Another day, another practice.

This time, Duncan went for the door once. I don't think he understood it was practice time because as soon as he caught a whiff of the turkey dog, he was all in! Harness and training leash were attached.

I had the box set to trigger from the beginning. We worked the turn over and over until finally it popped! Did Duncan react? Not a single bit. I set it again and we triggered it once more tonight. That is our record in a day. Two box triggers! Go Duncan! He is definitely building his confidence. You can tell because his speed and excitement escalate through the practice. This has taught me to really rev him up before I release him to run.

Total practice time: 12 minutes

I continued the new method tonight. The first three times we took off for the box, Duncan went for the garage door that leads to the house. :( I was patient with the first two and re-set him. After the third time, I told him "No" in a firm tone and re-set him up. This time, I revved him up for the box with a full "Reeeadddyyyy, Seeett, GO!" It worked. He got up on the box with little prompting. Three times later, he was doing a nice little box turn eagerly. It was nice.

I let him gain some confidence driving toward the box and set the trigger. It took about three box turns to trigger it. Again, he didn't even notice it and was focused on his treat. We didn't trigger it again tonight. We ended while he was excited, positive, and happy.

Total time training: 15 minutes (maybe less, but I'm rounding up)

Sunday we went with our team to a Flyball fun day. It was advertised as very green dog friendly, but I could disagree with that. Perhaps the information got jumbled in passing. Either way, while I had a good time, it wasn't the most useful of Sundays ever.

This was how it went: We got the lane while another dog or team worked in the other lane. Duncan balked at the box. He wouldn't put a paw on it. So we did recalls after getting dirty looks and giving up. Repeat three times. The last time, I ran him last after the other dogs, sprinting next to him (gosh he's fast!!!), tossing the ball at the end, and going back. In my head, pattern work was better than nothing at all.

After this last run, I walked up to a spectator. He has been doing Flyball for a very long time and I was recommended to him to ask for advice by one of my team members. He told me that I was training the wrong thing. I agreed. I shouldn't have been running. I got so frustrated that I let my desire to just run get in the way of best decisions for my pup. I spoke with him on various techniques to defeat this box fear. He had good advice.

Basically,
-Don't do any running until he has the box. Once he has the box, back chain to the end.
-Don't go back to the ramp now that he has it. Work with the box only.
-With box work, keep Duncan on leash until he is doing it on his own. Get the motion, add the ball.
-If he can't trigger the box (once he has patterned the turn), have someone hold him back and do a restrained recall while I run to the box. Let him go while I'm still running. He should have enough momentum to trigger the box.

Tonight started practice. We did less than ten minutes of work, but I can see the beginnings of awesome box turns ahead!

I put Duncan's forgotten flyball harness on tonight, clipped the training (4') leash to it and started. We didn't touch a ball. First, I re-taught going around a cone to be a left-hand turn, since that's what he has switched to. Then, I moved the cone in front of the box, got him ready, and went toward the box. Duncan balked and I kept moving, all the while luring with my left hand. The balk last for about 1/2 a second and then he did a box scramble. Three times later, he was doing a beautiful box turn. A few times after that, I triggered the box to see where we were with that. He triggered it and didn't react AT ALL!!!!! Holy moly!!! We stopped while we were ahead and Duncan was having fun. I think we'll go back to 10 minutes every day to build confidence. And I need to get the new regimen approved by my captain.

I have a training for work tomorrow (Ethics... hehe), so no agility again this week. But next week we will have some video and lots of updates!