# Chandra's agility training



## TwoBigEars

Kinda quiet around here so I thought I'd start a thread to chronicle my puppy's agility training. She's only 5 months old right now so we're mostly working foundation, toy play, body awareness, etc. I'm not very diligent about taping our training sessions but I'll add them here when I do. 

Today we worked on sends around a cone with the toy in my inside hand. This is challenging since her first impulse is to grab the toy instead of going around the cone, but she works through it! I specifically work on this so we don't have to deal with "but I can't run with the toy/food because my dog is too focused on it" and it teaches her how to think and earn what she wants instead of just grabbing. 






And from about six weeks ago, ladder for body awareness and cone wraps without the toy challenge.


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## Della Luna

Looks great! I love your puppy! That's such a fun age  Can't wait to see her progress


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## TwoBigEars

-cone/wing wraps, gradually increasing distance, overlaying "check" and "dig" cues, juuuust starting to work commitment.

-body awareness on plank, harder with a bigger body!

-toy in middle/cookie jar, first session!


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## TwoBigEars

Rear crosses with left and right verbal cues. Working on fading the pre-placed toy as a lure.


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## Deb

Love watching your videos! I'm looking forward to more! She's a pretty girl!


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## TwoBigEars

Starting our journey into running contacts.... won't be doing a lot since Chandra is still young, maybe one or sessions a week for now. And just some boring flat ground/carpet running for a while. Working on the verbal cue for running and my technique throwing the ball and seeing her feet before we bring any equipment into it. The poles are 24' apart, so the length of two planks.


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## Deb

LOL, took me a second when you suddenly disappeared in the middle of the screen! She's looking good!


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## TwoBigEars

Haha! Just a boring video of her running back and forth, but it's something. I'm not the most diligent about taping our training sessions but I'll have to tape the running contact stuff at least. We have been doing some work on call to hand, and handler focus vs. obstacle focus as well so maybe I'll get video of that soon.


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## TwoBigEars

First session on the tire! Lured once then shaped after that.


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## Deb

Love how eager she is to please you!


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## TwoBigEars

Been working serpentines/convergence lately. She's starting to get the idea! Need to keep working on jump commitment, had a few issues with that that I cut out of the video. But I'm really pleased with everything she's doing well, she's such a fun puppy.


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## TwoBigEars

Working some jump skills with Susan Salo's set point exercise. Height only 6-8" since she's still young, just want to get her thinking about jumping and using her body nicely. Still have work to do on this front, haha. But at least we finally have a useful sit-stay!






And beginning our attempt at a running dogwalk. Just intro to the planks with food to get her going through the poles. Will probably only do 1-2 sessions a week on this for a few months since again she's still young.


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## TwoBigEars

Chandra is beginning her journey to a running dogwalk! We'll see how it goes.  My current plan is to train a running dogwalk for the straight/easy exits, and a 2o2o for the turns or exits I need to manage. So yes we will be working on a 2o2o as well, and if the running dogwalk totally fails at least we'll have the 2o2o. 

Only planning 1-2 sessions a week of this for now, and we may have to take a hiatus for a while when it comes time to raise the planks since she is young. Winter weather will probably hamper our training anyway.


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## Jenny720

She looks great!


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## Deb

She's really progressing!


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## TwoBigEars

Some work on commitment and lap turns with our verbal wrap cues (dig and check). Winter project will be increasing Chandra's fluency with the verbal cues.


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## TwoBigEars

Some perch work! Not directly agility stuff, but good body awareness exercise for agility. Starting with independent rotation, then offered movement into heel/side positions.


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## Cschmidt88

Looking good!! I'm excited to see what you achieve with her


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## islanddog

Just catching up--how did I miss this?
I need some homework that doesn't involve full agility equipment, so it's also instructive. Thanks. Will be following.


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## TwoBigEars

Lots of stuff to do without much equipment!

-body awareness (perch, ladder, plank exercises)
-line ups on both sides
-backing up
-2on2off on a plank or object
-sits/downs/stands in motion (similar behavior to 2o2o with no equipment at all!)
-wraps around a cone (or tree, or barrel, or whatever)
-handling on multiple cones to work on wraps and commitment
-wobble board and tippy plank
-exposure to different surfaces
-classical conditioning to noise
-shadow handling
-delayed reinforcement (example, do some shadow handling and then run to the reward placed elsewhere instead of carrying it with you)
-collar/harness on and off
-weave through legs
-left and right spins

Just some ideas!


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## TwoBigEars

Chandra went to a One Mind Dogs seminar a couple days ago!


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## TwoBigEars

Chandra working on 2on2off at club drop-in practice. Mostly building value for the position, as well as working in a new distracting environment (new for this behavior, anyway).


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## TwoBigEars

Some sequencing with Chandra this morning. Mostly working rear crosses, and some other stuff too. We have been working on rear crosses on one jump, now starting to put rear crosses in sequence. Hard for a baby dog but she's getting it! Also some impulse control at the beginning, being polite for her toy instead of mauling me for it.


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## TwoBigEars

Some of our recent foundation work for the running dogwalk. Still not doing much intense work since she's young but trying to take advantage of the weirdly nice weather right now before it gets back to snow. Revisiting body awareness, first intro to the dogwalk, some hoop and foot target stuff. I'm trying two approaches, Ali Roukas-Canova's method (with the hoop and small foot target) and my own "idk making it up" thing with the carpet piece. Hopefully one of them will work, but we'll see!!!


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## TwoBigEars

Haven't posted for a while, but we've been training! Chandra is a year old now, so we're starting work on the contacts and weaves.

From a couple weeks ago, straight line jumps to work on driving forward, clearly a struggle but not a surprise since this is hard for most beginner dogs. Clearly I need the help of a lead-out and throwing the toy at this point!





First session on teeter between two tables. Ultimately I'll be using the TipAssist to train her teeter performance, but the two table method is still good for working with the movement, height, and noise of the teeter.





And today we started backchaining channel weaves!


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## jasonmj58

I would love to do agility with my pup Josie! I really enjoyed the videos in this thread! Any tips on when to start and how to learn how to train would be really appreciated!


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## Jenny720

Enjoyed your videos!!!!


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## TwoBigEars

jasonmj58 said:


> I would love to do agility with my pup Josie! I really enjoyed the videos in this thread! Any tips on when to start and how to learn how to train would be really appreciated!


Find a trainer near you who is well experienced in competing in agility. I typically recommend avoiding the "just for fun" trainers because they usually have very little experience with agility and it's easy for things to go wrong or even be dangerous with an inexperienced instructor. Most competition trainers still don't require you to compete, just understand that progress might feel a bit slow since there is a lot of foundation work and skills to work on before running sequences and courses.

There are also a lot of great online training options now too. Fenzi Academy, Agility University, and Daisy Peel's Online Classroom would be great places to start. You can find classes for engagement, toy skills, shaping, as well as "agility stuff" like obstacle skills and sequences.

If you look back on page 2 of this thread I listed a few things to work on with little/no agility equipment. If you're unsure of how to train any of those things, definitely check out the online classes. Building a good foundation with engagement, play, shaping, and body awareness makes all the "sexy stuff" of the agility obstacles much easier!


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## jasonmj58

thank you!


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## TwoBigEars

Third session on channel weaves. Chandra added a tunnel for herself on one of the reps, good entry practice.


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## TwoBigEars

Starting to do more work on the contacts now that Chandra is old enough. Today was her second session with the box on the a-frame.


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## TwoBigEars

Making progress with the channel weaves! I think she's starting to understand the concept of entries.


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## TwoBigEars

I'm slacking on posting, but we're still training! Got a lot of stuff to work on and just trying to make steady progress. Here is yesterday's weave session, definitely a lot of progress from the previous video!


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## Jenny720

Nice work! She is fast. Max's least favorite thing the weave poles. I can tell because he will try to grab the ball out my hand everytime right before we get to the weave poles.


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## TwoBigEars

Slacking on posting as usual, but still training! Currently we are focusing on obstacle skills on the a-frame, weaves, and teeter. Still aiming for a running dogwalk as well, but putting that on the backburner right now since the other obstacles are keeping us busy enough. Here is our a-frame session from today, introducing the concept of different exits and following the handling to the correct exit (instead of just assuming where the toy is).


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## TwoBigEars

Today's a-frame session, first session up to 5'2". Still working various handling maneuvers and different exits, though no exits requiring strong collection yet. This was the first session I did one rep of delayed reinforcement sending her into a tunnel after the a-frame and then rewarding. I will start to mix in more reps of that.






The weaves are going pretty well too. We got the channel closed up straight a couple days ago and will start fading the guide wires off. So far she is doing awesome with entries, but we need more exit work. She struggled to not pop out when I tried front-crossing after the weaves, even with the wires still on. But I suppose that is a tricky move and she's still learning, so we'll get there! She is doing well with sending forward through the weaves and staying in when I pull off laterally, which are also a bit challenging so that is great.






We do need to do more dedicated jump work again. I've fallen into the common trap of focusing on the contacts and weaves, and Chandra has been struggling with knocking bars. So back to more jump work!


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## Deb

She is looking good! How old is she now?


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## tim_s_adams

I cannot believe how fast Chandra is at the weave! She's very talented and a beautiful dog. I have learned so much about the process by watching these videos, thank you so much for posting them. It's really been an eye opener for me to get some idea of the foundational work that is required! I have a female black Shepard pup that just turned 8 months old and has caught on very quickly to most the obstacles on an agility course sort of naturally, but not the weave. I didn't know how to even begin training that, so we haven't tried them yet. Now I see how carefully you prepared Chandra with great successes at each step, and again, I see now how much thought goes into the training. Best of luck to you when (soon I'm thinking) you enter your first competition!


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## TwoBigEars

Deb said:


> She is looking good! How old is she now?


She is 17 months!



tim_s_adams said:


> I cannot believe how fast Chandra is at the weave! She's very talented and a beautiful dog. I have learned so much about the process by watching these videos, thank you so much for posting them. It's really been an eye opener for me to get some idea of the foundational work that is required! I have a female black Shepard pup that just turned 8 months old and has caught on very quickly to most the obstacles on an agility course sort of naturally, but not the weave. I didn't know how to even begin training that, so we haven't tried them yet. Now I see how carefully you prepared Chandra with great successes at each step, and again, I see now how much thought goes into the training. Best of luck to you when (soon I'm thinking) you enter your first competition!


Ahh thank you for the kind words! Chandra is the fourth dog I've trained for agility so I've learned a lot and they've all taught me something different. Chandra does make it look easy but that is because of all the foundation work she's had. And of course the videos I post aren't all of our training, there is a lot more. But Chandra learns more with fewer repetitions with more foundation and the improvements in my training skills from the previous dogs. Learning never ends though, for both of us! 

There are multiple methods for teaching weaves, they all work and have their pros and cons. Channel method is definitely my favorite. With an open channel you can teach the dog independence and speed right from the start without the added stress of actually weaving. I wouldn't start the weaves until at least 12 months old or older though.

Agility is lots of fun and addicting once you start! Have fun with your pup!


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## TwoBigEars

Evening training with Chandra! Weaves and turns out of straight tunnel puppy cannons, a skill we’ve neglected for a while. I got the weave channel closed into a straight line a few sessions ago, now working on slowly fading out the guide wires. Right now we only do about 1-2 sessions per week on the weaves.


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## TwoBigEars

Second session at full height (5′6″), and trying to transition to holding the toy instead of having it placed out as a target. Because I question whether she really “knows” the behavior or just happens to be correct while staring at the toy. Probably should have started with the toy on the ground anyway since we hadn’t worked on the aframe in over a week (if not two weeks) and it was probably a case of too much change too soon between that and the new height.

Next session I’ll start out with at least one rep of the toy on the ground, then move it out beyond a jump again. And mix in the occasional rep of me holding the toy.


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## TwoBigEars

Foot targets! We have mostly ignored the running dogwalk stuff for a while but we're getting back at it now and I'm trying to dedicate a few sessions a week to a it so we can hopefully make steady progress. We started off following Susan Garrett's method which uses a foot target, but I left Agility Nation before we made much progress. Now we're trying to follow Dawn Weaver's method, which also uses a foot target.

I don't even know which number session this is, probably our fourth or fifth over the past roughly 10 days. Though Chandra was already familiar with the foot target from our previous work with SG's flatwork, I would say she still wasn't great at it. I think in this session a lightbulb really came on for her to understand touching the target. If the dog misses the target (as Chandra did on the first rep) we are supposed to stop and wait for them to offer touching it.

This Saturday we go to another OneMind Dog seminar!


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## TwoBigEars

Oh and an update from the previous a-frame post. I didn't video our recent a-frame session but I did stick to my plan of starting with one rep with the toy on the ground, and then moving it beyond a jump after the a-frame. Only one crazy leap-off and since I didn't video I can't see if there was a reason for it, but other than that she did great with running down through the box. I will probably forgo trying to carry the toy for now and leave it either on the ground or after the next obstacle to build more history of success with running down the box and not overly-focusing on me.


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## TwoBigEars

Weave session today, thinking about fading the guide wires. I have been slowly fading them for a while, by removing them one at a time from the middle and lowering the rest. I think Chandra is confident enough now in the weaves and has nice consistent mechanics, so it’s probably time to get rid of the rest of the wires.


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## islanddog

I love seeing gsd's doing agility--following now.
Do all the border collie peeps eye's pop out when they see Chandra rocking it?


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## Jenny720

Nice videos and equipment makes me want to add some more! Great weave poles max dislikes this the most he does it but will try to get the ball out of my pocket on his way to the weave poles is how I know - a big brat. Great job!!!!!


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## tim_s_adams

Chandra is a pleasure to watch, thanks for sharing!


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## TwoBigEars

islanddog said:


> I love seeing gsd's doing agility--following now.
> Do all the border collie peeps eye's pop out when they see Chandra rocking it?


Haha I think they will once she gets out there in competition. So far nobody has really seen her outside of those who train with us.


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## TwoBigEars

Our video from the seminar a couple days ago! Several hours of learning compressed into four and a half minutes. It is hard to know what to say other than we are having so much fun together. I want to be the best handler I can for Chandra so she can know where she is supposed to go and go there as efficiently as possible without questions or faceplants or a moose-y handler in her way.

While I do not commit to any one method or system, I do believe that OneMind Dogs currently provides the best information about handling and understanding the dog’s perspective of our cues. It is really the "dog's method". We expect a lot from our dogs, so we owe it to them to continue learning and striving to improve ourselves. After all, we have 99.9% of the responsibility for everything that happens on the agility course.


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## TwoBigEars

A-frames yesterday! Getting the box faded, and alternating between having the toy pre-placed on the line and carrying it. Thought we might get some teeters in too which is why I had the camera there, alas that did not happen and that’s okay!

Quite a bit of improvement in this session. When we did the sequence in the second rep previously (turning left from the a-frame to the wingless jump), Chandra really struggled with missing that jump. Most often going around the far side of it because of her momentum exiting the a-frame, but sometimes cutting in too tight as well, especially with the toy on the ground after the jump. So even though today I tossed her the reward before that jump (to reward her hitting the contact since it is still challenging for her with me pulling away laterally) it is nice to see her hitting the contact and on a line looking towards that jump before she gets the toy.

She also seems to be getting better at driving down and getting the second hit on the a-frame with me carrying the toy or handling to different obstacles that aren't straight in front of the a-frame, instead of leaping off too high after the first hit because she is looking at me.

Just some analysis of the details that go into this darn stuff.


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## TwoBigEars

On the big girl weaves! I switched out the channel weaves for a solid base so Chandra doesn't get too used to the extra wiggliness of the channel poles. She had no problems adjusting.


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## TwoBigEars

Slowly chipping away at our running dogwalk. I think I mentioned before that we started with Susan Garrett's method, and are now following Dawn Weaver's method, both of which use a foot target. We've been doing several short sessions per week of flatwork with the target, and this is our first session adding the target to a plank. (technically not the first, we did it a few months ago before following Dawn's book but those earlier session were quite fail-tastic)


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## TwoBigEars

Been hard at work on our running dogwalk! Frequent short sessions, with some time off from it too. Today Chandra had her second session at full height. She is still gaining confidence with it and getting better each time. I also spent a couple sessions teaching her to go between the poles I have on the up plank (kind of hard to see in the video) so she always enters straight. This will be useful as we start adding more distance and obstacles before the dogwalk.


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## sebrench

She looks great to me! You two seem like a good team.


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## TwoBigEars

We've finally been getting snow the past week, so not much agility happening now! That's okay, sometimes it's nice to have a break forced on us. Taking the opportunity to work some indoor items/small space items that also help our agility training.

Today - finishes (starting to work some ob stuff but these are also good for agility line-ups), 2-on/2-off (will use this for turns on the dogwalk instead of turns in motion), and harness to stashed reward (delayed reinforcement for the end of our run)

I have been working on the 2o2o with Chandra for a while and we've been filling in missing pieces. She was okay with food but when a toy came out she basically lost her brain. Today she was finally able to do a 2o2o with a pre-placed toy out front, which is super hard for her! But also an important step in being able to stop and wait for the next obstacle.


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## TwoBigEars

Not a ton of practice the past few weeks since winter has made that difficult, but we've been working a bit! Our yard is just now dry enough to play in, before more snow in three days. Oh well.

Chandra's running dogwalk seems to be coming along! I was doubtful for a while, but it's getting better. Here we are working dogwalk-tunnel discriminations and various exits.


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## WIBackpacker

Nice!


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## BoTaBe

Haven't been here quite a while, but wow, those videos look great. Nice weaves and great running contacts! Are you planning on competing soon?


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## TwoBigEars

Sporadic posting as usual, but we're still diligently training! Chandra has done a handful of DOCNA and AKC competitions and earned one Q each in Novice Standard and JWW. Lots of good stuff on each run, and always coming away with more homework to work on. We have a couple USDAA trials coming up next in May.

The dogwalk is the big thing that has been holding us back. Even though Chandra *can* get nice running hits, they are very inconsistent. After her previous trial a couple weeks ago I decided to switch to a 2o2o for a while and we will retrain the running from the ground up and see how that turns out. I am auditing Anne Lenz's online running contacts class. But I don't want to wait several more months to compete so using a 2o2o in the meantime will prevent any inconsistencies or practicing bad habits of leaping off the dogwalk. Who knows, we may just stick with the 2o2o.


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## BoTaBe

Really curious what you end up deciding - 2o2o or running contacts. 
I'm honestly skeptical about GSD and running contacts because their sequence of steps is so wide and just doesn't seem to match. But the video you posted in February lokked really promising.
So yeah, curious if you switch back after Anne's online course. And I'm kinda jealous that you can just switch to 2o2o again. If I allowed running contacts once, I'm pretty sure my dog would NEVER come to a halt on a contact ever again...:grin2:


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## TwoBigEars

BoTaBe said:


> Really curious what you end up deciding - 2o2o or running contacts.
> I'm honestly skeptical about GSD and running contacts because their sequence of steps is so wide and just doesn't seem to match. But the video you posted in February lokked really promising.
> So yeah, curious if you switch back after Anne's online course. And I'm kinda jealous that you can just switch to 2o2o again. If I allowed running contacts once, I'm pretty sure my dog would NEVER come to a halt on a contact ever again...:grin2:


Yeah we'll see! We'll stick with the 2o2o for a few months at least, if not forever. I can say some courses from recent trials make a 2o2o pretty attractive, lol. Straight/straight-ish exits are still rather common, but dang there are some hard turns off the dogwalk too. Especially for a big dog.

It will be a while anyway before we can really get back to working on the running dogwalk stuff. We have a lot of other things to work on, like fixing her running aframe (she's coming off pretty high now) and we're doing Linda Mecklenburg's online jumping class since bar-knocking is also a thing for Chandra. Interestingly she actually knocks less bars in trials than in practice, usually it's the other way around! At our recent trial we had a couple really nice jumpers runs, just one bar from a Q in each of them. Crash-course bar knocking is no fun but I don't want to suffer "just one bar" syndrome either!!

I used the box method to train Chandra's aframe initially but I will probably use Anne's method/the mat to rework it for deeper hits again. Which should also give us a bit of a head start if/when we get back to the running dogwalk with the mat. I think the RDW is definitely possible. Chandra can get really nice hits. It just wasn't consistent enough and I know there was a lot more work we needed to put into it. We probably didn't do enough initial groundwork with the mat, for one.

Lots of people now have a running and stopped dogwalk with the same dog. As long you train both behaviors well (darn it lol), have distinctly different verbal cues for them, and give those verbals early enough the dog can react appropriately. A tip from Anne's class is also having two different names for the dogwalk so the dog knows by which name you say whether you will ask them to run or stop before they even enter the dogwalk. I remember when having both running and stopped dogwalks was rare but I see it more often now. Still not as common as people either going completely running or completely 2o2o but I see more using both. It was actually my initial plan for Chandra (running for straight exits, 2o2o for anything else).

I worked the 2o2o quite a bit on a plank since she was little, so the 2o2o itself wasn't a completely new behavior for her. It was a bit challenging to add it to the dogwalk after she had several months of running it. But we've made great progress though, a few pieces to still fill in but overall it's coming along quickly and more consistently than the RDW.


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