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16 hours ago
Friday, September 11, 2009
The problem
So my dog has a problem and there for I have a problem. If she perceives that I'm going to far ahead of her and she is trying to catch me, then the fastest way from point A to point B is fly. Yep, fly. Just like she use to take flying leaps off the contacts. Why doesn't she just take more strides to try to catch up to me. No, she will instead take a flying leap and crash a jump. She is going to kill herself. I don't want you to think that I want my dog to be crazy or that I'm not careful with my training. Ive been doing lots of jump chutes trying to recreate this type of sequence ( me ahead and her trying to catch up). But she does fine in the jumps chutes no matter where I place myself or how far ahead I go. Maybe I need to practice the jump chutes at the agility field. There I can really spread them out. Also, maybe I should first put her through a tunnel and then run the chute. Do you think she panics when she thinks I'm to far ahead or if I'm picking up speed. Maybe it has to do with coming out of the tunnel. She leaves with you in one spot. When she comes out, you are in another spot and she has to think and adjust to where you are and what you are doing. I really don't want her to kill herself. I feel lucky that she didn't break her neck yesterday. Crap, what was she thinking. Maybe I need to just not go so far ahead or start speeding up , especially when she is coming out of a tunnel.
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5 comments:
Can you throw toys, or food, or rewards more where you want her to be, maybe thinking the reward placement could come lots of places-like when she comes out of a tunnel and has to look for you, that might help her not worry when she is away from you. Another thought is that when she does get one of those sequences that she does not like as much, when she is out and calmly takes the jump you could stop right there, run to where she is and party so she understands that sometimes she is being a very good girl and she does not need to worry about getting back to you so fast. I think she definately seems to panic a little bit when she is too far out or too far away thinking she needs to hurry and catch you and sems like that is when she forgets to make sure she is jumping right or keeping herself safe, LOL, she just loves to make sure she keeps you right by her
Based on the LM stuff I've read, the farther ahead you are, the stronger the extension cue. Maybe Miley just has no limit on how much extension she will attempt to give! Besides training with jump chutes so that she learns to adjust her stride, you could try adding some collection cues when you are that far ahead to temper the extension you are creating: shoulders facing dog (not for that sequence), no handler motion/deceleration. You kind of stood still while she was in the tunnel (when she couldn't see you), then took off as soon as she appeared, creating some big extension. The dog's stride is naturally big coming out of a tunnel, and seeing a handler way ahead of her and charging forward may have been just too many extension cues for her. Maybe if you had hustled into position as soon as she committed to the tunnel, then held more still to cue those next two jumps it might have worked better. I see handlers of super fast BC's do this: use the fact that the dog can't see them in the tunnel to RUN and get in position to cue collection downstream.
Very good point Lorale. I will have to look back at other video and see what Im doing when she is in the tunnel and then what happens after she comes out. Thanks, Diana
Lora makes an interesting point. I'm also thinking for now, while she's building confidence, stay with her. Most sheltie handlers stay fairly close to their dogs. You can run like heck together. I know up here, most of the shelties are handled with rears. Not where I train but watching my class, it's rear cross city. I think a nice combo of fronts and rears might be nice. But I seriously think Lora is on to something which is what you want to work towards. But if you're trialing her now, adjust your handling so she doesn't kill herself. My teacher is very good about having us establishing training goals for class, practice, lessons, but not putting them into competition until it's trained.
My young BC used to do the same thing and my instructor would yell at me to stop racing him in class. What I did at home during training was set up a line of 6 or 7 jumps with two curved tunnels at each end. I would send him into a tunnel and then run down the line of jumps towards the next tunnel. I was careful not to "race" him but did keep up a pretty steady pace. He would drop bars at first because he would extend and flatten out when he would see how far ahead of him I was. He eventually learned to adjust his stride and take off and to think about jumping (rather than racing to catch up with me). I always varied the distance between the jumps so he wouldn't pattern his stride.
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