Fancy Footwork

Turns out it was very easy. Especially as a third party observer. Much more challenging to have a clear a view of flow from inside of it.  And I have zero flow with Moxie. She is way over my head. Watching Andrea and Moxie I could see the simplicity of positioning and purposeful movement that would lead to a synchronized effort.   Linking tricks is cool yet it is the mechanics and footwork between tricks at the heart of flow.

An Eye for Tendencies

Understanding the tendencies and strengths of our dogs makes a big difference.   With Kai I payed attention to her preferences and considered how I might enhance our flow.  Kai is much more dynamic when I throw her a flip with my left hand, and she needs to be exactly in line with me.  From the flip she is perfectly lined up for an inverted side vault. A non inverted side vault would take a step longer to set up.  Upon landing from the inverted Kai turns back and lines up perfectly and in time for a leg vault.  This sequence requires minimal adjustment or setup. It matches Kai’s natural movements to create smooth transitions as she exits each trick.

Agility Crossover

Lilli knows the most tricks. She is comfortable in any direction.  Her agility training and experience gives her a greater variety of moves and understanding of movement.  I think agility is great cross training for disc dogs and handlers. Ron Watson likes to reference front and rear crosses in his disc dog seminars.   There is also the hand movement, pressure and other techniques used in agility to move the dog through the course. This relationship can translate into more dynamic movement in a disc routine.

Disc Skills

Nothing kills flow like a poor throw. And 2 bad throws in a row is really silly.  Not directed at noobies and rookies.  Anyone who has spent some time in the sport should have a firm grasp on mechanics and throwing with intention.  It’s best for the dogs, flow and spectators I find myself being lazy when I practice and my dogs suffer the consequences with those sliders that jam them up, sloppy vault tosses, etc.

Practicing ( throwing ) with intention is better for me and my dogs.

In competition I am more focused and my throws are sharp. How when and where I place the disc is key for flow.  Moxie is wicked fast and it is easy to be late presenting the disc for an over.  Lilli prefers to jump off to the right on a back vault so I need to consider that when I place the disc or my head will pay the price.   Moxie likes to jump vertically, Lilli prefers more of an out, Kai likes them high and outside.  My biggest challenge is timing and placement on vaults.  I am often low and late.  When I play with my different dogs or new dogs, I watch how high I can throw the disc on an out to improve the chances of a reception.  Some dogs have more of a vertical leap than others.  And what pace do I need to put on the disc based on the tendencies of the dog and its speed.  Lilli is very good at reading discs but like most dogs her weakness is a straight up jump on a slow over head disc. She looks much smoother when the disc is at the right place at the right pace.

We would do a great service for our dogs if we all take more responsibility for proper throws.

Attitude

Moxie is about pursue and kill, Lilli about possession, and Kai is about the chase. Leila wants to please I think.  Knowing their attitude and behavior helps me create games and set up movement that works for them. Moxie will chase the disc anywhere no matter what.  Lilli is a bit more thoughtful.  Kai just wants to run after it and jump up for it cuz thats what she likes to do.  So it works out to keep Moxie moving or she will get antsy.  Lilli enjoys the whole process of obtaining the disc so the pace is less frenetic.  And of course there is the handlers attitude.  A bad attitude is surely a flow killer. Let’s take a note from performers and just smile like nothing happened when mistakes occur. A bad attitude kills it for everyone, including the dog, the spectators and little bunnies.

Anyway, that’s enough blabbering about Flow.  Just keep an eye out for it. never stop looking for it.  And appreciate it whenever you find it.

So that’s the preamble…

Lately I’ve been working on Lilli’s contacts.  Not much honestly – I’ve pretty much sold out on aility lately since Lilli started vaulting – it’s just so stinkin’ fun!    Anyway, we originally trained contacts as two-on-two-off with nose touch.  She would do it, but we had to encourage and remind her to come ALL THE WAY DOWN the contact equipment and Holy Moley did that take forever.  For such a ridiculously fast dog, her contacts move in reverse.   Today I had a brilliant idea…I heard music and saw Angels and the image in my mind became clear…the tasty, juicy, irresistable roast as the reward at the end of the obstacle…it was a FRISBEE!

I took Lilli out as I normally would, with a disc in hand (only one this time) and she fully expected us to play disc.  I pulled out the teeter and put it in the middle of the yard with no other equipment.  I set her up and asked her to teeter.  Now at this point, I didn’t say “touch” or “com’on’” or “all the way” or any of the “helping” I would normally offer to get her to do a proper contact.  (Susan Garrett suggested this as a bandaid for her contacts from how I trained them initially – with a plastic lid to a salad dressing.  If the lid wasn’t there – she wouldn’t target.)

Man, was she confused.  She went 3/4 of the way down and started offering behaviours.  Had no idea what I wanted but she sure wanted that frisbee.  She sat on the teeter, laid down, bowed, stared intently…finally after about 2 minutes she took a small step down…then another…then another…until she had one paw on the grass.  The I looked at her and said nothing (before this I didn’t give her any eye contact or stare down).  She slowly put another foot in the grass.  Then 30 seconds or so later she nose touched.  I said a big YES and released her and threw the disc.

We repeated this about 5 times.  I only rewarded average or better performances – another great Susan method – a couple times she went slower than the time before – and finally when she had the nicest, smoothest trip down the teeter, two on and two off and nose touch I ended the practice.  Tossed the disc several times and she went for a swim.

And I took a deep breath of relief.

Finally…the light went on a bit.  She’s learning to think instead of waiting for me to tell her everything.  Finally.

We’ll continue to practice this “disc reward” strategy for agility and see if it keeps the stakes really high for her.  There is no reward as juicy and irresistable for Lilli as her disc.  I’m so proud of  how she took on our new game today with control, curiosity and concentration.  She’s such a spectacular girl. 

Last week, Susan wrote on her blog about C=Continually, R= Rewarding, A=Ambiguous, P=Performances.  Since this was our first trial, there’s not a whole lot of “continually” going on, but that’s not the point.

I remember a couple months ago Susan wrote about a student of hers that sent her a video of a 1st place showing at a trial.  The student was so proud of the victory…AND Susan was there the burst the bubble.  Now personally, I believe that bubble bursting is great.  It’s messy and gross and ugly sometimes, and it’s where you find all the good stuff that makes you extraordinary.  Otherwise, we’d all just keep doing the same stuff over and over, and never care to look at why or how or what else is possible.  Also, bubble bursting isn’t always popular.  So it takes a certain love and commitment to burst someone’s bubble. 

What I got from what Susan said, that I carried with me this weekend, was it didn’t matter that she won.  It mattered what really happened on the course.  Did the dog hit her contacts?  Did she handle the way we’ve been practicing?  Did I settle on my criteria??

This weekend, in 4 runs, Lilli took 3 Q’s, 2 Firsts and 1 Second.  AND, more than anything, I saw how much work I have to do.  It’s not like I have to do the work, but I’m up to Lilli being a MACH dog and getting her Novice STD and JWW titles in 2 weekends.  I have 2 legs of STD and 1 leg of JWW.  One more weekend to go.

In another post, I’ll write about the stuff I learned this weekend specifically.  This post is about crap. Crap because we’ve been practicing for a year straight now, and I still missed simple obstacles with handling errors.  Crap because she’ll run 12 poles in practice no problem but had issue with all four of the 6-pole sets this weekend – and they were easy entries.  CRAP because we’ve been working contacts intensely – 2o2o w/nose touch – and she ran off 50% of obstacles this weekend without a stop.  On all the others, I had her stop extra long and give multiple nose touches.  I give myself a little pat for that. 

We Q’d.  For most, that’s a reason to celebrate.  For me – it’s crap.  It matters that I hold her for those nose touches.  I don’t care about the time so much.  I want her to stop – expect her to stop.  I want to see it each time without fail. I want to win, beat everyone else by a mile and look fantastic doing it.  I’m competitive.  Lilli is a very talented dog.  And I want it now!

So that’s the big lesson for me.  Perfection doesn’t just show up.  There’s a difference between a) running a course on run-through nights when you can go back and work a problem area again until you nail it and b) walking out onto a fresh course (novice or not) and having a clean, fast run.  There is a gap there.  And I’ve got work to do to close it.

Like a good student, all runs are recorded.  So we”ll review them over and over (and share them here on the blog so you all can see us) – like Tiger does, like Jordan did – maybe he still does…  These past 2 weekends, we got lots of awards and acknowledgment.  Ribbons, medals and even bidding to have litters with our dog. At the end of the day, I realized how far off I am from where I thought I was.

So back to work for us.  I’m generally not a “final thought” person.  This time though, I’ll end with something like that.  None of what we did this weekend in that trial had anything to do with Lilli’s anything.  She knows her stuff just fine.  It was all me – my nerves, changes from my usual body posture, my speed, energy, everything.  Jason said it earlier today and I think he’s right; Getting that it’s all me, that’s where being extraordinary comes from – that’s how I get to the next level, and the next.

We always imagined Lilli as a fantastic competition disc dog and thought of agility as a way to enforce obedience and a great alternate form of exercise.  Agility has become so much more than just bubble gum (something to chew on) for us over the past several months.

We just met a great agility group in West Palm Beach and wow, what a fantastic environment!  What I appreciate most is the feedback from teams of all different levels. We have some things to “un-break” – like contacts.

We never took the time to learn and enforce “2 on and 2 off”, which is an essential contact element on most obstacles.  We practiced and nailed “target” no problem, BUT we never enforced it on obstacles – rather let Lilli run through them. Result: Maybe we hit our contacts, maybe we miss all of them…

2 on and 1 off means just that, the dog needs to pause, nose touch, wait for release word, whatever behaviour you want to enforce, with 2 back paws on the yellow portion of the obstacle and 2 front paws in the grass – off the obstacles. You want your dog to do this each and every time – without question.

So how will we “un-break” the “broken” behavior of Lilli running through all of her contacts? We’re using a step and a board – essentially creating our own ramp – and have her jump up and pause, nose touch, and wait for release with 2 on and 2 off.  And treat and clicker the behavior.  Then move further up the ramp and further away until we can lead her up the A-frame, dog walk, teeter, etc. and she stops at the end and does 2 on and 2 off.

Agility Products

We’ll work on this over the holidays and do some videos of our progress.