Thanks, Polona! We’re working on stays in the house. Lots of bad weather, so a good time to work on stationary skills.

The short sequences are working well for Ice. It’s good discipline for me – prevents me from repeating stuff and making it boring. We try the sequence once. If there’s a small problem on one obstacle I may try to correct it and then run again, but that’s it. For me that’s great progress 🙂 Tonight we ran the sequence only once then played around with some tunnels and weaves.

Boss was a good boy, but is generally less enthusiastic lately. Ice is happy just to work with me, but for Boss it needs to be extra-fun. Even the novelty of his special balls seems to be wearing off.

It makes me happy to see the dogs running even simple sequences. Lyric and Omi came out and ran them tonight too 😀 Lyric was supposed to run at AKC Nationals in Georgia next month but I finally had to pull her. We just can’t get there….or anywhere. It’s been such a discouraging year that I haven’t been able to find much motivation to train….and in the process I seem to have lost confidence in my ability to train. Both dogs are missing some basic skills and I feel guilty about that. I just need to improve my mindset and get on with it, I guess. I never realised how much I relied on competitions, training partners, and seminars for motivation and feedback.

Things are slowly looking up. Thank you for this class. I love the fact that you work with each team individually, wherever they’re at in their agility journey – no judgement, just helpful feedback. 🙂

Thanks, Polona!

Training skills/problems separately from running sequences seems to be working well for both Boss and Ice. Previously they would both disengage and wander off periodically. Now they tend to stay focused and run with enthusiasm. We’re still playing with the sequences from Lesson 3. I brought a see-saw home, so we can work on it away from the agility field.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Maureen Burke.

I did some tunnel work with Ice. I thought he progressed pretty well. We need to work on come to hand. At the start of the session he decided to play keep away with the ball, so I switched toys. He was fine after that. If I give Boss a clear hand cue to the tunnel he has no problem.

They both had fun in the weaves. Should we close the channel or just keep working on entries?

I tried the bang game, but neither of them really gets it….in the same way that they still don’t really grasp the concept of a stay. It’s not that we haven’t worked on stays, but clearly I’m not teaching them effectively. These little guys are like perpetual motion machines 🙂 Please help!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Maureen Burke.

I hope so too! I have to say, I’ve gotten quite discouraged about training. We never seem to finish anything, as work always seems to get in the way.

Today we tried a couple of sequences from Lesson 3. I love your short sequences! 😀 All 3 of us are very rusty, but I tried to keep it short and upbeat so the boys had fun. I should have started with “you start I follow” – I’ll remember that next time.

I’m trying to avoid using food. Once the food comes out, Ice and Boss tend to reject their toys…….but if food isn’t on offer they’re happy to play. Since they both tend to be very handler-focused, it seems to me that throwing the reward is best – although I still find them staring at me as if to say “are you going to throw now??” What do you think?

I just wanted to check in and let you know I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. 🙂 Unfortunately, after weeks of doing nothing the hospital is now trying to make up for lost time. We’re super-busy and I’ve been mostly working 7 days a week…….and arriving home late. Also, one of my colleagues has gone home to Sweden on vacation – supposedly for 3 weeks, but with Covid who knows when he’ll be back! All that to say that we’ve had to take a temporary break from training. Hopefully this week we’ll get going again. 🙂

I have been following your good news posts, though. I know you were trying to buy a house – I’m so glad the farm has worked out for you! It sounds like a little paradise 🙂 I’m even happier that you didn’t decide on a change of career. Your classes are the absolute best in every way! You’ve helped us so much with so many aspects of agility and dog training in general. Without Let’s Play, Hogan would never have run agility……and we would have missed out on so many adventures!

Congratulations on your awesome success with Baxus…..and congratulations on your new baby! Jimmy looks like so much fun! I’m sure looking forward to Life of a Puppy 😀

We’ll be back with Lesson 6 posts soon 🙂

Drop’n’play – Ice now seems to be dropping the toy when I grab with the second hand…..not before, unless I pull the toy in. I tried adding the “give” cue at that point. What do you think?

So today Lyric’s hormones finally caught up with us 🙁 We attempted the tunnel drill…….but in slow motion and without much focus. Since Lyric loves her weaves I tried incorporating the weaves. It helped a bit, but she was still slow. Was it my cues that caused her to take the tunnels?

Thank you!

Since I really can’t take the boys and girls out to train together at the moment, today was Lyric’s day. Considering the fact that she is usually in outer space when she’s in season, I thought she did a really good job. She wasn’t too into tugging and startline games so we didn’t push it. Even though we made it through the sequences, I can see that me cues are mostly late. It was good of Lyric to save my butt 🙂