Happy birthday, Jagger!

Jagger turned one year old this past weekend. I can’t believe it, where has the time gone?

Happy birthday, little dude!

He hit a growth spurt a couple of months ago, perhaps his last, and it seems to have thrown his striding off on the dogwalk a bit. So, we have taken a break while he figures out how to use those legs again and will get back to it soon. In the meantime, I am very excited that we have started Silvia Trkman’s online agility foundations class. Here are a few videos of our work:

Oh, and by the way I am about seven months pregnant now. We are also moving in a month, so blog updates will continue to be sporadic. With all that going on, we haven’t done quite as much training and just general doggie fun as I would like, but fortunately Jagger continues to be endlessly entertained by destroying cardboard boxes and chasing them around my living room. Case in point:

“omg… throw it noooowwwwwww!” *twitch*

For completeness, here is where we left off with the running dogwalk before Jag’s decided that he *must always* three stride the dogwalk and nothing else would do, regardless of where his paws fell in relation to the yellow and whether or not he could actually pull off the three strides. Adrenaline junkie! You can actually see this developing across the three videos below, and especially the last one where I switch him to a partial contact, trying to isolate the yellow (he did get the idea much better the next session, and my horrible clicker timing also improved I am happy to say).  You can also see us working through some issues with the entry and proofing motion.

Edge of glory or hanging on by my fingernails?

Most recently, I have been working on adding a bit of height to the dogwalk. It is now at 36-inches, where it will stay for a while as we work through some things. I am pleased that Jagger hasn’t fallen off the thing lately. This is encouraging.

What is a bit discouraging, though not unexpected for a 10-month old dog, is that sometimes I swear when I teach Jagger something new, some behavior I’d previously taught him falls right out the other ear. I imagine our conversations going something like this during training:

Me: Ok, I want you to run through the right end of that tunnel, come out the left end, get on the dogwalk, run across it in four strides or maybe three or five if you think that will work better while touching the yellow zones on each end, then take that jump at the far end. Then I’ll throw you the ball!

Jag: OK!!!!!

*Jagger runs through the tunnel at 100 miles an hour, then shows up at my feet*

Me: Hey Jag, you were supposed to get on the dogwalk.

Jag: I FORGOT.

Me: No biggie, we’ll try it again. I know it’s complicated.

Jag: OK!!!!

*same scenario repeats itself several more times*

Me: Dude.

Jag: THROW BALL NOW?

Anyway, here’s what it looks like when things are going well:

In the above video, I am gradually moving the jump standards that you have seen at the base of the down ramp in previous videos farther away from the dogwalk. Eventually, I will get them far enough away so that I can put a low jump bar up. The goal is to encourage Jagger to drive toward the jump of his own volition, independent of my motion or throwing the ball. I make small changes (but didn’t tape all sessions) to gradually progress.

And when it’s going REALLY well:

These two efforts happened earlier tonight after a couple of days of very challenging training sessions where Jagger has obviously been working hard to put all his dogwalk skills together. The fact that he’s getting on the up ramp while I am moving (albeit at just walk right now) is a pretty major achievement. He’s not leaping off the down ramp even though I start jogging. I am also quite happy with how he’s driving toward the jump on his own.

Dogwalk Download

It has been a long time since I’ve posted an update on Jagger’s running contact process. In a lot of ways, not much changes from day to day. But when I look at where we are now compared to where we were two months ago, we have made tremendous progress!  Here is a recent highlight clip of last night’s training session:

I left in more of the raw footage than usual, and I uploaded it at regular speed instead of slow motion. I think it’s nice to see some of Jagger’s personality and his learning process in the raw footage. One thing I notice in this video as our biggest item of progress is how much better he is at understanding that the goal of the exercise is to get onto the dogwalk obstacle. We have struggled with this for some weeks. I get the impression Jagger was not entirely bought into the idea of the dogwalk in and of itself being a goal, and was trying to explain to me that running on the grass after the ball was MUCH faster. Anyway, I am *very* proud of how he is thinking about how to get himself onto the ramp in the above video.

And since the title of this post is the dogwalk download, here are a slew of our videos from June as we worked through raising the planks and figuring out how to set up exercises. You’ll notice there is a long gap between the end of June and the end of July with no video. Jagger is fine now, but he had a series of unfortunate events at the beginning of July, starting with a bad fall from the dogwalk. He needed a week’s rest to heal, and at the end of our first session back he managed to put an inch and a half long gash down the back of his throat with a stick while playing in the yard and was out for another two weeks. Sheesh, talk about a freak accident. We spent about a week working on rebuilding his confidence on the obstacle, and we are now finally (I think) getting back to where we were before the accident. Certainly an example of why the hind foot awareness tricks you see us practicing in the videos are SO important.

And finally, this clip just makes me laugh:

I have seen both my dogs slap down a single front foot in the yellow plenty of times when they have that moment where they realize at the last second they are going to overrun the contact but are supposed to touch it. This was the first time I’ve seen a dog slap down both hind feet in that moment!

Running Contacts – Enter the Dogwalk

About two weeks ago, I introduced Jagger to the idea of running across the entire, lowered dogwalk. Here is the setup:

Curved tunnel approach to lowered dogwalk

When I trained Copper to run his contacts, he already knew that he was supposed to run all the way across the dogwalk planks. So, it was a new and somewhat unexpected experience for me that Jagger took quite a bit of convincing to run on the planks exclusively. At first, I started him from a collar restraint at the beginning of the down ramp and released him to chase a thrown toy. Over the course of about three sessions and several days, I gradually backed him up until he could run across the entire dogwalk. As you will see in the videos below, I did have to add some barriers to help him stay on. I plan to fade those as the obstacle is raised.

At the end of our third session of chasing the toy down the planks from a collar restraint, we had a huge breakthrough and Jagger did his last attempt of the session at speed from the tunnel. I had a huge party for him after that success and immediately ended the session. I wanted him to really think about that attempt. You might not think that dogs, as creatures who live so much in the present, think much about training after it concludes, but I am convinced that they do. There was many a time I spent only a brief period teaching Copper a new skill, and low and behold several weeks later he remembered it.

All the same, I wasn’t sure what to expect of our first “real” session at speed across the dogwalk so I didn’t tape it. Jagger gave me a few attempts at running on the grass next to the planks or jumping off them, but quickly remembered what I wanted. Here is our second session, which I deliberately kept very short since this is a new skill:

There is some crazy stuff going on with his legs, but I think he is starting to figure out his footing better. We are continuing to work on tricks for hind end awareness and balance.

Here is our third session, which I think is much better in the hind foot coordination department:

The funny thing about this session is that I had been traveling, so we had not trained in almost a week. I let Jagger out into the back yard and he offered a lovely run across the dogwalk all by himself before I was even off the patio (of course the camera was not running yet!). This dog is hilarious. Then he waited as you see in the beginning of the video for me to hurry up and start the fun. He was so eager that I felt comfortable doing a much longer session with him this time.

Next step: gradually raising the planks

 

Running Contacts – Foundations

It’s been a while since I did a blog update, but we have been very busy! The tricks Jagger is now learning aren’t as quick to master as the earlier ones, so there isn’t a big exciting video montage to share. I have also been taking Jag hiking quite a bit, and trying to just let him be a dog as much as possible.

It hasn’t been all R&R, though! Earlier this month, we started Silvia Trkman’s online running contact course. I had trained Copper’s running contacts on my own with guidance from various, more skilled people’s YouTube videos. But, this time around I wanted professional guidance!

Our first steps have involved brushing up on some of our hind-foot awareness tricks:

and taking a good look at how Jagger looks when he runs on flat ground. Ideally, I want him to look the same running across the full height dogwalk as he does running across flat grass. This is the image I will keep in mind as we progress:

The first steps down the running contact path involve teaching Jagger to run on a flat plank just as he would on the ground. No jumping off the end, no leaping, no forgetting to run on the plank and running on the grass instead.  Well, we struggle a bit with that last one, but as long as he remembers to get on the plank we have been making good progress. Here are some of our early sessions:

My main observation is that I am *amazed* at how easy it is to get Jagger to RUN. After working so hard to motivate Copper, it almost feels like cheating to have this crazy border collie who just enjoys sprinting 100 miles an hour in and of itself.

Next step, on to a plank on a slight slope!

Everything is better with hugs

Since the last video update, I’ve continued to work on a variety of tricks with Jagger.  Most recently, my focus has been on not bolting out the door without permission, heeling, backing up, hind foot targeting, various balance tricks (feet in a bowl, picking up feet, standing on balance disk, front feet on a ball, etc.), and as you’ll see below – wrapping objects:

I’ll work on a bit more distance and proofing the verbal cue for left vs right, but what you see in the video is basically as far as I plan to take this behavior until Jagger gets a bit older.

This is what Jagger thinks of resting.

In other news, Copper and I had a pretty great weekend at a local USDAA trial recently.  The most notable parts were our first P3 Jumpers Q, our second Snooker Super Q, our first P3 Relay Q, and our first time ever successfully completing a masters level gamble (though I ran out of time so did not qualify).