Managing Expectations

We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway, yay
And I wonder if I'm really with you now
Or just chasin' after some finer day

Anticipation, anticipation
Is makin' me late
Is keepin' me waitin'

(Carly Simon - Anticipation)

I'm a little worried about having unrealistic and, frankly, unfair expectations of Shasta.  Everything is going so well to this point.  I am very impressed with her work ethic and her understanding of the concepts I've taught.  I'm impressed with her attitude and her control.  She is happy in working and training without being gleeful. 

I can feel it, in my honest moments with myself, the expectations that are already building in my near-subconscious thoughts.   I'm not speaking about titles or tournaments or accomplishments.  But the building expectation that we won't have many struggles.  That we won't have the usual struggles that even a great agility team usually have when they are young.   I recognize and know that it's not fair to Shasta.  I recognize and know that it's not fair to me.  Yet it's not like it's something I can really control except to recognize it and hope that being honest with myself tempers it to some level.

I've always thought and often said, the key to an accomplished agility dog is to have a dog that keeps bars up, doesn't develop serious weave issues and doesn't have fear issues.  If you have those three things you are 90% of the way "there" in agility.  Yet, I haven't started jumping or weaving with Shasta yet.  How irrational is it, then, to have building expectations at this early stage when I haven't even started to train two of the three things most likely to derail a "career"? 

So, that's it.  I've made a decision.  I am not going to subconsciously have such high expectations.  Yep, that's what I have decided.  ;-)

Shasta Is A Classy Dog

Last night I brought Shasta to our first class.  She was --- awesome.  It was an agility class, level 4.  It was in our winter horse arena which has horses in it during the day.  Shasta is a floor "snarfer" at times and I expected it to be a tough process to work through in the barn.  But she didn't care about the dirt at all.  No snarfing.  I was surprised.  Pleasantly surprised. 

To her it was all new, the obstacles, the place, the other dogs, the waiting around .  She handled it all brilliantly.  She had no issues generalizing the obstacles, had no issues being distracted by the other dogs and had total focus on working with me and the sequences.  Thrilling!

We did jumps at zero, didn't weave and didn't do the dog walk (we haven't done a tall one yet).  Much like I recall doing with Roxy at this age.  I can make up a lot of sequences while skipping those obstacles.

We did do two a-frames which I introduced to her last week in our back yard (did three of them in our back yard).  She is doing the downside slowly but right now I like that because it is being really easy on her body.  I now won't do any a-frames until we start jumping except for the one or two I do in class every once in a while.  And if she speeds up too much I'll bypass them as well.

The school has an all-aluminum teeter which can vibrate differently and I expected her to struggle with it a few times.  But she had no issues with that either.  No issues with the doghouse chute.  No issues with the level four sequences. 

She ran about 75-80% of the time.  Every so often she would slow down, seemingly a little tentative.  Like I've said in this blog before, she more than most dogs, will be fast only when she is confident.  Something about my cues made her question the path which slowed her down.  Which does not bother me a bit, my cues will get better and better with time.

It was a great first class.  Both exciting and a relief.

Crosses Groundwork

Life continues to interfere with our training recently.  Disappointing when the temps are cooler and winter is approaching.  But life is what life is. 

Nothing new in our training of late.  The little I've done has just been reminding Shasta of the things she already knows.

A week ago or so Kris did film a small piece of the crosses groundwork I am doing.  It includes front crosses, a blind cross, a rear cross, a couple of rear crosses on the flat.  And what I think is some pretty good lateral distance as well.

First sequence includes a Front cross, Blind cross, Rear on the Flat, Front and Front cross.

Second sequence has a Front cross and a standard Rear cross.

Third sequence is a Rear on the Flat and a Front cross.

I'm pleased with her speed and skills at this point.  She does a great job of reading my body and the cues.  Sequence-wise there already is not much that she can't do, in the comfy confines of our back yard.

A Whole Lotta Nothing

It's been three weeks since I've posted anything and it's fitting because there has been a whole lotta nothing going on.  Between three day show weekends, work, weather, mom and general malaise on my part, I have not done much training with her the last few weeks.

The one thing of progress is that I have moved Shasta on to the full height teeter.  I had gone so slowly and incrementally with the puppy teeter, bringing it almost to the same height as the full size, I expected moving to the full size teeter to be no big deal.  That was not quite right.  It was not incremental to Shasta to go from a wood, sanded teeter to an aluminum, rubber teeter.  I think the vibration was different for her.

Her first couple she got off as soon as it tipped.  Then she refused going up.  A teeny bit of gentle pressure got her back up the teeter but she didn't want to stay on it.  It took about 10-12 tries over two nights before she finally was comfortable enough with it to stick the bottom.  Now, it's all systems go.

Her dogwalk is now great, no apprehension at all.  Somehow, my "break" command got more confusing during our lack of training.  I have some work to do there.

Dogwalk Transition

Shasta is eight months old today!  I can't believe she is already eight months and I can't believe she is only eight months.  If that makes any sense.

About a week ago I decided to make the transition from the puppy dogwalk that we have to the "regular" dogwalk which for us is the old small size AKC dogwalk. 

It's tough to know exactly when to make these changes.  She was very confident on the puppy dogwalk, approaching it with good speed.  She was able to navigate slightly crooked entries.  She had lost her balance a few times on the puppy dogwalk and she jumped off the dogwalk every time, never just fell off.  Exactly what I was looking for.  So I felt like we were ready.

I was a bit surprised by how different she was initially on the higher dogwalk.  To me it didn't look like that much of an increase in slope.  Clearly Shasta didn't agree with my assessment!

I spent the first few days debating if she had become too tentative and if I should go back to the puppy dogwalk.  But I guessed that it wasn't that she isn't ready for the higher walk but that it was a transition we would have to work through regardless of when we moved up in size.  So we continued to work on it.

As of tonight, I felt like I saw a big improvement.  She is still approaching it with what looks like great concentration, a bit slow.  But she looks very relaxed and comfortable to me now when going up and over it.  I think the speed is going to pick up soon.  As I've mentioned a couple of times in this blog, I continue to be convinced that for her more than the most dogs, speed will go with confidence.

Sequencing Video

A quick 45 second video of Shasta doing a little jump sequencing.  The first half has two front crosses and a serpentine.  The second half has two rear crosses.  And a wrong course!

Good speed, good skills.  I am very happy where we are at.

Cik/Cap, Zig/Zag

Training continues to go well right now.  We are working on some really nice sequences of jumps (bars on the ground).  She is now happier about doing "just jumps".  Previously she knew the rewards came fast and furiously on the teeter and dog walk so anything else was understandably second-rate to her.   I am really happy with the sequencing.  I'm already quite comfortable with most front crosses, blind crosses, rear crosses, wraps, 180s.  It's going really well.

We watched Sylvia Trkman's Cik/Cap video.  It's her way of teaching collection and tight turns.  It's basically doing the cone work that I've already done with the dogs but with a few tweaks and a slightly more detailed process.  I watched it for Sonic and am going to try it with Sonic (at least for a while).  But while I'm doing it with Sonic I figured I might as well do it with Shasta too.  We'll see how it goes.

Sylvia uses the commands Cik (pronounced like "sick") and Cap (pronounced like "sap").  I wasn't sure I could use those without confusing myself so I decided to use Zig and Zag.  If it does work out, I'm sure the commands will be confusing to others watching us!