Zola and I had the opportunity to attend a Stacy Goudy seminar last week, and it was so much fun.
We had orginally wanted to do the beginner seminar but due to me procrastinating as to when I was going to spay Zola that class filled up .... which was very lucky for me as we totally fitted into the more advanced Novice/Open group. Learnt a few new things - a slighly new hand signal for the serpentine, the correct way to do the back side of a jump though we probably did it correctly all along but I was never certain what we were supposed to be doing and some tips on 270's. I was very grateful that I had introduced Zola to all the moves 1-3 weeks before this, so we were not brand new at any of it. There were some amazing dogs there and it was fun to be in a class with all these people you never train with but see at trials.
At this point I am honestly very happy with Zola's progress, this 7 weeks since she turned 1 years old have been huge in her agility career, she has gone from a dog who had barely started stringing things together to a highly intense very decent agility dog who can do most of the moves.
I did try one of the international moves this morning in the backyard, yip one of those blind crosses, and I totally understand why they need to be done sometimes, it may not speed the dog up, but it certainly helps the handler get on the correct footing to speed up. So all those You-tube watching and the seminar has motivated me to get back into shape again. I don't have a border collie, so even though Zola is driven it is not the same as a BC ...... so I am going to have to be fast to pull every little extra bit of speed out of her and I am going to have to work very hard to get get tight turns out of her. But as Stacy said, tight turns are not always the best things if it slows them down dramatically, you have to know where you need them.
This coming Friday 06/29/2012 is "Spay Day" for Zola. My heart says she is going to be just fine, but I still scared for her and me, very scared. I just don't want to loose another best friend and a great agility dog. :-) and even to this day I will have a quiet little cry for Jik because she was just a sweet sweet dog. Weird thing is, I think she picked Zola for me, and I am very grateful I stood my ground with the breeder and picked the sassiest smallest puppy in the litter ..... because something kept telling me she is the one and I must not let the breeder pick.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
1st Birthday! Holy smokes my puppy is technically not a puppy any more
This week brought Zola's first birthday. To celebrate Kurt and I did a run walk around Lake Calhoun with her and made tuna treats which she loved that day and all the training classes which followed that week.
Zola also officially started jumping 20" this week, early for her age but her growth plates are closed which is what I suspected as she did go into heat early, so I was expecting her to be done growing early. Mentally she is still a puppy and gets up to puppy stuff, though she does still have great focus for work. I also measured her and she is still at 22" even at the shoulders - so measuring for when she starts competition later this year is going to be interesting.
We had 2 classes and 1 at home session by ourselves.
First up was "On the Run" on Wednesday, she did very well and I was fairly shocked at the level of difficulty of the course especially since we have really only just started stringing things together. She did a really good job and I do notice with her she pushes a fairly well, and I didn't really teach that ........ weird, but I will take it. We also got to work on a tire, jump, and then tunnel entry - but not the entry right in front of the dogs nose after they take the jump - that took me about 15 tries to figure out how to handle it. I have a feeling, I am the one that needs to learn the most here - handling a faster dog (and she is not even border collie fast) is a whole lot harder. We worked solidly for an hour that day, with tiny breaks in-between, and she just kept on going - and then we hung out at Kurts house for several more hours and she kept on being super active - she sure has a very long lasting battery on her. So used to Cedar, who you do a little bit of exercise with and she is nice and relaxed and mellow for the night.
Next up "Cloud 9" on Thursday, I was expecting the class to be 6-7 dogs, but it ended up being 8/9. But actually was really nice, which is the good thing about hanging with the more experienced dogs and handlers, things just flow a whole lot faster. I did learn some handling skills on what not to do in general and what not to do with Zola (aka, she is too fast to pull off some of the moves I have for Cedar). First course I handled badly so we didn't look that good, but 2nd course I thought we looked fairly good. And the highlight of the day was I don't think she off-coursed once to the ramp - yip, the ramp is a fav for her.
And then yesterday we worked on the letter C from the Alphabet book. Just some general 5 jump work, sharp turns, front and rear crosses and some driving forward. I did throw in a few blind crosses even though they are not in the book. I will have to find some kind of course maps with some good examples of blind-crosses for us to follow. We didn't do the whole of the C pattern because I wanted to keep the session short and I did feel a whole lot better about me not having her out there too long practicing. I am happy about the new spot for doing this at home training, it is the field at the end of my road with the high-school parking lot next to it, so as long as I get there early on a Saturday or Sunday morning, training will work out perfectly, no people, it is cool, and I can drive right up to where I need to offload my jumps.
That is this weeks training done. Now off for our Sunday morning walk as both Cedar and Zola are getting pesky.
Zola also officially started jumping 20" this week, early for her age but her growth plates are closed which is what I suspected as she did go into heat early, so I was expecting her to be done growing early. Mentally she is still a puppy and gets up to puppy stuff, though she does still have great focus for work. I also measured her and she is still at 22" even at the shoulders - so measuring for when she starts competition later this year is going to be interesting.
We had 2 classes and 1 at home session by ourselves.
First up was "On the Run" on Wednesday, she did very well and I was fairly shocked at the level of difficulty of the course especially since we have really only just started stringing things together. She did a really good job and I do notice with her she pushes a fairly well, and I didn't really teach that ........ weird, but I will take it. We also got to work on a tire, jump, and then tunnel entry - but not the entry right in front of the dogs nose after they take the jump - that took me about 15 tries to figure out how to handle it. I have a feeling, I am the one that needs to learn the most here - handling a faster dog (and she is not even border collie fast) is a whole lot harder. We worked solidly for an hour that day, with tiny breaks in-between, and she just kept on going - and then we hung out at Kurts house for several more hours and she kept on being super active - she sure has a very long lasting battery on her. So used to Cedar, who you do a little bit of exercise with and she is nice and relaxed and mellow for the night.
Next up "Cloud 9" on Thursday, I was expecting the class to be 6-7 dogs, but it ended up being 8/9. But actually was really nice, which is the good thing about hanging with the more experienced dogs and handlers, things just flow a whole lot faster. I did learn some handling skills on what not to do in general and what not to do with Zola (aka, she is too fast to pull off some of the moves I have for Cedar). First course I handled badly so we didn't look that good, but 2nd course I thought we looked fairly good. And the highlight of the day was I don't think she off-coursed once to the ramp - yip, the ramp is a fav for her.
And then yesterday we worked on the letter C from the Alphabet book. Just some general 5 jump work, sharp turns, front and rear crosses and some driving forward. I did throw in a few blind crosses even though they are not in the book. I will have to find some kind of course maps with some good examples of blind-crosses for us to follow. We didn't do the whole of the C pattern because I wanted to keep the session short and I did feel a whole lot better about me not having her out there too long practicing. I am happy about the new spot for doing this at home training, it is the field at the end of my road with the high-school parking lot next to it, so as long as I get there early on a Saturday or Sunday morning, training will work out perfectly, no people, it is cool, and I can drive right up to where I need to offload my jumps.
That is this weeks training done. Now off for our Sunday morning walk as both Cedar and Zola are getting pesky.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
THE LETTER "J" - ZOLA AND MY 1ST DAY OUT ON A LOCAL FIELD TRAINING
THE LETTER "J" - ZOLA AND MY 1ST DAY OUT ON A LOCAL FIELD TRAINING
I have a lot of dreams and high hopes for Zola, and with that is going to be quite a bit of skills training, drive training and focus training, and a ton of planning on my part. Where my training with Cedar has always been lacking is I have never really had a plan, I just show up for class and do whatever is going on that day and it worked out perfectly fine, Cedar ended up being a hig achiever but not an elite dog and I ended up being an average to good handler but nothing special.
So Zola and I am going on a quest to hopefully be an super duper awesome team. I know our ultimate goals will be to get into the Invitational as one of the top 5 Labradors in the country and get at least 4 MACH's. But I still need to sit down and make littler goals. Like our goal for this year is the 3 F's, Fun, Fast and Focussed. And any trial we do this year will have those 3 in mind, Q's are not going to be on our brain (well they will be, but I will have to remind myself to push those thoughts away).
So my first step of my grand scheme is to train a little by ourselves so we can practice things I want us to practice. To achieve this goal I have bought Nancy Gyes "alphabet drills", I do see it is lacking blind crosses, oh well.
Just back to my philosophy on training and trialing a bit, because there is a huge range of opinions on that topics. First off, I am fine starting a dog young as long as it is fun and the expectations are not too high ..... I learnt that after getting 1 NQ out out of 4 in obedience with Zola so far, did I ruin her like some people say, absolutely not ..... I know my dog, she is not going to get ruined by NQing, she does not even know she didn't NQ - I can ruin her by making it totally boring, and getting angry or making her do things I can see she does not want to do - but I cannot ruin her by entering anything. So as long is my dog is having fun, early is better because they learn so much quicker when they are young. That all been said there is a fine line as too what the perfect amount of training is. Got to have another little detour here, young dogs are way more adapable than older dogs, huge oppurtunity to get them to be able to perform anywhere and any time, hence another reason for trialing and doing fun matches very early ....... otherwise you have to wait until they are like 5, believe me I know, Cedar took that long, so going a whole new route with Zola.
So today was "J" - the jump pattern was in the shape of a J, we practiced arcs, rear crosses and strait aways, together with learning to single bounce jumps. Was it successful? Absolutely! Was she or me perfect, absotutely not, but we both learnt things. She learnt a rear cross on a jump and a single bounce stride to the next jump. I learnt she will tug as a treat at the end of a sequence, I also learnt, that I need a plan for treats when the grass is too high, and that I need to shorten the session a bit and maybe make it a tiny bit simpler (she did just fine, but I was worrying it was too much for her even though when I set out I thought I had a good plan).
So before my next session.
I need to have my plan more defined and I need a better venue, that place was a little too distracting even though she did very well for her age. And I need to work on my handling skills as always, because Zola I think has a ton of talent, and it is going to be me that holds her back if I don't concentrate on being better at handling.
Rene, Cedar and Zola
I have a lot of dreams and high hopes for Zola, and with that is going to be quite a bit of skills training, drive training and focus training, and a ton of planning on my part. Where my training with Cedar has always been lacking is I have never really had a plan, I just show up for class and do whatever is going on that day and it worked out perfectly fine, Cedar ended up being a hig achiever but not an elite dog and I ended up being an average to good handler but nothing special.
So Zola and I am going on a quest to hopefully be an super duper awesome team. I know our ultimate goals will be to get into the Invitational as one of the top 5 Labradors in the country and get at least 4 MACH's. But I still need to sit down and make littler goals. Like our goal for this year is the 3 F's, Fun, Fast and Focussed. And any trial we do this year will have those 3 in mind, Q's are not going to be on our brain (well they will be, but I will have to remind myself to push those thoughts away).
So my first step of my grand scheme is to train a little by ourselves so we can practice things I want us to practice. To achieve this goal I have bought Nancy Gyes "alphabet drills", I do see it is lacking blind crosses, oh well.
Just back to my philosophy on training and trialing a bit, because there is a huge range of opinions on that topics. First off, I am fine starting a dog young as long as it is fun and the expectations are not too high ..... I learnt that after getting 1 NQ out out of 4 in obedience with Zola so far, did I ruin her like some people say, absolutely not ..... I know my dog, she is not going to get ruined by NQing, she does not even know she didn't NQ - I can ruin her by making it totally boring, and getting angry or making her do things I can see she does not want to do - but I cannot ruin her by entering anything. So as long is my dog is having fun, early is better because they learn so much quicker when they are young. That all been said there is a fine line as too what the perfect amount of training is. Got to have another little detour here, young dogs are way more adapable than older dogs, huge oppurtunity to get them to be able to perform anywhere and any time, hence another reason for trialing and doing fun matches very early ....... otherwise you have to wait until they are like 5, believe me I know, Cedar took that long, so going a whole new route with Zola.
So today was "J" - the jump pattern was in the shape of a J, we practiced arcs, rear crosses and strait aways, together with learning to single bounce jumps. Was it successful? Absolutely! Was she or me perfect, absotutely not, but we both learnt things. She learnt a rear cross on a jump and a single bounce stride to the next jump. I learnt she will tug as a treat at the end of a sequence, I also learnt, that I need a plan for treats when the grass is too high, and that I need to shorten the session a bit and maybe make it a tiny bit simpler (she did just fine, but I was worrying it was too much for her even though when I set out I thought I had a good plan).
So before my next session.
I need to have my plan more defined and I need a better venue, that place was a little too distracting even though she did very well for her age. And I need to work on my handling skills as always, because Zola I think has a ton of talent, and it is going to be me that holds her back if I don't concentrate on being better at handling.
Rene, Cedar and Zola
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
2/29/2012
Well both my dogs have had tummy issues in the last couple of weeks, Cedar has issues now. Oh well, no more rushing to the vet, Vet found nothing much wrong with Zola despite her not eating kibble, so I doubt there is much wrong with Cedar, just a bug. Zola is fine now and is hungry again - whew.
Zola's 2nd Beginner Novice trial went well, we scored high but there are definite skills we need to work on.
Zo also now officially weighs 45.8lbs, which is petite for her age and breed and the height growth probably has stopped. She measures in at 22'', or maybe a tiny less, so I am assuming at this point she will be jumping 20'' for AKC trials.
Cedar has had a long break from agility, with an occasional class here and there. She will start up with trials again this weekend and class next week. Agility Nationals is in a month and we arenow going.
Zola's agility training is going but not progressing because I am waiting for her to be fully grown to push the weaves and start real jumping. Plus I could do with some green grass to start teaching serpentines and other skills, so I am definitely looking forward to the spring.
Rene, Cedar and Zola
Zola's 2nd Beginner Novice trial went well, we scored high but there are definite skills we need to work on.
Zo also now officially weighs 45.8lbs, which is petite for her age and breed and the height growth probably has stopped. She measures in at 22'', or maybe a tiny less, so I am assuming at this point she will be jumping 20'' for AKC trials.
Cedar has had a long break from agility, with an occasional class here and there. She will start up with trials again this weekend and class next week. Agility Nationals is in a month and we arenow going.
Zola's agility training is going but not progressing because I am waiting for her to be fully grown to push the weaves and start real jumping. Plus I could do with some green grass to start teaching serpentines and other skills, so I am definitely looking forward to the spring.
Rene, Cedar and Zola
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Zo is doing well off leash
The last month as definitely matured Zola a lot. Sure she is still very much puppy in some situations but she is sure becoming more reliable in class.
I can almost totally walk her off leash in class without her thinking of going to say hi to the dog behind up, and her stay seems very solid even if she has a dog sitting next to her which keeps getting up .... I am so proud of her.
Agility wise, we practiced in the backyard over the weekend, not bad, had issues getting the hang of a serpentine if I straightened the poles out, so back to angles for us.
Cedar had good fun in last Thursday's class, we had some really tough courses and she did not get them perfect at all but she was very good and even remembered what a threadell was.
Rene, Cedar an Zo
I can almost totally walk her off leash in class without her thinking of going to say hi to the dog behind up, and her stay seems very solid even if she has a dog sitting next to her which keeps getting up .... I am so proud of her.
Agility wise, we practiced in the backyard over the weekend, not bad, had issues getting the hang of a serpentine if I straightened the poles out, so back to angles for us.
Cedar had good fun in last Thursday's class, we had some really tough courses and she did not get them perfect at all but she was very good and even remembered what a threadell was.
Rene, Cedar an Zo
Sunday, January 22, 2012
01/22/2012 - Cedar AKC Trial, Zola Training
01/22/2012
Cedar and I went to the Golden Retriever Club Agility AKC Agility Trial at Simons Arena in Cannon falls today. The weather was kinda dodgy getting there and back again because of the freezing drizzle, we survived though, but there was a little bit of white knuckly showing from me.
The results were mixed, Cedar was very blah in the stantard run, but did Q - which was good as I saw a ton of people NQ on that course despite it looking relatively easy except for the weave entry which would have been tough for really long strided dogs.
I had been lazy and did not get to the bank to get cash which I needed for food for that trial, and as a result I was very hungry by our JWW course, added to a lack of sleep from being bad and not getting to sleep on time for many days, I was very light-headed. Add these things all together, Cedar did a great job, me not so much, I totally forgot where I was going half way though the course, which was a shame as Cedar was doing great and was actually running fast. Bad bad me.
Cedar gave a few people a good laugh, she found a huge piece of firewood at the far side of the parking lot at Simons and then proceded to carry it all the way in, very awkard and very heavy, but she is always so proud of herself when she carries insanely large objects ..... I think that wood weighed about 10 lbs, no kidding.
Later ...... after white knuckling it home.
Had a nap despite Zola's disgust as she had been crated while I was out and she was ready to go. Felt a bit better after that and walked around the soccer fields, and Zola looked very keen to get to any dog she could see, bummer for her, she is not going off leash until she is out of heat ..... she is potent at the moment and is acting it as well.
Figured Zola had been neglected training wise of a few days so I set my jumps up in the snow and let her do a few drills with no bars. Nothing fancy, just 4 jumps in a curve so she could drive though them, which she did a good job doing. And then set up the 4 jumps in a + design and practiced some direction changes. Then took up on the teeter 3 times and called the outside exercises done. Then we went downstairs and practiced the board on the stairs and stopping at the bottom and runninng up it, hadn't done that in a long while.
Then I took out the 2 by 2 weaves and set them up in a straight line, I only let her go though them 4 times, and other than class, once a week 4 times is going to be her limit until she is a year. She has really picked up speed in them since class on Wednesday, it is as the action is moving from her contious to her subcontious (Lanny Basham).
More Zola training, this time obedience. Zola will now take the dumbell from me and hold it when I ask her to. I am very amazed at how easy this dumbell thing has been to teach. What really got the ball rolling is me teaching her to bring things back, and that was me using the chuckit and the tennis ball and food ..... once we got the concept of bringing thing back we moved onto the dumbell which was a task in its own, I ended up having to make a huge puppy game of it and use a very high pitched puppy/baby voice to talk to her and praise her, not embarassing as I was in my basement where nobody could hear me. But really as soon as I actually go her to pick the dumbell up (I was not worried about her spitting it out after retrieving at first). I was getting almost perfect fetchs with her in a few days, and I think it has been a week now, and she does the force fetch without me having to open up her mouth and shove things in, plus she retrieves and holds. I even tried a glove today, and although that was not perfect, she did sort of get the hang of it after a few tries.
That is our training and trialing for today.
Cedar and I went to the Golden Retriever Club Agility AKC Agility Trial at Simons Arena in Cannon falls today. The weather was kinda dodgy getting there and back again because of the freezing drizzle, we survived though, but there was a little bit of white knuckly showing from me.
The results were mixed, Cedar was very blah in the stantard run, but did Q - which was good as I saw a ton of people NQ on that course despite it looking relatively easy except for the weave entry which would have been tough for really long strided dogs.
I had been lazy and did not get to the bank to get cash which I needed for food for that trial, and as a result I was very hungry by our JWW course, added to a lack of sleep from being bad and not getting to sleep on time for many days, I was very light-headed. Add these things all together, Cedar did a great job, me not so much, I totally forgot where I was going half way though the course, which was a shame as Cedar was doing great and was actually running fast. Bad bad me.
Cedar gave a few people a good laugh, she found a huge piece of firewood at the far side of the parking lot at Simons and then proceded to carry it all the way in, very awkard and very heavy, but she is always so proud of herself when she carries insanely large objects ..... I think that wood weighed about 10 lbs, no kidding.
Later ...... after white knuckling it home.
Had a nap despite Zola's disgust as she had been crated while I was out and she was ready to go. Felt a bit better after that and walked around the soccer fields, and Zola looked very keen to get to any dog she could see, bummer for her, she is not going off leash until she is out of heat ..... she is potent at the moment and is acting it as well.
Figured Zola had been neglected training wise of a few days so I set my jumps up in the snow and let her do a few drills with no bars. Nothing fancy, just 4 jumps in a curve so she could drive though them, which she did a good job doing. And then set up the 4 jumps in a + design and practiced some direction changes. Then took up on the teeter 3 times and called the outside exercises done. Then we went downstairs and practiced the board on the stairs and stopping at the bottom and runninng up it, hadn't done that in a long while.
Then I took out the 2 by 2 weaves and set them up in a straight line, I only let her go though them 4 times, and other than class, once a week 4 times is going to be her limit until she is a year. She has really picked up speed in them since class on Wednesday, it is as the action is moving from her contious to her subcontious (Lanny Basham).
More Zola training, this time obedience. Zola will now take the dumbell from me and hold it when I ask her to. I am very amazed at how easy this dumbell thing has been to teach. What really got the ball rolling is me teaching her to bring things back, and that was me using the chuckit and the tennis ball and food ..... once we got the concept of bringing thing back we moved onto the dumbell which was a task in its own, I ended up having to make a huge puppy game of it and use a very high pitched puppy/baby voice to talk to her and praise her, not embarassing as I was in my basement where nobody could hear me. But really as soon as I actually go her to pick the dumbell up (I was not worried about her spitting it out after retrieving at first). I was getting almost perfect fetchs with her in a few days, and I think it has been a week now, and she does the force fetch without me having to open up her mouth and shove things in, plus she retrieves and holds. I even tried a glove today, and although that was not perfect, she did sort of get the hang of it after a few tries.
That is our training and trialing for today.
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