Keltic's First Trial

Well Keltic and I had fun at his first agility trial.  He didn't get any Q's but he did do 12 weaves for the first time in a trial scenario, ran quite well only going off to visit once and actually did the gamble even though he went underneath the tire.

We entered in four events, a Jumpers, two Standards and one Gamblers.  First up was the Jumpers, the tire was the second obstacle so without having much speed I knew he would have difficulty with it. We had the same issue early in the summer but I thought we had worked our way through it. I guess we have some more work to do; I'll have to get the tire out of the shed before we have too much snow.

Starter Jumpers - First AAC run

Next up was a Standard. He was a bit put off by the teeter noise, all of the teeters that he has been on have been outdoors where there's not as much noise.  You can see his hesitation on the dog walk but good man he didn't bail. Also impressed that he did 12 weaves as he's really only been consistent with 6 weaves. 

Starter Standard 1

Next run was another Standard. This time I made him do the tire and hoped that he would then do it in the Gamble.  I was happy that he got right back on the teeter and that he was much more confident on the dog walk.  

Starter Standard 2

Our last run was a Gamblers. I didn't think he would do the mini as we haven't done much training on sending away. The main Gamblers, I also thought he would come back into me before doing obstacle 3. He surprised me by heading straight for the third obstacle. I didn't even have time to think about bringing him around to do the tire; so much for making him do the tire in Standard 2 . But better that he gets rewarded for working away.  I was very happy about his opening, 37 points is very good.

Starter Gamblers

I think he was a happy boy in the ring and that's the best attribute to work with to improve his agility skills.

Keltic with his first ribbon

We only took the one ribbon from his first ever event, the Starter Jumpers. There will be more special ribbons in the future I'm sure.

Remembrance

Yesterday, we had a tragedy happen at the trial. One of our fellow competitors collapsed, other medically trained competitors  performed CPR until emergency services arrived. The firefighters and paramedics continued with CPR and were still doing CPR when they took Tina to hospital.  Later we got the sad news that Tina didn't make it.

Tina - first place finish at the 2011 Ontario Regional Championship

I didn't know Tina very well but she was a great presence around agility trials. She ran four Australian Shepherds; along with her husband those dogs were her life. Tina was always cheerful and great fun. She was looking forward to a vacation down east following Nationals.

I always loved watching Tina run, she communicated so well with her dogs. She loved the agility game, she will be sadly missed. You go, girl!

Daisy Peel Seminar

Keltic and I went to a Daisy Peel Novice/Advanced Seminar on Thursday. It was a day long seminar and boy were we tired when we got home, well at least I was Keltic was still ready to play with Beckett.

We learned four exercises to do on the flat for a pull, a push, a front cross and rear cross. They will be good to work with over the winter.  If I can figure away to make my notes into decent exercise diagrams, I'll write a separate blog post about them.

The rest of the day was spent on sequences, one for the front on the flat and the front cross with a lateral send and one for a front cross with forward motion. The last sequence of the day was for rear crosses. I think Daisy had intended to also do a sequence for the blind crosses but with 10 working dogs, three sequences was all we had time to get through. Daisy provided a lot of advice for the handlers and dogs on issues that they were having that were related to the exercises, start line stays and obstacle commitment were two issues that many of us struggled with. Keltic didn't have much problem with start line stays but obstacle commitment is still something we need to work on.

A few things Daisy said stuck with me. The first was: "Do what works"; so many people stick with a system so they won't try something different until one of the agility gurus says this is the way to do it. I go to seminars to take away things I think will help me work through problems I am having but I don't necessarily go back and retrain things that are working just because of a "system".  The second thing was that we need to reward jumps as much as we reward weaves and contacts. Our dogs will do far more jumps in agility than any other obstacle and we ask them to do so many behaviours associated with a jump that in her view they are one of the hardest obstacles for the dog. She also said we should reward commitment to go on without us to take an obstacle even if we didn't get the behaviour or even the obstacle we wanted as we are trying to teach our young dogs that they can be independent that once we've told them to take an obstacle they should go do that obstacle regardless of what we are then doing.

The video shows a few minutes of our seminar time where my handling actually communicated to Keltic correctly what I wanted him to do. What a good boy, he tries so hard.

Video of Keltic at the Daisy Peel Seminar

One thing I'm not sure of though is that she said we should build obstacle commitment by initially rewarding a dog for offering a jump (or any other obstacle I guess) when we are not giving any cues, no verbal, no arm, no motion. For me, the teamwork I want to build with my dog is based on cues, be those cues motion, arm, hand or verbals, whatever works the best. But when I haven't given a cue and am standing still I don't want my dog to take any obstacle just because it's close to me. I'll have to think about that a little more. Maybe what turned me off that idea was that without having ever seen him, she said Beckett's spinning was a lack of obstacle commitment. I don't think that's true, it's a lack of clarity on my part and a gap in our skill set but I don't think it's a lack of commitment. Anyway I'll try to build Keltic's commitment to take a jump when I move away either laterally or behind him by working on some of the sequences and exercises we did during the seminar.

We had a good time and have a lot of homework. It was fun to see all the young dogs coming up and just starting their agility careers. Tomorrow, it is Keltic's first agility trial; we are going to have fun.

Throwback Thursday

Grade 1 John A Silver School, Alsask Saskatchewan

Dream Fields Trial

Well, two weeks ago Keltic went to his last agility trial as a spectator. Next weekend, he will make his debut at Dream Fields. I entered him in 4 events, two Standards, a Jumpers and a Gamblers. Today we did a little weave practice in the backyard. He still really needs work on his weaves but after today we'll have to work on them in the basement as I'll be bringing the weaves inside today. The time change was last night so now by the time I get home it will be nearly dark.

But back to the Dream Fields trial, we went for only five events, a Gamblers, a Standard, a Team, Steeplechase and a Jumpers. Beckett was wild in Gamblers, I didn't even think he had enough opening points to Q, he did have the minimum number to Q but no matter as we didn't get the main gamble. Beckett came out of the tunnel and was supposed to get on the dog walk but he came too far back to me and I couldn't get him back out to the dog walk. Next up was our Standard, well you can see how that went.

Master Standard video

For Team, my partner had to pull her dog as he had injured a toe. I found another partner but both dogs failed to go clean so no Q there either.

I was getting a little worried that we would end the day without a Q and the ending sequence from jump 14 to 19 of the Steeplechase looked tough.

Steeplechase

But it ran, for me anyway, really smooth; so smooth I thought I had forgotten another jump. The Standard course time was 51 seconds. Beckett's time was 36.78 seconds, running 4.95 yards per second. The run was good enough for first place and a Q as well as best run for mini Regular dogs.

Next up was Jumpers, we had a couple spins. The first time Beckett stopped himself, the second time, I stopped and got him settled before sending him on to finish the course. We must have been blazing as the Standard Course time was 45 seconds, Beckett's time was 29.38 seconds even with the spinning. He was running 5.48 yards per second, very fast for him. We've been over 5 yps before but usually just over 5.  Again, he Q'd and had the best run of the mini Regular dogs. So our day ended very well!

He now needs only one Jumpers for Expert Bronze Jumpers and 6 more Steeplechase for Expert Bronze Steeplechase.

Looking forward to next weekend and Keltic's debut but before that, on Thursday, he will be going to his second agility seminar. He did a puppy seminar over a year ago, this is a Novice/Starter dogs seminar with Daisy Peel.  I'm looking forward to it. Going to be a good week ahead, always fun to see the training come together in the ring.