Evi and Weef, 5 year old Border Collie from Greece

Welcome! 🙂

No problem, in the beginning especially I like to see everything to get the feel for the dog. Do you have a video of her typical problems from before the class?
This very controlled session with food wen’t really well I think. When you use static toy on turns place it more precisely. Imagine her perfect turn and place it right next to where she would land normally.

I wouldn’t switch directly to sequences, but rather doing same drills with some more drive – starting from the tunnel for example. Not a straight one if possible, that really works as an accelerator, so it will probably be too much. I would start with controlling when she can enter the tunnel – asking for random tricks and behaviors including sends to the tunnel in random order and trying to get her to listen regardless of your body-language. Than I would switch to doing random things when coming out of the tunnel – sometimes ask for “close” and reward from the hand, sometimes have two toys there and show her which one to run to, sometimes ask for different behaviors,….
And another important thing when you reward with the toy, make sure you give her a big party with it. Tug, run with her, talk to her with a happy and exciting voice – create a special experience. Driven dogs love action. If you only let her have the toy it is less exciting than rushing through tunnels on her own. If you create a party, an experience for her, she will be more likely to ask herself “how to make it happen again” and therefore listen better.

I see! 🙂 Ok so always start with food and thinking exercises like your last session and than slowly upgrade towards what I described in the previous reply. 🙂

Great job! 🙂 I can see you are totally and completely terrified of loosing control with her, which I can understand from what you showed me. 🙂 BUT I think that this aproach is really working, she was totally focused and responsive this whole session. I never saw a moment of her wanting to just let loose regardless of what you say. So I will give you something to repeat to yourself 10 times each night before you go to sleep. 🙂
– No matter what, YOU are in control of the training. If she gets wild, you can always stop and switch to thinking games to “bring her back”.
So hopefully that will help you shake off the fear. Especially now, that you only work on small drills with not too many obstacles and you can really control everything. It is important that you start to feel like you are in control of things, so you can start moving freely and also having fun during training and rewarding with joy! If you are paralized and afraid to move, she will sooner or later start to do stupid things again, becasue she will find you “useless”.
So my suggestion is – after the initial testing her thinking skills and asking for random behaviors and single obstacles, alternating rewards between giving her food from hand or sending her to a pre-placed static toy (and REMEMBER… be EXTRA happy and enthusiastic when you reward her), start asking for let’s say 3 obstacle drill, but before you do that, make sure you take time to know what exactly is it that you will be doing and how you plan to handle it. You can keep the same setup but add one more jump to side of the tunnel that was empty now. So basically you have this curved tunnel and one jump on each side. So when you are at the point in training to start running little “drills”, you can do different variations to continue to encourage her to listen. Plan in advanc which obstacle order you are going to take and how you are going to handle it. You can include full stops/nose touches before obstacles and sends to static toy in random directions. But always know exactly what you are doing. If she gets wild at any point, give her a period of just tricks and single obstacles with food again and than try again.

Can’t wait! 🙂

Nice! She has very good understanding of things. 🙂 Generally we want the dog to go for the reward we intended to use, so you can use it to the full benefit and not create confusion, but in her case it is not bad that she was actually so very focused on you. She needs that. Yes, stripping the T&T would probably make it more recongisable. 🙂 Next time you can easily insist and point to it if she is not interested in taking it. I think you could try one of the short sequences. Pick a random spot to start and do it as a single jump exercise first, than add one more jump before and one after and if she is still in control, run the whole thing. HUGE jackpot, break and a different short sequence with same approach. Don’t worry if things don’t go well at some point. You can always go back to doing the exercise and show me what happened so I can make a better plan for the next session. 🙂

Nice! No wild Weef on this training! The mistakes she made (at least from what I can see on the video) were pretty normal mistakes for a fast dogs that doesn’t have much experience controling the speed. It wasn’t “I don’t care, this is what I am doing” behavior.
I would make the “in’s” happen if I were you, because she understands them well enough. I don’t think your handling was clear enough there especially since you were already on the other side of the jump which makes it easier for the dog to just take it straight. Next time that happens you can stop and just do an “in” (or whatever else she is struggling with) on that jump as an exercise and than slowly add obstacles before that challenge. When you do that and she still does it well, get much more excited than when you were just doing the exercise. Show her that the harder things get, the more you apprechiate when she listens. 🙂

“ Ps: When you come to Greece for FMBB drop by the agility secretary if you have time, would love to thank you in person ?”
I will come and take a look for sure! Would be nice meeting you. 🙂