Silvia Trkman Seminar

In February I went to a seminar with two time World Agility Champion Silvia Trkman.
It was great!! Didn't want for it to stop. She is an amazing trainer and really helped me out to do some very nice handling. Ryker enjoyed the experience and he was very well behaved in his crate when the other dogs were running. I shared the ride to Colorado with my friend Julie and her dogs Rift and Cash. We shared a room at the Drury Inn. Rift was signed up to attend the puppy class. I was auditing it. Some of the exercises I already knew to do. But she had some other great ides, which I will incorporate into my classes as well. I have never trained the running contact and the way she showed us really seems like it could work. I can't offer this to my students until I have trained my dogs on it first.
She uses the clicker a lot. Shape, Shape, Shape. Love shaping. Not a lot of people I know understand shaping the way it was intended and it is hard to teach if you don't understand the concept of it.
Having fun in Agility is the most important key to becoming a great team.
Tricks are so important for brain development in a dog. They not only have a stronger bond with the handler, but if they have been trained using PR, Clicker, Shaping etc. it is quit easy to add on Agility "tricks".
Silvia has 3 dogs at this time, Lo and La are Pyrenian Shepherds and Bu is a Border Collie.

Agility With All

Yesterday I went to the Club's Agility practice. It was good. Ryker was exited to do the course. He nailed his weave entry, touched the contact zone and listened to me. I felt like I had control over where he was going.
Raygen, what can I say, he is always great. Rylie..... she had fun. I made her do some jump that she did not take. She is a Velcro dog if you have ever seen one. I basically have to go over the jump with her. Training her has been the most challenging.
Ryddick, I ran him in "public" for the first time. He was great. He stopped at the contacts, very nicely. He had a slight problem with the height of the A-Frame and went all the way into the dirt. I will accept that, to avoid shoulder injury. He confused the Teeter with the dogwalk and did a Luganis. I had him take it again and he was great. Can't wait o run him in a trial. Maybe the next ASCA trial.

Bouncing off the Wall

Rylie, Raygen and Ryker are bouncing off the wall. They actually have a very nice swimmers turn, so it is more like taking a turn step off the wall. Looks so easy, but I sure would not try that myself.

Ryddick can't do it yet, but is getting nice and high off the board. He is still a bit clumsy. Who knows if he will ever outgrow that. I do a lot of walking on his hind leg exercises so he gain more strength and balance.

CU Seminar

I signed up for a working spot with Ryddick for the CU seminar in October. I can't wait. There are so many people that want to get into this and I feel lucky get a working spot. I also hope to get into a private auditing spot. More knowledge is so important in dog behavior.

Traveling

I have to travel so much more for trials here and I can never make it to any Flyball tournaments. The closest ones are in St. George, UT. 327 miles, almost 5 hours traveling. Yuk! But they happen to be on a date when there are Agility trials and AG comes first. I really don't have any dogs that are ready anyway. Rylie is on sabbatical from all competition. I may do some Agility and Rally in the future. I only need one more leg in Rally Advanced to get her RA title.
I am planning on getting Rykers RAE this year or early next year. I do have to travel to some OB/Rally trials to get some DQ's. I have 3 legs and here are my plans on getting other more....
May 1st
June 6/7/8
August 15/16/17
I should get it in August, but if I have to I will enter on September 12/13/14.
Otherwise I will do Agility with him in September.
I only plan on traveling to Idaho for Rally. Not sure if I am going to enter Obedience. So boring. Not sure what to think of it.
Raygen is on his way of getting his MACH. I am traveling to Idaho and maybe Wyoming. I hope to get it next year or maybe the year after that. It takes so many trials and there just aren't that many around here. I sure would have had a lot more in CA. So instead we do more local trials and that includes DOCNA and USDAA.

Taro and Jiro

Been trying to re-home two 10month old GSD for the last month. They were born May, 3rd, 2007.
Abandoned by their owner and left to starve, a neighbor, Eugene, kept feeding them and they bonded very quickly with him. One day they got into his yard and his dog attacked one of them. Tatsue, his wife got in the middle of it to try and break it up. A bloody thumb caused some other neighbors to call an ambulance. They apparently called AC, since it was a dog bite incident. The GSD were hauled off to AC in Davies County. After 10 days they were bailed out by Eugene. Who put them back into the neighbors yard. He then called Anna, who called me, cause Eugene lives only 3 miles from me.

These dogs are so cool. They have never been exposed to anything and still have the nicest temperament. They are not food aggressive and love people.

Today I introduced them to Raygen, my mellow dog. First we separated them and put a GL on Taro. I then walked in with Raygen on the leash and Taro freaked out for about a second. Raygen gave him all the calming signals there are and Taro responded quite nicely. They sniffed and I took the leashed off and let them go. They played around the yard and chased each other. Taro never showed any aggression, whatsoever. He tried to mount Raygen once, but Raygen, off course, would not have it.

Then I switched with Jiro. It was a bit more tense. He really freaked out and with some help he calmed down and was able to be off lead with Raygen in the yard. He is very insecure and this could be a major problem finding him a new home. I am hopefully going to place Taro this week and then we can work on Jiro and his insecurities. This is going to be a challenge. I hope to be able to get him were he needs to be to get into a good home. Maybe I will brin ghim to the Club sometime for training. That might help him out some.

Weave Training

My weave pole training journey started out with Rylie in 2004. Anne Platt was our trainer and she trains channel weaves, no guide wires. Phew! Rylie learned very quickly.

Raygen started out with the channel, too. I attended a training session with another trainer and she had put guide wires on the weave. Poor Raygen was afraid of them. As soon as we took them off he was fine. To this day he can find the most difficult entries to the weaves. It just came natural to him.

Ryker has been trained using the channel weaves, too. He was weaving when he was 9 months old, but I decided to stop until our first trial at 12 months. He sometimes hits them so hard that he bounces back from the second pole. He has to learn to control his speed going into the weaves.
Ryddick is the first of my dogs to learn the weaves with the 2x2 method. He too gets it pretty quickly. He is more cautious going into the weaves and I hope he can keep it that way until he gets older. I don't want to have another Ryker weave issue. At this point I am not in a hurry to trial him in Agility. I plan on starting him in Herding in a few weeks. but that is another post.