It wasn't windy today, so I got to practise on the dog walk with Sizzle after we came back from Pachesham this afternoon. I had a good think about what to do with him and his dog walk last night; basically I still want to stick to our running contact as we have been doing it since the first day I started our agility training. My back up is to go back to 2o/2o if our running contact gone horribly wrong, I hope not!
Sizzle is very different to Sing, eventhough Sing does running contact but he has much shorter stride and he is much slower, so I can find my way to catch him up when needed. Sizzle is so much faster and he also stretch himself longer (if that is the right way to express it?), so I have higher risk with him not hitting the contact area. I know we have not been doing a lot of dog walk, and running contact needs a lot of reputations, you are talking about doing it again and again and again and again ...
Unfortunately the small "hit hit" board didn't work on Sizzle. He hits it perfectly when the board is on the ground but he try to avoid the board when he did the full dog walk. He will hit the board when he is on the down plank and I have been doing that for 5 weeks. When I started put him on the full dog walk, he came down so fast and saw the board and decided he leap over it!
I've ordered a custom made size "hit it" board, again the mechanism in the board is not light enough to take Sizzle's weight, so when he is on top of the board, it didn't beep!
I have started a new idea before Sizzle was ill. I put his ball at the bottom of the DW, so when he came down, he needs to kinda stop to get his ball. I am hoping to shape a pattern that he will change his stride. We did a few reputations and he was doing well. I gradually moved the ball further away from the DW then he started to get so excited and jump off before hitting the contact area.
Then, he fell ill, so we didn't get any practise for four weeks. Today is the first time we came back to this. I put the ball out (at the bottom of the DW) to start with, after three/four runs, I fade the ball out (I was holding and hiding the ball at my back), I cue him "get it", when I saw him hitting the contact area, I throw the ball for him. We did about three/four runs and he didn't miss the contact area.
Later in the evening, when Colin got home, I thought I will get him to video us so I can see what I was doing. I started with putting the ball out for him then holding the ball and throw it for him when he hits the contact area. I have noticed that when the ball is not there, he was looking back at me for the ball. I need to think of a way to get rid of his behaviour as I want him to drive straight down instead of looking at me. Any ideas welcome!!
here is our training video:
4 comments:
It looks good. Im not sure about the looking at you part. Because to avoid that you would have to throw the ball when he is coming down the ramp. But if he misses , he still got the reward. Hmmm, I dont know what to tell you. Maybe start with you in front of the contact and call him over. That way he is driving forward toward you and then throw the ball if he hits the contact. It seems most people here are using that "manner minder" when doing running contacts. But thats food and you said Sizzle isnt food motivated. Sorry, I dont have any good advice. Diana
He's doing great. :D
Sizzle is so advanced! Weaving is ace! I agree with Diana you want to try and stop him looking back at you! How about the command "stop" to see if he responds to that when he hits the contact! get him to wait, throw the ball and then the "go" command! All-in-all I think Sizzle is doing brilliantly. With Ellie I will be doing running contact but just now at training we are getting her to sit and then release! Although the other night @ training she was more interested in treats that had been dropped! So in a way. it's good Sizle isn't food motivated! Althoughn Ellie likes her ball too! :)
I'm using Silvia Trkman's method to teach Wall-e his running contacts...we've been training it for 5 months now and he's finally starting to really get it. He used a have a problem with looking at me too when we first started -- I fixed that by calling him over the plank instead of running beside him (like Diana said). Maybe you can find some more tips at Silvia's site, it's an awesome site.
http://silvia.trkman.net/
Post a Comment