Things went waaaayyy better than yesterday. I felt like Duncan wanted me happy and he had really great ball drive to make things even better.

We got two sessions at the box. The first time we went at it, I had the fleeting feeling Duncan had forgotten everything we had learned previously because it had been two weeks since we had been to actual practice. A few 'good boys' later and it seemed to click. We worked him further and further back from the box. Every time, I had to get the ball from him, have a happy dance, then reset up for the next run - and toss the ball back. If Duncan doesn't see the ball go from me to the box, he doesn't want it. Definitely something to work on next round.

And we did. We did a couple 'fake-out' throws to get him going. Eventually, I want him to learn that the box has a never-ending supply of balls. The first time I did it, Duncan took a step, turned around, and barked his head off calling foul. It brought up a few issues like going ofter balls not on the box and such, but I think we did great for our second class.

I need to remember to tug with Duncan or at least offer it to him. The first couple go's, he didn't seem to want to do it so I just tossed it aside. I think I would have gotten more out of him if I had redirected some of his over-the-top energy with the tug.

Without further ado, a video of a few runs.


A side note:
We took Pierre to see if he had any natural talent or inclination to do Flyball. He is really smart, but man is he stubborn. He was not afraid of the box. In fact, he go right up on it, trying to get to the box loader for some love. He did not want to touch the ball, smell the ball, look at the ball. I started talking for a moment and looked away and Duncan strutted down the running aisle and took every jump at his own sweet little pace. If only we could get him ball motivated AND have him listen... he would make a great sporting dog. But alas, we have a Toy.

Weeellll... tonight was definitely not one of our shiniest moments. Thane had play practice, so no videos - not that I would want evidence of the evening to survive.

We have been working and working on tunnels, weaves, and jumps (with a little plank thrown in) in the heat, with distractions. We've even gotten some pretty good distance work for our level. For the first 50 minutes of class, it felt like all of it was for naught.

As everyone was getting settled, I tried to run Duncan through a curved tunnel to warm up. He loves them so at home. He refused it. I gently put him at the beginning and tried to call him through. Nope. I stuck him in and crawled after him and he seemed to enjoy running through. One more time and he seemed warmed up, besides - the set up was being announced.

The instructors had four lines of three obstacles each set up for us.

Line #1 - Tire jump, teeter, weaves
      Tire jump is no issue if I put Duncan in a wait and call him from the other side. We have yet to get a Go. Working on it!
      Teeter... this is where my stomach sank a little. He wouldn't get on it unless I was constantly feeding him a turkey hotdog. Then when he was on, he walked to the end like nothing was a problem (instructor was guaranteeing a slow descent). The weird part? As soon as he was on, he ignored the food. That's right, a Sheltie did not want food. We tried it again and a few steps up he stopped. I tried every call, whistle, and thing I could thing of to entice him up. The instructor lowered the teeter before he passed the fulcrum hoping to encourage him down. Eh, he said, I guess I have to meander down this thing now...
      I suddenly remembered the tug! Oh, please work... It did a little, but his nose was still stuck to the ground. He got one or two really good weave passes before we moved on to the next line.

Line #2 - Wait table, dog walk, curved tunnel
      The wait table isn't a problem. I imagine we'll actually do more with it when he's actually running, but for now - no biggie.
      The A-frame is a contact, therefore Duncan did not like it today. His nose was glued to the ground. I tried running start, placing a line of hotdogs up the ramp, enticing him with his tug, and even tried to trade treats with classmates... nothing. So I picked him up and put him on the flat top part. What does he do? Saunter down the other side. I put him a little further back and get the same nice result (if sassy). I put him on the top of the first ramp and he goes down fine. But will he get on the contact of his own free will? Absolutely not.
      We did the tunnel just a few times, as Duncan was pretty good at this, if slow and distracted. The only time he really paid attention to me was to go in the tunnel (I guess because he did it) and the the two seconds afterward. Even if the 'party' was still going on, he was done with it. When we had a successful go of it with a little more attention, we headed back to the dogwalk. One of the other students (a terrier thing) snapped/growled/attacked a lab and was getting some direction while I was doing the tunnel, so we got a little more time on this line.
      A-frame again, why? Masochism. Duncan would not look at me, listen, wait, or sit because there was this spot on the floor that HAD to be licked or at least you MUST pull and try. I don't like having Duncan on leash for practice, but understand the necessity with anything with height. He never really pulls - ever. Until tonight. An instructor came over and I mentioned that ever since I've been treating on the ground rather than from my hand, my pup had had a preoccupation with the floor and his focus is gone. so no more ground feeding. We'll fix the eyes-glued-to-hands later. I was grateful when he had to switch.

Line #3 - Chute, A-frame, jump
      Chute? Nope, it's shoot! I called 'tunnel' as we ran up and Duncan went in. Yes! Wait, where is he? Oh... backing out and prancing toward me. I put him in a wait, went to the end and lifted the chute, and called him. He went around. Several more attempts later, and an instructor comes over to help. Thank goodness! She held him and I went around and repeated it. He ran through. We redid it several times until he went through the chute on his own. He really wanted the tug. Things were starting to look up...
      ...To the A-frame. We run up, I say "Up on it" which tends to just be what spews out of my mouth, and he diverts at the last second, avoiding the dreaded contact. We had a repeat of the dogwalk but worse, much worse. I felt like I was going to rip my hair out but was quite determined to have FUN and to get a success and to not show Duncan how grumpy I was at the world.
      The last jump was fine. Duncan will jump for me. I used the last few minutes to tug with him and try to raise his bruised ego, as I know I was not as peppy as I could have been on the A-frame.

Line #4 - Weird slanty jump, looooooong tunnel, jump
      The first jump was fine, I guess. Duncan did a decent wait but would not look at me. I got tired of waiting and called him over. It worked. Bad me for not sticking to my methods.
      There was a sign on the ground (where Duncan's nose was) in front of the tunnel: Tunnel refusal is much more fun than actually going through it. Duncan believed the sign. The instructor was trying to help me, but Duncan was being particularly uncooperative. She said, "Walk away and ignore him." Holy moly, it worked. He really wanted attention. Through the tunnel he went! He tried to goof up again and I walked away, playing bored. He followed like a puppy (haha... sorry). When I knew I had his attention, I put him in a wait and walked 10 feet in front of him. I was feeling a bit defeated and fully expected him to stare at something, move out of wait, or start smelling the bleeping floor again. Nope, we got our first three obstacle run of the night. Jump, looooong tunnel, jump, tug, tug, tug. It was awesome! We ran it like 10 times (okay, like 6), reveling in the glory of connectedness. We love tunnels.

At the very end, we were asked to do our least favorite then our most favorite things and end with a party. A-frame... not so good. Running a tunnel... very fun. It was a nice way to end that gut-wrenching class.

The heat and rain has not let up a bit, but we've still managed some practice.

Our most notable foray was with astounding amounts of distractions. My backyard is actually communal between all the neighbors and many of them have the fishing bug. So, when I set up the equipment and Thane brought out his fishing pole, there was a high level of interest. The tug was simply not enough to lure Duncan away from the people, fish smells, and bait.

Between breaks where I brought out Pierre and Abbie (Duncan's rescue Sheltie sister) for socialization where Duncan got to cool off in the A/C, we did quite a bit. We started with weaves. This is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Duncan starts to pop out if I move the poles too fast, so I am having to show major restraint and just inch those poles in sloooowly. Then, we did weaves and the plank to get Duncan re-familiar with contacts. I really wish I had an actual contact to work with, not just a plank. Then we did weaves, tunnel, plank. At first, Duncan got barky with the combo but soon had the drive to power to the end - many times ahead of me (if I remembered to ask him to!). Gosh, he loves that tunnel now!

I felt like Duncan was tiring of the weaves, so I traded them out for a jump. I worked with the jump significantly to the left and right of the tunnel and worked him through both directions. Honestly, I feel like I learned more about where I need to place myself in order for Duncan to have the most successes. I very much want to work on directionals, but I'm not exactly sure how. Wouldn't you just call the obstacle name? If Duncan were to go over the jump and the tunnel was to the left and the weave to the right, I think it would matter more that I said "tunnel" if he needed to go left. Things to ask my instructor!

Overall, we are making steady progress with the equipment we have at our disposal. If our club allowed you to come practice on the equipment between classes, I could easily see myself there 2-3 times a week other than class night.

This week has been miserable, so we haven't gotten to do much training. My house isn't that big, so we really don't have space to do it inside. I am petitioning Florida weather to pick somewhere between the 100+ temps and the pouring rain!

The following video sums things up nicely.


As you can see, Duncan is doing great at the home weave set. I like the channel weaves quite a bit. We're at just over half a turn (about 95 degree turn from original open position). As you can ALSO see, we got rained out. I barely got everything inside before the onslaught began! The tugging is working nicely for at home training if it isn't too hot.

Moving on to class. Thane took some video sporadically. We did much more than chutes, weaves, and tunnels. Duncan balked a little at the contacts. He just wasn't focused tonight, but I don't think I was either. Not sure, but we weren't clicking as well as last week. Probably due to lack of practice. Oh well!

Duncan hasn't really had an issue with chutes until today. We finally dropped the cloth all of the way and he got confused. We backed it up and I think he'll do better when we have amazing tunnels. Speaking of tunnels, the few times on the video were some of our best for the night. I think he's confused because for tunnels and weaves, he isn't right next to me. I need to work on distance with him, but I'm afraid of doing too much, too soon (especially considering we are doing two sports with him).

See that pitiful weave? Hear my strained high pitched voice? Gah. That kind of summed up the practice. Duncan found everything he wanted on the floor and only thought about me if I was a lunatic. I think I'm going to pick up my Control Unleashed book again and work on focus exercises.

Brag that isn't on the video: Duncan did the teeter three times without even a flinch! I lured him the whole time with turkey hotdogs and the teeter was smoothly dropped to a medium high wait table by an instructor. We didn't want to over do it, so we left it on a success. I was so proud of my baby.

Sad news - no Flyball tomorrow. It got moved to tonight and we had Agility. I'm going to get some practice in anyway, though!

First - Batteries charged as of this afternoon, so I've got some pictures!

At our last Flyball class, Duncan was not interested in treats. He was panting and a little hot and just too excited. We were given some felt to make a tug. Sounds easy. I haven't been on here long, but you should know I'm a little OCD about things. I tried two different types of braid and was disgusted at the results. I un-wound each time and started again. Then I remembered these key chains we would make in high school and this bracelet I made for my husband out of a ton of thread.

The result:


I tied off the one end with a hair tie because we might thread a tennis ball through. That end isn't very long, though. If we don't do that, I'm going to finish the spiral sequence. The macrame pattern is called something 'lanyard' and I alternated square and spiral for effect and because I wasn't sure Duncan would be able to latch onto an end.

I was a little worried about the use of the tug because Duncan has great bite inhibition. When we play, he might mouth me, but he never bites down and if he gets too mouthy (haha) I squeal and he stops. He tried to steal the felt fabric while I was braiding, so there was some hope!

When it came time to put it into practice, I had just finished a set of PVC channel weave poles. (Pictures to come!) Being super excited to use them, I set the poles wide open and sent Duncan through them. He trotted through just fine and looked to me for his reward (smart dog). I put down the tug and amazingly, he latched on and started pulling! I really let him get riled up with it, so he had good memories and feelings associated with the tug. Then, I said "Mine" and took it away. He barked at me in protest, but worked with me very well for that tug! We got the poles all of the way to half closed (90 degree angle from the start point). I must put the caveat that Duncan is an 11.5 lb, 13 inch (recent measurement) Sheltie, so he still didn't touch the poles or even have to twist any. One run, he bounced through small dog style, which is where the dog hops with both feet on one side of the pole and alternates. We did extra tugs for that.

We ended that portion of the training with high spirits. It was about 95 degrees F outside (not including heat index), so we took a break and headed into the air conditioning to hydrate. After a few minutes, Duncan bothered me for some more training and I thought it was a good opportunity to do jump work, as we haven't in a little while. Once back in the heat, he was less than enthused about it. Tugging wasn't paying off as well. I got him to give me a few really good jumps and then we went inside. It was just too hot!

I highly doubt that the tug will be enough to replace treats for everything. Teaching something is waaaaayyy easier with treats if it is something nearly stationary - pause table, entrances to a jump - or something very difficult - for Duncan, contacts. However, when he is hot and has just run (Flyball or Agility) a tug seems perfect.

Bad news about the camera. One of the pups (my bet is Duncan) chewed the charger cord. Fortunately, no singe marks on any of them. Thane got shocked when he unplugged it, though. Guess that means no visuals until I get myself to finding a new one.

Flyball class was very fun. Our intro to the class two weeks ago was eye-opening and we were given lots of homework. Duncan doesn't have an issue at all with recalls, but he wasn't comfortable with the box. We used one with velcro to hold the ball instead of the spring loaded one because we aren't there yet! You have firsthand knowledge of our homework and how we did it. The work ended up paying off, even if it looked a little helpless at the start.

At first, Duncan (and I'll admit - I) was fairly distracted by the other noises and everything else going on. We did some box work trying to get him comfortable with the surroundings. It helped me to get him interested in the ball then toss it to our instructor, who 'loaded' it in the box. After a few times of this, we went to a smaller area to work up his interest of the ball because Duncan was still a bit off. I knew he could do better because we'd done better at home. It was just keying into his "zone."

In the back area, Duncan remembered what we'd done and was going after the ball as I tossed it or rolled it. He was shy of a table in the corner. We worked on the ball drive until the next dog was done with a few runs. This little terrier is SO good and already doing full runs only a few practices into her career.

We then went back and worked on recalls. Duncan likes chasing me down the lane. Our instructor released Duncan from the box as I went over the middle jump (they only have three jumps set up due to space). I tried not to look back too much, but I couldn't help it. I ended up smacking into the wall at the end once. Very funny, but my keeping on running sped Duncan up. I REALLY want a video of his pace. We did this 5-6 times and then stopped so we didn't fully tucker him out. A curious thing happened with the running. He didn't want his tiny sliver of turkey hotdog as a treat after his run. He seemed to be self-satisfied just having run. I am thinking something like tug will be a great way to reward him for running.


We got a rest and watched the others on the team do some runs/races. There was a Papillon that Duncan couldn't keep his eyes off. He looks almost exactly like Duncan's older (smaller) Papillon brother Pierre.

After a few runs, Duncan got to do some box work again. He finally caught on and grabbed the ball off the box and came right for me!!! We even got him to grab the ball and run it down to the start line. It was very exciting to see the work paying off. We're going to keep working on this with him at home. Until we get a box, I'm thinking I could use the target plate and an amazing down/stay. (We shall see if it stays amazing!) Again, Duncan didn't want any treats.

Then I did ball loading for a bit. It was interesting to see a dog almost ready for competition. He was very interested in the other dog in the other lane. I wonder how Duncan will react to that!

We were given some felt material to braid (macrame) into a tug. Duncan already showed interest in it while I was constructing it.

Take care!

Tonight, Duncan was definitely 'Most Improved' in his class. Sorry, no videos. My camera batteries died on me. They are being recharged tonight. Hopefully next time, I'll get video evidence.

We started on the A-frame, a previously unattempted stunt due to Duncan's reticence on the dogwalk and other contacts. First, we did it flat. No problem! Over the next three (that's right - THREE) height bumps, Duncan was great. It wasn't full height, but very nearly there. I stopped him while he was still excited about running up and down and not at all scared. It was like he suddenly decided that contacts were good things.

When we switched to the dogwalk, my Dunc got a bit weirded out at the entrance. It is so much thinner than the dogwalk, so he needs to have accuracy. I ended up picking him up and running him off the end a few times, backing him up until he was comfortable running down the end. This seemed to clear that up with him and he could run the whole thing without a problem. The height was maybe a foot and a half high. Still low, but Duncan is definitely getting used to it.

We did the wait table once. Duncan hopped right up and someone else wanted to use it, so we moved on.

Next we did a few jumps, loosening up. Duncan had a barking fit to which I responded by just looking at him and not doing anything to praise him. When he was done, I took him over to the chute and we did that a few times. Duncan was getting pretty good and could have the chute almost to the ground (someone was holding it up and dropping it after each successful go).

We did some tunnel work after this. We were asked to do the tire jump. Duncan would not sit for me, so I asked him to jump through using a 'come' and he did. After this point, Duncan would not sit for me again that night, even if he was attentive and doing well. We were able to do some tunnel/tire jump combos very successfully.

There was a little course of four jumps, the tunnel, then a jump and the chute that we were to try. Duncan refused the tunnel time and time again. First, the instructor asked me to start treating on the ground, since Duncan is SO hand-focused. Duncan still wouldn't enter the tunnel, but if she held him, he would fly through it. Then, my husband Thane came to the rescue. We called Duncan back and forth between us, treating for when he would duck into the tunnel. A few minutes of that seemed to solve our problems.

Duncan ended on the high note of the chute, barking madly the whole way. Believe it or not, that took an hour!

We did not do weaves or the teeter tonight. I want to build some weaves to work with at home. The teeter can wait until Duncan is fully confident with contacts.

Overall, we were very pleased with the work we did tonight and so was everyone else!

Yay - videos! All are shot by a neighbor's very young daughter. Her comments are interspersed and pretty cute. Oh, and it was about 96 degrees F outside.



This first video shows some of the jumps. They are set just under 8 inches, as Duncan is still young. First jump, Duncan had a nice wait and no hesitation. I upped the ante the second time, asking for a figure eight. He hesitated on the second loop, but got it. I thought I'd try the sequence again. He did nicely.

I need to learn to click better! Should I click as he jumps or as he lands? I think as he jumps, but I have a delayed reaction. Also, I need to consistently say "Over"... I said 'up' a time or two. Goal - distance work!



The second video shows contact work. The shots are a little everywhere, but Duncan is really getting this. I didn't add the PVC today, as he isn't fully confident with it. I am thinking I will work on sending him over the plank before creating a new monster. A few times you can see me trying to get Duncan on my left. I feel more confident with him there, which means I need to work the other side, too.



The last video isn't a good representation of our Flyball work. It LOOKS like just fetch, but the ball actually stops for a moment before I release Duncan to get it. Duncan is tired from all the training and had just completed some beautiful runs with as much at a 10 second wait before lunging to get it. I'm trying to work up to having him go get a ball that magically appears (I need a second person and more balls for this), rather than run after a ball. Maybe next time!

All of our work is in the early stages, but I feel like there is a lot of good happening. If you have tips or comments, feel free.

Targeting - Duncan is getting very good at running to a target. I have the issue of him looking right back at me once he hits it and coming to me. I think putting the treat on the target will solve this problem.

Plank (the 1" x 12" x 6' variety)- When we've got speed, we can fly over it perfectly. If I give him time to think about it, Duncan will side-step the plank entirely. I made the mistake of putting a PVC pipe under the plank too soon. He was wary, but I removed it and now he's fine. I'm doing slow introductions to the addition of the PVC... won't attempt to cross it until he's willing to get on it.

Flyball work - Duncan is about 70% awesome at bringing the ball back to me if I toss it while holding him back by the harness, revving him up, and releasing after it has stopped. When he doesn't bring it back, I'm trying to ignore it as best as possible, start over, and throw a shorter distance.

Goals:

Distance on targeting. Confidence on contacts. Me finding the right time to click. Getting Duncan to go for the ball without me having to throw it first.