Teaching In Poland

　

Last week I was over in Poland (Mikoszewo) taking a 3 day camp seminars for Klub Agility FORT.

So I got up Monday morning bright and early and left for the airport. My flight was due to board at 7.55am.. 7.55 am came and we were told that we couldn’t board the plane as they were experiencing technical problems and had to wait for the engineer to get to the plane, look at it and sort it. The engineer was in Luton and I was flying from Doncaster. Hummm anyway we managed to get boarded some 4 hours later and lifted off and were finally on the way to Gdansk.

I arrived at Gdansk and was greeted by Ania Kulawiak and her two lovely shelties... oh and her boyfriend :p It was lovely and warm when I got off the plane T-shirt weather! (Something I haven’t experienced much of this year in England) so we set off to the training camp venue which was about an hour away from the airport. As soon as we got there we planned to get into our rooms and get all sorted out, however.... my room key had legs and was nowhere to be found, so we went for dinner first.

Tuesday
It was my first day of teaching. Today’s training was focusing on Handling - We did a few course exercises and broke them down and worked on verbal/que timing, positioning and physical ques. Where and what behaviour should be rewarded and in what place we should be rewarding. It was a great day as there were some extremely keen people and dogs.

In the evening i did a classroom seminar for everyone. What do our commands mean? goal setting target setting for not just a win, but for training each individual command.  Getting into the habbit of following through criteria even in the ring and why this is important.
　

Wednesday
Today in the morning we focused on Weaves. My FAVE bit :-) Looking at the importance of reward in certain places. We did some entry exercises some of which can be found on my DVD and worked on maintaining speed focus and drive to the end of the poles and the way in which I would close channel poles together.

I really enjoyed the day and had some fantastic comments back from the exercises I set and information that I gave. So very please with the weave seminar.

I was then asked by Ania if I could help her out with one of her students who had been having weave 'problems'

The dog was called Stephan . A Flatcoat Retriever with a lot of drive! I could instantly see the problem and why the dog was doing what he was doing. The Channel had been left open far to long and the Weave word to this dog now meant... GOGOGO extent your stride and RUN. This makes it really hard when you begin to close the channel as the dog will probably barge or just jump out because that weave word really just means run like hell!

So we took away the weave command and just allowed the dog to go forward. The stride instantly shortened so we rewarded it. I then closed the channel up more and straight away he started to put in the weave action. (they weren’t fully closed but enough to make him start putting in the action) We did a little more work and then ended the session on a massive high. It’s a great feeling when you can help someone give them the missing part. Such a fantastic dog. I can’t wait to see it next year, very powerful!

In the afternoon we focused on contacts. Position, behaviour and reward... Following through and maintaining criteria. We focused on the end of the dog walk and how we can gain maximum speed into position and reasons for rewarding in certain places.

In the evening we had a room party and god knows what was in the drinks but they were good!

Thursday
Thursday was my last day of teaching and throughout the lessons we focused on legwork and co-ordination. So exercises that required more thinking than speed. Thinking about where the dogs are placing their feet. Then we worked on how I teach a wing wrap command, teaching the dog how rewarding it is to put that extra step in as apposed to jump long. Next we looked at the See Saw and how we can make the end as exciting and fun as possible!

The seminars flew by! In the evening we all sat round a little fire and cooked our sausages on sticks washed down with lots of wine :-D Magda then came out with a gift a Camp T-Shirt and a card signed by everyone and invitation to teach their camp again next year :-) So 30th April, I’ll see you guys again for a whole week this time! :-D
　

　

I’ve been really busy this week and teaching today and tonight. It’s the last session of prep for a W.A.O Team member Karen Marriot and Puzzle. Good Luck :-) And have lots of fun in Belgium :-)

Tomorrow it’s a 2.30am start and drive up to the ferry for a long weekend, teaching and judging in Ireland. I’m taking my dogs with me as I’m going to see one of Ben x Maizie puppies in Scotland on the way back. He was sadly attacked by a Staffie nearly 2 weeks ago and gained some bad puncture wounds. Ashleigh gained injuries too. It will be good to see both Ashleigh and Key as I haven’t seen them since I moved back from Scotland. So it’s been a fair while, and I am also looking after another Ben x Maizie puppy 'Ronnie' as Allison is undergoing a knee op. Ashleigh has inever met Ronnie so it will be good to reunite and get some pictures :-)

Handsome Ben =~P

Lucy Osborne

www.agilitybuds.com

Box Of Tricks - Agility Voice (May Article)

Box Of Tricks

Having trouble with waits? The equipment is just too much fun? How about another ‘Box of Tricks’ Wait Game.

So over the last few months we have looked at rear leg lifts, front and back leg box circles. This month we are going to use the box as another way of teaching the wait behaviour.
Below are the two starting positions that I may choose for my dogs. The sit and stand are just positions that I prefer. They are the positions that will be shown within the pictures throughout this article.

If your dog breaks the wait behaviour there is a good chance that your dog either doesn’t know the behaviour/fully or there is not enough value for the position! The wait I feel can be the most boring thing to teach, especially for an unmotivated dog. People tend not to want to teach a wait because the dog lacks the enthusiasm on the release. So why not spice it up and make it a fun game and reinstall or install the basic criteria with your box!
Ok so to start off what is your definition of wait?
Personally I do not have a ‘wait’ command. I will give you a definition of my commands and see if you can guess why I don’t use or need a wait command.

Command	Definition of behaviour
Sit	Bum on floor, no movement.
Stand	Stood, all four paws on ground, no movement.
Down	Lay on floor, no movement.

So if I had a ‘wait’ command the definition would be ‘no movement, stay in the position that you are in when I say the wait command.’
From what my sit, stand and down commands mean do I actually need a wait command?
No, because I say sit. Sit means ‘sit with no movement’ therefore this is a sit wait, I don’t need to teach the ‘extra’ command or say the extra verbal.
I try my very hardest to keep my commands as easy a possible so if something is similar I will look at loosing the command.
So first of all we need to mark the position that we want our dogs to stay in. You can either do this with the dog sitting in the box or on the box. If your dogs don’t understand the wait behaviour at all then sitting them in the box may be easier as they have to lift their leg up and over the box to get out.

So I am going to reward my dog for getting into/on the box. Once the dog is in/on the box I will then ask for the behaviour and reward. I will reward the dog for maintaining the position. First I will not move away, just side to side. If the dog gets up I will withhold the food/ reward and wait to see if they offer getting back to position. (in/on box) You may have to re cue them to do the sit, stand or down behaviour but wait it out first (see if they are going to offer it)

I start teaching my waits around the agility equipment, not always in a field with no distractions. I will have interesting things that they may like to investigate, but I wouldn’t start practicing it for the first time in a class full of dogs doing agility. That may be a bit too distracting!
In the case of the dog pictured in this article he already has some understanding and reward value for jumps and weaves so they may be very interesting, if the handler were to move towards them. So the wait value needs to be higher, therefore a better reward. Don’t be boring, get exited!

So I may then start adding in movement around the box. Here is a list of things I want you to try before you start adding distance from the box

Arm lifts

Clapping

Star jumps

Spinning in a circle

Lifting your legs

Running on the spot.

So why would I do them before increasing distance?

(Only when the dog has had a high level of reward, for maintaining the position with you moving from side to side.)

I would do them near the box because I can quickly get a reward in for my movement and the dog holding position. If I do this further away and the dog holds position when I throw the reward they are going to move! (Unless you have a perfect throw and a dog that catches perfectly. I’m ruled out of that one! I’m sure 99.9% of people and dogs are too!) If you move away, straight away and do the above list, the dogs will most probably keep getting it wrong because they have not had the consistency and understanding that moving from position makes the treats disappear. Doing this close to them first means they get a quicker more accurate reward for movement so they should get an increased level of reward. If your dog is moving at this stage I would go back and make movement a bit slower. Let your dog start to understand that although their handler can be an absolute nutter your erratic movements boost the amount of reward.

I would then start to tease them with anything they already have value for i.e. equipment! (For those agility dogs that don’t wait) it could be toys or other dogs. Remember don’t throw them in at the deep end. You need to increase the interesting other objects slowly and increase the reward for maintaining the behaviour.

Build on this session by session, I wouldn’t try the whole lot in one session!

So get to that piece of equipment and then go through your movements and get the reward back in. I would then decrease the box to a mat and then decrease the size.

Even the most boring things can be fun!

It’s all just another trick

Lucy Osborne.