Translate

Friday, November 29, 2013

Samurai Qualifies for AKC 2014 National Agility Championships

Better late than never. We actually thought we would have to squeak out the last three points in our last two days of trialing for the 2013 qualification period.

But the night before we left, I checked the AKC website and found out Samurai had actually earned 10 points over the 500 we needed at our last trial.

So far this weekend, we've already picked up 22 points at from our Standard run this morning.

The Chinese medicine approach to treating his IBD, a raw diet and resolving (I hope) some of our weave issues have helped.

His time was 10 seconds under a similar run about a month ago. We're so glad he's feeling better.

We don't know if we'll actually go to Nationals. If we do, it will be for fun. It's just nice to know that after all of the issues that we've worked through that we were able to meet this goal in our first year of trialing in AKC Masters.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Michael Ellis Teaches the Food Chasing Game

This is little seminar snippet shows a great way to build drive for the dog to move into the handler. The next step will be to turn this into a recall, but it would also be a great first step for training startline so stays and "follow the hand" in agility. 

It could also be used as a performance warm up for a non-toy motivated dog. 

The trainer gives a good clarification on the proper technique. Be sure to pay attention at the end where the trainer talks about lessons learned in over building drive. He makes the point that it's more important to be able to offer an appropriate channel for drive early on in foundations, rather than over building without a behavior to channel it to. With a drivey dog, this can cause problems later on with the dog throwing a lot of random energy that might result in a need for a correction which might be in conflict with the overall objectives of the training. 

The video is shot live at a seminar, so it can be a little murky at times, but hang in and it will be worth it. 

http://youtu.be/CciIIMXJ2_M