Category: Rio

  • Flyball Homework

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    Rio’s hits on the box are looking good and she’s ready to move on to turning with a ball in the box (untriggered). Unfortunately she can’t seem to get put the turn and the ball retrieve together. Box = Turn, in Rio’s mind! I seem to have taken a mildly ball obsessed Rio and turned…

  • Rio's Agility Update

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    A selection of brief notes based on training in the past 2 weeks. Rio is relaxing and enjoying training again. Her focus is great, and I’m using a mixture of food and tug, and regularly scheduled breaks. Doing some single-jump reward work has helped her engage faster on course. When I cue appropriately and in…

  • I Only Blog When It's Going Badly

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    I have a tendency to be naturally suspicious of anyone who writes glowing, exciting blog posts when their training, handling, or competing is going perfectly, and skips over anything that isn’t fitting in to that. Especially those who then say things like “It didn’t go well, I’ve learnt a lot” and then utterly fail to…

  • Options I & II (A Moment of Panic)

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    Option One: Rio finds focusing in high-intensity environments difficult, and asking her to focus (ie. introducing a high-value reward) can push her over threshold. She is currently learning to assimilate her environment, relax, and focus in short bursts, keeping her at optimum threshold and allowing her work productively. This is not entirely successful as yet…

  • Agility Nuts Sept

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    I’ve been meaning to do this show since it started a couple of years ago, but there’s always something else on this weekend. I could have been judging in Cheshire for UKA, instead I trekked 2hrs to Nottingham and spent the weekend reading and playing with the dogs and occasionally running some agility. C6-7 Agility…

  • Flyball Training

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    Flyball is a lot of fun at the moment. We’re focusing on individual skills work rather than teams; this is mainly because our dogs all need skills work, but also partly because not all our dogs are team-ready yet, and we haven’t made any decisions regarding lineups for next season. That will happen soon (I…

  • Happy Birthday Beanie

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    This crazy little munchkin is two years old today. She is currently sulking because she sliced her pad a week ago (just like one year ago), and so she’s on restricted exercise and continual bandages (which she continually eats). She’s also pretty bald still. Where is your fluff, Rioli? I cannot possibly put into words…

  • Positive

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    I should probably stop late-night-blogging, I’m not sure it’s that coherent. Since I finally realised that Rio’s issues are threshold related, so I went back and re-read Control Unleashed, and immediately felt better. I formulated a plan, and it’s already in action. We’re worked through the Take a Break exercises and she’s already improving in…

  • Failure to Launch

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    Really struggling with Rio these days, when it comes to training. Agility on Tuesday started out really well, she ran 4-5 times on short, focused sequences where she needed to respond to handling well. She was great! Super focused, super tuggy, and ran all the sequences really well. Then she shut down and I lost…

  • Judging

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    I judged at Dig It’s club competition this Friday, my first “judging appointment”! It was actually a lot of fun, but also exhausting, and it was only a 2hr stint. Judges, I have a new found appreciation for your skills. This was my course, just in case anyone is interested. It was supposed to be…