Wednesday, December 03, 2014

Continue to learn

Today is another Dog Agility Blog Event Day - December 3, 2014; please visit all the blogs at: (http://dogagilityblogevents.wordpress.com/continuing-education/).  Also please leave comments, we all enjoy hearing what you have to say.

Continuing education is a process, is it better to try new things or is is better to stay with what you know?  With all the changes in agility, obedience and rally I feel it is necessary to continue to learn.  What you learn may not work with your team but it may give some different ideas or bits of what you learn may help to make you a better team.  If you don't continue to learn you can become stagnant, not able to handle the new course layouts and possibly continue to make the same mistakes you are making as you trial.

How do you continue to learn?  Take seminars, listen to your instructors, talk to people at trials, watch and listen to others and be open to new ideas.  Some things you may want to change others maybe not.  Don't try something one time and say it doesn't work for you; you and your team mate need a chance to learn it together to truly test it.  Don't continue to jump from one new idea to another it will end up being too confusing to both you and your dog.

As I progress in my agility career what I find most important to learn about are my dogs; why they do the things they do, what motivates them and how do I best communicate to them. All three of my Boxers are so different but also alike in many ways.  I made so many mistakes with my first agility dog and do not want to repeat those.  The best way to do that is to continue to learn, understand and be the best team mate on the other side of the leash.

Thanks for visiting and please remember to visit the other blogs, I am!!!! 

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Nov. - Dec, 2014

December 27-29, 2015 (Thors 3rd AKC trail)
Had a great time at the Doberman Pincher Club of Milwaukee in Oshkosh for their 3-day trial.  Thor was silly zoomer during our T2B runs but I was using them to help settle him down, he is wild when he first gets out there.  He qualified in Std with 85 points (1 W & 2 R) but still under time for his first leg in AKC, I am so proud of him.  We had some great and not so great moments the rest of the weekend but I am so happy with how he is coming along.

December 17, 2015
This weekend Thor will be doing agility at the Tree Town Boxer Club trial, I will be working since I am a member but hope to have time to work with him before we run.  I entered him in T2B so he isn't sitting and waiting until the novice classes.  Keegs and Kiah are staying home with my great-nephew who will be house sitting for me since they are not entered.  They will have way more fun with him instead of sitting in crates all day at the trial.  Thor may be a bit lonely but he will be fine.

Tonight we go to class, our last training session before the trial.  I hope each week I get more focus than the previous week.  Eventually we will get it and become a team, just can't push him too fast and make it stressful.  We need to have fun!

December 3, 2015
Thor is in the advanced dog class, Diane Sanders & Beth Diehl are the instructors. Diane is allowing him to come to class.  I don't really have Thor's focus yet so they will be helping me with that.  We are doing partial courses so as not to be too hard and discouraging for him.  So happy, they are the best

December 1, 2014
November is gone and now it is already December.  I am so not ready for winter, the cold, snow and ice make it difficult to get to the places that are not local.  Good thing trials in this area are inside year round.

Thor had his first CPE and AKC trials during November.  CPE started out wonderfully, he got a first place in Full House but something freaked him out during our Standard run and we didn't do well at all.  In Jumpers he was still really uncomfortable so not so well in that class either.  We will be doing an AKC trial at the same place later this month and I hope he doesn't remember that he was afraid there.

The AKC trial was at the club where we train and he is very comfortable there so I got a lot of zooms, not Kiah type of zooms but lose focus and run off type of zoom.  We will be training hard on focus this month before his next trial.

I would like to do an obedience trial late January so we have to work harder on obedience too.

More later.......