Rankine and Aaron continue their quest for USDAA National qualifications at this weekend’s Southwest Agility Team (SWAT) trial in Albuquerque, New Mexico.   Today, Rankine will be competing with Ayr (the border collie) in performance versatility pairs with hopes of earning a qualifier that will allow them to compete at USDAA Nationals which will be held in Denver, Colorado.   Rankine will also be trying to earn qualifiers to complete his performance agility championship and perhaps a Grand Prix or Steeplechase qualifier.

Updates to come throughout the weekend – lets hope it’s good!

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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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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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