Every time I hear people say flyball dogs are out of control, it makes me want to put obedience titles on my dogs.
In any case, we had flyball practice tonight, then a few of us stayed late after flyball to work some obedience with our dogs.
First off, flyball. We are still on the quest to fix Koira's turns. You can see in the video of her first session of practice that we were trying different props a few times trying to fix her double hitting. But, a low single bump was making her drop her butt too low, so we put in the triple. The next time we came out and practiced with her, which I didn't get video of, we used the triple with an additional PVC jump over it, about another 2 inches taller. I'm not really sure if it's helping or not.
For the obedience afterwards, I decided to just take out one dog, and picked Pallo for no particular reason. We worked a bit on attention, since he was still in flyball mode a bit. It took some rewarding for looking at me a few times before he started paying attention to me, but then we did some decent practice with heeling for a step, doing fronts, sits/downs/stands, etc.
Then the group did some group down stays and sit stays. I've never really done a lot of stay practice with my dogs (they "wait" much more often). Pallo did awesome though. He snapped into position immediately when I told him to, didn't budge an inch as I walked away from him, stared intently at me the whole time until I returned (I think we did about 20 seconds or so). He did both the sit stay and and down stay awesome like.
Then, for kicks and giggles, we decided to practice stand for exam with a friend. She showed me what to do first (I've never taken an actual obedience class, so am super new to all of this). I practiced with Pallo, having him stand, stay, walking away, then walking back, feeling along his back, returning to position, and releasing him. He took a single step while I did the touching his back part. Then my friend helped out and I had Pallo stand, stay, then I walked about five feet away while my friend approached him, felt his back, walked around behind him, came back over to me, then I walked to him, around him, and released. He took one step, when I returned and walked behind him. Pretty darn good, I thought, for his first ever time practicing it.
I'm thinking the key to obedience is to play a few hours of flyball first...
I am insisting the My Vickie learn from your post today. Seriously, I agree. The key to obedience is to play a few hours of flyball (or just throw it Vickie) ball first.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the help in teaching My Vickie
Bert
I feel your pain on the box turns. I am at my wit's end with Sophie's box turn. I think I need to borrow the team box and just work on it a few times in the morning and night to get that muscle memory going.
ReplyDeleteI also get infuriated when people say flyball dogs are out of control. My obedience trainer used to say that and it drove me bonkers. I finally pointed out that my dog can work in the midst of chaos because she learned to not be distracted in flyball.
Yes we do obedience training with Wizz who also does flyball. She has just passed her Gold KC award (already has her Silver & Bronze) as you can see on her latest post :-)
ReplyDeleteI took Steve out and threw frisbee for him until he wouldn't run anymore before his last rally trial :D
ReplyDeleteI love training obedience (and rally). Truly. It's a completely different world from flyball, but I find it so interesting and grounding and I just enjoy it so thoroughly.
And I freaking love it that my dog can do both.
Fun! More dogs should do both :)
ReplyDeleteI'll add that for the stand one of the first things I do is a little bit of light pushing on their sides. It works with the oppositional reflex and I reward when the dog tightens up against the pressure.