Agility -- September 3, 2007
Ask anyone who has competed with her dog about the phenomenon, and they will tell you. When you first start out, winning seems to be the only thing that matters. If you don’t qualify (or, “Q”, as the slang goes), it is grounds for depression or self-destruction. As your career in competition grows, you realize that it’s not about Q’ing; it’s about small successes. I am proud to say that I have truly evolved to that point!
Last weekend Pete and I took Acacia and Bing to our first AKC agility trial. We have all done many trials, but not in agility. Acacia and Bing and I have worked very hard throughout the summer to prepare for competition; we did private lessons twice a week and group classes once per week. Acacia did a NADAC (North American Dog Agility Council) trial a few years ago, and we while we did pretty well considering the heat and humidity, I wasn’t familiar enough with the rules and we didn’t qualify. Subsequent to that, my interest in rally increased and we didn’t pursue agility until now.
While preparing for this trial, Bing’s biggest issue, it seemed, was a fear of the teeter. However, this proved to be short of the truth. Bing had much additional trepidation to overcome. He often ran to the gate to leave, even in private lessons. This occurred even in my own yard! His need to leave was an expression of generalized anxiety, youth and inexperience, and I found similarities between this behavior and his behavior in the crate. Once I began to have success with him with the teeter, I realized that I hadn’t taught him the weaves enough to get by. Oh my! And then there’s the whole ‘don’t touch me’ thing…he needs to be measured for his jump height! And all of these issues existed in addition to the simple challenges of front crosses, rear crosses, contacts, and other handling skills.
With the teeter, I realized (in a light bulb moment!) that I needed to click him for MOVING the teeter, not for the contact (the yellow part at the end of the teeter). Once I realized that, he was all over the teeter like peanut butter on jelly! With the weaves, I wanted to freeshape him for doing the weave poles. I bought channel weaves, which are adjustable so that the dog can basically walk through them initially, and end up weaving through them when the dog has learned them. We started with them 12 inches apart, and freeshaped him until they were 4 ½ - 5 inches apart. The trial was on a Sunday, and on Thursday morning I began to utilize a different tactic, one my friend in CA suggested I try (thanks, Anne!). I had Bing on a short leash, walked him up to the second pole, and waited for him to offer turning his head to the left…click! And treat. I repeated this for poles #4 and #6. We worked on this for three short sessions (both dogs) on Thursday, two sessions on Friday, and one session on Saturday before I ran out of time. By then, I was able to have both dogs do the weave poles with some coaching from me, with them on my left side…enough to complete a course! Yay! I wouldn’t say that my dogs really know the weave poles, but it’s a start.
As for being measured, I took Bing to a trial earlier in the summer so that one of my instructors could show me the measuring device and possibly practice using it on him. I was thrilled when I found that not only was I able to stand Bing on the table, hold his collar and feed him while Scott measured him, but that we were actually able to get an official measurement taken at the same time! Talk about a major relief! (As it turns out, he measured 22 7/8 inches at the withers, which makes him small enough to be excused from the breed ring…but makes for an awesome agility dog.) So when we got to the trial last weekend, although he was still anxious about it, we measured him without too much trouble (silly me, I didn’t have treats on me that time…grr!)
You can see the amount of preparation that went into getting ready for this trial…I’m still exhausted by it all! To cut to the chase, neither dog qualified, but BOY do I have things about which to be proud!!! I’d like to list some of them here…
- Bing didn’t leave the ring!
- Neither dog went into the zoomies, nor did they sniff, pee or poop in the ring!
- Acacia didn’t turn into a mule (I swear Acacia is part mule…when she doesn’t feel like doing something, she’ll just stand there and look at you, with her head lowered a bit. Kind of funny, I guess, and at her age, I have to laugh at her if she becomes a mule).
- Bing’s behavior around people was exemplary. At no time did he show any signs of real fear or snappy behavior. If he didn’t want to interact, he just backed or turned away.
- Acacia didn’t knock a single bar in the Standard class, despite having to jump 20 inches in the preferred class in her debut at age 9!
- Both dogs took the panel jump despite never having seen one before!
- Bing took the broad jump with no trouble, despite only having ever seen in once before, which was Friday night at 10:45pm, and without the uprights that demark the edges of it (when I practiced it, I didn’t set up any uprights). Yay for Bing! Acacia has seen the broad jump before and took it but stepped on it with her back feet…inexperience and age, I think.
- Bing did the teeter like a real champ!!!
- I successfully did two blind crosses with both dogs in the tunnels during the JWW (Jumpers with Weaves) course, which is a skill we haven’t really worked on.
- I didn’t get lost on the courses at all!
- Both dogs did the weaves twice!!!
- Bing didn’t run up to the judge during the course, nor did he decide that he needed to go visit any dogs!
- Bing wasn’t afraid of the loudspeaker or any of the loud noises at any time during the day. The trial was held indoors, in a horse arena. This was only the second time he’d been in one, and I was thrilled that it didn’t bother him.
- Bing has learned to spend time with Acacia in the crate. He still has trouble being in it alone, but seems to be content to sit and watch things if Acacia is in there with him, lying down. I was even able to walk away from it for about ten minutes and they were quiet, after I did a few repetitions of coming back and rewarding them for being quiet.
- Acacia tolerates Bing being in the crate with her for short periods of time (this is actually pretty astonishing, considering the extent of her love for her crate!)
- Bing actually FELL ASLEEP toward the end of the day!!!! He wasn’t in the crate when he fell asleep, but rather he was lying on the ground next to me as I sat in my chair. One of my goals for the day was to show Bing the experience of “just hanging out”. This is something we never really do, and the experience is invaluable.Bing’s behavior toward other dogs was fairly appropriate. He usually sees dogs and really pulls me hard to try to get to them to play. He did little of that at the trial. He also walked nicely for both Pete and me much of the time inside.
Qualifying would have been icing on the cake. Just going there and having so many things go right was an absolute thrill for me. We can‘t wait for the next trial!
Ali
Comments about this blog, email pete@e-production.net
Return to the Main Blog Page.
Send email to Ali Brown
Bing Blog 33
