TRAINING!

As we really are going to my barkday show, She who thinks she must be obeyed thought we ought to do some training.

Here I am doing the 'wait to go through the gate' that I had to do for my bronze Good Citizen certificate way back when I was a little puppydog.

And here I am sitting at the kerb waiting to cross the road to the green were we do our training.

But first of all we had a' throwabout' to get rid of some of my energy. (I get VERY excited when I see my jumps and She who thinks I must be obeyed says I run round like a headless chicken!!!!!!

Then I had to wait while She who thinks she must be obeyed set the course up. This is what it looked like. And yes that U.F.O. is back I wonder what the aliens think of my course?

I'm very good, waiting to be told to go over the jump. You won't catch me behaving like this at the show, it's way too exciting!

Here I go!

This video is an example of why you should never try to do more than one thing at once. She who thinks she must be obeyed was too busy TRYING to film me as she ran round to tell me what to do properly!

After all that exertion it was time for a down stay.

And then a sit stay.

Followed by a recall.

First working trial lesson

I have been trying to find someone to help me teach Finn tracking for ages now, and have not been able to find anyone locally. We had a go at Schutzhund last year but I'm not really convinced about the manwork aspect, so we have been trying to find somewhere to do working trials and finally came up with Carole at Aricia Dog training at Whitchurch which is about 130 miles away! We had our first long awaited lesson on Saturday.
As it was such a long way to go I decided to make a day of it and set off bright and early with picnic for both Finn and me. We stopped at Nant yr Arian, a forestry centre just north of Aberystwyth, where they feed Red Kites daily between 2 and 4. We missed that, but we had a good mountain walk to let off a bit of steam and help us concentrate on our lesson.


Look at the view Mum


Just a quick rest


And another one


Just time for a coffee before we set off again.

We stopped for about 2 hours before resuming our journey and arrived at our destination a bit early, intending to wait quietly outside, but Carole's dogs came out to welcome us and we were invited in for a cup of tea before we started. I hadn't got much idea of what is actually involved in a Trial so Carole and her husband explained everything and then we went out to work. First we went through some obedience and I got lots of advice on how to improve my heelwork and retrieves. I've never tried a send away so we did a few of those then we went into the field to find objects in slightly longer grass. He brought the first article back, but didn't quite see why he should go back for anything else! Then I was shown how to mark out the search area.


Awaiting instructions


Sit stay.

Then we went on to do the agility part. In agility the long jump is 5 foot, in working trials it is 9 and the dog has to wait for the handler to go to him after completing the jump. The high jump is also marginally higher than in agility and the dog has to await the handler after this as well. I was quite interested in how to teach the Scale, which is eventually 6 foot high. We stared off at just under 4 foot, high enough for him not to jump it but not high enough to frighten him.

As you can see he did it.

After all this hard work Finn was quite tired so he retired to the car for a well earned dinner and we had tea and cake, while Carole made out some notes to help us with our homework.

We left at about 4.30 and stopped at Nant yr arian on the way home to cool off in the lake.

Hey mum look at this

Many thanks for a lovely day Carole. We're looking forward to our next lesson.

Tunnel Dog

Had to move the horses to a new field yesterday, and retrieved the rigid tunnel from under the brambles and stinging nettles where it has been since I stopped using it for Jax, (my previous G.S.D.) about 4 years ago. Miraculously it hasn't rotted away! We now have another item in our 'keeping the neighbours amused' kit.

Finn is better at going through the tunnel, than I am of taking a picture of him doing it!

Here are some photos to go with the last entry.

More Training

I picked up some really useful plastic clips to turn broomsticks into jumps while we were at Worcester the other week. Now Finns agility training kit includes flowerpots, broomsticks, electric fence posts and a wind break! The poles from the windbreak are already sharpened to a point to stick in the ground for the supports and the broomsticks rest on the clips attached to them. Electric fence posts make good weaving poles and the flowerpots with numbers painted on them mark out the course. My agility equipment now comprises of 1 home made long jump, 9 weaving poles and five jumps. I am trying to set up a different exercise every day and even with this restricted amount of equipment it is surprising how much variation can be achieved with a little thought. The main difficulty is setting everything up when there are no children around to 'help' as I have to use the communal green outside my house. There is an additional problem at the moment as we have workmen digging up the road to replace the watermains, so far we seem to be providing entertainment during their teabreak.It's all good practice in ignoring distractions. Passing neighbours like to stop and watch and comment on how good he is! (If they ever watched a show they would realise how much work we need to do), but I suppose compared to the average dog on the estate who is never trusted off the lead he is good: most of the time. Also my 2 cats Tara and Smudge like to help by providing distractions which are not always ignored.
Inbetween exercises I do a bit of obedience to give us a bit of time to get our breath back, or I'll put him in a down stay while I sort the next exercise out. I like to have a complicated bit to the exercise to make him think, followed by a simple bit so that after a period of concentration he can relax with a quick blast down a straight line and work off any frustration if he doesn't quite understand what I want him to do. Most of all I want it to be FUN.

Yesterday was quite busy workwise so it was getting late by the time we could do any training so I decided just to do obedience. For a change I thought I'd use the clicker. I've not really been a great fan of this method of training up until now, (probably because I'm not any good at it) but Finn seemed to really enjoy it, so perhaps I'd better get used to it.
I went to a clicker training day a few years ago, one of the things we had to do was split up into pairs with one of the pair being the dog and the other the handler. The dog had to work out what the handler wanted without being told. It was really hard, but it made us realise just how much we expect of our dogs when we tell them to do something in what to them is a foreign language and just how inteligent they are to actually work out what we want them to do.