X-type openings. When people struggle with a particular handling sequence because they haven't taught it, they just struggle, that's it. There's a lady with a standard schnauzer in Uma's group who clearly cannot do serpentines if her life depended on it. She struggles with these serpentines each and every time they're set up and it would really have been such an easy thing for the instructor to get up and show her what to do.

I admit to having been a rebellious camper. When the instructor sets up long and twisted courses (and it's hot hot hot here - finally) I break them up into pieces and finish after some type of accomplishment. The good news is she has stopped yelling at me, but it's strange that I actually feel like I'm not being honest when I'm trying to teach my dog.

The Czechs also don't have startline stays, practically all of them run with their dogs from the startline. They also don't seem to be teaching jumping. When the dog knocks bars, the dogs knocks bars and that's it. There doesn't seem to be any method to teaching it. In general, I was thinking of going home early, but well... it's just one more day and maybe we can survive that. And there's a 1-day official trial on Saturday.

Lesley Olden seminar - part III

2007-08-03T12:17:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to be trialling this weekend, far far away, but due to various interconnected reasons I wasn't :-(
Next weekend I'm leaving for a week-long agility camp in the Czech Republic with Jirina Strnadova who is a well known judge and retired competitor (she used to run Shelties and Belgian Sheepdogs).

But since I wasn't trialling this weekend, I had some time to write more about Lesley Olden's methods for contacts and jumping drills.

Her contact methods are basically the same ones I use, though I guess I first learned about them through Susan Garrett and I've always thought she was the original inventor of the 2on/2off taught through targeting of a plexi square. Lesley says she first trained a 2on/2off contact through targeting (of a clear plexi square) in 1991. That's years and years of experience in doing this! She starts off with a clear plexi square (VERY small, like 2 square inches, no more) and basically goes through all the stages Susan Garrett describes. She emphasizes the need to fade the target very quickly. It comes back in if the dog is having issues with something new. When I was recalling Uma over the dogwalk from a tunnel and she just couldn't put the brakes on hard enough, she had me put the plexi target back for a couple of repetitions. Amazingly, it worked. Two reps with a target and she was able to put the brakes on without one.
Lesley prefers to teach a down as her contact position and constant targeting (not pecking, but "put your nose down and keep it there") which differs from what I do. She says the down position is natural for most border collies (not Aussies though), so that's why she uses it. She doesn't use it for other breeds. On the other hand, I would think it might also encourage crouching in BCs.

There aren't many people in Poland who teach a stopped contact with a 2 on/2off, usually people, even the really top competitors, have some form of a running contact that's pretty much dependent on the position of the handler.

Obviously, Lesley puts a lot of emphasis on independent performance of a contact obstacle and does lots of work on independent angled entries onto the contacts (something I have to work on). She teaches the dog to go under a hoop on commaned or around a pole/cone and uses that skill when practicing angled entries. Somebody asked why she doesn't believe the hoops don't work for down contacts and work for up contacts and she said "just because" :-) I am still wondering what I should do with Uma's up dogwalk contact for which I have assumed the attitude of "don't fix it if it isn't broken" but I'm being more and more concerned that it might easily get broken. She sometimes misses it in practice, though she hasn't missed it in competition yet. If I'm worried about the approach, I'll do a quick RFP to shorten her stride a bit. But maybe I should actually teach her the damn thing...

Lesley has a horse background, so she knows a lot about jumping and showed us some jump grid exercises she uses with her own dogs. Basically, she admits to doing this more by instinct than by plan - analyzing what the dog is good at and what it needs work on and progressing on the basis of that. In general she set up grids of 4 jumps, experimenting with the spacing, the height of the jumps and finally offsetting them a bit. She does her jumps grid exercises as a send (different from Suzanne Clothier's Jump Chute method in which everything is done as a recall), especially if she's working on the early stages of collection exercises. And she does have a point there, a recall exercise certainly invites a dog to flatten out and extend, while in a sendaway the dog is not focused on getting to the handler. Of course, the same collection exercise should later be done as a recall as well, but she says it is easier for the dog as a send.

As she brings the jumps closer together, she never puts them at less than 2 meters apart for the big dogs (to quote her loosely: "not like them bloody Americans"). She also set up turning drills with three winged jumps set up in a U pattern with the wings touching. For this one she starts the dogs off from a standstill and then adds speed to the drill by adding jumps before the turn.

Lesley Olden seminar - part II

2007-07-30T01:09:00.000-07:00

The exercises I really liked consisted of timing various handling options for one sequence and seeing which one was faster. The results were sometimes counter-intuitive for me, which is why I liked it so much, because of all the information these exercises provided.

What was very eye-opening for me was Lesley's concept of lines on turns. I'd heard about it before, I think it's something I really should have known about, but well... somehow I never gave it as much thought as Lesley did at this seminar. In general, Lesley said (rightly so) that it is always faster for a dog to turn in the direction it is moving in and looking at.

In this exercise it would seem that the shorter and thus faster route would be to shape the turn between the 1-2 jumps, wrap the wing of number 2 to the left and give the dog a straight on entrance into the weaves. Like this:

BUT.... it turned out that for all the dogs (one exception, a smaller slower dog) it was significantly faster to turn right after number 2 and wrap the wing from the other direction. Mostly because the 1-2 line was clearly suggesting to the dog that it would be turning right. Thus, the left turn in the first handling option took longer to register and wasn't as tight as the right turn. Here's the faster handling:

Same thing in the exercise below. It would seem logical to wrap the right wing of number 2, have the dog move between jumps 2 and 3 onto the A-frame, also giving the dog a straight on approach onto the A-frame. Like this:

But it turned out that giving the dogs an angled approach to the aframe, by turning the dog to the left after jump number 3, was the faster solution for everyone.

I also noticed that Lesley is a fan of long offset leadouts, especially when they help you get a tighter turn. And what she suggested here was a leadout way to the right of number 2, with the left shoulder turned towards the dog, left arm leading the dog to number 2 and switching to the right arm as soon as the dog commits. Again, something I'll have to practice, because it was a good idea in terms of the tighter turn it created.

Here's the faster handling option:

This one wasn't as clear cut and obvious. The concept that the faster turn will be in the direction the dog is looking in would apply, but the distance the dog travels after turning left is so much longer that it sometimes outweighs the time gained on the turn. Here are the two options:

EDIT: Come to think of it there actually isn't any distance losst on turning to the left here. Which means I have absolutely no idea why turning to the right worked faster for me. But it did.

And nothing counterintuitive about the sequence below. The faster way was with a front cross after number two. BUT... it was damn hard to get it in. For me it required sending the dog into the tunnel running to number 2 ASAP and giving her my turn cue to number 3 as she was coming towards number 2.
I also tried the second handlig with a post turn after number 2 and with a wrap and then a back cross. My post turns/pivots suck, so it was faster with a wrap and a rear cross.

Lesley Olden seminar - part I

2007-07-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a seminar with Lesley Olden and what an informative seminar it was!

In general I have to say I love Lesley's handling style, because it's so un-European. Lesley is not a "run with your dog as fast as you can" kind of person, she has knee problems herself, so she needs to look for ideas that allow her to maintain speed while handling from a larger distance than most European handlers.

On the other hand I'm not sure if she's got the personality of a seminar-giver, I think you really have to dig to get answers out of her, ask her questions and don't accept a "well done" type of comment. I'm also glad I was in the advanced group with Uma, because she seemed excellent when discussing the handling issues we faced and kind of bored with the basic (motivation, focus, startline stays) issues the less-advanced people had. So for handling strategies, she's an excellent choice and I highly recommend her.

She definitely revealed tons of holes in my training and motivated me to work on them. I'll write them down now (so I don't forget) and I'll later write about the specific exercises.

TURNS - I've been working on this a lot, but it seems like there's still a lot to be done. I have not worked on pivot turns (post turns) and that shows when I need to do one. And more work on wrapping wings tightly. It seems her best turns are turns out of rear crosses. That has to change ;-) Lesley also showed us some cool grid work jumping exercises, which I will want to work on in my neverending quest to improve Uma's jumping technique.

WEAVES - Lesley has totally impressive weave entries from a distance at weird angles and at tons of speed. I still need work on that, lots of work. I also need to work on entries when I'm on front of the dog and recalls through the weaves.

PULL THROUGHS (and threadles) - this seems to be one of Lesley's favorite moves. I need work on pull throughs when the dog is way in front of me, which can happen... Lesley suggested teaching a verball pull through command and I think I'll go for that. I had some issues doing the threadle in the course which follows below, there was no way I could get it from a distance. Especially since I'm used too handling threadles while walking backwards, I can only achieve this when I'm in front of the dog. If the dog is in front of me, there's no way I can do that.

TUNNELS - it seems Uma does not understand the concept of the possibility of exiting the pipe tunnel in the other direction than the arc the tunnel is curving in. And I can call her all I want, in the course below she still first turned to the indside of the tunnel after existing it. Lesley suggested directional commands, but I am not sure about that. I'll have to think it through.

CONTACTS - Uma has gorgeous contacts and fast as well, but she sometimes loses it when the speed is really outrageous - as in below 1.7 seconds. In the course below I tried sending her to the number 8 tunnel and recalling her over the dogwalk. The first time she did not get the contact, it was just too fast. I had to go back to a target and the next time she got it. So more work on this, getting really top notch speed (out of a tunnel) and recalling over a contact obstacle.

more courses and photos

2007-07-26T23:54:00.000-07:00

Here's yet another cute Uma pic from Lublin (two weekends ago):

The guy who took this picture, Szymon Regis, is one of the best agility photographers out there. Like most of the agility photographers in Poland he lets people use his photos for free as long as credit is given.

And two more courses from last weekend. This one was particularly nasty:

We died after the number 15 jump. I was too slow Uma took the dummy jump (number 8) instead of going to the tunnel. But it was a heck of a nasty course.

And a Jumpers course which I was particularly proud of running well:

The way FCI trials work in general is that there are three runs a day - one is the so-called "exam" That's a regular standard run divided into levels (A0, A1, A2, A3). You need three Qs from A1 to move up into A2, 3 Q with top 3 placements from A2 to get into A3 and 3 Qs with top three placements from A3 to earn the A3 title. Exams are not organized at each and every trial (unfortunately and for strange and complicated reasons). The two remaining runs, one Jumpers and one Standard, are so-called Open runs, which means any dog from any category can run in them. They don't count for titles.

And now we're off to a seminar with Lesley Olden. That should be fun!

Photos from Bialystok Trial

2007-07-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

And some photos from the trial in Bialystok. All photos by Mokka (Hanna Bryzek).

Get that contact, girl!

Got it, mom!

Straight line, legs extended:

Maybe a little bit less extended here... Maybe not.

Tunnels:

This one's my favorite:

And the A-Frame

Bialystok, July 20-21

2007-07-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

We were in Bialystok at an official FCI trial this weekend. There were some highs and some lows, but we were running very smoothly and the only times anything happened was when I messed up.

BAD: calling her too early when she's in the tunnel, not turning her quick enough after she comes barelling out of a tunnel, me being nervious about weave entrances and thus Uma not getting them (on Sunday I relaxed and she got ALL her weave entrances). And more bad timing on my part....

GOOD: The dog :-) Uma holding her contacts (I'm tempted to start quick releases with her, but I don't think I'm there yet), fast weaves, awesome jump work, just 1 knocked bar all weekend long (my fault). Practically all of our runs were very nice and fluent, usually with one stupid handler mistake per run. Two were awesome - a qualifying Standard run on Sunday in A1 (this means she has 1 leg and needs 2 more to move up) and an awesome clean Open Standard run on Sunday (with a third place).

Saturday was a "bad handler day" for Uma and I really messed her up quite a few times. I pulled her out of the chute by calling too early (there was a tricky sequence following, I didn't want her to take the dummy jump, but it was obviously too early) and I put her over the wrong jump after exiting the tunnel.

I did the very same thing on Sunday which cost me an off course and a very nice trophy. Here's the course where this happened:

Here I off-coursed her after the number 18 tunnel onto the number 3 jump instead of doing the broad jump. I didn't turn her tight enough after the tunnel and it didn't help that I was on the right side of the broad jump. She jumped the jump when my back was turned to the tunnel. I did the same thing in Saturday's Open Jumpers class, which means this is something I need to work one. Both of these runs would have been awesome if it wasn't for that off course after the tunnel.

This is a course we ran clean and in 41.90 seconds. The best time was 38 seconds by a very fast Lithuanian border collie. However, I was holding Uma's contacts for at least half a second on each. I'm sure there's no way she would have been as fast as that dog, but I could technically shave at least 1.5 second off her time by quick relasing. But.... I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. Anyway, here's the course:

In general I'm very pleased with her and of course disappointed in my handling skills or lack thereof. But next weekend we're going to a seminar with Lesley Olden (of Crufts fame) and I'm looking forward to that.

Lubiln, July 14th

2007-07-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to Lublin to a small and very informal trial with the goal of holding Uma's contacts and doing all in my power to try and break her stays. There were only 8 dogs in Uma's class, so the trial was absolutely no big deal, but we still did our thing - contacts were perfect as were her stays.

Her standard run was clean and in first place, her jumpers run was also nice, but I was so amazed she made the difficult weave pole entry I held back and pulled her out - so that was 5 faults for a missed weave pole. Still a first place though. Second went to Uma's mom Mira, who missed her weave antry (also 5 faults), but was slower. There's always a combined standard +jumpers classification in Poland and Uma took first in that as well. She also got the "best contacts" award - well, that's what we were there for. We got some very nice hand-made polar fleece tugs as our loot - I think they'll come in handy as tug toys.

And here are the courses from Yesterday. Here's the standard course (as I remember it):

And here's the Jumpers course:

Uma's two siblings (blue merle Asti and black Jinx) were there as well and did very nicely too.

and more problems

2007-07-11T01:18:00.001-07:00

Of course, as always before a trial after a longish break, all kinds of problems have to pop up JUST before the trial.
On Monday I was working on speed on contacts with my club members and worked with Uma as well. It was drizzling and kind of slippery, but after the speed session she was not holding her contacts on the dog walk - trying, but clearly too much speed to stop.
The good news is her speed was decent - 1.6 to 1.9 on the dogwalk. But I cannot yet ask for that kind of speed in competition or this is what I'll get. She needs practice, practice, practice stopping in the 2on/2off position from FULL speed.

On a good note - Mira (Uma's mom) has received an invitation to the ASCA Agility Finals for this year! She qualified in last place of the qualifiers, but I am guessing she must have been the only one who went from Novice to qualifying for the finals in about 6 months.

2007-07-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

We worked on some weave entries on Wednesday and Friday and I have definitely found a hole in my training. But this is something that just needs to be worked on in terms of miles and, hopefully, it will come.

The bigger problem seems to be Uma's weave pole technique. In the US she was very nicely sinigle stepping the poles - BUT the poles in ASCA/USDAA are spaced at 20" - that is 50.8 cm. The poles here are spaced at 65 cm - that is 25.6". It's a HUGE difference, for some reason I hadn't noticed how huge the difference is. And it clearly impacts her technique.

Interestingly, both Mira and Malcolm (and Jinx and Asti - Uma's littermates) single step these weave poles very nicely. I'm trying to think very hard about what to do to get Uma to do this. If her siblings are capable of doing it, it should mean she can do it too. But it's kind of frustrating at this point...

Training in July

2007-07-04T05:39:00.000-07:00

Our first trial in Poland is on July 14-15th, it's an unofficial match in Lublin. The following week (21-22) there's an official trial in Bialystok. Then we're off to an agility seminar with Lesley Olden from the UK and then to agility camp in Vetrkovice.

The past week was devoted to enjoying the almost constant availability of agility equipment :-) We did some tunnel/contact obstacle discriminations and worked on handling for that, some jumping drills on offset lines of jumps and some weired entrances onto contacts.

Our dropped bar ratio has been pretty low, though not nonexistent - but mostly when I pulled too fast on tighter sequences or signalled miserably late.

A friend visited us with a camera yesterday and took some pics of the dogs playing agility and herding. Thanks for the pics, zakla! Here are a few pics of Uma:

training plans

2007-06-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

Things to work on soon:

- weaving away from me and allowing me to drift to the left and right while Uma is weaving (to enable a front cross)
- cuing the correct entrance of a C-shaped tunnel with a slight RFP
- Uma's response to my cues for tunnel/dogwalk and tunnel/A-frame discriminations + my consistency with using cues
- two ways for handling serpentines

General and larger things:

Think of ideas for working on changing the bad habit of usinig her right lead while on a counterclockwise arc.

Carefully plan a progressive project for independent contacts, especially in two situations: (1) contact obstacle after a straight line of jumps (Uma way in front of me) and (2) when I am way in front of her (to allow front crosses not just next to the contact, but also from a greater distance). Also work on position on contacts with targeting.

Look for ideas for more jump work