Hyper Flight Practice Update

Zio and I headed down to Dallas and met up with Si and his daughter Tristen at the Hyper Flight practice. I'm very impressed with their organizational skills. They began the practice by putting every dog's name on a white board and organized it by what each person wanted to work on with their dog. Practicing like this focuses that particular time segment on one or two dogs which gives them the personal attention they might need. It also allows for plenty of helping eyes.

The biggest tip I picked up was that the whole team plays cheerleader for the successes of which ever dog is practicing at the moment. Such a reinforcement tool!! There were obviously other things I learned, like a different way to do passing drills, puppy training, tug training, and honing Zio's wall turns.

Zio did great showing what he can do on the wall and actually stayed focused on the tug... even with distractions going on. Well worth the trip to Dallas!

From Scratch!

I didn't realize it had been so long since I had updated this. We had TONS of fun at the Spring Fling Tournament hosted by Hyper-Flight. Zio raced on the Off and Running Team both days as well as running singles matches each day. My little man was exhausted Saturday night and again Sunday night.

He posted new best singles times both days with a 4.686 on Saturday and a 4.583 on Sunday. Racing on Sunday was more fun than I can describe. We ran Izzy, Luigi, Zio, and Violet consistently in the 23 second range. We tied for first, but lost the second tiebreaker (best head to head times) by .016 seconds! Considering that we haven't really practiced our timing on passes with a green dog, we did pretty good! Almost every race was clean Sunday.

The discouraging parts was that Zio reverted back to punching the box instead of using a swimmers turn and pretty much ignored the tug. I'm guessing that he's too distracted by everything going on around him that he loses focus.

Elizabeth, from Hyper Flight, was extremely helpful and talked to us about teaching a wall turn. In a nutshell, train the dog to jump against a vertical surface and push off from the wall (doing a swimmers turn using a wall). They have to turn around and push off very quickly or they would fall to the ground.

To be honest, I didn't really embrace the idea initially. I've spent four months teaching him to turn and he does it great here at home. My mind tried to convince me that he just needed to re-enforce home habits at the tournament. The more I thought about it though, the more I came to realize that after four months of great practices at home... he still wasn't getting better at tournaments. The time to change was now.

Without much knowledge, I started trying to get him to turn against the wall (without much success). He would get his front feet up, but his rear was planted on terra firma. I kept at it for a few days and wasn't seeing improvement. Elizabeth had mentioned that it may require getting a piece of plywood and starting with it almost flat (to get them to use all four legs) and gradually angling it until it was vertical. I didn't have plywood, so I took a chaise lounge and leaned it slightly against a wall. The first time or two, Zio would walk over it and then push off with his front legs. I decided to try a 45 degree angle and amazingly... he leaped completely over it and did a perfect swimmer's turn off the wall!!!! I'll try to get some video tomorrow, but I'm very, very encouraged by his eagerness to bounce off the wall.

I may have an opportunity to go with some teammates and practice with the Hyper Flight team in Dallas Sunday! What a great opportunity to get some training tips and soak up some expertise to share with the team!

More Progress

Zio continues to improve with tug play and I think we've settled on the game he likes to play with it... killing it and waiting for me to try and take it away from him. I guess it's not the standard tug play, but it's one that he really enjoys playing.

The other thing that has helped the most is that I can put his props up and simply command him to the box and return for a Gooberlicious treat. Now he is able to do ten turns and play tug for a bit in the same time it used to take to do two turns.

Tomorrow night we head to Bonham!!!

Team Practice 3/7

I noticed a BIG improvement in Zio's focus on the tug and ignoring the other dogs yesterday. The "Step on It" team was practicing in the left lane, so I set up the box in the right lane for Zio to practice. We would wait until the other team was between runs and then practice some turns. Although he looked at them a couple of times while we were waiting, he was focused on what he was supposed to do! Awesome!

The negative is that his box turn disappeared during practice once again. He keeps reverting to punching the box. I liked Connie's suggestion that he not be allowed to go to the box without his props... even during warm-up time at tournaments.

Better

I'm continuing to work on making the tug more fun. Zio seems to like to play "kill it" now. I let him pull it from my hands and he grabs a knot and shakes his head back and forth to kill it. I'm sure it's some instinctual thing, but he still LOVES his old floppy frisbee because he can do the same thing with it. I just need to keep my fingers out of the way though!

We've continued to use all of the props... chute, board, and cone. I've added a few pieces of PVC along the exit side of his return (parallel to the run) so that he turns tighter coming back. He stepped on them once and he's never done it again. We'll try without the cones tonight or tomorrow.

Pictures from the Barkin' in Bonham/Canton can be viewed here. There are two of him running toward the camera on page 2 (Zio is the one with the purple Z-Control Skid boots) and then he's in a few of the team pictures at the end.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Sometimes, it seems like we make real progress and develop some consistency. Other times, it seems like we're back at the beginning.

I tried removing the cone Tuesday evening and he reverted back to punching the box. I put the cone back in and he was still punching the box. I offset the starting position to the side and he did a proper turn, so we quit for the evening.

Last night, I kept the offset starting position for a while and then tried it head on again. He went back to punching the box, so I've reconstructed the "chute" with the board blocking him from punching the box and he got his form back on the turn.

I'm torn between continuing to try and develop the tug drive or switching to a frisbee as reward. The frisbee REALLY motivates him to return, but I'm afraid that he'll eventually realize that I don't actually throw it for him and I'll be back to square one.

Tug Play

We ran a handful of turns before dinner tonight and another handful after. He's got the box turn going good with the cone about six feet in front of the box and a token board to jump over. I'll probably take the cone out tomorrow and see if he still has the muscle memory going from all of the practices before the tournament.

I've been trying to find a way to make the tug more fun for him. He acts like it's the greatest thing since cheeseburgers here at home, but in practice, I might as well try to get him to play with a brick. He gets distracted by the other dogs or the balls and pretty much ignores rewards. I can eventually call him and he'll pay attention, but by then he's forgotten about a reward and ignores the tug. I used a frisbee as reward on the second day of Barkn' in Bonham and he was MUCH more interested in that, but it would be better if the tug was exciting for him.