Breakthroughs.....

Training dogs is a funny old game,sometimes it goes great,sometimes not,but I believe the dogs can only do as well as you set them up to.
Sometimes I struggle to leave behind my 'foundation' in training,and in just being.Sometimes I want the dogs to do something 'just because' I said so,and you know what 99% of the time they do,because I have trained and conditioned things I want them to do 99% of the time,before I ask them to do it.
I realised I had let Floozie not chasing my other dogs slip a bit,I was getting frustrated and trying to call her off them in a frustrated tone of voice,and unsuprisingly she wasn't coming back to me as fast as I wanted,and still going in for the toy too.
Today I went back to basics with it.Threw the toy for one of the others and immediatly called her in the 'special' recall way,the word Foof (one of her nicknames) in a high voice,guess what?She span on a sixpence immediatly she heard it,EVERY time.Why do I give up on things when they're almost all the way done,and then let things slip again?

Shady came for some training at Becky's today too,and LOVED it.I forgot how intense he is about agility,same as Floozie,the difference is Floozie has been taught to have impulse control,Shady hasn't which makes him seem so much more intense than her,when she would be mental if she'd been allowed to develop that way.
2 things I wanted to achieve today were AMAZINGLY basic things with Shady,(considering this dog was trained and competed and did pretty well),but had never been taught.
Firstly I realised that I must have pretty much always rewarded back from me,instead of throwing the toy forward,or putting a dead toy out for him to drive forward to.
He was always doing his sequence,weaves or whatever and turning immediatly for his reward.
Even when someone was down the end of a sequence calling his name and waving,throwing or dropping the toy where he should have been clearly able to see it,in his head his job was to finish the sequence,then come to me for a reward,what a stupid thing to have taught him lol.
Secondly,I'm starting his contacts from scratch,like he's never seen one before.
Still a 2o2o,but no verbal command from me,same as Floozie and Mookie.The equipment itself is the cue.
You do a piece of contact equipment,you drive as fast as you can to a 2o2o position,ALWAYS.That is my criteria and I am determined to stick to it 100%,none of this letting them keep going if they are in the contact crap!
I have been guilty of that in the past,NO MORE.I am going to go into agility runs with the criteria of just getting the contacts correct,long term success is my goal now,no more letting the last contact criteria go because I'm doing well and want that clear run.
That clear run is not a success in the long run,if I had to trade my contacts for them.
Me not being able to maintain contact criteria is I believe what stopped Mookie and I moving up to grade 4 this past season.We had several 2nds,3rds etc,and had I not been panicking about contacts,and her bless her doing contacts slowly cos she didn't know what the f*** I wanted from her at shows,cost us the time which would have put us first.
Its funny Shady doing all the basic stuff,considering he's the oldest,and the had competed for nearly 3 years,then here comes the younger dogs and they are in some things more advanced than him.

So wwe went back to putting Shady at the top of a lowered dog walk plank,and let him run down to a target.
Shady is a funny boy,he thinks too much sometimes,and gets himself into a panic.I have found that if you literally 'push' him through that momentary panic,he goes 'oh yeah lol,don't have to be scared about that!',and that's it,he's over it.
The more choice he gets in a situation like that,the more it freaks him out.
For instance today I wanted him to reverse (walk backwards) onto the bottom of the a frame.First time he did by accident,got a big reward,and I called him off it.
Next time he did,he went 'oh no I must avoid backing onto that things as if my life depended on it!!' lol.
So he's being very creative at avoiding getting on it,so i had Pete and Becky stand either side of the a frame so he had no choice,but he just manouvered backwards around them lol,so I got him to stand in front of it with a treat right in front of his face and kinda 'pushed' him onto it with the treat,he was sitting on it,but we'll take it,as he wasn't avoiding it.
Next time I do it,he gets straight on it,lol.Then he does it over and over,very pleased with himself indeed! :)Gotta love that boy!
He also realised straight away about the toy rewards not coming from me,but from the end of a sequence.
Then the biggest breakthrough for Shady was that later on when we weren't doing anything,he got himself onto the lowered dog walk plank,which he has never done,we had a little party about that one!
Weird how basic the things I'm asking from Shady are,but he had literally been lured for everything he did until the last couple of months,so for him to go and try out getting on that without being asked shows how much he's changing :) woo hooo makes me so happy for him.

With Floozie we did some contacts which she hasn't done for about 3 weeks.No problems with what we did,though she did come off once when she just couldn't stop,you could see every ounce of her being desperatly trying to stay on that contact,she loves her contact position.
What I did not do which I should have was to move awayin other directions other than running straight ahead from the equipment when she was in it,as before Christmas she was coming off when I did it.
Did some very straight forward sequences with her and she was lovely,nice tight turns,and responsive :)
I asked Becky to run her so I could watch her,I couldn't believe how fast she looked,I never really noticed when I ran her myself.
Any of my dogs after Shady doesn't really seem that fast as he has an urgency about him when he runs,he seems to be going so fast cos he's so frantic to get wherever he's going.Where as Mookie just flows around a course,never looking likes she's going that fast or putting any effort,but she's a pretty fast little girl :)

With Mooks we did some box work,nothing too difficult,some contacts which were good,and some sequences.
The biggest break through of the day happened when I was working Mooks.
We were doing a little course where I had to leave her in a tunnel,run away,and pass an off course jump on my right and get her to catch up to my reinforcment zone on my left,(with her passing the off course jump on her right too)to then turn her right into the box.
First 3 times she came out of the tunnel and took the off course jump.
I keep meaning to work on reinforcement zones more with her,and what I learnt from this was that I don't really like doing much RZ work as an exercise on its own,I know it is important,but I just naturally don't really like doing it.
But I really enjoyed on working on it in this context,as part of a course.
I rewarded her 2 or 3 times for coming out of the tunnel into my RZ,and then she had it,so I am definitly going to make some of the foundation stuff which you can do with no equipment,part of training sequences.
That probably sounds weird,because of course you practice them as part of a course,but instead of feeling 'oh God I should really practice RZ'etc,and not doing it cos I don't really like to,I can put them in a course,only need 2 obstacles anyway,and practice them.
Its funny how we as people feel rewarded by different things,I felt really happy when I figured this out,it ridiculous!lol.
I get no positive renforcment from just doing those exercises on the 'flat',and therefore neglect doing them at all,well problem solved...Breakthrough!!!