Kristina & Myle, Miniature Schnauzer, 4 years, Lithuania

Congrats! Second run looked very cool! Much better speed than first one. I think it was partly because of the start, you really pumped her up before the second one, and in first one you started without connection. I would always leave her as far away from the first jump as possible, to make sure she already feels like she has some catching up to do and to develop some speed already before she comes to the first obstacle. You might need to practise that sometimes, to make sure she can manage that first bar without dropping it, but it will help her speed for sure.

I wouldn’t skip lesson 3. I suggest you just do one easy lesson 1-2 training first when you get home and in the following ones, you can do sequences from 3-4 combined with some games from 1-2 and also start working on “problematic” obstacles – or the ones that could be faster/more reliable.

I wouldn’t compete every weekend, but a competition now and than is ok – choose the one with nice judges (fluent courses) and good surface.

Really happy with her overall attitude and speed! 🙂 And yours too! It sounded like you were both having lots of fun, made me feel good just listening to your laugh. 🙂 That is the spirit! And I think she made one step forward, she seems faster than when we started!

See-saw not bad. Don’t worry if she jumps over sometimes. It is new for her and jumping from the side, she has to be very precise to stop exactly on the plank. Sometimes you don’t have to ask for full stop, when she jumps on and pushes the plank off strong, you can release her immediately into a throw. And I would do less full see-saw repetitions at the end. In fact I would do none at all, just focus on the banging game for a while. She won’t forget how the whole obstacle is done, but if she enjoys that falling/banging part more, she will not feel the need to stop early.

DW – overall nice training. How did you train running DW? Which method? She has very deep hits at first, but she was decelerating a lot. Towards the end, she is going faster but her hits are higher. Still good, but if I understand how exactly she was trained, I might be able to think of something to help her keep good speed and depth…

Fun game at the end! I think she was really putting lots of effort into running. I think she can for sure handle more challenges in little sequences!

” all the time i have to create mini circus and spread various sounds to give her joy and encourage to work better, run faster.”
Yes, but what I liked so much is that you sounded like you are really having fun, not just trying to encourage her because you know you have to. That is the part I liked so much. 🙂

“Just wanted to show you Myle’s attitude to a see-saw in general, i think it is one of her favourite obstacles in the course.”
Yes, she is quite happy with it, but still stops a bit too soon, so this jumping game can help her be even more pushy and run all the way to the very end.

DW – Hja. The general concept is not wrong, but the key is always to find balance between thinking/understanding and doing it full speed. Rewarding hits in very low speed can help the understanding, but some dogs won’t naturally speed up or they will speed up, but not know how to hit the contact with that speed. How long would you say you are stuck at the same point with no improvements? If it is not for too long, it might still work, if you stick to your criteria and mix between starting from various spots on DW and doing full speed repetitions. But if you have been doing that for very long time and there is no general improvement, perhaps you need to consider some kind of modification – perhaps introducing the target, but first teaching her to hit it with full speed on the ground…

Yes you are right, she is always faster the second time. 🙂 Perhaps it is because her confidence rises when she thinks she knows the course, or simply because she knows that the more she does, the closer she is to her reward. 🙂 Either way, I think all the “chaining” drills will be good for her. But I would also practise explosive starts – just one to three obstacles at once. Sometimes starting with her, creating as much excitement as possible. Sometimes with a lead out – but as far away from the first jump as possible (I am talking really a lot – 15,20m if you have enough space). So she has to develop lots of speed already before she reaches the first obstacle. Make those starts different, but always just 2,3 obstacles.

So on some trainings practise longer sequences using different kind of chaining. And on some trainings practise starts and for example dog walk/see-saw/slalom,… work on individual obstacles.

DW – perhaps you could try and teach her the target the way I explain in my lesson. It is something you can do at home/in front of your house/at your walk, and you can’t loose anything by training it. If we see she is really good at it and she likes it, we can combine it with her DW training and see if that is a missing puzzle to her understanding. 😉

Yes, target is a simple exercise and dogs usually love it. 🙂 However there are some things I would change. First of all, I like to do this exercise with pure shaping, just sitting quietly and letting the dog offer the behaviour on its own, without pointing to the target or doing anything else to stimulate it. When the dog is on the target, it is time to get happy and loud. 🙂 But I wouldn’t call her name. Because it makes it almost more about recall than about the target. So instead of calling her name I would just click or give an “ok”, “yes”, something like that and present the treat so the dog will come back naturally. IT is all in function of independence. I don’t want my dog to focus on me here, it has to be all about the target.

“1. Can I play with target each evening and feed her dinner this way? I think it will take approx. 10-15 mins; It wont be to often and too much?”
Yes, you can. Shaping at home is usually never boring, but you can shorten it by giving bigger amount of treats for each “click” or you can just do a couple of minutes and than feed the rest from her bowl, or change to some other trick you want to teach.

“2. Now I use two commands – OK for the start and her name – Myle – to turn and come back. Should I enter DW command for the start while playing with target at home? Our normal DV command is “forward forward”. Do I have to use it now, or just when we start to run an real DW?”
So partly I already answered this question. At this point I actually wouldn’t use any cues. I would let her offer it and when she consistently offers it on her own, you can add a gentle cue such as “tap tap” and use it just before she is going to offer it anyway. It is just to give this target a certain name, so later on during the process you can help her focus on the target if she gets lost. In a final version of the exercise I don’t give any cues, just the general DW cue and the dog should know it means a complete DW, including the behaviour on the contact. 🙂

“3. We have food machine. Myle is crazy for this machine. Maybe i can use machine for rewarding at this stage instead of giving food from hand?”
It will be useful in some stages of training, but I don’t want to teach the dog that target and machine always come in a package, because than later on it is sometimes difficult to get them to do the right thing even when they don’t see the machine. So save it for later, we will use it when you start adding different handler positions and really running through the target.

I would do another session or two at home. Gradually changing your position and adding your movement. Just walking slowly up and down and rewarding with a food throw in each direction. When we are happy with how she does, we will move this game outside and add more speed.

Seems like you girls had fun again. 🙂 The small things I would change – I loved everything about the starts, but when practising starts, reward sooner, no later than after 3rd obstacle. If you keep going, she doesn’t expect anything exciting to happen at the very beginning, so it just contributes to her “diesel” mode – slow start, getting faster and faster throughout the sequence. I would practise both, “flying” starts and sit&wait, but with “anticipation building” – just like you did it.
Not quite sure what was going on with that “under the bar” thing. Sometimes when you make distances so big, that distracts them. But she wen’t under the jump in the middle of the sequence as well. So perhaps it was the lightening or just an overall sense of hurry. I think if it happens a lot in one sequence/session, you can gently correct it. Just turn around, run back, call her playfully and give a strong “jump jump” cue again to help her. And of course a lot of happy stuff when she does jump.

See-saw – looking good, but for this height she doesn’t need a platform yet. That is what she was trying to tell you. 😉 So just go on without it, until she really struggles to jump on directly. But I think she will need a larger platform at that point, it is easier for them to jump out of full speed if they don’t have to “narrow it down” to a very small space.