This past weekend was the Front Range Agility Club’s United States Dog Agility Association (USDAA) trial at the Budweiser Event Center in Loveland Colorado. Rankine and I have been working diligently on weaves to improve entry and speed. In early February we attended a weave seminar where I learned different methods for improving weave entrances including the two by two (2X2) method. Every night after work, I spend 5-10 minutes working on weave entries using the tennis ball as a reward. Our efforts paid off this weekend when Rankine made his weave pole entry on every course. Although we weren’t perfect this weekend, we did walk away with qualifiers in standard, pairs, and snooker.

Props also go to Rankine’s older brother, TJ, who qualified in pairs, snooker, and jumpers!

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Rankine and I had a blast at the Colordo Kennel Club AKC trial over President’s Day weekend. We are finally starting to have fun, relaxing, and successful runs. Here’s a video of his standard agility run on Sunday – if you ignore the sniffing on the table, it was a great run!

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Maybe it’s the training or maybe it’s turning three, but Rankine showed a marked improvement at last weekend’s agility show. We qualified in 5 of 9 runs and earned our NA (AKC Novice Agility) and OAF (AKC Open Agility FAST) titles. We even managed to win a couple of blue ribbons in the process. Yea Rankine!

Over the past year we have problems in three areas: 1. weaves, 2. hitting contacts , and 3. the pause table. Two of these, weaves and contacts, are training issues while the third, the pause table, is a stress related issue that is likely related to his young age (and being an intact male).

We have been spending a significant amount of time working on the weaves and even went to a half day seminar a few weeks ago on a newer method of training weave entries. While we may have had to redo the weaves once or twice this weekend, I am happy to say that none of our failures were due to the weave poles. I believe that with a little time training some of the concepts from the seminar we will up our competition weave pole success rate to the 95% mark.

Two of the four failures this weekend were due to missed contacts, which is simply a lack of training on my part. My older agility dogs have a relatively low drive, so training a rest at the bottom of the contacts was simple. However, Rankine is a fast, high drive dog that hates to stand still. Getting him to stop, slow down, pause, rest, or whatever you want to call it, will only be possible through a significant amount of training. I have only myself to blame for this problem.

The issue with the pause table is a little more difficult to fix. When he gets to the table he completely ignores me and sniffs the table thus wasting valuable time. Is he sniffing for food, for a female scent, because he’s somehow stressed? I simply don’t know. The only solution I can come up with is high value reward training. I need to teach him that by getting on the table and instantly lying down he will get a piece of steak, cheese, or a tennis ball. My feeling is that this will probably take some time to resolve.

And in case anyone was wondering, the other two failures were due to off courses. One of which I will take the blame for and the other of which I blame on my wife (she ran him one day while I was at work).

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Hey it’s Rankine, the Golden Retriever, with a report for all you dogs out there that have two-legged brothers or sisters. My two-legged brother arrive just about a year ago. At first I was wondering what Mom and Dad were thinking! He cried all the time and my one-on-one training time was starting to suffer. Then a few weeks ago, my little brother started to earn his keep by giving my a relaxing back massage – check out the video. If you train them right… it can be a great relationship.

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I have high hopes that 2010 will be Rankine’s year to shine. Rankine just turned 3 in November so we should be through the puppy stages (although the Golden Retriever seems to mature at a slightly slower rate than other breeds). This weekend was the first test of the New Year as our dog club held the first USDAA agility trial of the New Year!

In the fall of 2009, Rankine and I took a handling course focusing on jump sequences and timing. Our efforts paid off as we had a beautiful Jumper and Snooker run on Friday. We also managed to earn a Gamblers qualifier – although it was a close call as his lack of dog walk contacts (both up and down) cost us 14 points.

Unfortunately, our success at the agility games did not carryover to the Standard agility course where we are battling issues with the pause table. In theory, he is supposed to jump on the table and immediately lay down wait for 5 seconds and then go on to the next obstacle. Rankine has decided that instead of laying down, he prefers to sniff the table and completely ignore the world. Of course this is 100% frustrating for me who (a) cannot touch Rankine and (b) never sees this behavior during practice. On Friday I managed to get Rankine to lay down after what seemed like an enternity of begging. On Saturday he ran to the table in the middle of the run at which point I elected to leave the agility ring. My suspected reasons for this behavior (a) he’s an intact male interested in the wonder smells or (b) he is stressed because I am so frustrated by the behavior that he is using the table as an avoidance technique. Whatever the reason, we have our work cut out for us!

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