Tess' Running Dogwalk Turns Progress

Here lately I haven't been able to train but on Sundays mostly, yet we have been having sooo much progress training Tess' verbal turns off the DW!! I am so EXCITED considering in the past I have been able to teach her to turn off the DW on a verbal, but I've never been able to get her to do so with much speed at all. She's always been so focused on the turn or even just thinking about her striding that getting her to RUN (rather than trot) over her DW and into the turn has always been our challenge. And with Tess I learned a long time back that if we're trying a method that causes Tess to have to think, that method probably won't give us the results we're hoping for... Anyway, these past few sessions we discovered a method (foot target/Hit-It board idea) to train these turns that Tess THRIVES with!! I don't know why but this dog just *gets* foot targets...The criteria is clear, she doesn't have to think and she can focus on driving so therefore Tess feels confident enough in her task to complete her turns off the dogwalk with SPEED!! Not only that but with this method I've been able to actually give her the different dogwalk cues, "go"(straight) vs "get"(turn) from the BEGINNING of the dogwalk! Previously we had a lot of difficulty with the timing of the cues if it were anything but a straight as if I cued her early she would lose all of her speed, yet if I cued her later she would panic due to too little time to prepare and plan for the task she was being asked to perform.

EXCITEMENT OVERLOAD... she's been keeping up these great results for several sessions now so it's not just a fluke "good day" :D

Anyway, video of Tess not only turning on a verbal, but also showing the ease she has in distinguishing between the "go"s & the "get"s :) Super speed, super accuracy, super ENTHUSIASM!! :)  

Also, just a short video of how her turns training looked before as we were experimenting with different methods. Here the manners minder method of slowly moving the target to the side and simply not rewarding the dog if it cuts corners and leaves the dogwalk early vs rewarding for running through the contact. Accuracy was pretty good, speed was lacking, enthusiasm was alright. Much like many of our other past attempts at training turns :p

One more week (and way too many doctor visits)

Only one more week until our next trial! We only trial about once a month so I am ALWAYS excited to get my agility fix, every time :) To put an interesting spin on things though, I severely sprained my ankle almost 3 weeks ago and have been hobbling around on crutches until the past couple of days. Since getting off the crutches I've slowly regained the ability to walk more or less normal with simply a noticeable limp. Yesterday I attempted to "run" for the first time just to see where we were with things and it was pretty pathetic actually, lol! I think I would've made my lap faster had I simply just walked around the room and I'm fairly certain I resembled someone missing one of their feet ;) Needless to say I'm not sure I'll be ready to run a course next weekend but we're still going to go and have fun. I figure Doodle and I can practice her distance skills (though not the fastest when working independently Doodle does have pretty awesome distance on her) but I have some great friends who have offered to run my Tess if I'm not up to it by then.  Tess really requires someone who can move with her and support her around the course, and distance work has never been our friend due to her lower self confidence levels and my apparent lack of ability to support her properly from a distance. Thanking God for great friends! Agility has introduced me to some pretty amazing people :)

This will also be Tess' second trial jumping at 24" which is quite exciting, but also makes me a little nervous as she's also in the process of getting weaned off her Prednisone. You see, after reviewing Tess' bloodwork numbers the Veterinarian Specialist isn't convinced she has Atypical Addisons but rather possibly something along the lines of Irritable Bowel Disease.  Only way to know for sure is to wean her off the Prednisone in order to do more testing to see if she should actually be left on the Prednisone or not... This only worries me as I guess I'm afraid I'll find that Tess might revert back to the dog who caves under the pressure of the ring and completely shuts down. Before we knew anything was going on with her Tess had always been a little stressy in the ring, but nothing I wouldn't expect from a young dog with her perfectionist personality.  However in late May, I believe, she began actually shutting down in the ring. I couldn't find that spark in her eye, there was no enthusiasm to tap into, she'd slowly lope after me, skipping jumps and barely able to baby step her way through the weave poles. Then she began messing in the ring in more runs than not and I was at a loss. Good news is that over that weekend  in an attempt to "empty her out" I had her outside playing fetch when I noticed her gums went extremely pale and her tongue had turned very cool, nearly cold, to the touch. We had only been fetching a couple of minutes and it was about 80 degrees or so. Up until then I didn't know if we were looking at a Chiro issue or simply a stressy dog issue (not used to dealing with ring stress as Doodle just has fun chasing me and barking her way through the course) but at this point I was worried and made an appointment with our vet to get her in for a checkup and bloodwork. Everything tested out fine except for a few things that suggested possibly Addisons. By the end of all our testing I was actually to the point of hoping it was Addisons so that at least we had an answer and something to work with. We ran the ATCH test which should have given us our answer yet the results came back inconclusive as her baseline cortisol levels were low like an Addisons dog yet after being given the steroid her numbers jumped to just below where a normal dog would be. With this, our vet had us start her on Prednisone as a "test and see how she responds" and suddenly I had my old dog back!! She's happy and confident in the ring, she isn't stressing like she was and I was ecstatic! However her pale gums issue when she gets involved with intense activity did not resolve so our vet referred us on to the Specialist for further testing. And here we are now. The specialist wasn't hardly concerned about the gums at all, but aren't that impressed with her numbers either saying they came to just under the average normal dog's number so it being an average means a little higher/lower is within reason. So now we're looking at getting yet another ATCH test done after she's been weaned off the Prednisone for long enough and until then we're exploring the possibility of IBD (while hoping to avoid the need to perform the extremely invasive surgery and thousands of dollars it will cost to diagnose it)...

So I guess we'll see how Tess handles this next trial since she'll be on only half the dose of her Prednisone and I'll be watching, ready to pull her if it starts looking like that will be best. And we'll also see how my foot holds up to "running" on the dirt arena... Doodle might be my only point of sanity, though she's not going to appreciate having to hold a startline again, it's only been a couple years since we dropped it to have a running start instead  ;)  but some odd agility is better than no agility at all :) Need my agility fix!

A Look Back...

I'm just a 20-something kid obsessed with her two amazing dogs and the game of agility we play. Started training agility back in 2009 with Doodle, nailed obstacles and handling, flunked jump form and eventually got to start my dream with my crazy Doodle when we attended our first trial together in 2011 or 2012. Being a perfectionist my goal was to run clean, maybe set some records and certainly earn quite a few MACHs... little did I know where this journey would take me or just how much it might change me :)

Doodle has taught me how to laugh at my mistakes, better my handling, love SPEED for the sheer rush of it, figure out how to handle her turns, learn running contacts and quit caring so much about the Q. Looking back I never would have thought I could smile about it taking us 1 & 1/2 years between QQs, but yes. I now smile and laugh at that part of our journey too. This crazy dog makes it difficult to take things too seriously and I just love her for it. Our story is not one of a lot of "successes" as typically thought of by the general agility community, but rather of personal growth and experiencing what life has in store for us. We struggled hard to qualify for AKC Nationals 2013 but we eventually did qualify. We then attended our first big event and the only ribbon we brought home was from the T2B class. If that wasn't humbling enough we had our very first "elimination" in the JWW run due to an upset stomach... Doodle just smiled, I wanted to hide away somewhere... Now we both just laugh at this  and hope to one day attend Nationals again and see how much we might've improved since that point :) But for now we just take things one step at a time. Rather than chasing Qs we chase personal achievements,  yps records, better turns, faster contacts, occasional placements when we can hold everything together for long enough ;) We are enjoying living life on the edge and disregarding others opinions on what success means. Success is our own personal betterment and joy, so throw caution to the wind and let the pieces fall where they may :) That's where Doodle and I are now in our journey. She's about 6 or 6 & 1/2 years old now and sometimes struggles with an old shoulder injury and a lower back condition. We don't know how many years we'll have to continue playing agility together so we enjoy every moment of it that we can. Every run with this dog is a win ♡

And then we have Tess. Tess entered the picture about the time Doodle and I were earning our Open titles. I was looking for a fast, drivey BC who couldn't help but become an agility superstar, lol... and God had some other plans for me as He brought me to this amazing little dog :) Tess is absolutely a superstar and often times the whole neighborhood can hear me screeching how "Super! Super awesome!!" she is. Tess is certainly not what I expected to get in a BC but I fully believe she is everything I never realized I wanted. Tess, like me, is also a perfectionist and no, this doesn't mean I understand her one bit ;) Tess is brilliant and honest and requires you earn her trust and prove you're worthy of her attention. Tess is also a soft personality, who easliy can cave to pressure even if she's the only one offering it. She has taught me so much in what is truly important in this game. It's not the titles, placements or wins. It's not even about looking decent in front of your friends. It's about finding that joy, and putting your teammate's needs above your own wants. Looking towards the big picture and not just the here and now. I had(have) a lot of learning to do in these departments and Tess was eager to offer me the challenge ;) Coming from a dog who would shy away from running obstacles and couldn't handle criteria she has made leaps and bounds of growth! At one point Tess could only handle running sequences after dark by the yard light as I believe the daylight allowed her to focus on all the many tasks at once, which proved too much for her. The darkness simplified things for her, one task at a time. Tess tends to shut down if I make a handling mistake, or even just an imperfection, a late cue, a wide turn, etc. She's pushed me beyond my comfort zone, aiming to become her "perfect" handler and to keep her happy above all else. Celebrate the flyoff(NQ) because what a party it is that she had the confidence and enthusiasm to run past the tipping point!! Don't worry about the fault, just trust that experience will bring the Qs in time. We're now just into Excellent after starting trialing 2 years ago. Our Q percentage is not very high, yet I fully believe we have already become quite a team to behold. We get out there and push for everything we have on course and slowly I'm beginning to see the fruits of our labor unfold. Last trial my "slow, cautious girl" laid down a run that was fastest time all dogs all jump heights and I couldn't have been more ecstatic! ! We NQd due to a missed contact (running DWs with my sensitive girl always offer me more to work toward and look forward to) yet that little comment said by a stranger on the video meant more than any Q could have, "Wow, now THAT was fast!" :) So here we are now, aiming toward lofty goals, slowly testing the waters and working our way up to 26". I hope to earn our Excellent titles and attend ITT in May next year with this little girl. I fully expect we'll bomb all the courses but that doesn't matter. I can't wait for the experience. I don't know when it will come, or how long we'll have to wait, but I just know there are great things to be accomplished with Miss Amazing here :) Someday we might find ourselves running with the big dogs, or maybe we'll discover we have no fear of the edge (DW plank) or maybe that Miss Amazing finds her crazy in the ring... so many possibilities and a whole journey to discover :)

Welcome to our journey...
Tess 24" Exc Std - 09/20/14 & Doodle ISC JWW - 7/26/14

Taking The Plunge...

So, I've finally taken the plunge and decided to make a blog. Kind of intimidating but something I've been wanting to do for quite a while now. Mostly for rambling thoughts, journaling our training/trialing progress, bragging about my very much beloved girls and our journey through agility and life together. Just hang tight as I figure out all this tech stuff and slowly introduce everyone :)