Finally the time has come to put school thoughts aside and start packing for Champs!! This weekend I was pretty nervous about how ready Ce monster and I were but now Im just anxious excited! It really helped my confidence to do alphabet drill "A" yesterday for start line stays and front crosses; I rarely do fronts because I don't think I'm ever fast enough to!). Today I was debating between taking CeCe for a bike ride or doing agility. I decided to finish prepping for for Champs by doing some weave proofing tonight. This weave proofing also turned into major start line stay practice (She may even hold it at Champs now! *knock on wood*) and also some "go on" distance work as well as some jump/weave distance discrimination so I could mock the handling I would do for the contact discriminations. I still need to work on communicating more and not just relying on my body, someone remind me later?
imaginary picture is here
After the session tonight I felt AMAZING because CeCe NAILED her "Go On" command and was doing everything I told her (even if I didnt mean to haha). Her weave entries and forward motion is awesome, I even stood at the first pole and she weaved the hole set with just my verbals urging her. Start line stays are still a little jumpy but this whole session I did the Tori Self dance which helped proof the wait. WE SHALL SEE WHAT HAPPENS!
After CeCe ripped her toenail up at the trial last weekend, we made a vet appointment for her for that Monday. I only ran her in hoopers on Sunday, but that night it seemed really bad. When I was getting ready to sleep she started licking her paw and even pulling at the hair. I tried to stop her but eventually gave up since I realized I could not be babysitting her the whole night.
The next morning it looked a lot better but we went into the vet anyway. We chose to try out a vet that was closer to us than our regular one because they seemed much nicer. I was surprised when the vet tech/ vet gave her the most thorough exam she has ever received! When the vet got to her teeth I was honestly really amused by the look on her face. To say CeCe is missing a couple teeth is an understatement..
When the vet finally got to her foot, she informed us that it was only minor and she would be fine with doing agility that very day as long as I avoided making her pivot on that foot. She said it should be healed in a week if we soaked her paw in some nolvasan solution and kept it moisturized (with neosporin). CeCe almost got the "cone of shame" but we quickly told the vet that we had a boot for her to keep the neosporin on.
I haven't been very faithful about soaking CeCe's foot, but about every other day I have stood her in the sink with a bowl of the nolvasan mixed with water for 5 minutes.
She stands still the whole time! Such a good girl! My dad thought it was because she liked the attention, but if you look at her expression while she is standing in the sink you'll see she's not a fan. She's just a good girl as I have already said! haha
After soaking her foot I dry it off and put neosporin on the wound. Then I place her on her side and but on the booty! It's really not a medical booty, its Riley's winter boot. It's actually quite effective when CeCe is not pulling off the velcro strap. Its easy to direct her attention elsewhere and she moves just fine in it.
Even though the vet okayed agility, I waited four days before doing any practice. Her paw is almost healed now and Im confident we will be back to full agility training soon! On September 17th we wil be heading down to La Crosse, WI for another NADAC trial (one day only). That will be our last trial before Champs eeeep! GET YOUR WEAVES GIRL DOG.
This weekend we went up to Lindstrom to practice on dirt some more to prep for champs. My plan was to handle discriminations at a distance because there are always distance discriminations at champs it seems. We have not worked on discriminations since before CeCe was competing and she has had no problems. The bad thing is, up until this trial, I would baby CeCe to the tunnel so there was no chance she would take the contact obstacle (remember our rush to get regular Q's?). To my surprise, she sent out to multiple tunnel discriminations and nailed them; I thought she was a complete contact sucker! Then I realized I had done something veryy bad.. in two runs I turned her into a tunnel sucker -.- In chances she blew me off and went way out of her way to take a tunnel. When it came time to take the dog walk with a tunnel underneath it, SHE TOOK THE TUNNEL! What the heck she ALWAYS does the dog walk when I tell her too! By this point, I admit, I was done taking her blowing-off crap. I made her redo the dog walk discrimination and luckily got it that time. BUT she flew off the side of the contact when it would've been soo easy to add an extra stride and hit it nicely. I pulled her after that because she was being ridiculous.
Weavers was a complete failure. I don't really want to talk about it but her 2x2 training did not stick in this one... pulled her off for being yet again ridiculous.
Next was touch n go which I'm always confident that CeCe can do well in. This course had a wrap in it which is always exciting (: We were trying to hit that 100+ running index again and with a 5.35 yps run Im prettyy sure we got it.
Last was jumpers. I definitely did not feel in sync with her this run. It felt a mess, but in reality was not tooo too bad and we did Q. Yay? The best thing I saw during that run was in the home stretch horse shoe. I was trying some distance and layered a jump. I saw her pulling in but then noticed she corrected herself and went back out to the correct jump without me having to stop and support her more. An okay way to end a bad day.
Apparently blogs fail without pictures so boom boom POW
In between touch n go and weavers Sara was holding CeCe and I noticed her back left paw was bleeding. Upon further examination Sara determined that her nail had pulled up from her paw a bit. /: I was a little shaken, but CeCe didn't seem to be in pain so I ran her. When we got home I found Riley's snow boot and ended up putting it on her for part of the night and all of the next day.
I was planning on doing only hoopers, tunnelers, and maybe chances if it didn't have contacts on sunday because of her paw. The day started with hoopers and CeCe pulled a really nice run considering I was a little off due to my worry about her foot. She showed great "go on" distance!
During the regulars I noticed that CeCe had bled through her boot so I sadly decided to not run her anymore that day. I was really sad, I couldn't bring myself to even walk chances with Chrissy and Sara because I knew CeCe could have gotten that one. Watching CeCe be only a spectator for her favorite course, tunnelers, was equally hard. By the end of the day I wanted to curl up into a ball and die.
This morning it looks like CeCe's foot has stopped bleeding for good but she has a vet appointment today anyway; Im scared for infection. Ill keep this updated as best I can.
After three calls to customer service over the span of a week, Nikon FINALLY shipped my camera battery, charger, and lens cap with next day shipping. Maybe it would have happened sooner if the "top dog" wasn't in intensive care..but anyway YES FINALLY!
Yesterday I just played around getting to know my camera and the functions for a few minutes. Took one blog worthy picture which was actually my seconds picture ever taken with the camera!
35 mm lens f1.8
Today I was at my dads house so I could take photos of the dogs and test the action shot settings! I knew, since it was early in the morning, the lighting wouldn't be too attractive, but I was just too anxious to wait. CeCe is a touch subject to photograph since she refuses to hold her startline stay for very long.
55-200mm VR
55-200mm VR
55-200mm VR
Next I wanted to try my macro lens out with action since I had done a simple test at my moms house and the macro seemed to pick up the action better. I brought out Riley knowing he would wait until I called him across the jumps. CeCe was so angry because I took out some cheese for Riley and she couldn't get any, but that's what you get for not holding your start line very well..!
35mm
35mm with focus setting on 3D tracking
35mm with 3D tracking
Im super excited to try my camera out at Lindstrom!! And Chrissy is happy because now she can get some good V-NATCH pictures! Lindstrom will be a blast. Chrissy and her family are driving down friday night and staying in our pop-up tent camper in our backyard! Sara will be joining us Saturday night making a full house with five dogs! Still have to clean my room..I should get on that now.
I pulled a Karissa and tried to take some photos of Ce Monster with her ribbons. The sun wasn't out so excuse the gloomy feel.
With Champs coming up I wanted to work on CeCe's start line stays because as I was watching Jack's video (you know which one you obsessive Champs addicts you), I realized if I could not get any sort of lead-out from her that I would DIE from all the running. Either that or I would be seriously behind causing CeCe to miss a contact or something along those lines. So every run (except for one, I just had to do ONE running start) I lead-out even if it was a mini one like in Jackpot. She broke it once but really not bad for a dog that hates being still on an agility course.
This brings me to my next area of focus. I was really excited to see how her teeter turned out. I definitely wasn't expecting her to stick the contact because like I implied earlier, she has little self control on course. The contact stick fell apart on Sunday, but thats because there is no training in CPE and I couldn't reinforce the stick! The first time she self-released I turned my back to her trying to lead out and she got antsy. The second time, well, who needs to stop anyway? Psh!
My 2x2 instructor was at the trial so I was a little nervous! To make matter worse, she was planning on watching Jackpot, a class I have never done, so I was ready to crap my pants at the startline. CeCe did really well and ended up with the highest Jackpot score for the weekend, except we left early so we couldn't claim our prize. My instructor was impressed, especially since she noticed I ran the course differently than I had walked it. xD Im pretty sure she was not expecting Ce to be so fast because when I told her at class that CeCe had problems collecting for the weaves because of her speed she didn't seem to believe me. Afterwards I asked her for suggestions for the Standard round to possibly get CeCe through the weaves on the first try. Watching the video back Im positive I slowed down too early for the weaves. I guess it will take time to get used to.
Something I was not expecting were the horrible entries to the dog walk. To make matters worse, the course seemed more distorted than the course map. Almost all the handlers were not helping their dog hit the dogwalk at a nicer angle and two fell off!
Sorry this one is sideways but LOOK AT THAT ENTRY ]=<
Not good for running contacts..
Overall a very successful trial! Im really glad that my instructor was there because at class she was more friendly with me and she knew CeCe a little more so we got more specific help. She actually got CeCe weaving 12 poles straight (no tenth pole pop)! One last session; Im hoping to try the 12 poles in class when she is less tired to try and get her to pop so we can fix this problem for good!
Last night we had our first 2x2 class at On The Run canine center! It was great to be back to where CeCe's agility career started. I was surprsied to see Kelly with Jake there for the same class!! She helped me understand the concept of the 2x2 training before class started and offered to bring her dvd next time. She makes me miss taking classes at TCOTC with instructor Jim Nally. Anyway, class went swimmingly! Once two sets of two were put in place CeCe's lightbulb turned on and she started making weave entries I never would have even attempted at home! Im very excited and I can't wait to see her progress through the other two sessions. The only bad thing about that class is sometimes there is some waiting/ rest time and all CeCe wants to do is keep working so she can get her treats. She is so bratty that whenever we aren't doing anything she stares at me and barks. (She came to us all bratty like that and although she has gotten better she will NOT stop that bad habit.) The instructor even turned to her once mid-speech and said "yes I know you're a Sheltie but barking for treats wont work!". All the other dogs never made a peep. Sigh.
No video, sorry! Possibly next time but who knows.
The teeter session today went fairly well. Check out the video description because it pretty much explains everything.
Why all the unlisted teeter training videos? Well I noticed as the days went on, the views decreased on my videos so I decided to stop spamming youtube. Now Im spamming blogger..lol YAY spam is delicious.
Today we only did a short session because we have a weaving class tonight at On The Run. Only worked on contacts because Im thinking of going to a normal teeter within the next few days and contacts will be my main struggle here on out. She did really well, Im so glad I tried to teach her 2o2o earlier. It really helped because she is targeting even though there is no target. Smart girly!
Make sure to check out yesterdays session as well! And because I can, here's another video not related to agility (:
Im ready to kick my base across the yard. This session my teeter base collapsed once and fell over twice. Not okay. On top of that my boards that I duct taped to one end to make the board tip more slowly were coming untaped. Of course! My life.
Angry explaination done. I replaced the table which was about 15-18" with some pvc dog walk supports which are about 13". CeCe doesn't seem to mind the change but she is coming in too fast to stick her contact sometimes. I did a mini 4-on session since I was tired of putting the teeter back in place from it falling over and she definitely understands it. Looks like she's offering the touch thing which we had worked on a coupld months ago. Interesting she has remembered since I'm using a different command. Ultimately she is offering me a combo of her 2o2o and her moving touch behavior.
Im very happy with CeCe's progress today. I was struggling with the 4-on contact but Chrissy gave me an idea and now I can finally see the light! Although Chrissy's idea didn't go quite as planned (the board beat CeCe up a little bit lol), I think Ce dog now understands that I want her to wait until I release her!! I bet that 2o2o training we did awhile back helped beause she looked to be offering that some of the time, but YAY for SOMTHING! Now the hardest part is behind us we can go back to goofing off a little and just work on speed/ confidence, and contact proofing. I AM expecting another road block in her contact training when the teeter doesnt have anything to catch it (the table) because the grass will be beckoning to her to run on. I already have a plan for that though mua ha ha. Just no plan B.. Hopefully all goes well so we can finish this baby up before the CPE trial next weekend. (:
Im sorry I have been neglecting you. Its been over a month and I feel bad. But I really didnt find it necessary to make a post about trials when the youtube description explained the majority of my thoughts. And training sessions would have been boring for you because it was mainly just weave proofing and wraps.
But I guess I have more to say about wraps than just mentioning them, so quickly:
I know akc has a lot of wraps so I knew eventually I wanted to teach a wrap on command but when our latest nadac trial had a wrap in it I got motivated to begin teaching the command right away. I use the command "tight" and I give it to her before she is jumping so she has time to think and collect. Im still mixing it up being "tight" and "go [on]" so she doesnt lose her distance skills when I start hanging back. Bored yet? Good.
After training today. CeCe says yum?
Teeter training has begun and I frankly have no clue what Im doing but Im just going to smile and pretend I do. She is looking good for having a confused trainer, in my opinion! Well not completely confused, I am now spending each night going through training strategies in my head. Last night I only got a couple hours of sleep because I was thinking of a command for her contact and figuring out how I would go about changing her down behavior to a crouching target. I definitely make it hard on myself thinking of names for behaviors that are outside the usual. I dislike conformity and for some reason I do not like the word touch.. Her 2o2o command was "dos". Yup I had to resort to foreign language. You can imagine how I struggled with a term for her 4 on teeter behavior. I eventually came up with "stick" sometimes "stick it" because her teeter command is "tip it" (oh yeah Im on a ROLL with creative names aren't I?). haha
Since CeCe just got introduced to "stick" today she doesnt know what it means exactly.. And I was struggling with strategies for a held contact since this is new to me. For instance if you take a look at my video (Ill post it at the end) and look at 2:19 in the video, you'll see my face of confusion and awkwardness. Thankfully miss Chrissy came to my rescue with a strategy that may just work to help teach a better "stick". Ill try it out tomorrow and of course video!
I redesigned the blog if you haven't noticed already! ;) I was tired of not having a banner so I randomly threw one together. It didnt look good with my old background with the birds so then I had to find a new background that wasnt too busy but wasnt too boring. THEN I changed the font colors to match. After I was content with the home page I decided to finally add details to the dogs' pages which has been neglected for far too long!
If you haven't heard already CeCe's contact training has been halted. She showed me at our last trial that the Davenport trial was just an extreme situation. When Im there for the upcoming trial I will definitely inspect the dog walk again and SAY something this time instead of letting it be. I don't want to have to say something since CeCe is the only dog that was having issues (granted she was the only one that ran it like a rhino) but ugh we need regular Q's! Maybe I should still be working on her 2o2o for back up and to avoid confronting someone.. Bleh
Other then that I dont have that much news. Im just killing time waiting for Karissa to come online hahahaha Im almost driving myself insane. Gah I wish I could go running now but I ran two days ago and played tennis for an hour yesterday so I am SORE. I dont even want to move let alone pace which I have a strong urge to do until I get a reply. xD
I don't really want to talk about the trial this weekend. We were out of sync and she didn't get any Qs in regular GAH. The video on youtube explains more.
I hate to keep driving 5 and a half hours to get to Davenport IA for trials, but if we continued with the planned trials Ce would have only 12 more chances to get 9 Qs in regular. SO, to Chrissy's delight (and somewhat mine I guess haha) I will be going to the Daveport trial July 2-3.
Since CeCe had difficulties with hitting the contact on the dog walk this weekend, I am officially training a contact for her! I googled methods saturday night actually hoping I would find a quick fix for sunday and then go more into training after the trial but no such luck. I then googled training methods because I still wasnt sure if I should stick to running or not (Chrissy, being biased, thought I should try 2o2o) :P I dont have a full size dog walk so I thought Sylvia's method wouldn't be the answer. I happily stumbled upon a sort of target training. The ultimate goal is to keep the running contact while having her dip her head down in the contact zone. Im excited to try this out since I have never trained a contact performance before (no Im not lazy I just never saw a need for one) and I don't know what the end result will look like especially since we only have a few months to train it with a few trials thrown in to probably set back the training. :/
I started the target training at the trial on sunday first with just the target and then with a square board propped up with the target on the end. Today we started with just the target again and then with a longer more dog walk type board with the target at the end. She's definitely catching on and Im begin to see what her dog walk could potentially look like in the end!
Im holding off moving to target to the dog walk this week because of a trial this weekend. I dont want her to associate the target with the dog walk just yet so she doesn't learn to offer me the behavior only when we are at home. Im having fun! We're learning together!
This was my last weekend for hmm FOUR weeks that I was able to sleep in for. I didn't quite accomplish that task though. Firstly I have a 40 minute group presentation and also a five minute speech on my banned book due monday. My group presentation is for the most part on track except for the fact that one group member this whole week has been a handful and an irritation. When we would reach an official decision on the order of things, videos, or skits he would go off on his own thought and keep suggesting other ways to do things even though we nicely told him we were already set. Then we assigned him two simple power points and a skit on slang of the 2000s which isnt too hard but somehow he managed to dump one powerpoint on other group members, fail at the skit, and totally trash the other powerpoint. Now the rest of the group members have to in addition to their slides redo his as well -.- Except somehow I turned out to be the one who picks up the mojority of his slack. OF COURSE! And now my speech is being neglected..yay can't wait to present it not having it semi-memorized.
Sorry to unload again but Im not one to verbalize drama because drama SUCKS so I just keep it to myself.
Theres actually a funny story to this blog ready for it?
So I mentioned that this was my last weekend I could sleep in..well option was there and I wanted to but it didn't happen. At 6 am my mom woke up, saw my light wasnt on (I wake up at 5:45 for school) and yelled "ROBYYYNNN" and still half sleeping I yell "WHAAATT" "Its 6! You should be up by now!" "ITS SATURDAY" "oh..". When I woke up for the second time at 8:30 I thought I had a nightmare and I was worried I had shouted in my sleep but my mom came to me laughing and retold the story. Sigh isnt she amazing?
If youre still hanging in there...the reason I wont be able to sleep in for the next three weekends is because I have TRIALS! Normally I wouldnt do them back to back to back or even back to back but Im feeling pressured for champs since CeCers didnt make any regular Q's last trial.
Im super excited for the Davenport trial memorial weekend trial because I get to see my friends and have an amazing time on astroturf with my girly <3
It's 1 am and Im blogging..I knew starting a blog would destroy my life. No actually I celebrated mothers day today since I have a trial this weekend. I took my mom to chanhassen dinner theatre and saw Jesus Christ Superstar. Amazing! Didn't get back until 11, CeCe needed exercise so I ran up and down the block twice and took a shower which made it about 12. Then I started gathering my things for the trial this weekend since we are leaving right after school gets out and driving 4 hours to des moines!
I didn't start this post to tell you that but I did and it stays.
I did some agility this week to prep for the trial (of course!) and I am quite pleased. Earlier in the week I gave Ce a lesson on sticking in the poles even if there is a tunnel FIVE FEET from the weave pole exit. She popped a couple times as to be expected but by the time we finished she was weaving 6 poles consistently again despite the major tunnel temptation.
The middle of the week I decided to get video. I wanted to get her back on tweleve poles and tempt with the tunnel again but this time a little further than five feet :P Also I played around with her distance weaving again which I started earlier this month ever since I saw champs maps just in case ;)
Im super excited for this trial. I am ready to run my butt off instead of making CeCers do all the work haha. Im also going to be testing out tunnel/ dog walk discrimination handling since that is something I've been avoiding but is crucial. I am trying to avoid the over exaggerated "turn 180 and run backwards!" handling method because I dont want to desensitize CeCe to my shoulders, when I move my shoulders I want her to follow them not keep going straight...just my thought. Rebecca looked like she had a pretty good method so Im going to play around with variations of that.
Side note: we need to get atleast 2/4 Q's in regular this weekend for me to feel like we are still on track for champs!
There was a trial this weekend (Happy Easter world!). It was a last minute decision so I only entered two runs with CeCe. I was determined to get her weavers Q since that would complete her novice title and guess what? We came, we saw, WE CONQUERED! It wasn't the prettiest but Im mostly to blame, I didn't run fast enough in the beginning (mind you, I struggle running in the dirt) and I didn't support her weaves. One set she got excited about the tunnel ahead of the weaves and jumped out early which she has done many times before. Note to self, practice weaving with a tempting tunnel in view.
I never said why I was SO determined for the Q did I? We are on a quest to get to the 2011 NADAC championships! CeCe's estimated birthday is 8-8-09 so we were not eligible to compete until February. That left us five months behind most of the other dogs wanting to qualify for champs. So we're in a tight crunch to meet the requirements. We certainly wont get our hoopers requirements with only five trials left, but Im pretty confident we will be able to make the rest and hopefully be accepted in (especially since Im a junior handler). Right now our points go as follows: 1/10 regular. Ok it looks really bad right now haha I was going to type the rest but it would be pointless since we haven't gotten anything else towards champs YET. Take note though that we are ready to start accumulating in chances, jumpers, and weavers!
Im going to digress a little and say that I would enjoy a new camera because taking agility action shots is a fun way to pass the time in between runs. I just have a tiny little canon which takes beautiful videos but the action shots..well take a look:
I was on the computer checking my email this moring when I heard a squeeky whine. I looked down and saw THIS. How can Riley do this to me? His hair is at the perfect length for him to give "the face" and I just couldn't turn away from it. Life lesson: when you're too lazy to run an agility course, just sit down and look cute.
I found a course map from I think last years champs and started discussing handling options with a friend. That excitement then carried over to more course evaluations and the hunt for more Champs courses..and then the hunt ended because course maps for Champs are a rare specimen. So I went to a very helpful blog I kept stumbling across but never did much with in the past. Although there are plenty of helpful drills on his blog, with my aframe dead and me being too lazy to get the dog walk and tunnels out I chose two short courses with just jumps that was ment to expose handling faults.
I quite enjoyed this drill and added some blind crosses to the pin wheel from yet another drill where the blogger was giving his opinion on the best way to handle pinwheels. I think I'll try a pinwheel blind cross in one of our trials coming up.. (: Videooo para ti:
A couple days ago my mother asked me, "Guess what hot guy is on tv tonight??" The first person to flash into my mind was of course Taylor Lautner..and then no joke milliseconds later.. Sven Sundgaard popped into my head..! I had to crack up because apparently he's gay and apparently my family thinks he's ridiculous..and wow really? I think he's the second hottest guy that could be on tv? That's just strange.
For you children of the corn that don't know who in the world Im talking about:
Awww x] I love hearing the weeks weather forecast when Sven is on the air! CHANNEL 11 BABYY
Oh and yesterday, I was woken up by my radio which is tuned to 93.7FM (the best morning radio show in MN) and Weasel, Josh, and Nick coincidently were talking about the weather and, you guessed it, Sven Sundgaard. "Sven SunGod?" "Wait, who? OH, Sven Sundgaard!" "Would you like to join the Sventlemen club?" Made my day :D
