Agility Training

It’s been a frustrating couple of days with Dylan. I’ve been really happy with his contact work until now; he has been extremely good with the 2o/2o on the dogwalk, and his 4off for the Aframe has been working really well. I have to admit I had slacked off on practising the 4off touch-target behaviour, because we don’t have an Aframe at home and our staircase isn’t suitable for working on (ever seen a collie run down a flight of stairs onto a laminate floor leading to a solid wood door?), and I want him to associate the Aframe with the behaviour. I learnt my lesson about that last night. I decided to just do a bit of target-touch work, and Dylan just looked at me blankly and then made his own game up, which included licking the target so it would stick to his tongue and then flicking it across the room. He eventually remembered what it was about and by the end we had some lovely nose-touch downs going on, but I have to keep reminding myself that he is not Kim. Once Kim has learnt something, she’s learnt it, and she doesn’t forget it. Dylan obviously doesn’t work in the same way – either that or his target work just wasn’t as sound as I thought it was.

So that’s one problem. The other is that Dylan has decided to lie down on the contact whilst he’s doing his 2o/2o. He’s still doing what I want him to do, technically, but I don’t want him to lie down. I’m also wondering whether I might have proofed it too well (bet you don’t hear that complaint very often!) because he’s reluctant to leave the contact until he’s been there a couple of seconds, even with tunnels and jumps and other exciting obstacles tempting him. I have a feeling that will disappear as his confidence grows though, so I’m not complaining too much.

Final problem is with Kim, although it’s not so much a problem as a potential breakthrough. You all know how many issues we’ve had this summer with the dogwalk contact, either missing it completely or creeping the downplank and then missing it anyway, unless I’m in exactly the right place at the right time. Today, for the first time, I had her running it smoothly with no hesitations, and hitting the contact 95% of the time. I always wish I’d taught Kim proper contacts, but when she started neither of us knew what we were doing and neither did our “trainers”. By the time I’d realised what I should have been doing with her, I’d decided it wasn’t worth retraining her. I still stand by that. I know her well enough to know that she will never do a 2o/2o, 4off, 1RTO, whatever, and hit&miss running contacts are my only hope.