|
Location: Glasgow, UK
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 810
|
|
Originally Posted by
Ben Mcfuzzylugs
Scarter
Sorry to hear you are not feeling you are getting on too great
I know Carol is used to training lots of different types of dogs and handlers and totaly dosent expect everyone to handle like a collie so she would only be trying to push you as far as she thinks she can
I know it has taken over a year and Ben is only just going 'out' to obsticles - and that has been building up slowly
I would say the sniffing is a sign that she dosent understand what you want
remember the rule - when you increase the difficulty increse the rate of reward - so dont expect her to do a whole course, send her to one jump or something from a slightly further distance than normal and then reward totaly
as far as I have seen in classes and at the shows pretty much everyone runs with their dogs to a greater or lesser extent
Try and think of working away as more of a trick than something difficult
- anyway on your flyball clips she is working away from you - so she can do it
Just make it much more clear and far more fun and rewarding and I am sure you will do fine
(and dont expect too much all at once - agility takes a long time to train cos as you get better your dog increases confidence and speed and you have to adjust your timing to keep up with that - I have been going for well over a year with Ben and we are still v inexperienced - although getting better all the time)
Thanks Pam, I agree completely that she's wandering off and sniffing because she doesn't understand. This little clip was taken after about 4 or 5 lessons. Back then she LOVED it. I don't know if you can tell from the clips, but her little sparkly eyes would be fixed on me the moment we entered the barn. She'd stick to me like glue eager to do whatever I had in mind. In this clip I was making up the course as I went along and she was having a great time figuring out where I wanted her to go next:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27172079@N08/3220826234/
This is her weaving after just a few days practice:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27172079@N08/3282165294/
Then classes moved onto things where our approach didn't work as more distance control was required. The others in the class managed fine, but Beanie & I struggled. It's not that she minds in the least being sent away....it's just that she seems to need to know exactly where she's going at the moment you send her. She's not too good at taking instructions en-route (at least part of the problem is that I'm not giving instructions correctly).
I completely agree with your suggestion that rewards need to be good and the difficult stuff has to be done in small steps. To Beanie, the reward is tearing around a course at high speed with me beside her - and a tasty treat at the end. If we do plenty of what we're good at and introduce tiny bits of the difficult stuff in between the fun stuff (i.e thinking of it as tricks as you suggest) I've no doubt that we'll get there. But we can't expect classes to be changed to suit us - and the format of classes is just setting us up to fail. I did ask about private lessons but that wouldn't be possible through the summer.
So we're going to slowly plug away at things on our own. There are things that we're very good at and there are things we have great fun doing. Once we get Beanie having fun again we can start tackling the things that we find difficult in tiny chunks. Hopefully at some point in the future classes will be suitable for us.
I want to try some other ideas too. For example, a friend from the park does very well with her dogs by teaching them the names of the apparatus. I think Beanie would pick that up very quickly.
We wouldn't have time for competition so really it's not important that we learn to do this a specific way. The main thing is that we're both having fun and enjoying working together. I think we will get quite good at it though!!
The challenge now is to find a great place to practice (not just agility, but all of the doggy activities we do). Our garden is too small and we don't want to move as we love the house. The park is fine sometimes but other times you get pestered by other dogs. I'm thinking of buying or renting a little plot of land.....no idea how to go about it though.