I love Silvia Trkman. Her training methods are inspiring and I just love the bond she builds with her dogs. I've always felt that 90% of agility is having a great bond with your dog and the rest just falls into place (I realize that it is possible to have a great relationship with your dog and not do well in agility too, but those are outliers).
I've been working on her Cik/Cap the last week or two and boy I sure progress a lot slower than Silvia! Not that it really matters aside from trying to see how I can improve. And I definitely see some reasons for it. Mainly 1) I don't reward frequently enough (especially when I'm so tired that I'm training to tire her out more than trying to teach her anything and 2) my placement of reward to encourage offering behavior can quickly turn into luring when I'm not paying attention (or tired).
Unfortunately I'm unable to say Cik/Cap so I've translated to Tic Tok. Kirk's Tic direction is significantly better than her Tok so I see more Tok's in our future.
We're going to continue to work on Tic Tok but I think my next focus will be heeling and our lineup behavior. I'm a bit tired or luring to face the correct direction I want her to go. We've played with pivoting with her front feet on an object but I haven't really progressed from there.
TicTok from Agility Dogs on Vimeo.
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Fun, fun! Brave has played some with this too, but only with me sitting and shaping the behavior of wrapping the stanchion (now he gravitates towards poles in the yard because apparently they equal food). Kirk, you're so advanced:) (and cuuuuuuuute, oh my)
ReplyDeleteBrave is WAY more advanced that Kirk. She can't even swim yet!
DeleteThis is LOVELY cik&cap Channan !!! Great job little Kirk !!!
ReplyDeletenext (to tire her out even more) you could send from one stick to the other and then from the tunnel to wrap the sticks (and are your trees useful that way ??). Did you see that Silvia recommends doing cik&cap sends uphill to condition adult dogs..? LUV Silvia's training !!!
Thanks! Great ideas. Kirk is only 4.5 months old so probably a bit young to be doing uphill conditioning, but I plan to do that when she's older! :)
DeleteHi Kirk! Hi Channan! Hey we can't say this either and ours is called seek and tap and I use an accent when I say it because I am trying to sound EXACTLY like Silvia in case that helps my dog training. Banksy likes seeking better than tapping. We have more barking from the distraction making dogs when we do it though so it probably sounds more like seek seek seek bark bark bark howl howl OTTERPOP to Banksy. That is going to be a mouthful for me at some point when she's running really fast and doing this on an agility field.
ReplyDeleteOoh, doing it with an accent is smart. I will try that.
DeleteCik and Cap were very hard for Hot Pie. I use one word to rule both directions, hard for my brain otherwise;) He eventually found his cone wraps, but man, he though multiwraps were the most boring things in the whole world. Took MONTHS and MONTHS before he was able to do the exercise with some enthusiasm. We stopped and went back to them when he was older and then he could find the joy in them;) Kirk looks like she is having a blast. I think I will have to have another female someday, so petite, not sure what that is like to run anymore.
ReplyDeleteI agree that relationship is pretty much where it's at when it comes to the teams I love.
I wrote a whole response to this last night and then my browser crashed and I lost it, but the gist of it was me nodding along in agreement with you. Boys are awesome but slow to mature. Girls are ready to train out of the proverbial "chute". Hi-Fis are normal boys, Rampages are x-tra slow maturing boys (with relapses into immaturity at random intervals), Icons are like girls with boy parts. Freddies are like... . So in summary... work with the dog you have, not the dog you want :).
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