I entered Ice in the Masters JWW ‘B’ match, his first ever official event. I was allowed to use toys in the ring and took his green frog with me although I don’t think Ice knew I had it.
Ice started off slow but sped up significantly as the run progressed, in fact his increase in speed caused me to be late cuing my final front cross almost causing Ice to over shoot the jump.
Very pleased that Ice read my rear cross prior to the weaves – he’s never done one of those before even in class.
I didn’t attempt the weaves but if you look at the video closely you see that Ice actually thought about trying them!
I’ve been a bit lazy with Ice’s weave pole training. Sky learnt on channel weaves with “training bars”, he ran through a wide channel for about 6 months before I started closing it. He then went from a 6″ channel to inline in about 2-3 weeks. I trained Little Riley with the same method and he learned even quicker, he was doing 6 inline poles in about a week.
With Ice I decided to use “weave-a-matic” weaves running to the Manners Minder. Penny has been training Ice on the weaves during the day whilst I’m at work. Yesterday Ice was doing 6 inline poles to the manners minder. He’s been doing this for a couple of weeks now. The problem is he is very environment sensitive, if we move the poles to a different area of the yard he doesn’t see the obstacle as weaves anymore and we have to start over with a wide “V” in order to get him weaving again.
That said, when Ice does weave he has a nice action for a medium sized dog, he can’t single step the poles like Sky does but he does move through them quickly without too much lateral motion.
‘B Match’
The Evergreen Retriever Trial are having a ‘B’ Match this afternoon at Argus Ranch. I’m going to take Ice along, I’m not sure yet whether I’ll run him or not, the main factors influencing my decision will be heat and Ice’s distraction level.
Table Sequence
We ran two small jumping sequences this morning and Penny videoed them for me.
Usually Sky goes to class on Wednesday and Ice on Thursday, but as Sky is grounded Ice is going on both days. This means I had the opportunity to retry the sequence that caused the table issues on Wednesday.
Here is the course fragment that Ice ran, the sequence started at the chute #9 and ended at the double #19.
On Thursday Ice had no issues running this course, here’s how I handled it.
I started with Ice on my right and did a short lead out to the chute. Next I did a “Pull” from #10 to #11 followed by a “forward send” to the table #12. Ice went into a down as soon as he hit the table.
I released Ice from the table on my left side and I did another “Pull” from the Panel Jump #13 to the A-Frame followed by a “Forward Send” to jump #15, as Ice wrapped back from #15 I had already moved to the landing side of #16 doing a blind cross which I completed before Ice took the Triple jump #16. With Ice now on my right I did another “Pull” around #17 and #18 and the showed lots of forward towards the final jump #19.
Observations
This sequence was pretty easy for Ice even though it did come from a Master’s level AKC course.
I would have handled Sky the same way only I would have done a Front Cross rather than a Blind Cross between #16 and #17.
Ice is still not running anywhere near as fast as he is capable of running.
Ice’s running A-Frame is way better than Sky’s
Dog Walk Sequence
The course opened with this Dog Walk challenge. I took the opportunity to use this sequence to practice Ice’s running Dog Walk. We did 10 reps in all and there was only 1 miss. The rest of the runs were either good (multiple feet in the contact zone) or very good (two rear feet split in the middle third of the contact zone). On the first 8 reps Ice just took the tire and then ran the Dog Walk. On reps #9 and #10 I beat him to the end of the Dog Walk (I had to run hard to do it) and then did a rear cross on the flat to turn Ice into the tunnel. I was able to get to the end of tunnel #3 to do a push into tunnel #4. If tunnel #3 had been a 15′ one I would not have been able to do this.
Conclusions
Ice’s running contacts are still working really well even though we don’t train them very often. Unlike Sky he understands what the criteria are and he makes the necessary stride adjustments to meet them.
The one time Ice missed the Dog Walk contact was almost certainly caused me over stimulating him with a squeaky toy immediately prior to the rep.
Ice still gets distracted in class by other dogs and/or people – that said he was better this week than previous weeks and he was coming back to me (eventually) when I called him rather than me or Sarah having to capture him.
The table was one of the first obstacles that Ice learnt. We used to practice it in the garage over the wet winter months. Ice got to love the table, it was one of his favorite games.
Last night in class Ice encountered a table in sequence for the first time. He used the table as a trampoline to the next obstacle – so much for my training over the winter. After a couple of retries he “stuck” the table but would only sit on it, I wanted a down but decided this was not the time or place to push things as I really wanted to focus on building up Ice’s obstacle drive.
This morning I got my table out and placed it on the grass – without much effort Ice was happily being sent to the table and immediately going into a down. He remained in the down until being released. All the time he was on the table in the down position he’d get small cookie rewards.
My next step was to incorporate the table into a small sequence which started and ended with the Table. The sequence went like this:
Table
Jump
Tunnel
Jump – wrap back to the tunnel.
Tunnel – other entrance from #3.
Jump – same jump as #2 but taken from the other side.
Table – down, wait 20 seconds in the down position and then repeat.
Observations
Jump #4 requires a collection cue in order to get a nice tight turn back into the tunnel. On our first run I just used deceleration as the cue to get the turn and Ice didn’t read it that well. He took the jump a little longer that I was looking for. On our second run I decelerated, turned into him and showed him my outside arm and hand but didn’t give a verbal jump command. This time Ice stopped dead in his tracks in front of the jump – what a good boy! On our third run I gave the same cue’s and added the verbal jump command and got a lovely tight turn.
Ice nailed the table on all three runs – he landed on it and went straight into the down, I didn’t even need to give a down command. At the end of the training session (we only did 3 reps) I was feeling pretty good as this had been one of our best sessions so far and I started thinking what had made it different from the other sequencing sessions we had done. In the past Ice would easily get distracted between runs, he’d wander off sniffing the grass and this didn’t happen this time. Of course it was the introduction of the table, the course started and ended on the table, Ice values the table very highly because he gets lots of cookies on it provided he remains in a down so he doesn’t have the opportunity or desire to leave it and go sniffing.
Conclusions
Don’t forget verbal jump commands – Sky would benefit from these as well as Ice.
Incorporate the table into more of our training sessions. It stops Ice getting distracted and the table still occurs in a lot of the venues we compete in so it’s a valuable skill to master.
Ice Agility 