Contacts!

At the moment Im working nights, in a week on-week off fashion, not far out of London. Given that I still get sleep when not much is happening overnight, it means I have the days to spend at my leisure, and actually have some time for once to get the dogs out and about and do some training. So Ive decided to take up some private 1-2-1 agility lessons so we can focus on specific areas. Yesterday was the first of our lessons at Scramble agility club.

While we did a few sequences, we spent most of the lesson working on contacts and going back to basics. Its what we most definately need given we dont get enough access to maintain behaviours.

Tooheys was initially taught running contacts (despite my reservations prior), and had a really nice 3-4 stride A frame but it wasnt long before his dogwalk contact behaviour started deminishing. So last winter I retaught a new stationary contact behaviour away from the actual equipment, and earlier in the year I translated that behaviour to the equipment itself. Unfortunately I didnt get as much time to introduce it as slowly as I would have liked but he seemed to catch on.

So fastforward to now and Tooheys understands his contact behaviour quite well and he can perform it nicely on the dogwalk, but is struggling a little on the Aframe - he lost his nice running Aframe once we introduced the stationary dogwalk as he lost his massive drive over the top of the frame and started hesitating on the way down only to miss the contact. BUT he also has difficulty stopping himself in position at the bottom so will often overrun and then get himself back on into contact position.

So at the lesson yesterday we discussed the fact that theres no reason he cant have a stationary dogwalk and running Aframe. So we went back to basics to re-increase his drive over the frame and hitting his running target. And wouldnt you know it but the little sod insisted on taking up a perfect 2on-2off contact everytime..without his previous difficulty of stopping in position. Seems I have to decide I want something else for him to decide that he can do what I wanted in the first place!!! So 2on-2off Aframes it is. And hopefully only upwards from here!