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Comment by Marcie on November 13, 2012 at 5:32pm

Becca and I started agility with a "fun" class. There was less pressure than my beginner class and much more laughter. It was more about bonding with your dog and learning. Are there any fun type classes for you to attend?

Comment by Judith Andre on November 13, 2012 at 1:18pm

Beth...I hate to see you quit, but maybe a little break might work wonders.  A woman in our club with a very distractable Puggle dropped out for a few months and then came back and she was so much better then.  Murray has always loved it even though he suffers from many of the same quirks as Jack. I have observed lately a lot of people with relatively beginning dogs taking things clear too seriously and their dogs tend to pick up on that and shut down.  I think it's easier to see someone who started after you doing better than you and start pushing too hard.  It seems like agility is usually 2 steps forward, one back (well, sometimes 3 back)  You don't have to feel pressure to ever trial....the point is for both of you to have fun and not compare your dog to others.  Murray much prefers doing full courses instead of short sequences because the repetition of the same  thing over and over is not to his liking and I have found that with most Corgis...they don't really like repetitive drills.

Comment by Beca and Mishka on November 13, 2012 at 11:18am

Mishka also gets to a point in class when he is "done".  Fortunately, our instructor encourages us to stop an activity at medium-to-medium-well.

I totally burned him out on the walk once and we had to stay away for almost 5 months before he was willing to go up again.  We started the class series over again to give him a break and go back to working at stations instead of running courses.

Comment by Bax & Zigs & Rosie on November 13, 2012 at 10:37am

I'm really sorry to hear that Beth, but I think it's great that you can recognize the fact that the class structure may not really be for Jack. Working with him more one on one might be better in shorter periods of time. I recently went to a seminar taught by Nikki Snook, a Canadian agility world team member. She said that she practices obstacles like the weave poles maybe once a week and always works in very short sessions with her dogs. That surprised me bacuse I always felt like we needed to work on thing A LOT to really make sure they got them right. Especially the weaves. But I think it really depends on the dog.

 

This past weekend, my dad made me some agility equipment. I found this great article written by a fellow corgi and agility enthusiast: http://users.amerion.com/emrys/AgilEquip.htm The plans are detailed enough that we were able to come up with a teeter, dogwalk, and a-frame for just about $200 for all the materials. Granted I haven't sanded or painted them yet and my dogwalk is sitting on four cinder blocks... BUT! We've got some equipment to work on at home. If you can make yourself one of these it might give you a little more to do at home to practice with. The only piece that is somewhat hard for me to move is the a-frame, everything else is pretty light (if you move the dogwalk in three parts.)

Comment by Cheri on November 13, 2012 at 8:24am

That is extremely unfortunate. If there are only 3-4 dogs in the class it should be shorter or there should be more lecture or discussion. Plus the instructor should have picked up on the fact that your dog doesn't like to do the same thing over and over. I was in class with a sheltie like that and our instructor would have him stop before he shut down. The classes I take my boys to now are actually 90 minutes but we each work our dogs only 2-3 times during that period. We have a lot of walking on the course, discussing different options, planning and then we run what we planned, might run it again a second time but then something on the course changes, we walk and plan again and then run once more. We spend a lot more time with our imaginary dogs than our real dogs...

Comment by Beth on November 13, 2012 at 7:11am

I'm pretty sure we're going to quit agility.  I might still play around occasionally at home, but I'm pretty sure Jack hates it.  Last night, and not for the first time, he kept heading to the ring exit.  The only other place I've ever taken him that he wants to leave is the vet!  This dog LOVES going in the car; usually when we are getting ready to go he makes "monkey noises" til we get him settled in his seat belt.  Thinking back, he hasn't gotten excited to go on agility night in months.  

We are going backwards instead of forwards.  We were up to doing strings of 8 or 10 obstacles and now much of the time I'm lucky if I can get him to do 2 or 3.  He will randomly decide he does not like an obstacle and not want to go near it.

In hindsight, I think the hour-long class format is just not to his liking.  This is a dog who always loves to train, but I do short frequent training sessions and when he nails something, we STOP.  In class, we are not the only ones and if we are practicing something and he gets it right and the rest don't, we'll sometimes practice it a second and third time after that.  And I can think of countless times when I had a tired dog (he runs all-out so he tires faster than some of the dogs who just lope around) but there was still 20 minutes left to class so we kept going.

If I ever start classes again I will put my dog first and not be embarrassed to just tell the instructor "I think we are done" even if I'm not getting my money's worth, but I can't undo it and at this point, the work it would take to rebuild his enthusiasm just does not lend itself to a class set up at all.  I'm not going to pay by the class and go, do one run and praise him to the high heavens and leave.  And I'm not going to mix in frisbee sessions in a class of three or four dogs.  

If I could afford my own equipment, or there were a club where I could just show up when I wanted, that would work better for us.  But I have a very unhappy dog right now.  I was ready to cry when I left class last night.  He was blowing me off and had to chase him down, and by the end he kept jumping up on my, something he only does when he's a very worried dog.  

I guess I don't understand why dog-training classes are traditionally an hour long when every dog-training book I've read says to keep things short and frequent, but I suppose no one would drive a half-hour for a 15 minute class.  Ah well.  I won't ruin my relationship with what is a very good and very smart dog to force him to do something that interests me way more than him.

Comment by Cheri on October 28, 2012 at 2:09pm

Sounds like the problem is the sound more than anything. If that's true then you need to desentitize her to the sound. Get her to actually want to make the sound. Do you have a boom board? I made one out of a short 1 x 12 and a waste PVC pipe. The goal was for my dog to just use their paw to smack it and make noise. The more noise they made the bigger party we had. We started out small and built up.

Comment by Marcie on October 28, 2012 at 12:47pm

Any tips for teaching the teeter totter? Becca is near the end of her beginner class and it is the only obstacle that she is fearful of. She did well when it had pillows under the down end and didn't make noise. She doesn't like the slam when it makes contact. Our last class just got postponed a week because of the storm.

Comment by Beth on October 15, 2012 at 10:05pm

My husband came to class tonight and caught this short video of a five-obstacle sequence.  My "good Corgi" showed up tonight and he actually paid attention.  We were practicing pushing ahead while we hung back.  This table is a fixed height and is too high; the "easy" is because otherwise he tends to fly off the top, not a problem with his normal table height.  Please forgive my awkward running.  :-)  I have bad arthritis in my neck and I am not the most graceful of runners as a result!  I'd be happy to hear any feedback, good or bad!

http://youtu.be/yyGy9AsSvZg

Comment by Bax & Zigs & Rosie on October 2, 2012 at 10:49am

Beth, I have the same problem with Baxter and Ziggy when it comes to sniffing out dropped treats. It is so frustrating! I was at a seminar this weekend and the instructor told me to call him once, tell him leave it, and if he doesn't respond, to go physically pick him up and bring him back. That works fine with Ziggy, but Baxter knows the drill and will bounce away from me when he sees me in arms reach.

Patterns can be rough to work through especially when they think they know where they are going. What I try to do now for work in between classes is to bring the table or one single jump in my living room and do a little jump work on it. We'll do this sometimes before they get dinner or breakfast and I just use some of their food for treats. When I didn't have a table, I used a couch cushion.

 

Cheri, that sounds too funny. I can just picture the back and forth from the weave to the tunnel. Ziggy loves him some tunnels. I can only imagine we'll be facing the situations soon!

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