MUST.BE.PATIENT!!!

PATIENCEEEEEEEEE PATIENCEEEEEEEE PATIENCEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Patience is something that doesn't come very easy to me. I really have to work quite hard at it. I know some people don't think so since I have taught AMP so many tricks and re0train RDW, but really I have to tell myself a lot to be patient and it'll come :) AMP just likes to remind me of that right there!

On Monday when I tried to the RDW I seriously wanted to just give up! I was done with trying to get her to figure it out, nothing was working from the last session and session 2 of that day was getting better, but still nothing worth getting too excited about! Then there was yesterday and it got better and now TODAY!! She was an absolute genius :) :) Minus my 2 sucky throws ( really I was a good softball pitcher..haha) and 2 could of been betters she was giving me the best striding that she has at this height yet. I.am.completely.thrilled :)

Of course I should know this by now that with AMP it's all about patience. She is a brilliant dog, but her high drive energy sometimes blocks the way of her thinking juices ;) I wouldn't change it for the world because once we have got things figured out she is going to be SUPERB! So for now I will just wait her out and keep on working at it!

And now the video of the smarty pants herself :)

Are ya bored yet?

You have gotta be bored with RDW videos by now?!?! I know I am!!! I am starting to think that I need to start bribing AMP into just doing it right and that way we can be done :) Hmm. Possibly if I write it on a spread sheet for her with some pictures it would work. Although she would probably crumble it up and throw it at me ;)

Today it went better than yesterday started! Horray for that! The little things guys. She did try doing this new thing- I told you if it was possible AMP would try it- and hit with her front feet a couple times. The first time she tried it, it was just a skip and she didn't put her foot down right, but then she did 2 or 3 after that and she was actually hitting them after I watched the video. I am not sure how much of that I should reward or if at all, but I guess if it is getting her in the contact and she is comfortable doing I don't see it to be a problem. More than likely it will change when she gets ore height. I guess we just keep movin' along!

Maybe I will post a video of her doing all her silly tricks later-that'll be more exciting :)

It's gotta be the lucky boots :)

My fake Uggs are lucky I tell ya :) I wore them on Saturday at an agility trial running Dakota and got a 51 point snooker- and now?? I get a MUCH better RDW session out of AMP!!! It's definitely the boots!!! Can't imagine what the real Uggs have for luck :D

Anyway if you didn't know or couldn't tell by now I am super obsessive! YAY! Me and my border collies get along so well for a reason :) It basically drove me nuts all day how dysfunctional her RDW session went this morning :( I just really wanted to fix it!! Like a helpless little border collie that comes off his 2o2o contact and tries to quickly fix it before the walk of shame. That'd be me! Fortunately for me I am in control to do that :) So I did!

Really it doesn't bother AMP she likes doing anything involving me and toy, so she is always game :)

This session went MUCH better :) :) :) She would jump on and off on some of them, but that was because of my poor ability at throwing that toy right where I want it to be :/ Wish Babe Ruth could of given me some lessons of the whole throwing aim thing, so we just have to make due with my special skillz. I don't expect her to stay on when the toy is off center that will come at a later date, so if she doesn't not a big deal. The point is that the ones she did hit were better! Not nearly as many gaaaahhhhhh moments :) So were on to big and better things now and will continue on. Hopefully work, school, and holidays won't force us to take some much time off from it!

it must have been the turkey

3 days of no RDW training.....yea probably not so good.

It didn't go too bad, more less it was what I expected, so at least it wasn't worst right? :)

I probably should of just quit while I was ahead in this one since we had a couple conflicts through-out but we gotta work through those too!

Not much else to say about it other than we still need work!

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and I almost forgot it was AMP's Birthday yesterday! Don't tell her I didn't post this yesterday.... Can't believe she is already 2 and I am sure the rest of the world is saying I can't believe she is 2 and hasn't hardly done and shows ;) Psh showing is for dummies :p Being obnoxious outside the ring watching is what the kool kids do :)

And I leave you with a crazy Spider Monkey picture :)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Were getting more consistent :) YAY! Still need to work on trying to get some of those reps deeper!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to you all!!! Go eat LOTS of Nom Noms :)

If its possible AMP will try it!

I tell ya the girl really wants to just test EVERY scenario ;)

Went out for our RDW session today. Mind you the board has NOT moved the snow had NOT moved ( I really wish that would move), NOTHING has moved! I started her back where she was successful and what does she do? I was thinking maybe a bad rep? Oh no she goes around the board! huh? Must have been a fluke! Oh no she then did it two more times- dork! SO we went up to being on the board and then it all came back to us :) haha She only had to try one go around after that to be sure that wasn't the right option. The rep after that wasn't good because I started her a little further up to just make sure she would go on and then after those we went back to where she is successful and she did GREAT minus the one whoops!!

Overall I am still quite happy with how she is doing! I will stay at this height at least for another session or until she is getting on it from the start at the very least!

Picturessssss!!!!

I know two posts in one day, but this blog is in desperate need of THE Princess pictures :)

So little words and lots of pictures :)

I haz toy I iz awesome!

Dork :)

Wow AMP I am impressed- A normal pose :)

AMP and her peeps!

Uh we might need to get that tongue checked out :/

Du dun du dun du dunnnnnn

Perty :)

And I leave you with a snowy face AMP :)

sNOw Stopping me :)

I am bound and determined to get this RDW and MN and it's crabby little snowing sessions aren't going to take me down :p so there! ha!

As you saw that last session was one I would rather just be forgotten :( I expected that on her first session, so I guess when that one went good I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up too high for it to keep going that way ;) So we took some time off and then it snowed and I wanted to cry, but I decided it wasn't going to stop my training quite yet!

Which brought us to today :)

I started her on the plank since she isn't able to get too crazy from that still of a stand point :) That went good so I moved back a bit and she had good separation, but not deep enough which last time meant we were too close. I didn't tug with her, but I did tell her she was a good girl because she is doing the correct striding. Second move back wasn't quite far enough yet and then the third time we hit it spot on :) YAY! She hit every single one after that good :) I didn't do as long of a session today since I don't want to risk ANYTHING!!!

I am just quite relieved that we only had a small hiccup at this height :)

It's a good thing she is cute :)

GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* clearing throat* Now that I have got that out of my system I shall explain :)

Went to do the plank this morning- Horray--or no :( Remember when I posted before about sharing the bad results clearly I wasn't prepared for what was to come :( Eeks!

We are still at the new height and she really just couldn't hit it at all from the same distance that we had been at. I then went a little closer. Had a few nicer reps and then boing on boing off :( It's sorta like the " clap on clap off light" minus it really isn't that handy. I tried varying with her distance and nothing seemed to be reliably working, so as you will see at the end of the video we went back to 2 feet on the board 2 feet off the board. There I got good results, so we will probably start there in the next session!

Sadly the plank has to be put away :( Apparently Minnesota is going to start acting Minnesota like and have snow..blek! This will not help the RDW stuff, but we will try to over come it :)

Raising the bar..umm..plank

This morning we ventured out into the cold.....er VERY cold MN morning to do our RDW practice. Horray us :) I feel like this RDW stuff has made me a more dedicated person? :)

We moved the plank up a whole 4 inches...wait until you see my awesome way of raising it :)

To say the least I was surprised that she did this well with it. I know to the average person watching they are thinking what a lost cause, but I am after all not the average person, I am rather a person who really wants her dog to have a RDW :) a.k.a trying to look at the bright side of things with determination. :)

THE princess tried some quite creative things in this session which is actually nice to see. Rather than doing the same behavior over and over she was trying to change it up which tells me that she is trying and that she understands that no reward means you need to change. This is good :) So looking at it that way even the bad ones are good ones, but shhhh we don't want to tell her that! No we just do like we did at the last height wait her out and let things get settled in before we make any adjustments.

Aaaaand never to bore you there is video :)



We are now crawled back in the house under blankies away from the bitter cold.

That feeling

People always say they are grinning from ear to ear. I always wanted to know what that feeling was like. I am sure I have felt a variation of that feeling or come close to it and heck even felt it and don't remember. Today it has come back to me :)

I did another session today with AMP and the RDW. Her very last two sessions were good session one was showing a light and session two was looking like we were almost there and today? Today we saw that light :) :) :) She nailed the plank today. She only had one horribly bad one due to the toy placement I would say, but maybe she just didn't stride whatever it was, it was one stinkin' wrong rep out of like 6 totally kick ass reps!!!

I know that to the rest of the world especially the non-running contact people they probably don't understand the reason for the joy, but to see that your dog is finally understanding something that is in their minds probably intensely complicated is just an ear to ear grinning feeling :) I have worked SO hard on AMP and wanted to give up SO many times, but I just felt I had to keep trying. I am sure glad I did. I now have a dog that can run a slightly raised plank which she couldn't even stay on the plank before! WOW! Go Princess :)

The next session the plank with be raised about 4 inches and we will go from there :)

Enjoy the video from today until then!

Not even Columbus discovered things this BIG :)

So maybe he discovered America and stuff and traveled like a million miles doing it and now we all live on this little round green and blue planet. Our home is one of those green splots surrounded by some water. Not really that big of a deal right? especially since he could of choose a different part of the world which was MUCH warmer thank you very much. hmph

I think my discovery of AMP's RDW has truly been quite the work in its self. No traveling needed for this one (yet) it has plenty of its own problems right in my back yard..or it did. I would like to look at me as the counselor to AMP's RDW :) Clearly the little guy was having some problems that he just didn't know how to express :( So dun dun dun counselor Kaitlyn to the rescue..I didn't even need schooling for that ;)

I did TWO session yesterday for AMP's RDW :) Decided I would like to see what happens! The results were fantastic!!!

---->The first session:
My goal was to slowly back chain her to find a spot where she can be successful in having a good stride while having a nice stride in the yellow too :) We started at like 3 feet and just reversed from there. I got to about 7 feet and she was doing pretty good. It was pretty close to the yellow and blue boundary line ( Mexico verses America). I would prefer she was more in American ( obvious reasons) however I figured we were getting nice strides for the most part, so we can stop there :)

-----> Session Two:
Started at 7 feet once again and she did good there for a rep, so I moved her back to about 10 feet and VOILA! That's the winner ding ding ding :) She can hit very nice right at about 10 feet :) Her rear feet separation is beautiful and he stride across looks very nice and we are all happy!!!

The plan is that if she does well today we are going to move it on up :O It is scary, slightly, but I am feeling confident with our success and her understanding :)

Now the video for you all to see for yourselves :)



So now you understand why Columbus isn't even half as good as me :p tee hee!

Even the bad :)

I am even letting you all in on the not so good sessions of our RDW adventures :) lucky you!

Bad probably isn't a good word for it- more like wrinkly clothes. Right now we are like working with wrinkly clothes we just need to slowly iron out the wrinkles one by one :)

In this session I tried moving her back after the rep to about 3 feet. Since when she eventually (crossing fingers) gets to a dogwalk she won't be coming onto the down plank right at the apex it'll be from a couple feet before that. This however caused some issues with her not wanting to drive to the toy completely if she had a few bad reps. She decided that there really wasn't a point in getting there too quick if no rewarded was going to be given in return. Of course AMP you always want to know what's in it for you ;) So we will be working on better long distance sends. Good thing that I saw in this session was the great hind feet separation. She definitely had a lot of that action going on and it was just not in the correct spot due to her not being loaded in a natural spot for all the stars to aline ;) No problem we will get to that wrinkle next. I think if I keep looking at this as a wrinkly shirt I can keep moving along ;) The iron never fails on shirts and I guess if worse comes to worse to the dry cleaners she shall go :)

RDW 2

This session didn't seem to go as well. I think I have figured out though that it first off helps for her to do some " energy wasting" before the plank and second helps if she is rocking back on her rear when I release her. At the end of the session she started doing the best because of those things, so I am going to try them with the next session and see how it goes ;)

I have a decision problem :/

I have come to the conclusion that I lack major skillz in the making a decision department! I could practically be a millionaire if I had a penny for every time I have changed my mind about training the dogs something.

Judging by the current trend I should probably just stick with my first idea and go with it because I somehow always end up back there :) I suppose this isn't the greatest trait to have, but hey at the end of the day..er...year I do eventually get a decision made. This is probably the leading reason for AMP not knowing very much in agility. I just didn't and still haven't decided how I wanted to train some of the obstacles. Thank goodness for the pressure of waiting to actually run the dog before she is like 11 years old to push me along. Who says peer pressure is bad? ok seriously don't always give into pressure though ;)

I am sure by now you are thinking so what have you changed your mind about NOW!?!?

I am trying one last time to get AMP a RDW. Here are my very valuable reasons....

1) I.love.RDWs. Jinx's is SO much fun to have, it brings a new element of excitement to the game and fun :)
2) If I taught a re-train shouldn't I be able to teach a from scratch dog?? Logic says that would be true, so I am going to go with logic--my training abilities are proving otherwise, so I shall ignore them!
3) I think she would enjoy it :) I really think once I get the point of what I want across to her she will really like it and be very good at it!!

So there is my reasons :) They all seem quite valid to me!! So here we are off on our new adventure! We have got the whole winter to get it down and hopefully come out in the summer with a bang!!!

Here is her 2nd session technically. The first one was in the barn with Dictionary there to help. This was my first time being along...it was a bit scary, but we didn't do too shabby! There will be MANY more videos to come, so ya'all best be prepared!

<-------I learn a little about myself ------->

Just when I think I know a lot about myself my dogs prove me different. Each dog I train I learn a little more about training and more about myself too! It is quite astonishing :)

Saturday my mom, me, and a friend ( lets call her Dictionary- you've heard about her on here before I am pretty sure) went out to the arena to play with the doggies :) The baby dogs got to play and the adults were able to do course work--YAY!

Dictionary is like RC extraordinaire :) If there is a problem she helps me repair it! So the problem? AMP's running A-frame and running DW. Yea yea shush I am trying a couple more things with her RDW before I give up all together ( for now).

First came the A-frame and what I thought was going was not :/ Motion was hiding the badness >:/ We slowed it all down a bit, actually stopped it, and went from there. voila success :) I, of course just had to be forced to be patient and let AMP settle into it :) Looks like we have a bright future for her A-frame.

The DW I was very skeptical about. I really have felt like I have tried lots and lots and LOTS and did mention LOTS of things. I came down to the idea that he stride just wasn't ideal for the RDW :( I really hated having to admit this. I want a RDW! I love Jinx's and would like to have the same with AMP. Dictionary had some clever ideas in mind, so we gave 'em a whirl. Had DW on the low table and started with AMP on the table and threw the toy. it went a little something like stride--boing right over the yellow. haha Back chaining it was :) That went well :) We managed to get her all the way back to two feet on the board and two feet on the table! She did 3 good ones in a row :) That is the best I have ever gotten. The theory is that the toy needs to be a longggggggggg ways out, so she isn't changing her stride in anticipation for the toy while on the plank and of course patience once again. I need to just sit through the bad ones and keep working at it rather than assuming it isn't working.

So there is still hope for AMP in the RC world :) All thanks to the dictionary of course :)

I guess I already knew this about myself, but I just need to be reminded that I have to be patient!!!