At first, I was going to keep this under my hat. Our little private moment that we have every single morning on the way to work because I am so good at getting up early enough to have our private moment every day before work that involves dragging heavy things around and getting wet and dirty before it’s time to get paid to get wet and dirty and drag heavy things around. It’s the dirty, draggy, damp hobby part of day.
I thought, maybe this could be a surprise for the internet. One day, I just saunter out onto my blog, in a bathrobe, sipping a nice cold beer straight from the cocktail shaker, and am all, “Oh. By the way. Internet. In our spare time, since we weren’t able to whip up that documentary film about the shady underbelly of dog agility which would be SO FASCINATING to EVERYBODY, I taught someone something and he’s really good at them and SURPRISE, internet!”
And then Gustavo would be the world champion agility dog and somebody would make a documentary about us and I would have a personal trainer and my foot wouldn’t hurt and we would win the lottery and buy a ranch and also someone would bring brownies that have salted caramel on them.
So I guess our little secret is out. We have a long ways to go. But someone is very, very, very happy about this project because in case you haven’t figured it out, ie, you are not one of my agility pals, you are like my Mom maybe and you wish Gary was in the photo and hope that I’m wearing sunscreen, it involves running as fast as you can, every single time. No stopping. Ever again.
Okay, that first picture creeped me out really badly! I was trying to figure out what was going on and what was wrong with Gustavo, then _whoa, hi there_ eyes!
no stopping ever is the future of agility. go for it! this road is not without it's dangers, but it certainly feels right.
standard will suck forever because of the table, but that's only a teensy exception to no stopping ever.
valpig
I found a dark chocolate, salted caramel mini cupcake recipe. I'll bring those to your ranch. Can my dogs visit? They would never harm any of team small dog!
if this was facebook, i would put a little thumbs up next to it. learn to love the joys of no stopping
Salted fudge is better, but I haven't a clue what it would do to eyes, polkadots maybe?
NO stopping, just running, no stopping, just running, NO stopping…..ever, ever, ever again. It's good for the soul and the eyes will just spin around and around and all will be right with the world. GO GU! Never look back……"Over and out", says The Cosmic Muffin.
The photo of Gustavo is a masterpiece. It met me at 7.30am and I just know today is going to be ok now.
Apparently there is a recipe that exists for brownies with a layer of bacon on top.
Heck I will take any kind of salted caramel chocolate ANYTHING! Well, I might peel off the bacon. If you are bringing them to my future ranch of lottery winning then bring your dogs, bathing suits and the bartender will be mixing tiki drinks! If you bring them to my normal, regular every day ranch, then dogs have to stay in trucks.
So far this has been a very fun project because Gustavo is in love with running dogwalk plank. And robot awaits him when he does it right. So far so good!
Great I'll see you when the bartender arrives!
How funny does the MM make the dog? I have been doing some basic jump to MM work and Pan is so happy the game doesnt involve me at all. She thinks the MM and her have a special relationship and all she has to do is do the jump and the MM gives her the glory of its guts. If I try to call her back you can see she is all 'hang on woman, I'm in the middle of something here'
My Word Verification for this comment is CHEABLER, that so should be a real word
I too have just discovered the great joy of all running, no stopping. It is like a drug. I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong, but I'm so addicted I can't seem to find the time to go look up an article or a video or wherever they explain the right way to do it.
So you're saying I should have bought one of those robots way back when Hammacher Schlammacher or whoever was dumping them at half price eh? Ooops.
Alaska, explore Silvia's page under "training"
http://silvia.trkman.net/
She has a great section on running contacts. We run our A-Frame, but are chickensh** about the dogwalk. Maybe one day.
Yes, Silvia is one of our agility heroes, and we are using her method too! Lots of repetitions, every day, don't raise the board until you are at 100% success rate. Pretty simple.
I taught Ruby a running dogwalk like this (except w/o Robot), and I didn't vary my position enough, so at this stage with Gustavo I'm making sure to change sides, sometimes be stationary, sometimes running with him, sometimes ahead, which is hard because you have to STARE at yellow and have good timing (for me, with the Robot to beep it and shoot out the treat).
We haven't started turns yet, but I will be building those in soon as well.
This is how I taught him his a-frame, the same leave early for work and a bazillion repetitions, and this is one of my PROUDEST training efforts with Gustavo, it is very consistent. Just by channeling Silvia.
Uh oh, in the time I took to write this, I am missing my leaving early window! Yikes!