"Too competitive" ??

Well, for the first time in my entire life I have been accused of being too competitive. Me? Competitive?? Well maybe!

Since starting agility with Obi I have gone from non commital to taking great interest in the sport, Obi has proven to be so easy to teach and quick to learn that it has all seemed quite natural to go from "we'll never bother entering a competition" to "lets book time off for 6 UK shows"!

However, Obi may be a natural, I on the other hand, am not! I can clearly remember Louise patiently trying to teach me front cross footwork in the early days at Paws, I just couldn't seem to get my head round it and ended up fed up and frustrated, poor Louise probably wanted to thump me haha! Luckily enough I had been bitten enough by 'the bug' that I went home and practiced it on my own, without Obi, until I got it right. It took ages and it was so annoying that I had to work so hard at it when everyone else could do it without thinking. I guess my brain just works in a different way (!)

Anyway, back to the 'competitive' accusation. Is there actually anything wrong with being competitive? Surely few people take part in a sport like this if they don't want to win?

And if you want to do well, and more importantly play fair to your partner, you have to be consisitent so your dog understands exactly what you want him to do. It is no good giving him the hand signals for something without teaching him what they mean.

I was reminded this morning of a lesson where we were being taught 'pull throughs', we had never done them before and I was shown the instructors' handling technique and told to do the same thing. It didn't work, funny that as Obi had never been taught what that particular handling meant!

So we have been practicing, and will continue to do so throughout the winter. I have only two jumps but it is suprising what you can do with such limited equipment. Over the last week we have worked on front crosses, serpentine handling, pull throughs, 'go on's, waits and 'bounces', and I can see improvements in both of us already.

Obi and I are both enjoying playing this game together very much, even when it all goes horribly wrong, Obi has even started doing his 'ball squeek' on courses which tells me that he is enjoying himself very much indeed :o)

So here's to 2010, onwards and upwards (hopefully!) :o)

What next?

Well, as it turns out, I am not a natural born blogger! This is my first entry for absolutely ages and I am writing it really to sort things out in my head!

Obi's training has been coming on well, I think. His contacts seem to be back on track and I'm really pleased with his jumping, the poles actually stay up more often than not these days :o)

Last week Obi won his first red rosette at the monthly comp-nothing for most people to get excited about I guess, but I was thrilled :o) He also won the 'Best agility Gundog' trophy, (jointly with a lovely lab named Chase.)

So all in all, things seem to be going quite well..........but...........

Looking ahead to the UK shows next year I'm having a bit of a crisis of confidence.

Clueless as I am, I didn't realise that most shows do not hold Grade 1 classes.

I know I am very lucky with my agility partner, he is fun, intelligent, easy to train, and an absolute joy, in agility and in everything he does. He is a wonderful dog and I wouldn't swap him for the world.

But, trying to look at it objectively, are we going to win an Agility G1-3 class? Really? Almost certainly not.

For whatever reason (?) graded jumping classes seem more common, but jumping is not our strong point as Obi is not the fastest over the large jumps, the best we have done in the UK at jumping was a 20th place (we even got a rosette for it lol!)

So, what it boils down to is , looking at the list of shows for next year, do I choose shows that I want to go to? Or shows where we stand a better chance of winning?

It would be conceivable to find a little show in the back of beyond and try to win out there, but considering that we have to come all the way from Jersey to find this show, is that what I want to do? Or go to the bigger shows, knowing there is little chance of winning, and enjoy ourselves.

The answer would seem obvious, go and enjoy ourselves, life is too short etc etc. But I have been bitten by the competeing bug and I WANT us to do well!

The other option is to stick to Jersey shows, and maybe the Kennel Club International just because it's great fun, and spend the money I save on a real holiday, to somewhere hot lol!

Hmmm..........

Well, I have now mulled this over for 24 hours, and have decided to get over myself, and go for it :o)

Obi loves agility, I love agility, so we'll work hard over the winter, get fabulous, and go and kick some collie butt! (In a nice way obviously haha!)

Can we win out of Grade 1 next year?? In the words of such greats as Barack Obama and Bob the builder- "YES WE CAN" !!

Pride comes before a fall...

Well, there I was, feeling hugely pleased with Obi's contact performance-it just goes to show that there is no place for complacency when it comes to dog training!

This saturday was the GSD July show, and, more importantly, Obi's 2nd birthday :o)

He had lots of treats and gifts from friends and family, including a 'birthday biscuit' from Louise and Paul which went down well!

In general, the competition didn't go to well for Obi and I, we came second in the Agility but to be honest, it was a pretty awful round, Obi ran off both contacts, and half way round he thought he'd finished and ran out of the ring to get his ball lol!

When Obi blew his contacts, I let him carry on-very naughty I know! Luckily enough, he knocked a pole, otherwise he would have won and I'd have been mortified to go up to Novice with a round like that haha!

Much better (even though we were eliminated!) was the jumping round, unfortunately I didn't turn him quick enough and he took an extra jump near the beginning but the rest was really nice, and I managed to cross behind him in the weaves without even a glance back from him, which I was thrilled with :o)

Power and Speed- what a disaster! He performed his Dog Walk contact beautifully, then blew the A frame one-so we did it again (after asking the very nice judge of course!) and he blew it again! Very unusual! So we did it agin and he crawled down and stopped at the bottom :o( Not ideal but we weren't doing it again!!

We continued on and poor Obi crashed straight through the Spread, which was set at full width. I was convinced when I saw it while walking the course that he would nevr make it and he didn't :o( I then felt guilty for making him attempt it and completely mucked up the jumping bit-Aaargh!

The last course of the day was the Steeplechase, which was a nice easy 'snail shell' type course which we managed to get around clear, though we didn't get a placing-looking at the video, the huge wide turns are slowing Obi up ALOT-we really must start working on that!

I also ran the Steeplechase with Scooby, and we came 2nd :o) What a great dog he is, I always love doing agility with him, his enthusiasm knows no limits lol!

We also ran the Novice jumping course together, which I think we got round without an elimination (although with Scoobs it all happens so fast I'm not sure lol!) but boy were the poles flying-Hurricane Scooby passed through haha!

Back to Obi's contacts-on sunday at the training day, things went from bad to worse, I asked him to go over the A Frame, and he went up the up side and sort of slid/crawled slowly down the other side.

Clearly something had confused the poor boy-but what?!

After racking my brains for the rest of the day the answer came to me that evening, when my thoughts couldn't have been further from agility.

A few days before we had been at a training session trying to perform a section that we just could not get right-and it was A frame-jump-tight turn-jump, we tried over and over, and I could tell my boy just couldn't get what he was doing wrong :o( With hindsight I think the sequence physically was difficult for a large dog who hasn't been trained to turn tight, and I shouldn't have pushed it as much as I did, but I suppose you live and learn!

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that he linked the confusion and frustration of that exercise with the A Frame and just isn't sure what I want him to do on it any more.

Easily fixed hopefully, we have been practicing targeting again on the flat and stairs, with high value rewards-big chunks of chicken, and we will hopefully be able to transfer that back to the A Frame at training tonight.

The rest of the training day on sunday was really great, he performed some lovely rear and front crosses, and his weaving was fab, I was really proud of him :o)

Well, onwards and upwards, our next competition is the Kennel Club International in just over 4 weeks-EEK!

Obi goes to secondary school

So, little Obi pup was now a year old and finally able to start 'big school'- the Paws training group :o) (We also go to the GSD club but we started a little later due to saturday lunch time commitments)

We did a couple of 'beginner' classes but were quickly put up into the 'slightly more advanced' class.

It was here that we met Louise, one of the trainers, who has been fantastic and helped us so much :o)

I remember our first lesson with her, obviously she didn't know what stage we were at so she got us to run round a simple circular type course. All went well until we got to the Dog walk-naturally Obi was well ahead of me, being as he is fast and I am..well..not!

I did my usual contact performance of yelling his name to slow him down and attempted to lunge in front of him with my arm up, but of course by the time I was anywhere near he had soared over the contact area and was on the ground looking at me with a rather puzzled air.

The following converstaion went something like this -

Louise-Right ok, so what are your criteria for Obi on the contacts?

Me-erm ummm well-he has to put at least one paw on it???

Louise-oh dear! (Well ok, she didn't actually say it out loud, but surely she must have thought it haha!)

Obviously this method wasn't working very well for us so with much help and encouragement we embarked upon training '2 on, 2 off' contacts.

Luckily as Obi was already conditioned to the clicker it all went quite smoothly :o)

We began by Obi nose touching a square piece of plastic takeaway container lid, and progressively shaped for longer nose touches.

Once he was good at this on flat surfaces, I began training him the actual position, for which purpose the step in the back garden was ideal-

Once he could do this consistently and quickly with me on both sides we worked on him targeting while I walked, then ran past. When he was happy with that, I started training him on the stairs at work so he would generalise the position and hopefully make the transition from flying three feet over the contacts to stopping at the bottom easier!

Then it was just a case of putting the target at the bottom of the contact, and asking him to 'Touch!' on the way down. Hopefully eventually I will be able to drop the 'touch' command and not say anything, but for now, he seems to still need it as a reminder.

After lots of practice, we eventually faded the target and clicker, and he gets sporadically rewarded for the correct position.

Although we did start with doing nose touches, I don't insist on them anymore, and just the correct position with his head up is fine.

Last sunday I had some 'free time' on the agility equipment so I decided to see how solid his contacts really were-in training I usually tend to be quite close to him at the end of the contact so I wasn't sure if he was truly doing them independently or from my body language.

I set him up as usual in front of the A frame and sent him over, the first few times I kept running and got quite far away before releasing him from a distance, then I practiced running away in the other direction while he went over-he was brilliant and stayed 2 on 2 off which ever way I went, even when I went around other equipment and threw his ball BEFORE releasing him!

I was so pleased with him, what a clever boy! :o) :o)

One gap I have discovered in his contact performance (and I must admit something I had never thought of) is that he will not drive down to the 2 on 2 off position if I am behind him, so this week we have been back on the stairs at work with the target.

Just after a couple of sessions he will go down the stairs to the target while I stay at the top, though I have to say 'Go on, Touch' -for some reason if I just say 'touch', he doesn't seem to get it?

But generally I am so pleased with his contacts, they are well worth the hard work :o)

Now I just need to remember to be 100% consistent... easier said than done for me!

Beginners..

As it happened, one of the instructors at the puppy socialising class we attended also taught agility.
Denny, who has Obi's sister Penzi, was very keen to get started so I thought we'd tag along and see what it was all about.

Obi seemed to enjoy himself and so did I, although no one warned me quite how addictive agility is!
The puppies were only about 7 months old so they didn't do any jumping or weaves at this point, but they learnt the basics of going inbetween the jump wings, safely getting over the contact equipment and how to control the tip of the seesaw.
Here is a short clip of one of Obi's first training sessions, a very auspicious start I'm sure you'll agree ;o)

We had alot of fun at this stage, though we had a bit of a hiccup when Obi was about 9 months old and he suddenly discovered his nose! Suddenly all the smells in the field were far more interesting than listening to mum- I spent quite a few lessons just chasing him around trying to catch him!

To my relief, by the time he was a year old, his concentration span had improved dramatically, and we were back on course! He had progressed from poles on the ground to jumping small height, and he was good at the tunnel and seesaw.

Problems, however started to surface in other areas.....

How it all began...

Obi and his two brothers and three sisters were born on the 11th July 2007 to mum Pearl and dad Merlin.

As I live in the 'Granny flat' belonging to Pearl's owners Peter and Hayley, and I work nights, I spent my days looking after Pearlie and her little family.

Very quickly I fell in love with one particular puppy :o)

The day that Peter and Hayley gave him to me was one of the happiest days of my life so far!

It quickly became obvious that Obi was a very clever pup, he was nearly 100% housetrained by ten weeks old.

We started clicker training, and he soaked up everything I could teach him like a sponge. He learned the usual things, and also fun tricks like 'right spin', 'left spin', weaving through my legs, walking backwards and things like that. I had a vague idea we would learn 'doggy dancing' but as it turns out-I can't dance-what a surprise!

I think all the early training we did together helped us to build a really great bond, and taught us how to focus and problem solve together.

A few times, when we'd hit a bit of a brick wall on a particular issue, I'd sit there thinking of a fresh way to show him what I wanted when he'd suddenly offer a tentative approximation of what I'd been after. Obviously he'd been sitting there thinking through the problem too-and come to a conclusion faster than me :o)

Here is Obi practising 'hide' at about 6 months old-

So there he was, an intelligent, lively, eager to please young Springer Spaniel-it was time he had a job! :o)