New agility title for Chewie - Master Jumpers with Weaves
OK, it was for several reasons. It also was my twin daughters' birthday and they turned 30 years old.  Ouch - that was almost worse than when I turned 50!But, Chewie and I were at an agility trial in Minneapolis. We were also there with his cousin Mojo, and her human Gale. For once there were TWO OES competing!  We had the mathematical potential of completing 2 titles, and luckily we did that on one of them! I'm going to backtrack, and explain a little of the title structure in AKC agility. A "Q" is a qualifying run, and there are certain standards at each level - like in Novice you can have a couple faults and still Q. When you get to Excellent and Masters - NO faults of any kind are allowed for a Q. You start in Novice, and with 3 Q's in the class (JWW or Standard) you earn your Novice titles. Then Open - 3 Q's and you earn your Open title. Then Excellent - 3 Q's and you get your Excellent title. Then Masters - it takes 10 Q's, and you are accumulating points to your Championship title. It is a very, long process! Chewie is in Masters for both JWW (jumpers with weaves) and Standard, in Excellent for FAST (a games class). Going into this trial, he had 8 JWW Q's, and 7 Standard Q's. We entered both on all 3 days. Friday he Q'd in T2B - another games class. He won his class and gained 10 points toward that title. It was only offered Friday.He also Q'd in JWW - so we were at 9!!  Standard we had one little oops, so NQ.  Saturday he had an oops in Standard again....grrr. We actually had more of a mutual miscommunication, so just an accident.  Then in JWW, we again Q'd and it was our title!!!  Here is the course:  It was like a maze! If you want to try to learn it - #1 is in the right lower corner...good luck! And to make it even harder - this building is on a lower level, so it has posts...a LOT of posts! You will see what I mean in the video.  Here are the just completed running Chewie and I and ribbons!   Video - This is the course we titled in, from the map above: and then just because it was a crazy and complex course of JWW, here is the Sunday run we almost Q'd in! Sunday we NQ'd in both JWW (above) and Standard. Chewie just ran out of gas by Sunday afternoon. We also had drove home Friday night to do a big therapy dog presentation and program for 100 kids and moms at a Mother's Day banquet. On Saturday we stayed at Gale and Mojo's house, and of course they had to play and run around!!! It finally was too much for Chewie...he was pooped! I also had Bond with, and he got his official wicket measurement height card done. He measured 24.5 inches. Chewie is 23.5 inches. This is a really tight space to run and the posts are surely an added challenge!! But agility is still so much fun. Win or lose we have a BLAST!  |
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got sheep wrote: Win or lose we have a BLAST! Congratulations! |
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| Nice smooth runs, you make it look easy, pity Chewie took the wrong jump. I think in Canada the rules might be slightly different, I think in jumpers and standard we have to have no faults to qualify. In snookers refusals was allowed. Unfortunately for me no runs allow knocking of the jump bars which is where we got nearly all out faults. |
| That is awesome! Congrats team Chewie!  Cindy |
| We are the same with bars - you never can knock a bar, even in Novice. It's a good skill to get polished on, ASAP! |
| Congrats to you & Chewie! I beginning to think it would be easier to list the awards/certifications that Chewie HASN'T won. That list would be shorter.  |
CamVal1 wrote: Congrats to you & Chewie! I beginning to think it would be easier to list the awards/certifications that Chewie HASN'T won. That list would be shorter. Thankfully, when you get a higher title in the same area, it supersedes the lower one....so you don't list it. So his MJP (Master Jumpers with Weaves Preferred) he just earned "assumes" you already have the NJP, OJP and the AJP. (the Novice, Open and Excellent as steps on the way to the Masters.)  He still has an impressive alphabet list though.  Let me try to rattle it off..... UWPCH UCH AKC-CH Masquerade Alice Acres Madness CD RAE2 AXP MJP OFP CA THD, AHBA-JHD, NADSR-WPCH, TDI-DSR plus some other CPE agility titles. I think that's it. He has honorary back packing titles from the Malamute club, as well as the same for Working Samoyed titles. That list includes Show CH's, weight pull CH's, obedience, rally, agility, herding, lure coursing, therapy dog categories. But "Chewie" is just so much easier.  |
| Congratulations! |
Nice job!!! I would have totally run into one of those posts   |
| Congrats !! |
| Yay Chewie! |
| Yay! |
got sheep wrote: We are the same with bars - you never can knock a bar, even in Novice. It's a good skill to get polished on, ASAP! Will do! July will be the month, next two months will only be able to train a few times. |
| Congrats to you and Chewie You two always make it look easy |
| Hi Dawn I finally have time to rent the agility barn to practice Monty's jumping. He is still knocking bars. He may be taking off too soon over the jump and clipping the bar with his hind feet. He is also very responsive to my movements so if I turn slightly he clips the jump as he alters his direction. I am planning on doing grid jumps at 10 feet intervals in a straight line at first. Do you have any recommendations for him getting a cleaner jump? Thanks Tanja and Monty |
Congrats! Looks so nice and easy.......wow, great job Chewie.   |
MontyQs wrote: Hi Dawn I finally have time to rent the agility barn to practice Monty's jumping. He is still knocking bars. He may be taking off too soon over the jump and clipping the bar with his hind feet. He is also very responsive to my movements so if I turn slightly he clips the jump as he alters his direction. I am planning on doing grid jumps at 10 feet intervals in a straight line at first. Do you have any recommendations for him getting a cleaner jump? Thanks Tanja and Monty Jump grids are great to work on this. I'm not sure the 10 foot length will be right. What we do here is have the dogs jump, and with a helper it goes easier. They are watching the dog from the side, and adjust the interval bewteen the jumps based on what they see. You want the rounded jump (not long and flat), with no extra stride in between. If it's just a bit too far, they know they can't get an extra stride in, but will stretch and make long flat jumps - that's what you want to avoid. Then when it looks good, you can measure the distance between jumps and use that when you practice. I've started Bond, and while he is half an inch taller than Chewie, his jump grid distance is actually closer than with Chewie. It's the slight difference in structure that makes a difference. And these two are related! (Uncle/nephew). Another thing is what your response to his downed bars is. This totally varies by the dog. In the beginning, they have little understanding of the significance of knocking bars. Then as they progress, they understand. Softer dogs begin to "care" more, and notice earlier. More exuberant and gleeful dogs seem oblivious for a long, long time! So how you respond needs to be geared to their experience and personality. Another biggy in this is your relationship and level of other training with your dog. If you already do other sports, this is a topic you've already addressed. If its the 1st sport, you are laying groundwork for communicating pleasure or displeasure in how things are going. It can be a real fine line to walk - you want them to know it's not right, but not kill all their enthusiasm for trying it. The movements you make will be an ongoing issue. I still can pull Chewie off by twitching wrong! No pressure on us humans, right?? In our classes we work a lot on the more subtle handler cues and how they affect the dogs - acceleration, decels, shift from the line of direction to the left and right, tilting your body in and away, forward and backwards; angles and height of the directional arm and on and on! Then add in stuff like voice cues, specific motions for directions,supporting jumps or obstacles with eyes and hand while drifting away with your body..... and there is so much we can do to make our teamwork better and better.  |
| Hi Dawn Thanks very much for the tips. Monty is the exuberant and gleeful type of dog which is great as he has a lot of enthusiasm for the sport and he can't wait to run. In fact it can be quite annoying his barking between runs as he eagerly awaits his turn. I don't think he is understands yet that knocking bars is undesirable, I do not reprimand him for it, like you say and my instructor that you don't want the dog to stop enjoying it or get a Hang up for jumps. We usually get him to run the jumps again until he doesn't knock. Agility is the first and only ongoing dog sport for both Monty and myself so it is hard to judge what we need to do exactly to get his jumping right. My instructor Randy is excellent and a really positive trainer but I think that correcting jumping is probably not his strong point as all his dogs and the other dogs in the groups do not have a bar knocking issue. I really think the rounded jump is what we need but I don't think I understand jumps myself enough to get the wanted posture but I will give if a good try. So should I have the jumps at different heights but the spacing between the jumps the same to get the rounded effect, and when he lands on one jump, does he immediately jump the next jump so he is bounding or how many steps in-between jumps? Thanks for your help, it was reading your exploits on this forum that has gotten us in to agility, it's so much fun. |
| The jumps are all the same height and also the space/interval between is the same. The interval/spacing takes a little experimenting. He starts in front of the 1st jump with just enough space to take off and clear the jump (that is the 1st challenge!) I remember doing this with Chewie and taking FOREVER to jump it right so he didn't knock the bar. This is actually the 1st step - don't really bother with the rest of the jumps until he learns to take off (from his rear) and not knock the bar. Then when you add other jumps, he only has space to land with his fronts, and push off with the rears - no extra strides. So it's a push off, land, push off, land sort of exercise. So yes - a bounding sort of jump. This trains his eyes and muscles (called muscle memory) to take off close to the jump, and to get a strong push-off with his rear. It is kind of tedious, and can be frustrating (I'm in the midst of it with Bond now, so I know the pain!) But it's very important to get it down pat before you start running and competing. I learned with Chewie how it pays off in the long run. It's been 5 years since he learned it, but it is so ingrained with him that he still has perfect jumps and rarely takes a bar. It needs to be so much a part of them, that in the joy and adrenaline of a competition, that it's still an automatic thing. |
| Okay, it's expensive to rent the agility hall and I don't have any jumps at the moment so it's going to be a slow process. |
| Check out www.affordableagility.com I'm not sure if they ship to Canada, but they have good and reasonable stuff. I got the 4 portable jumps with a bag for $99. I have 2 sets (8 jumps) and have had them for years. They hold up really well. They have sat out all summer and all winter (some years) here in our MN weather. Maybe your training place would let you borrow or rent a couple jumps? - just a thought. You could go for a bit just doing the one jump exercise at home. |
| Thanks, I might get these as I can easy pack them away, my husband doesn't want lots of equipment around our small yard. Now that Monty is no longer afraid of the teeter, we have this beautiful large and heavy teeter in the garden making the grass go yellow. |
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