Behaives perfectly for Private lessons...

I decide to take some private lessons from Michele so we could work on the weave pole and contact problem that Clover has during competition. During the lesson, Clover behaved perfectly. She only missed a weave pole once, in about 15 runs. ...and she stuck every contact!

It is just like taking a car to the mechanic and all the noises and problems disappear. This makes it very difficult to fix the problem. We have come to the conclusion that it is an excitement problem and we need to try to recreate the excitement that comes with a trial. The only thing that we could think of that would get her that excited is to play ball with another dog in front of her before we go into the ring. So next week we are going to do that, try to get clover as excited as possible and then go in and have the private lesson. I hope it works...

The other thing that we talked about was taping every run on video and playing it back to see exactly what is going on...

Another Show-n-Go and Teamworks agility meeting

After a week giving Clover a week off---We didn't even go to Course Of the Week, we went to the Teamworks show-n-go. It was crappy weather, with sprinkles and mist etc, so we only stayed for a little while on Saturday, long enough to run both the novice and elite in the standard and the Jumpers courses.

Clover did OK, I had to restart her on the weaves and she did the contacts very well.

On Sunday we had the Teamworks Agility Club meeting. I was in charge of the meeting and we had a construction session where we made 5 jumps from PVC pipe. After the meeting, I ran Clover. She did very well and was a weaving machine! I have been giving her the cue very early for the weaves and it seems to be helping.

I will be back into the swing of things this week because I will be taking a private lesson and competitor agility class starts. I also need to register for upcoming trial.

AARF trail results

The ARFF trial held this weekend at Bon-Clyde in Sanford did not go as well as I had hoped. We only competed on Saturday but we ran 6 runs. The order was a little different than our last NADAC trial. They ran the chances first, 2 regular runs and then the tunnelers and jumpers. We had the worst Q rate of any trial so far. We only Qed on one out of six runs.

The First run, I didn't take her out of her crate until shortly before the run. I could tell when we went in that I made a mistake and that she was very hyper. She did the first part of the run OK, but absolutely refused to do the weave poles. I brought her back a couple of times and I know it frustrated her because she was vocal, she didn't bark but she was close. She never barks. We just skipped the weave poles and then she went to the dog walk and blew the contact.


The second and third runs were regular runs and the results were practically identical to the touch and go, although I tried very hard to have her repeat the obstacle if she blew a contact. If she blew it then, I took her off the course.

Clover would not do weave poles at all this weekend. The poles had a different pattern on them, one that clover has never seen before and the stand was pretty flimsy.


The touch and go run was about the same with contacts.


The tunnelers run was fun as always, but I pulled Clover a little to soon and she went in the wrong end of the tunnel



Our only Q was with the jumpers course. It went well, in fact very few people Q'ed because it was a slow course. Clover was the only Q out of 7 dogs at that height.


Ok, I know it is the same old, same old, but we need to work on weave poles and contacts....

COW before NADAC Trial

I have a NADAC trial in Sanford, NC on Saturday so I wanted to get some practice in at Course of the Week on Wednesday. But when we were doing our first run, and practicing a lot of weaves, I was watching clover carefully and thought she may have hit the weaves a little to fast the first couple of times and was more reluctant to do them after that, so I took it easy on her.

We didn't have Competition agility class this week because it is between sessions.

So I guess we will be going into this NADAC Trail a little cold. We are entered in 6 classes on Saturday and 2 of which are open standard, with 12 weave poles. She has definitely improved the last couple of weeks, so we'll see how she does. I am hoping a week of rest will help her.

Doggie Chiropractor?

My wife has been going to the Chiropractor lately and in conversation, her Chiropractor mentioned that she is learning to do adjustments on Dogs and would be interested in looking at our dogs. My wife has taken our older dog a in a couple of times for adjustments and It has seemed to do wonders! She is much more energetic etc. Today week we took Clover in to let her have a look.

She said Clover's left shoulder is more developed than the right and that her spine is out of align near the back. She said this could be because she may have been compensating with the front when she strained her ACL last summer. It could also be a cause of the her reluctance of the weave poles.

I think I may take her back just to see if some adjustments help.

COW Practice those weaves!!!

Last night I took Clover to COW and we ran mostly in the grass ring on a course very similar to what was set up for class last night. I focused on having Clover go from tunnel to weaves. I can see her confidence building. We did a lot of weave repetition. I worked her pretty fast and hard for about 1/2 hour.

We ran the standard course in the sand ring. It was a standard AKC course, she did well. We only stayed about 1.5 hours since I didn't have to run COW.

Competition Class

Clover and I really enjoyed competition agility class again last night. Since Clover and I were the only ones there, and Linda read my blog, she designed a Touch and go course so we could practice speed and contacts. Clover did well on the contacts.

We also worked on weave poles. She set up 4 sets of 6 weave pole next to each other and we ran them sort of serpentine like to get clover used to entries etc. Clover did very well. We then put tunnels on each end of the weave poles, once agian she did very well.

I am going to have to just keep up the persistent weavepole training until it gets ingrained in her.

Teamworks Spring 06 NADAC-Sunday's results.

Clover and I ran in the first class of the day. That is one advantage-disadvantage of moving up to Elite classes. Elite classes always run first. I don't have the map for it, but the class went very well. The course was more difficult than yesterdays and Clover went past one jump and I had to bring her back. She still Q'ed and we placed first in our class. Out of the four dogs in my jump height 2 Q'ed.

After jumpers was the regular run. I thought it was a good run. I had to start her 2 times in the weave poles, but we came in under time. We are still running novice because of weave poles. The course time was 44.12 and our time was 37.70 seconds. But when we looked at the scores, we had a 5 point deduction. I don't know what the deduction was for. 5 point deductions are either for not completing the gamble, ie crossing the gamble line or knocking down a bar. I know she didn't knock down any bars, so I must have stepped on the gamble line. I talked to a couple of people that watched my run and they can't remember any faults, oh well.

This is where the rule changes hurt me. If it was the old rules, I would have gotten a 5 pt Q, but with the NADAC rule changes and me running in standard, they no longer have 5 point Q's. Also, now they have integrated the gamble into every standard run and call it a distance challenge. You have to successfully complete the distance challenge to Qualify on the standard run.

Clover did well on her contacts. She held the 2 on 2 off on all the contacts.

The Tunnelers run went well. It was a more difficult than yesterday's run because there were 2 call offs. Clover missed the entrance to tunnel number 7 but I called her back right away and we only missed a couple of seconds. She did the call offs very well. We ended up Q'ing and placing second in the class with a time of 26.65 seconds with a course time of 30.4 seconds.

The next run was Chances. This is the first time that I competed in Chances and the first Teamworks trial where they have had it. In the past you obtained gamble titles through completing distance challenges that were embedded into regular courses. Now, as I mentioned before, the distance challenge is mandatory in the regular classes and they have made a new class called chances, where you have to complete 3 challenges--distance, discrimination, and direction. In novice you have to do one, in open you have to do 2 and elite you have to do all three.

All the old gamble points from before transfered to the new chances class, so I'm able to run Elite chances. All I have to say is that I should have ran chances yesterday instead of today! Yesterday the distance obstacle was the dog walk, today it was the weaves. To explain how the class was run, obstacles 4 and 5 were the direction challenge since you had to change direction, Obstacles 6,(weavepoles) through 8 were the distance challenge and the teeter and tunnel were the discrimination challenge. The dashed lines below are the lines that the handler can not cross.

I made a handler error by deciding to do a lead out to after jump 3. So I had no momentum when I got to jump 4 and had to stop at the line. Clover saw me stop and would not go all the way out to jump 5. There fore she would not do the weaves. Since I knew it was blown at that point, I crossed the line and tried to get her to do the weaves. After trying to start her once and not succeeding, we left the ring.



The final run of the day was the most disappointing. It was a touch and go run. It started with a tunnel and then went to the dog walk, where she blew her contact... I mean she went flying! I brought her back and made her repeat it. The same happened at the A frame. I made her repeat it 2 times. Before we went on to complete the course. Needless to say, no Q's here! As I mentioned yesterday, we are definitely going to have to work on tunnel-contact contact stays.




Over all the weekend went well. We had a 50% Q rate. It gets to be a tiring weekend when you run so many runs. I was glad to be home realtivly early though, although I got home around 5:00 each night.

I will post the actual times when they are mailed out.

The next trial is the AARF Nadac trial at Sanford in 2 weeks. I am only going to be running on Saturday, but I will be running 6 runs. And I moved up the regular class from novice to open, so we will be attacking the 12 weave poles.

Lots of work to do with weave poles and contacts in the next 2 weeks.

Teamworks Spring 06 NADAC-Saturday's results.

The NADAC trial at Teamworks went well today. I was a course builder, so I have to be there for the entire trial. We're busy too. Unlike AKC which has only 2 classes each day, NADAC has 6 classes each day, and most classes have different courses for Novice, Open and Elite.

The first run on Saturday was a jumpers run. It was a very open and fast run. It was nothing but a big loop with a 3 jump serpentine, a tunnel and exit. It went very well. Clover Q'ed, placed first in her class and obtained her Open title.


The second run of the day was a regular run. I ran in novice since novice has 6 weave poles vs the 12 weave poles in open. Since Clover needs help with weaves, I thought I would be as kind to her as possible. I had to restart her 2 times in the weaves but she did do them. She rushed her contacts especially on the A frame and I was not happy about that... I should have made her redo it, but I didn't so I got the Q. She placed 2nd in her class. Mostly because I ate up time restarting her on weave poles.

The third run of the day was a tunnelers run. Tunnelers is fun. In we entered in Elite class. This is the first time that we have run elite. Elite isn't that much different because it is the same course as novice and open, the time is just much shorter. I actually thought it was an easy course. It didn't have any difficult call offs. We obtained our first Elite Q and placed 2nd.


The final run of the day was the touch and go run. Touch and go is all tunnels and contacts. Clover really get running through tunnels, especially after a tunnelers run and when it comes to contacts, she doesn't want to slow down. Also, in practice I rarely practice tunnels followed by contacts. I guess you can see what I am setting up here... She missed her contact the second time over the dog walk and rushed most of her other contacts. The dog walk was more difficult because she had to go over it twice.


I didn't run the weavers class, although it may be something to consider in the future since they changed the rules. Novice only has 2 sets of poles now and their own course. In the past they ran the same course as elite and had to do about 5 sets of weaves. I also didn't run the Chances today, since it was a new class and I wanted to see it before I ran it. I will give it a try tomorrow and explain more about it.

Overall, I was happy with the results. We Q'ed in 3 out 4 classes. Got our Open Jumpers title and got our first Elite leg in Tunnelers.

The conclusions from today were that we still need to work on weaves, and we need to work on contacts after a very fast tunnel set up.

We were both tired after a long day.

Beautiful night for COW

It was an absolutely beautiful night for COW. It was the first Wednesday of the month so I set up a Jumpers course. We used the course that was at Winston Salem about a year ago. It was a tough course, and Clover was never able to complete it tonight because I was unable to call her off of 2 traps.

I was surprised that more people didn't show up. There were only about 6 people there, but that gave clover and I time to practice. We worked in the grass ring on contacts and sends. I have noticed that clover has been taking the contact obstacles rather slowly.

This weekend we have a NADAC trial at teamworks and I am entered in most classes except weavers. I only entered the chances class on one day because I wanted to watch it at least once before I compete. It is a new class.

Last night I glued together my practice weave poles. I just had the PVC fitted together before and when clover went through, I had to straighten them constantly.

Tonight I am going to help set up at teamworks. It is suppose to be a gorgeous weekend. Wish us luck!

Class... sends, contact approaches etc.

Last night Clover and I had advanced agility class. We were the only ones there again. It was a good class. We worked on squaring the approaches to contacts by placing a cone on the side of the obstacle, so the dog cant jump on from the side and then gradually moving the cone.

We then practiced some distance work on pinwheel jumps and doing distance sends to blind tunnels and shoots.

After the class I ran clover through some weaves and she successfully did 12 all 3x we ran them!