Box Of Tricks - Can you do? (June Agility Voice)

08:28 in

This is the final article on box tricks! This month is a bit different though I’m not going to tell you how to get to the end positions but they are all achievable quickly from the Box Trick articles. I will state which box trick the new trick has evolved from, but I want you guys to try and shape it yourselves. Remembering, the key points of training.

THINK- What should it look like.

PLAN – How you are going to break it down into stages to mark the behaviours leading up to reaching the final behaviour. Have a plan ‘B’ too.

DO – Try it.

Remember you may not get it all in one session.

Below is some pictures of end positions some have ‘stages’ (more then one picture) To try keep you on the right track.

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Leg Raises

This exercise is a progression on the first article I wrote in March, Leg Raises. If you have forgotten look back to the article and recap yourself and your dog and the think how you can progress it before you do it with your dog.

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Wait Games

An extension of wait games this time with your dogs FAVE toys.. Can they run past those toys to you who have their highest value reward? Try it without showing them that you have the toy first. If they can’t resist the other toys the help them out, show them you have the toy. Once they have it right, increase the game!

 Can the wait whilst you chuck toys past them until you throw the highest reward back and release the to it (if it’s not already at them)

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A-Frame 2on2off Shaping Position.

(Rear leg awarness)

These next two tricks are a mixture of two articles I wrote. Recap both yourself and you dog over both exercises before trying this out. Can your dog find position.. Or can you teach your dog the position? The dog should start to see this position as the BEST bit of the contact.

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See-Saw Tips

Rear leg awarness and movment

They should start to learn that the pushing down of the see saw as the trigger for a reward. And this only happens at the end, and it is the BEST place in the world!

Over the coming months I plan to give you 'Back Garden Success' exercises. You don’t need lots of equipment to practice and don’t need much space just toys, treats, your dog and yourself.

Have Fun and see you next month!

Lucy Osborne

www.agilitybuds.com

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Box Of Trick - Wait Games (Agility Voice May Issue)

14:36 in

Box Of Tricks - Wait Games

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.
www.agilitybuds.com

　

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Judging.. Updating step by step!

22:57 in

<sup>Well again I’ve not updated very well! I’ve just not had much spare time.
I’ve had loads of training days but haven’t got time to write about all of them. I’ve got up early just so I can get a little updating done before getting ready for Nottingham Show.

I was asked to judge in Northern Ireland on Saturday 12/5/2012


So I drove up to the ferry Thursday night to catch it Friday morning. I didn’t finish teaching Thursday till 10pm and by the time I was back, packed and sorted it was 11.30pm but I was still wide awake so headed off. I stopped halfway. The ferry was due to leave at 10am. Check in was by 9. We got there for 8am but, with a broken car! About an hour away from the ferry my car started making the most horrendous noise. I didn’t stop till we got to the ferry, I just wanted to get there, then when I had a look the exhaust had come totally away from the back box! We were checked in and then told that the ferry was postponed.. Typical and they wouldn’t allow me to go to a garage to get my car fixed in the meantime.
I had classes booked to start at 2pm. So unfortunately Kristy had to cancel the 2 o’clock class. We managed to get on the ferry at 12.30 so managed to get in 4 hours teaching when I finally got across.</sup>

Saturday, judging day.

I judged all heights, all grades, agility. I really enjoyed the day and had lots of positive feedback about my courses. I wanted to make the courses not too straight forward but not too tricky and have them flowing allowing the dogs to open up a bit more. I really enjoyed my day and below was the courses that I set.

Last time I judged in Ireland it was horrid and raining so it was great that the sun paid a visit.

Sunday

Today I was teaching again, another good day. And no rain! Weave exercises and courses, handling and fastest lines, before heading back to catch the ferry at 10pm. This was on time!

I’ve being asked to judge at Scunthorpe in August. So with having to pull Ben out at Scunthorpe in April I said id judge the PRO PLAN 6-7 Qualifiers. But hopefully (fingers crossed) Ben seams better! I’ve done lots of core work with him to help tone his stomach up more. Now I’m undecided what to do with him today. He has had 5 weeks no agility and 3 short sessions back, and being fine. So he may have a run and see how he goes. Its something I’ve learnt that I’ve got to just play by ear and I’m much happier knowing that its not hurting him as that’s what worried me so much at Scunthorpe thinking that I could of possibly hurt him. But Ben wouldn’t run if he was a tiny bit under the weather or he would slow down which happened at Scunthorpe his very good in that sense.. Stig would still run with 2 legs! He has trained twice on large and has done a few small medium jumps in the Garden and been more nuts the ever! He has always been fine in himself but he was off it at Scunthorpe as his stomach wasn’t as toned and with loosing his spleen, stuff had moved a bit making him a bit uncomfortable when jumping but not in pain. He’s been checked and again he’s fine but we wont know how toned he has to be unless I try him. He’s been fine after jumping at home and at my venue so fingers crossed its done.. Just need to continue core training with him! He had been absolutely OFF HIS HEAD.. He absolutely loves his agility and I can’t say (if he is fine) that he won’t be cheeky. But I just miss handling my comfy slippers. Would love to have him back and letting him enjoy agility he has been really grumpy knowing he is missing out.

Lucy Osborne

I will try sometime this week to update more.

Lucy Osborne.

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Teaching In Poland

04:03 in

　

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

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Box Of Tricks - Agility Voice (May Article)

03:40 in

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.

Read more