New Iberia Agility Trial

Maxie: 6 runs, 4 Q’s, 1 QQ, 2 2nd place, 2 3rd place, 49 MACH points, MXB and MAB TITLES, 6 videos
Lucky Lucy: 6 runs, 3 Q’s, 1 QQ, 5 MACH points, 6 videos



Our setup, right at the entrance. 
Each support beam has a 30 amp hookup and water.
Unfortunately,
the asphalt parking lot was studded with limestone rocks,
which is going to hurt us later.

It's Valentine's Day weekend and I'm off to a trial, leaving my sweetheart at home. We agreed to postpone our celebration til Monday night. After a 1.5 hour drive, and another 1.5 hours to set up the RV including my fenced yard, I was completely settled in 3 hours.

The Sugarena has electric and water hookups on every metal beam front and rear of the arena.  I was one of the first to arrive at 4 p.m. Thursday so I got my pick of spots right at the entrance, not far from the rings. No need to set up a crate space, which saved me lots of effort, and the dogs were warm and comfy between runs.  Sweet!  These hookups are new. The weather was cool, crisp, and dry.    Furthermore, most other RV'ers parked in the back or way to the side, so I had the whole front to myself.  The dogs seemed calm and happy.

I got several compliments on my fenced yard, and discovered that by bungying my 2 little wooden tables to the outer corners, was able to increase it's stability when Lucky lunges against it.  So much so, I didn't mind leaving them alone outdoors for short periods. It's always been bungied to the awning uprights and the 2' x 4' table, plus the white strips on top keep it mostly stable, but it needed more.

Temps in the low 40’s with wind early mornings and evenings, in the 60’s during the day. So glad to have my Trapper’s Hat! Still need to work on looser layered clothing that doesn’t make me feel stuffed in a sausage skin. Also need warmer, looser lounging clothes for evenings when taking the dogs out. I had to stay dressed in my day clothes for enough warmth.

Dogs ran small to tall all weekend, and Maxie was the 1st 8” dog on the line all 3 days, Lucky the 2nd 24" dog.

Friday, Feb 15, - Trial started at noon so I stayed up til almost midnight Thursday night, and slept in til the dogs woke me up for breakfast at 8. I'm on vacation!  Maxie's first run wasn't until 2 p.m. He Q’d in Jumpers with a 2nd place win and pretty fast times.  NQ'd in Standard by entering the weaves on the wrong side. Otherwise a nice run.  Lucky miraculously Q’d in Jumpers -- with 2 seconds to spare, then scratched in Standard with several WC's and R's, like she didn't want to be in the ring.  Curious.  I earned 1 raffle ticket for gate keeping T2B, and won a $25 gift card to Chilis’.

Maxie with his placement ribbons, and a
purple ribbon from Mommy for his 11th QQ.

Saturday, Feb 16 -  Up at 6 a.m. Maxie on the line at 8 a.m.  Maxie QQ’d, with a 2nd and 3rd place win.  Darnit, the hosting club offered no purple QQ ribbons!  Lucky scratched both runs, one with so many errors I removed her from the ring. She was totally distracted. I had noticed her licking her right front paw incessantly Friday night and all thru Saturday, leaving wet pools of slobber on the couch and bed.  When we did our traditional hand shake and she gave a cry, I felt sure a lodged stone or bruized paw accounted for her dismal performance Friday afternoon and Saturday.   She would not let me examine it, but by Sunday she wasn't licking it any more, which is maybe why her performance improved significantly with a QQ.

Lucky Lucy's 3 Q's and a purple scarf from
Mommy for her 3rd QQ.

Sunday, Feb 17 – Up at 6 a.m. Maxie on the line at 8 a.m. Q’d in XJ with a 2nd place.  Lucky, to my absolute amazement, QQ’d!  She barely made course time both times, one with only 2 one hundredths of a second to spare, but walked/ran clean and made it. I earned1 raffle ticket on Saturday for gate keeping but too late for the raffle.  They gave it to me for the Sunday raffle plus another, and I won another $25 gift card to Chilis’.  I'll use these cards to take my husband and our dog sitters out to dinner.

Composite videos, with commentary, will be posted when I get enough time.

GOALS SET/GOALS MET:

• a QQ for Maxie and 35 MACH points, which earns him both bronze titles: MAB, MJB.  All that and more accomplished - 4 Q's, 4 placements, 1 QQ, 49 MACH points.
• a Jumpers Q for Lucky.  We did a QQ, and 2 Jumpers Q's, which was beyond what I expected.
• get all my videos taken without stress.  That happened thanks largely to Karen Des Roches and others who stepped up and offered to help willingly.
• Get Pepper used to the trialing environment.  He seemed OK with the noise, let several people hold him, sat in the bleachers a long time, and pranced about like the wild man he is.  He doesn't mind the noisy, bouncy motor home, a great relief as he used to throw up in the car as a young puppy.
• Relax and have fun.  Yes, one of my best trials ever in that regard.

OBSERVATIONS:

1. Rhonda Crane was a very pleasant judge.  Her courses were "melodic".  They flowed beautifully and while challenging, were not tortuous. She nested her Open and Novice courses so they could be built with just a few changes from the Excellent setup, making the course builders' jobs much easier.
2. I'm always trepidatious about those limestone parking lots.  How can the dogs not get bruised paws? I must try to avoid them whenever possible.
3. I came home with the outside of my shins aching something terrible.  Someone speculated it's because the hard packed dirt had no "give", like running on concrete.  Do I need to train for that?
4. Gift Cards: I really like the way this club gave out a raffle ticket for each class worked, with a drawing near the end of each day.  (Plus, they also gave out a $5 lunch ticket to spend at Concessions.) They had a range of gift cards from Starbucks $25, Burger King $10, Subway $15, Chili's $25, plus an assortment of agility books and T-shirts.  At other trials I've also seen gift cards offered instead of raffle items, where you purchase tickets for $1, or 6 tickets for $5, or 15 tickets for $10, etc., with cards for Home Depot, Pet Smart, and others included. Much easier for the hosting club to pull cards together (and possibly members would donate cards) in lieu of the extreme hassle of hauling and assembling hundreds of raffle items.
5. Maxie would easily have 20 QQ's by now if it weren't for his hesitation in those darn weaves!  Lucky would make course time way more often.  I've begun to suspect it's the white metal spacer bar that throws them off at trials.  We don't have those at home.  I'm going to paint my spacers white and see if that helps.
6. Most interesting maneuver I learned was in MS on Sunday, second to last obstacle was a 20' tunnel going under the dog walk and pointing straight to the exit.  Very few handlers reached the end of the tunnel before their dogs did, resulting in D veering left to find H (like Maxie did), and taking a WC at worst.  Only way to do this well was to cross before the tunnel and run like hell, which few did.  I noticed it from the stands, and corrected my own performance by the time Lucky ran and she Q'd by 2/100th of a second. A bobble there would have killed her Q. I analyzed video snippets of several people doing this below.

LESSONS LEARNED:

• The road to Lafayette is bumpy as hell in Lafayette and I-10 out of Lafayette towards BR.  They need to fix that road. Good thing I had my cabinets bungied shut because 2 of them popped open slightly and scared Lucky so badly she raced up and jumped over my gate to hide under my drivers seat, with her butt almost touching my gas peddle and I could not budge her, and me on the Atchafalya bridge.  I managed to pull off at the Atchafalya Welcome Center a few miles up the road and calm her down, then chained her up so she couldn't reach me, but that could have been a disaster.
• Label everything.  I left my new Trappers Hat and gloves on the workers table.  By the time I remembered, the crew had packed up and left.  I hadn't labeled them but I emailed the trial sec and she has them.  She'll bring them to me in Monroe.  If I'd have labeled them, someone would have found me and delivered them.
• I'm comfortable as Gate Keeper, but on Saturday I was handed the gate list and envelope of scribe sheets for a large T2B class.  I taped up the list and people began checking in, but when the scribe was nowhere in sight and only 5 minutes to go, I began to sort the the big stack of sheets according to the list as best I could (never done it before).  Many people hadn't checked in.  Those marked ABS I pulled those sheets.  Oops, I was just supposed to mark them ABS and leave in correct order.  Those Moved I moved into the new order.  The unchecked people I left in order and waited to see if they showed up.  If they didn't by their turn I  ran over to the scribe telling her to mark them ABS.  It was controlled chaos.  Next day I was visited by the Trial Sec, who very nicely thanked me for a good job but in future please do it differently . . . . . . . Yes Ma'am!
• Next day I asked the Gate Keeper to move Lucky from 2nd to last (about 5 dogs down) on the 24" running order so I could film a friend running late in the 20" jump height. The gate keeper happened to be a judge, and OMG, how she fussed me for that! "Oh No, you don't get to move because you want to film somebody. You have to have a real excuse, like a conflict getting your 1st dog put away and your 2nd dog on the line on time. If you miss your run in the correct order, you will just miss your turn."  Again, Yes Ma'am!  But then, I'm glad she wasn't gate keeper on Saturday when I didn't get Lucky to the gate on time and the friendly Gate Keeper just moved her to the bottom, as I've done for numerous people in the past. Didn't know that was a wrong thing, especially in a friendly game.  I've seen people move themselves to the bottom and never give a reason why.

So I continue to ask, how hard would it be to teach a little class or write an instruction sheet on how to change your place on the list?  How to put scribe sheets in order??????  Gate keep??????  Time??????   Scribe??????  I hear over and over people say they'll "do anything but scribe", including this weekend.  Getting it wrong affects a team's score, so it's serious stuff.  Learning to watch the judge instead of the dog is hard for some, and scribing what the judge signals instead of what you think you saw is another level of difficulty.  Marking the wrong sheet with faults and time would be a sin.  I propose at the very least providing a laminated chart on every scribe table showing the judge's hand signals. Who knows those starting out?  AKC provides such a chart, shown here, and linked to here. I'm going to print up and laminate a few for our club, plus give them out to Gate Stewards at every trial I go to from now on!  Enough of this nonsense of not systematically training people, then fussing over not having enough volunteers and/or fussing them for getting it wrong.

 

Despite all this complaining, the Acadiana Kennel Club did an outstanding job rounding up volunteers.  I know it was a tough haul for them, but they enlisted some outstanding helpers from other clubs.  If not yet, I hope future Trial Secretaries, Chief Course Builders and Gate Stewards get comped for their trial entry fees or other financial compensation.  They work very very hard all weekend on top of trying to run their dogs.

Next trial in 2 weeks, in Monroe, LA. I look forward to another cool weather trial.

Upwards and onward!

A Study of Weave Performance - Front View

It takes a dog between 3.5 - 6 seconds to run through the weaves, too fast to notice all the fine details of their footwork, especially if you are the handler/trainer. So, last year in Lake Charles I took video snippets of numerous Excellent level dogs taking the weaves at a trial, all running towards me.  I finally got around to compiling them into a slo-mo video to better understand how different dogs take the weaves, how a lack of consistent footwork slows them down and leads to pop-outs, and how even high achieving dogs who complete the weaves are sometimes inconsistent. 

Here's the 6 minute video of 26 Excellent Class dogs in a T2B run, slowed down to 40-50% speed.

Do you know how your dog weaves? 

Several things I noticed:

• Almost all dogs have the same rear foot action - a two foot hop, regardless what the front feet are doing.
• A few large one-stepping dogs only put down one back foot also, or barely touch the other foot down.
• All dogs push out of the last weave with 2 front feet.
• All dogs head check their handler as they leave the last space unless the handler is already ahead of them.
• Some dogs push the poles with their head or shoulders, to straighten their line, which probably improves their speed.  They leave the poles all aquiver.  Other dogs don't touch the poles.

Inconsistencies include:

• Leading into the space with the outside foot sometimes, other times with the inside foot.
• Both front feet land simultaneous sometimes, other times it's a stutter landing.
• One footing it sometimes, two footing it other times.
• One footing it on one side, two footing it on the other side, consistently.
• Even in consistent two steppers, they sometimes land on the outside foot first and the inside foot other times, or always land on the same foot first no matter which side of the weaves they are on.
• Some dogs combine all of the above within a single pass through the weaves.
• An inordinate number of dogs pop out at the 10th weave.  Why is that?

I want to learn how to improve footwork consistency in the dogs I train. Let me know what you think.  I invite discussion.  I've heard various things from various trainers, including

• Always practice on channel weaves except a week before a trial.
• Trainers close the channel weaves too quickly, before their dogs commit the performance to muscle memory.
• I don't care how my dogs weave, as long as they know they have to get through them.

Two stepping and one-stepping are both correct styles in my view.  Each dog will do the style that suits them.  And yet, we should be able to improve consistency and the answer lies in back-chaining and baby steps.  Hitting solid entries.  Susan Garrett's 2 x 2's is one way.  (Our club has a set.  Hardly anybody uses them.  It's hard to teach a class with multiple students on the 2 x 2's.)

Last year I posted a still shot study of the various front foot action, plus a slo-mo video of rear foot weave action.  You can view that study at this post.

Upwards and onward!

Motivating Lucky's Weave Performance

Lucky weaves at home, me with her Chuck-It in my hand.

Lucky's performance at the Port Allen Trial is perplexing.  Almost embarassing.  0 Q's, and all way over course time.  She was lethargic and would barely run all weekend. I couldn't get her attention in or out of the ring. She even ignored her favorite treats (shrimp and hot dogs). She wouldn't tug much. There were flies about, which she was focused on and snapped at.  She only had 1 clean run out of 6, but all of them were way over course time and once she missed so many obstacles I excused us from the ring. She knocked a bar, very rare for her. Tracey, who has run her successfully before, ran her Saturday afternoon as my hip was hurting, but Lucky would not focus. Kept looking for me. That was a disaster. Another run she saw Daddy videoing her from the sidelines and ran over to him. The rest of the weekend I got someone else to do Lucky's videos.

I was so miffed, I got home Sunday evening, took her in the back yard to see if maybe she was injured.  But no, she ran her weaves and sailed over jumps like a champion and didn't want to quit. Of course, I had her Chuck-It in my hand.  I am disappointed other competitors can't see her at her best, so full of enthusiasm and focus.

Next day, I videoed her doing her weaves the way she does them at home and in class, and post it here to PROVE that she can do them.  I want others to know I wouldn't DARE bring a dog into the competition ring that couldn't do all the obstacles, run and follow directions well, or didn't enjoy the activity.  She wouldn't have earned her AX and AXJ titles in a year if she was as incompetent as she was this weekend.



By comparison, here is the Port Allen Trial composite video below.



Very discouraging, but three different people came up and said they enjoyed watching her run and not to give up. I needed to hear that. I was most impressed at the applause Tracey got for not giving up on Lucky.  The big cheer was for her, not Lucky.  See, it's not just about the dog!

Lucky's speed is what concerns me. Yesterday I ran her at our training field through the same standard course that Tracey ran her at the trial, and she flew through it with only one mistake - knocked bars at the tripple.  SCT 64 seconds, she ran it in 53 seconds.  Plenty of time. 1st place winner ran it in 48.24, only 5 seconds faster!  And, since it wasn't a real trial run, I left her on the table an extra 6 seconds to catch my breath.  Subtracting that wasted time, her time would have been 47 seconds!  Here is that run:



I will continue to try to figure out how to motivate her in the ring.  SHE CAN DO THIS!

Upwards and onward!

Weave Pole Performance

Studying the still shots taken by professional photographer Michael Loftis from last weekend's trial in Kiln, MS, I've discovered that many dogs have inconsistent stride thru the weaves.  Since the poles are all spaced at 24", you would think over time an experienced dog would establish a stride and maintain it.  But the photos indicate otherwise. 

Here are a group of thumbnails of my own Lucky Lucy, posted with Michael's permission, to illustrate my points.  Lucky is a fairly green dog  who just earned her AX and AXJ titles from AKC in 7.5 months, who can two-step the weaves beautifully in practice but at trials generally slows down to a walk.  Below, she is running, doing a single pass with 3 different ways of maneuvering, all caught by Michael's camera:

Here's a few more dogs with inconsistent stride in a single pass:

Obviously, dogs that can't maintain a consistent stride are slowed down, must often get confused, give up trying to re-balance, pop out, etc.

Now here are 4 shots from a single pass thru those same weaves by my little Papillon, Maxie, who, when he runs instead of walks the weaves, has very consistent "two step" weave pole performance with a "single bounce" stride that is very fast.

On the last photo, it's clear that Maxie completes each pole in a single stride by extending his body.  With these photos confirming his consistency (same degree of lean, same head and tail position, same gaze forward, same shoulder distance from the poles, front feet landing right the same distance back from the pole, outside foot landing first), I now wonder if what makes him walk the weaves sometimes is when he doesn't hit the entry just right and can't hit a consistent stride, and if that's true, how do I train his entry to be at an exact spot?

Here are more examples of the "two-step" stride with different size dogs. Notice their back feet are close together and pushing off simultaneously.

Here are a some examples of dogs using their inside leg to lead in, pushing off with their outside leg, which sometimes (not always) resulting in the coveted behavior known as "one-stepping the weaves":

And shots of dogs using their outside leg to lead in, which has to slow them down and sometimes trip them up as they struggle to cross the new outside leg back in (last photo):

A few trials back, I attempted to video the back ends of a few dogs going thru the weaves, to find out how the back feet are moving.  Viewing each run in slo-mo (50%), turned out the back feet push off mostly simultaneously then hop into the space right behind where the front feet were, even while the front feet are varying as described above.  All the dogs take each pole in a single stride. The larger dogs have to "collect" and land their rear feet farther away from the line of poles, the smaller dogs have to "extend" and work closer to the line of poles to cover the distance. One dog, running with the lady in pink, was "one stepping" on one side of the weaves, and "two stepping" on the other side and mixing up leads, but the back feet were doing just about the same thing all the time.  Watch for that:

(Correction: dogs tend to take each weave in 1 stride, not 2 as stated in the video.)

As to training stride, my hunch now is this: I think we rush to closed weaves.  If we open the channels a bit then give our dogs a lot more time to figure out and develop the muscle memory of a consistent stride, they will eventually be able to do fast and reliable closed weaves.  Problem with that, our club has no 24" channel weaves.  I'll have to use my stick in the ground poles at home, but straight weaves at class.

We should also spend a lot more time doing "around the clock" weave pole entries.

Anyone with other weave stride training suggestions, ideas or comments, please feel free to share.

Upwards and onward!