Saturday, December 25, 2010

All I want for christmas is running contacts!

The snow melted off of the "Dogwalk" and we had two sessions. As I stated earlier, I fixed the 2" height difference and that really seemed to help her striding. I taped the second session ( almost to dark to tape) but she was a very good girl, and while one was a little high, she was 13 for 13. She had also hit all of them in the first session today...I swear!

This is first time I had tried using the clicker with this, I usually use it alot, but I didn't want her to think too much about what she was doing and found it was easier for me to just mark verbally. Now, I think I can add some precision to it with the clicker w/o causing too much thinking....I hope!

5 comments:

Steffi said...

Those contacts look amazing!!!! How long did it take you to get to this height? Thanks for posting your running contact training - I'm also trying to re-train my dog's running dogwalk using Silvia's method so it's been great to read your blog and watch your videos.

Wendy said...

Thanks, I have tried other methods previously, but then kept going back, because I wasn't getting what I wanted. I have never broken it down using Silvia's method before...I was trying to get just the a-frame previously. So this go around ( and I am NOT GOING BACK EVER!!!!) I started playing around with breaking her home peformance soon after the USDAA Nationals. If you look at the other videos I have posted, I started trying the hit it board right after thanksgiving, then I had it on the the see-saw on the cinder block. I then moved up to the 16" table, 24" table then the picnic table combo. This was about a month's worth of progression. I just today put the full length dogwalk together, back chained a little bit, but she needs to get more confidence in adding the extra stride needed on the top plank. I will try to tape tomorrow's session and get it up on the blog. How long have you been working on it?

Steffi said...

Thanks so much for the reply. I just love the results you are getting with Silvia's method. My dog always did a 'running' contact before but I wanted more speed (we just went slower so she wouldn't jump the contacts). We started re-training with Silvia's method after Thanksgiving and I think we are up to 16" but we are using a board that is only 8 feet long. Since my dog is small I am hoping that we could train with a shorter board - but I'm kind of worried how it will look when we go to a full length dogwalk.Here is how far we've gotten - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUxiFhV5MaM
Thanks for blogging your experience with training this method. I sometimes feel a bit lost so it's great to hear how other people are doing.

Wendy said...

I looked at your youtube video. They look really nice! I'd say your are making good progress too. Glad that my blogging helps. I love hearing and seeing other peoples progress as well. Keep me posted! Very cute little puppy you have there - what kind? It's hard to since she's going so fast.

Steffi said...

Thank you! She's a 2 year old Alaskan Klee Kai - kind of looks like a mini husky and is 14" at the withers.