Yesterday, I picked up my new puppy, who for the
moment I'm still calling Willie. I also picked up a second puppy for
transport. I was amazed at how well both puppies traveled. They had
already been on the road for 11 hours before I picked them up near East
St. Louis, and we were on the road for another 5.5 hours. I decided to
stop as the sun was going down to let the puppies out for one last potty
break. Sure glad I did it while it was still light. They hadn't been
on a leash before and it was like trying to walk a couple of garter
snakes! They didn't have a clue and they were in no mood to learn this
particular skill at this particular moment in time.
I
pulled in about 12:15 a.m. and decided to sleep in the sun room with the pups so we'd be close to the back door if
they had to go out at some outrageously early hour. Both Willie and his
sister were quite good and slept until about 5 a.m. Since they hadn't
eaten since the morning before and they had been cooped up in crates for
more than 20 hours, I got up and feed them and then walked with them
out in the field, hoping they would wear themselves out and I could grab
another couple hours of sleep. I also used the early breakfast to introduce Willie to a clicker. His sister discovered the agility tunnel and ran through it a couple of times before Willie joined her. I think he's going to be a lot of fun to work with.
It took a while, but they were finally willing to zonk out again. Reese's family picked her up about an hour ago and now it is just Willie and the pack.
One of the problems with an instructional DVD is trying to locate the exact information you are looking for. You know you saw it, but where. If you're lucky the DVD is divided into chapters and has a menu, but even so, what you're trying to find isn't always in the chapter that you thought it would most likely be in.
Recently, I was torn between auditing another online class and purchasing a DVD covering the same material. I ended up purchasing the DVD so I could watch the material over and over whenever I wanted to. Yesterday, I spent about an hour watching about 10 minutes of my new DVD and then working on what I saw with Belle. Then I compared what we did with what the guy in the DVD was doing. I identified several spots where I got it wrong and went out and tried it again.
This morning, I was re-watching the DVD to see if there were still points I had overlooked. I was about to get out my pen and some paper to make notes when it dawned on me, I could use Word for my notes and just switch back and forth from VLC media player to Word. Then I had an absolute inspiration. I could paste screen shots into the Word document and add notes later. Here's an example:
Not only does this give me the important points of the DVD, it also provides me with where the information is located on the DVD. (If I decide to print a hard copy, I would probably type out the words and eliminate the pictures to save ink.) And of course, I'm not limited to just capturing the titles. If there I'm having problems remembering how to do a certain move, I can take successive screen shots and save them in my Word doc. Then I can load the document into my Samsung Galaxy Tab 5 and take it out with me when I practice.
Over the last few days, I set up two of the courses from the WAO. I thought we'd do a little better than we did with them. I was starting to question why I was even bothering to set these courses up since they are so far above our current skill level. Then yesterday, I received a newletter email from Daisy Peel about goals. Basically, by definition a goal (in the sense of a challenge) is something that is beyond your current capability. Yep, these courses certainly fit that description. Here's the first one we tackled:
Yesterday, I set up a jumpers course from the WAO, and I was totally taken aback at the difficulty Belle had in shifting from obstacle focus to handler focus. Hmmm. Time to do some training. I looked through my binder of Backyard Dog exercises and Power Paws drills, and finally came up with an PP setup (May, 2009) that featured two straight tunnels with plenty of opportunity to bring a dog from obstacle focus to handler focus.
I set up the course this morning using hoops since our problem stems from handling and training issues and not jumping. Right off the bat on what was basically an obstacle focus exercise, we hit a snag. Belle turned the wrong way upon exiting the first tunnel--I wasn't expecting that at all. Just love it when I pick an exercise that is going to give us the chance to work on multiple skills! Here's the video of us working it out:
Yesterday, I finally threw in the towel. We've been at full height for almost five weeks and Belle still doesn't hit the yellow with any regularity even when starting on the cross plank of the DW unless the PVC box is in place. It's been a very interesting training experience, but it's time to move on and resurrect Belle's 2o2o DW and see if I can breathe some life into it.
I really feel that Silvia's method is a good one, but re-training an older dog who started with 2o2o is a monumental task.
