In the middle of the trip we had a chance to attend an agility seminar! This wasn’t a planned part of our trip but was a great opportunity . We did two half days with Isabelle Emanuelsson and Jouni Orenius. The set up was excellent – the seminar host had two outdoor agility rings, one big/’normal’ sized area and a smaller area. There was a pond very close so the dogs could cool down between runs. Even though we were only there for the morning portion, we got in a -lot- of training. The 8 working dogs were divided into 2 groups – I’m not sure how it was decided, but it worked out as 4 small dogs and 4 large dogs – and all the large dog people were apparently fine with the lecture/course analysis part being in English! We would talk about the course for 15-20 minutes and then 2-3 ten minute sessions with one instructor. We spent the second part of the morning in the other area with the other instructor.
Griffin is great, I don’t think we did too badly – there were only two moments where something seemed completely impossible for us. The overall things we need to work on are no surprise – it’s a lot of what we get told to work on during lessons at home.
More cues: I know Griffin needs more cues/understanding of cues to tell him about turns/how to take a jump. We’ve started this but he doesn’t understand it very well yet. I’ve also started this with Viktor and Tonks but not followed through well. Jouni talked about this being one of the important more recent additions for his dog/s. At the trials/seminar I could see where the cues would help (and at home too!).
Push Griffin for more speed: Easier said than done. He’s not a slow dog, but he’s also not trying very hard. He’s not crazy about toys but I’m back to trying to use more toys in training to increase his arousal even if I can’t use the toys as a reward.
Go faster: Our usual agility instructor has been very politely been saying this for a few months. She says it in a way that’s sort of “You could go faster. you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but really you could.” At the seminar the prompts were a lot more enthusiastic.
However – this has been one of the harder things to apply. The more I’m thinking about where I need to be, how to cue my dog, and when I need to cue – the more I slow down! This also happens when I’m driving my car – if I think about more things I start to go slower and slower…
And running faster is not just actually running faster – there were many times when I’d be too early to cue some areas. The strategically running faster is going to be an important part.
Skills: I didn’t feel Griffin was too behind in skills. We could push to backsides of jumps, he had good independence on contacts and was decent (but not perfect) about weave entries.. One of the fun things we did was two blind crosses in a row – this had never occurred to me even though I must have seen it. It will solve a few handling challenges with a lot less training.
Outdoor agility trials. One ring is left of his head, the other ring is to the right of his head.
Misc: On the first day we did courses that were about 24 obstacles. When we arrived the second day, we saw folded pieces of paper….to add numbers up to 32.
The presenters had a lot of enthusiasm for timing handling options and were eager to pull out their stopwatches.
At one point Isabelle made a comment about Griffin being “..an angel about jumping!… an angel about handling!” which I found very amusing. Other people often seem to think he’s more biddable and cooperative than he actually is.
Griffin’s fitness was not as good as the other dogs. Not far behind – but we had to cut some of our turns a little shorter. In training I may be keeping our sessions too short.
At one point there was a comment that it was very “American” for me to not be cuing him a lot. I don’t know how true that is- I think our obedience experiences make me want to give Griffin more responsibility and less cues.
Walking at a trial. Nature area – so much nicer and safer – than warm up walks at home!
One of the sessions had a theme of “flicks” – a variation of rear crosses. We did really well with this even though that’s not something we ever really do. Apparently doing other kinds of rear crosses transferred over very well. Not only was I confident we could do it, but he actually did well. This did mean we had to then get harder tasks for us – but it was fun to do something very well!
I’m so glad we had this opportunity. We’ve done a few agility seminars this year and it’s a lot of fun. I love the location and it was a great balance of successes and challenges.