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Sooooooo excited. We started teaching running A-frame last night to Wikki and CK. Will be interesting to see how it progresses. Hopefully it will be along the lines of ready for the ADAA GP in a few weeks. :)

I thought a correctly taught running contact was an average of 6 months to perfect? Ideally, with no trialling on contact equipment in the meantime. Shows what I know :laugh:

What method are you using to teach it? I'd love to experiment with running contacts one day, unfortunately there are not enough judges around who can accurately judge it on a really quick dog so I'm not sure I want to go down that track just yet. At least 2o2o is black and white to a judge.

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I'd be keen to hear/learn about a method that only takes a few weeks as well.

I made this weird deal with myself that I wasn't allowed to attempt to train a dog in running until I had trained my absolute ideal 2o2o performance. Providing my young dogs continue to hold up in competition, I think my next dog may be running :)

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I have considered doing an online course (probably Silvia's as I like the way she runs hers) and completing it with Charlie. She gives about 4-6months as a guideline, depending on dog and handler. He isn't as fast as any of the others and would be easier to judge, and it would give me the experience and knowledge if I wanted to do it with a future pup. He was trained on a 2o2o but one of the things I identified as a stressor for him was anything that interrupted the flow. I stopped insisting on a stop and got myself a much happier dog :) I had pretty much pulled him out of agility until recently so didn't bother doing anything about his contacts and they are now a bit "hope and pray". Probably at about 85-90% accuracy which I can handle given I had retired him multiple times over the years for not wanting to be out there. So long as he is happy, then so am I :)

Both Delta and Whip have such rocksolid 2o2o performances (even if they are a long way from what I would deem a perfect performance) that I wouldn't want to mess with that. Plus, I like that I can regather my thoughts out there if need be. Having stopped contacts for me means I can break a course into short sequences and don't get myself into such a fluster :laugh:

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DC - interesting you say that. I have pulled Em out of agility as she doesn't like the whole "stopped" contacts idea either. I guess she doesn't have a thorough understanding of the behaviour but that is understandable as we do much more retrieving training. Also, stopping a dog in retrieving indicates to the dog that they are taking the wrong line so there could be some conflict. Anyway! She is SO much happier running flat out in Jumping at the moment so I will leave her be and problem solve this later. I would love to train RC for her as I think it would suit her.....but no equipment!

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I'd be keen to hear/learn about a method that only takes a few weeks as well.

I made this weird deal with myself that I wasn't allowed to attempt to train a dog in running until I had trained my absolute ideal 2o2o performance. Providing my young dogs continue to hold up in competition, I think my next dog may be running :)

I had made the same deal, BUT.....with this dog we are struggling to get the drive I want and figure that running is going to be easier to keep her 'up' than the stop/start of a 2o2o.

We are using a jump bump/stride regulator and at low heights were getting GREAT results in the first session. Now to work position and slowly increase heights.

Worst that can happen is that I have to go back to 2o2o that she has already.

With a drivey dog like yours (or even my older girl) I will stick with 2o2o and a quick release.

DW is a whole other story - that is staying 2o2o for the time being.

ETA - she understand the stride regulator really well - I've done a lot of work with it lately so it seems that transferring it to the AF has been quite easy for her to get. With this dog once something sticks it doesn't come undone/break down, but it has to be 100% or she will show you her confusion.

Oh - and as for judges.......I've seen a scary number of them who think they can judge contacts from the other side of the ring. Personally I need to move my sorry butt and get in there to see for sure.

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We are using a jump bump/stride regulator and at low heights were getting GREAT results in the first session. Now to work position and slowly increase heights.

ETA - she understand the stride regulator really well - I've done a lot of work with it lately so it seems that transferring it to the AF has been quite easy for her to get. With this dog once something sticks it doesn't come undone/break down, but it has to be 100% or she will show you her confusion.

Oh - and as for judges.......I've seen a scary number of them who think they can judge contacts from the other side of the ring. Personally I need to move my sorry butt and get in there to see for sure.

How much ground work did you find you needed to do? By that I mean how long have you had to spend teaching her what the stride regulators mean and how to actually accelerate along the plank rather than slow down given that she previously had a stopped contact? That is the one hold up I have in my mind. If I do decide to retrain Charlie I want to do it properly which means accelerating down the down ramps etc rather than just running through them. He isn't a dog that accelelerates easily, he prefers to just maintain a pace, so I am not sure how well he will go given he is used to decelerating down the ramp if that makes sense?

Are you introducing turns off the contact before you put her on full height or are you going to teach that later?

Sorry if I am being a pain but just curious to know how other people do it :)

As far as judging goes, so long as you are watching the contact zone rather than the dog you should be able to get a fair distance from it. A lot of people get caught up with watching the dog rather than just looking for anything to strike the contact zone. You see it in flyball too, when judging close crossovers you should be looking at the ground where the dogs meet rather than the dogs themselves, otherwise it is inaccurate as they are moving too bloody fast :laugh: the contact zone (and grass for flyball) don't move so they are the objects to fix your gaze on :)

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We are using a jump bump/stride regulator and at low heights were getting GREAT results in the first session. Now to work position and slowly increase heights.

ETA - she understand the stride regulator really well - I've done a lot of work with it lately so it seems that transferring it to the AF has been quite easy for her to get. With this dog once something sticks it doesn't come undone/break down, but it has to be 100% or she will show you her confusion.

Oh - and as for judges.......I've seen a scary number of them who think they can judge contacts from the other side of the ring. Personally I need to move my sorry butt and get in there to see for sure.

How much ground work did you find you needed to do? By that I mean how long have you had to spend teaching her what the stride regulators mean and how to actually accelerate along the plank rather than slow down given that she previously had a stopped contact? That is the one hold up I have in my mind. If I do decide to retrain Charlie I want to do it properly which means accelerating down the down ramps etc rather than just running through them. He isn't a dog that accelelerates easily, he prefers to just maintain a pace, so I am not sure how well he will go given he is used to decelerating down the ramp if that makes sense?

Are you introducing turns off the contact before you put her on full height or are you going to teach that later?

Sorry if I am being a pain but just curious to know how other people do it :)

As far as judging goes, so long as you are watching the contact zone rather than the dog you should be able to get a fair distance from it. A lot of people get caught up with watching the dog rather than just looking for anything to strike the contact zone. You see it in flyball too, when judging close crossovers you should be looking at the ground where the dogs meet rather than the dogs themselves, otherwise it is inaccurate as they are moving too bloody fast :laugh: the contact zone (and grass for flyball) don't move so they are the objects to fix your gaze on :)

With Woo I've done a fair big of plank running so she gets the accel thing. The first few reps we lured with a thrown toy from a restrain and them moved quickly to 'go' from restrain to get her driving ahead with the toy following closely and ending up in front.

So......she gets to run a plank quickly. She gets to drive forward and not look back for the reward as it comes. I've just added those into the jump bump scenario. (We've done a LOT of that over the last few weeks.)

So far so good.

DW has a lot more ground/flat work attached so I haven't gone there yet. (As in haven't asked what process to use.)

By contrast Xena who has a history of jumping off, but has recently been 'fixed' of that had a LOT of confusion about whether to run or not. She thought we were tricking her. (I've decided not to go running with her for the reasons I mentioned earlier.)

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I had made the same deal, BUT.....with this dog we are struggling to get the drive I want and figure that running is going to be easier to keep her 'up' than the stop/start of a 2o2o.

Do you mind if I ask...Did you ask a 2o2o right from the beginning of her DW & AF experience? Or did you put the position on later once she was running them?

We are using a jump bump/stride regulator and at low heights were getting GREAT results in the first session. Now to work position and slowly increase heights.

Thanks, I have seen a few people use stride regulators. Hope it all goes well :)

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I had made the same deal, BUT.....with this dog we are struggling to get the drive I want and figure that running is going to be easier to keep her 'up' than the stop/start of a 2o2o.

Do you mind if I ask...Did you ask a 2o2o right from the beginning of her DW & AF experience? Or did you put the position on later once she was running them?

We are using a jump bump/stride regulator and at low heights were getting GREAT results in the first session. Now to work position and slowly increase heights.

Thanks, I have seen a few people use stride regulators. Hope it all goes well :)

we've always done a stop. i've been slack at maintaining criteria in the ring I have to admit. Training is perfect, if slow.

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I was very impressed with Booker last night at agility training - from originally not being able to get him on the dog walk to then going a million miles an hour over it with no chance of stopping something 'clicked' and he stopped when I said and went slow when I asked :D Yay!

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I was very impressed with Booker last night at agility training - from originally not being able to get him on the dog walk to then going a million miles an hour over it with no chance of stopping something 'clicked' and he stopped when I said and went slow when I asked :D Yay!

thumbsup1.gif Well done :) What method are you using?

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I was very impressed with Booker last night at agility training - from originally not being able to get him on the dog walk to then going a million miles an hour over it with no chance of stopping something 'clicked' and he stopped when I said and went slow when I asked :D Yay!

thumbsup1.gif Well done :) What method are you using?

hmm, I don't really have a method :D very new to agility. Originally started with food to lure him onto the dog walk. I've also been practicing just on our walks - having him up on a ledge and walking next to him and then telling him to stop - then reward when he does.

Also we went to the K9 pro workshop last weekend and all week we have been playing tug and I'm changing over from food reward to tug reward slowly (when i'm more confident that I know what I'm doing) - so we had a little session before we started training on Thursday night and not sure if that made a difference but he was actually quite a different dog..... just listening to me more. It was actually a really awesome training session all round - not just the dog walk part.

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