Aren't they beautiful! Merger was less than thrilled yesterday when we went for a walk and I made him disengage from his dog herding duties to pose for a picture!! He was a good sport though and let me capture him against the beautiful back drop of the foothills of the Rockies where I live :-) Danger seems to live for posing for photographs!!

It was a gorgeous day and after a very long drive home from the equally beautiful Vancouver Island, BC it felt so good to stretch my legs and just hang out with the dogs.

It has been a crazy couple of months and it is simply going to get crazier, just the way I like it!!

After returning from Phoenix the middle of Jan. I had a bit of a break and then it was off to the East coast where I had the pleasure of teaching for 3 different groups. Danger got to come with me as an only dog on that trip so he was a very happy camper! He handled all of the travels incredibly well and has made an incredible number of new friends!

I was home from the East for 2 days and it was time to hit the road to the Pacific Northwest! I drove this time as I really wanted to have dogs with me. It is quite a drive but the weather was perfect both coming and going and it was wonderful to have my puppies with me. I can't say we got a whole lot of training in as my breaks, lunch hours etc... were pretty much filled with exercising dogs, pottying dogs, playing with dogs, you get the picture. I tried to squeeze in a few minutes of quality training for each dog everyday if I could but all in all it was just awesome having them with me.

The groups in Seattle were so fabulous! They took in every bit of information and were always willing to try new things. I have had the pleasure of working with many of the people that I worked with several times over the years and it is always like old home week when I get to see the fabulous friends that I have made over the years.

We spent a lot of time working on collection and decelleration cues, front cross timing and execution and even got to play a bit with rear crosses on the flat. Timing is and continues to be the issue Du Jour, this is primarily because timing cannot be learned, the timing of cues changes with every run.

In order to be able to properly time cues there are a few things that must happen, you must be able to monitor your dogs position throughout the run as they are truly what defines proper timing. You must also be able to trust the dog to take responsibility for obstacle performance and each behavior that you cue.

The only way to do this is to train the dog properly from the beginning, our inability to trust the dog is actually a reflection of how well we trust what we have trained, do you trust what you have trained and have you trained the right things?

Does your dog have independent obstacle negotiation skills? Is your dog capable of paying attention to you through any number of distractions, any level of distractions, any type of distraction?

Have you taught your dog what the various hand signals mean? Do they understand that it is their job to seek out and maintain a path parallel to you unless instructed to do otherwise?

Have you taught your dog how to use itself properly from a physical standpoint? Think of what it takes for your dog to accommodate any angle and any spacing between jumps and still be able to clear the bar, turn, etc... There is so much to teach it is a really great idea to take inventory and define what skill sets your dog possesses and where there may be holes or gaps.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to train your dog to 200% to get acceptable performance in competition environments!

OK, back to my trip :-) After a great lunch at a Mongolian BBQ on Thursday, 5.5 days of teaching later it was my time to just relax! How does a dog trainer relax? She goes to another dog training facility to audit another trainers classes! Thank you Daisy for letting me be a fly on the wall during your classes and for the pizza and beer afterward!

I headed out after dinner to get at least a part way to the Canadian border so the trip was not so very long. I was booked on the 9:00 a.m. ferry over to Vancouver Island so I got up really early finished my trip to the border had a super fast border crossing and got to the ferry about 1.5 hours early!

I have never taken this ferry or been to VI, it was gorgeous!!! The weather was wonderful, I swear on Sunday afternoon it was in the 60's!!!

I had the extreme pleasure of working with a "new" group that had a ton of familiar faces as well as some new ones. What a pleasure it was to work with each and every one of them! Again, we had a lot of philosophical discussion and some major course challenges. The group was all about being pushed, in actuality that was the common thread between the Seattle and the BC groups, what a blast to work with so many people who are so eager and so talented! They made my job tough trying to come up with new scenarios to test their abilities.

In Canada we spent a fair bit of time on back side sends over jumps and pull throughs a good time was had by all I believe! I know that I personally cannot wait to go back to both places!

Today I finally had enough energy to get out and train my own dogs, after teaching a couple of lessons of course!

Danger is learning to run his plank and drive to a target, he is also becoming quite the master of the sit and down! I have made some serious progress in his parallel path work, (stationary heel/side), and, his outside turns.

I think what I am most happy about is that he is a toy/play freak, and, a food freak, but... he will tug and play immediately after a food reward and even continue to play if I am holding food in my hand!

Danger got to play on the wobble board today and as with all other things had absolutely no idea what the big deal was and acted as if he walks every day of his life on a wobbly surface! He was immediately willing and able to offer both sits and downs on the board without stress!

He is a very smart boy indeed!

Quickly switching gears, Able is doing fantastic and gets his stitches out tomorrow!!! He is still not using the leg much but according to the tech I talked with on the phone today he is on par with where he should be 2 weeks into recovery.

Back to todays training, Daisy gave me a very valuable piece of advice for Mergers running dog walk that I was finally able to try out today for the first time, she suggested a stride regulator on the third plank to get him to extend a bit more, it was brilliant! He stretched over the regulator, jumped right into the contact and, strode right through! I only tried it 3 times as he was already bit tired from some other things we were doing but I am very optimistic indeed. Merger is also rocking the weave poles!!! He is getting to be very fast and incredibly accurate, we have a bit of entry work to do but overall I am very happy with where he is at. Jumping is looking great, he is handling odd spacing and angles as if he knows where his caboose is! He gets to show off his abilities weekend after this in an AKC trial in Kansas, I will keep you posted...

How are SoBe's running dogs walks coming along you ask?? Well, at the risk of sounding like the boy who cried wolf I am back to proofing her 2on/2off behavior. This is new as off my trip to Seattle. I did a bit of soul searching and decided that I was driving myself crazy trying to retrain her dog walk behavior when she already has an amazing dog walk behavior, so... no more Mrs. nice guy and she will be held accountable, her performance is fantastic in training and I would love to be able to report on how it goes in the trial but alas, she has decided to come into season, gotta love those intact girls! I suppose it is time to decide if I want to spay her, I know that I always want to spay her when her seasons interfere with trials!

Wally seems to be recovering very well from his Iliopsoas strain and will get to play at the trial next week. Maze is doing fabulous and we are just starting to think about wrapping our minds around AKC Nationals that are coming up very soon!

So, on Friday I head out to Kansas to teach for a week, this is another of my "yearly" teaching engagements and we have grown very close, one could say we are even drinking buddies :-)

So, that's what's happening now in my life hope all is well in yours!

On the road again...

HI All!

Well, I am not exactly on the road yet... I returned home yesterday from a great trip to the east coast that involved teaching for 3 different groups in 3 different parts of the Northeast :-) Danger got to go with me and I learned how to stuff a rather tall and long puppy in a Sherpa bag with great success!

I leave again on Thursday before dawn for an extended trip to the Pacific Northwest to teach, I am really looking forward to this trip too as I am driving and get to take dogs with me so we can actually train!!

Danger is definitely accumulating miles and is becoming the well traveled, super socialized young man.

I have not had time to get any training done as I have been out east and my dogs wee in Colorado so I am ready!!!! Danger got to play puppy games on his road trip but that was it.

I did take SoBe to the building today and worked on her dog walk, she was brilliant after 11 days off! I am definitely feeling optimistic about these running dog walks!

There was another reason that I did not get any training in today, I had to take Able to see Dr. Fitch who is our awesome Orthopedic surgeon here in Fort Collins as it appears that what started as a partial tear morphed into a ruptured cruciate.

Tomorrow my big beautiful red boy will undergo TPLO surgery that will not make him younger, but, it will make him pain free! The Dr. says he may even run agility again :-) If he ever does agility again that will be gravy and I am not even thinking about that, I just want him to be the happy, carefree, playful, pain free man again!

Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers, I will keep you posted!

The power of foundation

More new videos are up!!! It was a very interesting training session today, with SoBe in particular :-) As I was changing my location on the dog walk, SoBe's 2on/2off foundation kicked in and if I was stationary at the middle or bottom of the last ramp she wanted to stop in a 2on/2off position. I also experimented with running past the dog walk and this too caused the stop. The dog's amazing ability to recognize training and the power of good foundation is a most powerful thing! What I really find ironic is that although I have not asked for a stop in several weeks and we have been diligently training the run for that amount of time she still defaults to that behavior although would never even consider offering it in a trial environment!!!

SO, I had to think about what to do to change this behavior. The good news is that the very first thing I tried seemed to work! I released her with her verbal release cue to the go and ran with her. I have put this video up as well.

I was impressed with the fact that although when I stand at the base of the dog walk in a stationary position she has a tendency to launch because of the forward pressure I am putting on her, but, when I ran with her she was close to 100% running through the yellow!

I have said it before and I say it again, this is a truly fun, amazing, thought provoking process that will ultimately be a great learning experience for both dog and handler!

Having tons of fun!

First, the last entry should have had a video with it, but alas it would not upload to the blog... in any event I have created a YouTube account and all videos are there for your pleasure and perusal :-) Search under Merger Plank work and there should be a few of both Merger and SoBe.

I have been diligent in my work with the dogs until today, had so much other part of life stuff to do that the dogs did not get worked... It appears I did get Hawk, my giant paint horse, a trial gig, which will hopefully become permanent as a therapy horse at a therapeutic riding program. Cross your fingers, he will be great at this work!

I have been having so much fun with this silly plank work!! I have been toying with this whole running contact thing for so long now it is really nice to have finally made a decision and have a plan.

The dogs are really enjoying it and I am already seeing tremendous improvement and some true understanding of what I want.

It has become a great case study in dog differences already as well. It has never been a secret that SoBe is primarily a "doer" and Merger a "thinker", but, it has been truly interesting to watch those facts come to life when training each of them the same thing on the contacts.

Merger clearly understands that it is about the plank, to the degree that I have already been able to place the toy at a 90 degree angle to the dogs walk plank and he will run straight down the plank then turn to get the toy. There is video of this on the Merger elevated plank work video :-) Whereas SoBe is certain the game at this point is about how do I get the toy, if I do not make sure that the toy is directly straight off the end of the plank she will follow the line of the toy to a "T" and come off high and crooked to whatever direction the toy is placed.

They are both figuring out the job just in their own way. I do not expect this to be a quick process, months and months from what I hear, however, the end will definitely justify the means in this case if what i am seeing now holds up.

Danger puppy is doing really well and has learned his name, the eye contact game, hand touches, sit and down. This feels like a lot since I am primarily focusing on play at this point. It is definitely my plan to take my time with Danger and really instill the play/prey drive as well as focus and attention before we worry about any structured training.

Danger at this point will switch from food to toys and back again with no problem, as a matter of fact I can play with him with a toy and have food in my hand. He is a tugging fool and it is my goal to get him to maintain focus on his toy regardless of what distractions are occurring.

I had Danger and Merger together in the building the other night and Danger was tugging a toy I was holding in my left hand while I tugged and threw toys for Merger out of my right without letting go or getting distracted by what Merger was doing! Good boy!!!

We are currently working on retrieving, Danger happily chases the toy but is still not completely convinced he should bring it to me, when he does bring the toy I praise enthusiastically play a bit of tug and release the toy, Danger gets to win pretty much every game right now so that he wants to continue to "share" his toys with me.

We are playing the trade game and racing to toys as well, this game he does not always win I am encouraging competition and drive to the toy. I have also started a bit of opposition reflex training holding loosely onto Dangers collar while teasing him forward with the toy. When he offers even the slightest pull forward I release my hold and tell him to get it! He loves these games!

I am fortunate to be home one more day then if the weather cooperates Merger, Danger and myself are off to Connecticut, Mass., and, New York. Keep your fingers crossed that Danger continues to fit in the Sherpa for 12 more days and that the weather cooperates and allows Merger to fly!

Then I have driving trips for a while so that I can take dogs and continue to work those planks!

Merger's Plank Work





Merger Low Aframe



SoBe's Plank Work

Go Merger GO!

See, even a giant dog can run a plank! This was just the second time I worked Merger on the plank and I am thrilled with how he did!! I was able to change my location, his location, and, the toy a bit as well. And, he still consistently ran through the contact. the last 2 attempts were actually at a run off of a jump to the plank, that is so many more steps than I thought I would get in even several weeks time.

I am going to start really moving the toy and moving more myself over the next couple of days, if he stays this consistent it will be time to put the plank on a low table sooner rather than later.

Merger seems to really understand what I am rewarding for and although has ample opportunity to bail, at this point he seems very happen to drive through.

I am also seeing a great deal more confidence on the single plank than I was even on the 1' tall dog walk. It is still a bit of an issue for Merger to single track across a 12" plank, he is a big boy!

I am so pleased with his performance tonight! I started the plank work yesterday and he jumped from the red to the floor to the toy a couple of times, when he did this I simply took the toy and replaced it out approx. 20 feet from the bottom of the plank and asked him to do it again. When he offered the behavior of running through we played tug and had a party, that is the only difference I am offering right now while he is trying to figure it out.

I am also marking the behavior when he hits in the yellow with a yes!

His jumping and weave poles looked awesome tonight as well. Tomorrow I am going to go back to the broad jump board at the base of the A-frame and remind him his stride pattern....

Danger and SoBe got to work today as well :-) SoBe is playing the same game as Merger but as it turns out a stride regulator and the board slightly elevate gives her a much more consistent stride pattern down through the contact.

Danger is learning that toys, food and his name are the coolest things on the planet and so far when he hears his name he comes running and jumps up and puts his front feet on me for a reward. So far he knows his name, hand touches, sit and down on verbal cues. He is a tugging maniac and will switch readily between food and toys.

Our training at present is all about attention, and play! He loves to play and has fabulous attention so I guess we are on the right track.

Until next time!

Taking a step back and moving forward...

What a motley crew! Well, these are them, the crazy crew that I call my agility dogs. So many wonderful dogs came before them and I am sure there will still be a few to come after :-) At present these are the dogs that keep me the busiest and definitely keep me on my toes! Can you name them all? You probably can except for that incredibly cute little black puppy face, his name is Danger and he is the newest addition to the pack.

Danger comes to me from my very good friend Stephanie Spyr who bred her Taser (Wallys aunt) to Olga Chaiko's Yankee, to produce a repeat of a breeding she did last year. I absolutely love the temperment that Yankee produces and of course am very partial to Tasers lines, so, here I am starting again...

Danger is a wonderful pup who exudes energy, is toy driven out of his mind, loves to learn and has incredible focus for a 9 week old pup.

I will definitely be chronicling his progression in hopes that a foundation tutorial is born.

I picked danger up during a 2 week working vacation that took me first to sunny warm Phoenix for what I believe is the 14th year of teaching there in Jan. It was the most amazing weather I have ever experienced in all of my Januarys in Phoenix!

The seminars were fabulous and as always it is a bit like old home week, I have the chance to work with people I have known for years and who are so incredibly eager to learn! Every year there is so much improvement and that opens the door for new skills. Agility being the evolutionary sport that it is there are always new skills!

Halfway through the trip on my day off I took a little road trip to Riverside CA to pick up Danger, the whole litter was still there and it was great to see the interaction between littermates. Stephanie picked everyone's pups for them and I was very grateful for that, I am not at all sure how I would have picked myself!!! Of course as soon as I knew who was mine I knew he was the very best pup and of course perfect for me, so far I have been right on both counts I am sure :-)

Back to Phoenix I went to teach for 5 more days and Danger had a blast meeting new people and generally just being adored!

Once I finished working it was back to CA! I had the awesome opportunity to spend a couple of days training with Stephanie, we set up tons of challenging drills for the older dogs getting ready for worlds, world team tryouts, Nationals, etc... Oh yea, SoBe got to play on them too even though what she is getting ready for right now is the most comfortable way to get carried off the course for sassing her mother!!! Have I mentioned lately how much I love her? :-)

Anyway, it was a great time, very fun to get to work my own dogs and to be lucky enough to have the eyes and advice of Steph! We also played some puppy games and generally had an amazing time!

The highlight of the trip to CA was getting to pick Stephanies brain about teaching a running dog walk. We were able to get into some really great training discussions and put theories to the test with SoBe who is going to be taking some time off of competing in any classes that require a dog walk while I completely reconstruct her dog walk performance.

The reason for going back to square one is because she needs to "learn" how to perform a running dog walk and I have to "teach" the criteria. Just early releasing her from her 2on/2off will not be enough to keep the responsibility of proper performance on SoBe. I truly want her to "know" the job and be able to perform it independently. This reconstruction is of course my reference to taking a step back.

Merger will be learning the same performance at the same time, I am very excited to see how it translates on 2 such incredibly different dogs, both mentally different and physically different!

These 2 get to teach me the patience and step by step process that Danger will be the recipient

of as he grows up.

Maze and Wally are just plain and simply awesome! We left Stephanies and headed to San Diego where we competed in a USDAA trial over the weekend.

Maze won the GP at 26" and Wally took 2nd to Rage :-) SoBe almost got around clean but her serious aversion to collecting for the weave poles reared it's ugly head, on more than one occasion I am afraid!! While she is learning the dog walk she is also going to learn the consequences to ignoring collection and sassing me on course, game over! I will convince the little princess that I am driving the bus one of these days and then watch out World she is gonna kick butt!

Merger had some much needed time off to grow some more :-) I was hoping it was a mental growth but I swear he grew another inch while I was away! He did have the bestest time training last night though, a little break can do wonders!!!

I am very excited about what taking a step back is going to mean to the whole process of moving forward!

Fun at the Fun Match!

HI All!

I hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas!! I had a fabulous Christmas, both of my boys are home together for the first time in I don't know how many years that is fantastic!! The weather has not been great but who cares when you are surrounded by family and friends! I also had a fantastic Birthday :-) I was the lucky recipient of too many wonderful Christmas and Birthday gifts. I am definitely going to be a very well dressed agility teacher/competitor in the New Year!

The dogs probably wished for a slightly better Christmas, we had about 72 hours of 60-70 mph winds and so the pups had to spend a significant amount of time inside, plus there was that whole shopping thing that took precedence over all else :-)

Now that the hubbub is over we can breathe a bit and maybe actually get a bit of training done. On Sunday I broke tradition and actually headed out to another fun match with SoBe and Merger. SoBe had the majority of the runs but Merger actually got to play in one run as well. It is very comical the contrasts between Merger and SoBe.

SoBe needed 3 of the 4 runs because we had to have multiple discussions about what the actual dog walk criteria is, she needed a couple of start line reminders and then there is that whole collection thing necessary to transition from the first to the second weave pole :-) Ultimately she got all of that figured out and per the norm kept all of her bars up, had perfect running A-frames and teeters, as well as doing everything at the speed of light.

Truthfully we accomplished everything I was hoping to by going to the match, put her in trial mode and be able to "fix" things.

She also had the opportunity to hear some new noises that a microphone makes and get used to those as well.

Merger had perfect stays, awesome weave poles, and in general was a perfect boy, hence the contrast comment :-) His A-frame seems to really be coming together and his teeter was also very nice. I do not think he dropped any bars but is still in need of a bit of confidence in order to really offer the speed on course that I know he is capable of.

It is always very interesting to me to train polar opposites in dogs at the same time, it definitely keeps me on my toes as a trainer.

We had a very good time at the match and I am very glad I decided to go :-) We have a trial this weekend and I am really excited about it!

So, how did everyone like the course?? I have another that is even harder with some really cool challenges that I will post in the upcoming week.

Until then, have a very good week and a Happy New Year!