Saturday, July 30, 2011

Issues

We are in the midst of the 3 day trial in STL this weekend.  And if you can't guess by the post title it's not going that great.  Both dogs have developed some aversion to contact equipment apparently.

Lyric has become increasingly concerned about teeters the last few trials and this weekend won't do the teeter at all (well, she gets on but only takes a couple steps and jumps off) and subsequently is afraid that the other contacts are also teeters and is getting refusals at those before going up.  Her jumpers runs have been fair-missed a weave pole yesterday and today must have gone around a jump.  I didn't know it until I picked up my scribe sheet though so at least it was a "mental" Q.  Sure thought it was a clean run!

Legend performed her random refusal of the a-frame yesterday and threw in a teeter refusal as well.  She refused the teeter again today but did the a-frame fine??  What drives me so insane is that the always does everything the second time.  Why can't she just do it the first time?  And why, after 4 years of trialing does she do it at all?  And, no she's not injured in any way that I can tell.  Just crazy.  So my plan is to keep working hard on contacts with them at home and also to take them to some other places to work contacts.  We had such a good first 6 months of the year and now she's doing weird stuff and running a little slower-it's always something with dogs huh?  She has gotten 2 jumpers Q's though.  Maybe tomorrow is our QQ day.

Stormy is getting lots of lookers but no takers yet.  She's being very well behaved though-I'm so proud of her.

7 comments:

Sara said...

Gee, I wonder if something is weird with their teeter equipment?

I hope today goes well!

Diana said...

I use to have great teeters. Then they stared going down hill. One weekend all her teeters were called for fly offs. Kathy told me about a DVD from clean run. It's called "teeter from start to finish" by Wendy Pape. I found out that Miley was afraid of the height. The DVD breaks it down into different sections. The height, noise ,movement and something else. Then I also read. Jen Pinders article in clean run, Oct and Nov 2009. I like how she taught the end behavior for little dogs. I hope today is better and no one gets refusals. Good luck.

Rob said...

I guess thats what you get when you work with animals, it's very rewarding when they do everything as expected but so frustrating when they don't. I hope you had a fun time all the same.

Rob said...

I guess thats what you get when you work with animals, it's very rewarding when they do everything as expected but so frustrating when they don't. I hope you had a fun time all the same.

Amy / Layla the Malamute said...

I hope you have a better day today!

Border Collie Mom said...

Not to make any excuses, but there were a lot of problems on Thursday. I wonder if the dogs got used to the rubber contacts and now think something is funny with the non-rubber? We saw a LOT of dogs that could not stop and just slid down to the bottom. First time out Maggie started up the A-frame, stopped, looked at her feet and jumped down like she had stepped in something icky. I don't think she has EVER jumped off an A-frame.

Nicki said...

Very true Rob.

Thanks Lori, makes me feel a bit better but this is not limited to this trial. Plus we have non-rubber contacts at home. It all goes back to Rob's comment I guess.