It has been a while since we were on the Agility scene, and man am I excited to get back into it! Harmony is now a year old and we are getting to start working on equipment training! I plan to train running contacts with her. She has SUCH an awesome drive response (which by the way is a two sided coin) that I have high hopes of her having really nice speed in the ring! I started her on flat work when she was just a puppy, so she already knows her front crosses and shadow heeling. 

     
Here is Bentley! We had been boxer-less for about 5 months, and decided that it was time =) Bentley came to us from West Coast Boxer Rescue, he was being held in a kennel in southern CA. Bentley came to us with a little bit of a rap sheet, he had been in a foster home previously, but had been returned to the kennel because he was fighting with their boxer female alpha dog. We weren't sure whose fault those fights were, we just knew that they were bloody. He had been back in the kennel for about 10 days when he came down to us. It turned out that he has wonderful manners with other dogs, but he does have prey drive- motivated aggression. He went after Kenzie while she was chasing her ball and gave her a pretty nasty puncture under her eye. They got in a fight and I had to (safely) break it up. We kept him on leash for the next couple days, to make sure that did not happen, and until we knew him better and he had earned some trust. It didn't take long, we saw that he was wonderful with the kids, and very respectful of Kenzie's space. He was so good with Kenzie in the house, but as soon as we were outside and she ran after a squirrel, lizard, her ball, or anything else, Bentley got a jolt of adrenaline and went in attack prey mode: head up, ears up, eyes big, pulling really hard on the leash, etc. It has been 5 days since that first incident, but Kenzie still does not trust him. I don't blame her, he went after her when she wasn't looking, that's like being shot in the back! I also think that she looks at his spine sticking out of the top of his back as his hair being up all of the time... =-(  That is the only thing I can think of to explain how fearful she is of him, even when he is displaying the most submissive, non confrontational body language possible. 

So anyway, we started prey driven aggression training day 3, and I saw a big change in him right away. Thankfully he is highly food motivated, so this does make it easier. Today on day 5, I dont think he would go after her if he weren't on the lease, but I still had treats, but I'm not going to test that any time soon, it's just not worth it. I will move on to a long lead for training before I go leashless. 

Bentley also has severe separation anxiety =( Poor guy, he sounds so pathetic. He lost his voice from barking in the kennel, so it it just this sad squeak of a panicked bark. We worked on trying the crate thing last night, it did not go well, he never calmed down. I went in and out, in and out for an hr, but he just kept panting and barking. I decided to try keeping him loose in the house today to see if he did better...and he did, but he still never relaxed while I was gone. After 2.5hrs of working from 1 second out of the door to 10 minutes, he would over and over start barking and howling and jumping on couch after 10 minutes. 

So we took a break. I will mull it over and try something else. Training is not a perfect science. What has always worked on all other dogs I have trained is not working on him, so back to the drawing board and try again! 

Well, now that Riley is doing so much better, he has been getting into more and more things. Pulling dishes out of the sink, pans off the back of the stove, etc. Unfortunately it also causes me to get a little lax in giving him his supplement treats. I had forgotten like 5 days in a row when I left a carton of eggs on the counter while I ran over to my Mom's to have a cup of coffee. Well of course, I came home to egg juice all over the house. Lovely. Riley ate 12 raw eggs. I really didnt think anything of it, I have heard of people feeding their dogs raw eggs, and my husband used to eat raw eggs all of the time. Well I came home to Riley just wanting to be outside eating grass so that he would throw up. So I left him outside while I took Kenzie to agility class. I came home late and Steve and Riley were already asleep. The next morning Riley was lame in his right hind leg, and very weak in his other hind leg.I had to carry him outside to do his business, and then back in a well.  He looked to be in a LOT of pain, so I ran him to the vet. She said that he has a fluxating patella (moving knee cap), and that if it causes him pain, he would need surgery from a specialist. Very bad news, since it was obviously causing him a lot of pain. But I kept thinking about when Riley was really young and he got into the organic fertilizer. That caused him to vomit and then be lame in his hind legs the next day too (though not as painfully as this time), so I was REALLY hoping that Riley has always had the fluxating patella (but the supplements keep it from being too big a deal), and that he was just dehydrated, or whatever happened with the fertilizer was happening again, causing the lameness. I made him some electrolyte water and some extra of his supplement hoping that with some rest he would improve. Well, he woke up this morning full of energy and using his back legs no problem!!! He doesnt seem to be in ANY pain!!! SO exciting! So I guess it was just those stupid eggs that threw him off. It just shows me how badly he could be doing, if I did not have him on his supplements. I am so glad that I have that for him!

 

 
Kenzie did great at her first trial! We did have a little fallback from the stress to deal with afterward (jumping at every sound), so we went back to the thundershirt/music regime for a few days, and then she was fine. On the way to the trial I gave a speech about how relaxed I was, and how it did not matter how we did, we were just there to have fun, etc. Once we got there and went to get measured etc, there were dogs milling around everywhere. She was stressed, but not aggressive, so that was good. I then massaged her while we waited for our first run. I left her with a bully stick to work while I went to walk the course, then came back to get her when it was getting close to our time to run. I massaged her at the gate while waiting at the gate after warming up. She completely relaxed on the ground for me to massage her, even while surrounded by pumped up agility dogs! When it was time to go in I showed her the toy, then tossed it behind me and went in. To sum up this first run, she was VERY relaxed on the field....slow, not zoned in, and loopy. I expected wayyy too much from her while planning our run (it was a gamblers course), so it was a rather rough run for us both. She did hit her dog walk contact though =) 

For the following runs I decided to try to ramp her up beforehand, to see if I could get her back in that zoned in place, but it just didnt happen. She did get a little more zoned in as the day went along, we actually placed twice and got 3 Q's. She always ran with me, such a good girl, even if her mind was not all there. She was doing great in Snooker until I messed up and took her the wrong way!!! Ugh, I have been out of the ring for too long!

I mostly noticed that I did not have a strong enough reinforcer with me in the ring to get her to focus on me, rather than ALL THAT NEW STUFF OUT THERE!!!!!  When we finished running, I had to have my mom at the finish waiting for me with a tennis ball so we could sprint out to the back area to play fetch.

So, I decided three areas can be improved upon:
1). Go to more trials so that it is not all such a big deal
2). Practice getting ramped up for agility, so that we both have that routine
3). Increase tug drive, so that I do have a reward with me in the ring

Okay, so how to do these:
1). Obviously just go to more trials. I'm not going to worry about this one too much, it will come with time.
2). I know that going into Kenzie's agility field at home is a major reward, so I decided to begin a routine of putting the agility leash on, asking her if she is READDDYYY????, then go to the gate, open it, then get her all ramped up and say "OKAY" when she reaches her most worked up, then enter the field quickly and put her on the startline just like I would at a trial. After a week of doing this, she now knows that she needs to be barking her head off and growling to enter the field, so that is what she does =D
3). Okay, so to increase her tug drive, I knew that I needed to put all throwing toys away, so that her play need was not being met by those. I also googled how to increase toy drive (yes even trainers call upon google occasionally). I found a great paragraph on how someone trained their dog how to tug by shaping it. She said she learned it from her teacher, but didnt say a name, so I dont know who to actually give credit to, just know that this was not originally my idea. 

Begin by shaping your dog to pick up rope. Hold it in your hand, when she touches it, click treat, then when she opens her mouth and touches a tooth to it, click treat, then when she picks it up, click treat. Once your dog is picking it up out of your hand, then just close your hand over it, then let go when she pulls, c/t, then wait till she pulls a little harder, then a little harder, until she is pulling really really hard to get it out of your hand, and whalla! Your dog is tugging. I also will sometimes not pick the rope back up and let her bring it to me to start the game of tug-for-a-treat. I started doing this before dinner every night one week ago, and took it outside for the first time today. So I did our usual routine of getting her all worked up before entering the field, then went in this time with no toy, just a braided rope leash. We took off and did a quick course, then ended with me throwing the rope leash over a jump. She ran to it and I said "get it!" and she brought it right over to me and we tugged tugged tugged! When I let her win, she just kinda looked up at me and I said "GOOD GIRL!!!!", then grabbed the rope and started again. I let her win two times, then decided that I was going to win! I pulled and pulled and screamed YOU GIVE ME THAT TOYYYYYYY!!!!! (I got this from a very cute video by Susan Garret found on youtube). I smacked her up a bit and grabbed her like I do when we played, oh ohh boy did she love it!!!  Once I did get it from her I said "LETS GO!" and ran her around the course the other way, then threw the toy again, repeated the tug game, then called it a day. I was SOOOO happy!!!!  Before last week when we started training this, she had never tugged on a leash for more than a couple seconds, and that only half heartedly! 

When I started training this stronger tug, I also started researching what kind of leash I wanted to have. I decided to get into leash making, and I have had a blast!

SOOOO, it has been a while since I updated you all on our agility progress. We have now been to 3 fun trials, where Kenzie learned what the whole trialing thing was. At the first two fun trials she was what I call "loopy", which just means that she ran with only 5% of her brain focused on me, the rest of it was focused on everything else = /  So she just ran very wide, though she did stay with me, which is more than it could have been. Then, a couple weeks ago we went to her third fun trial, and she ROCKED IT!!!!!  She was so tuned into me, and I her, it was awesome. She hit ALL of her dog walk contacts (4) and all but one A-frame (6), and had an awesome teeter every time as well. I was SO happy. 

So we are now working on getting faster weaves and higher drive through the course. I have found that as long as I trust her, Kenzie is pretty darn consistent on her DW contact. We have our first real trial this weekend!!! It is USDAA, and we have 5 runs, so that should give me a pretty good idea on how consistent her contacts are right now. I am super pleased with her teeter performance as of late. She was going very slowly, but then I stopped working on it at home, and only did the teeter during class or fun runs, and I guess because her drive was so high, it no long seemed a big deal that it dropped.So she just runs to the end and holds her two on two off beautifully. So now I just make sure not to practice it too often. It is too easy for her to practice crawling on it during at home practice when she is not as hyped up. 

Kenzie's reactivity to other dogs is going okay. She did have a set back at this last fun trial, not that she aggressed really, she was just very very on edge afterward, and she did not get over it before out group class two days later, so that just made it worse, and then it took an entire week. after that of thundershirt/massage/music therapy to get her over it. But she did great the next week in group class, so we will see how she does this weekend. 

So we have just started our agility group classes with a trainer in Stockton. It is SO funny to watch Kenzie "show off" to the other dogs. I am shocked at how fast she is when we are in a group setting. Of course this could just be that she is a little "on edge", so her adrenaline is pumping, making her run faster, but either way, I am very happy with it. Now that we have the performance of the individual obstacles down, we are now on the very fun process of fine tuning our team performance. Learning how to read each other, to best work fluidly as a team. I love our new trainer here, she is a very good people trainer =)  Certainly the hardest part of any dog trainer's job description.

SOOOO, Kenzie is rocking 12 weaves!!!! It is so exciting to now be working on speed, more difficult entries, and independent performance. Kenzie is also making great progress on the Dog Walk running contact. We are now able to go jump, tunnel, full dog walk, toy. We are working up to full speed, not quite there yet, but I am very happy with our progress. We start A-frame training in 2 days, as well as introducing the chute. Her teeter performance still is not as quick as I would like...I will be working on that the next few weeks as well.

Ok, so I have been working on weaves and contacts for about a month now, if you take out my traveling for the conference for a week, and now recovering from surgery. I am finally starting to be able to work outside with Kenzie again, albeit slightly dizzy, and moving very little, and slowly at that. =(

We are making great headway in both areas. Kenzie has been running the full height dogwalk starting from the middle of the top plank for about a week.  

We are just about to 6 straight poles, with front x, rear x, and shoulder turn, as well as sending to the entrance from parallel to 6th pole on both sides (very advanced entries). She did it all on 4 straight poles, and 6 very very slightly turned poles.