Today, at the St. Catharines & District Kennel & Obedience Club Canadian Kennel Club show, Alice won Best of Winners for a point, and THEN SHE WON BEST PUPPY IN GROUP!
I thought the judge was walking over to give the ribbon to the top Mudi in Canada who was beside us. She wasn’t. When she said “thank you all for showing me your puppies today, my best puppy in group is the Swedish Vallhund” I nearly burst into tears. I am so proud of this puppy! Showing in breed is way less fun than playing agility, but she’s a real trooper, she loves to work no matter what the work is, she really inherited her parents’ lack of quit 😉 , she showed her heart out all day (and we had two shows today). She still had a happy face and a spring in her step even after a long LONG day of showing.
This actually puts her (temporarily, I’m sure) into the #2 spot overall, making her the #2 Vallhund in Ontario currently!
A few videos of Alice running an open 12 weave channel to the Manners Minder (we also work 2 x 2’s, but they’re not in this video, she can fairly reliably weave four poles straight up now). There’s also a little of her targeting a mat as early stages of our running dogwalk.
I am varying my position in relation to her and the weaves with every repetition, and I even do some rear crosses in the videos. The OMD folks say you should start varying your position and working on independence from the very beginning, because that way that’s how things just are from the start.
One of the things I love about this puppy (almost 11 months old now) is that she is SO resilient. We had some technical difficulties with the Manners Minder and she just goes with it (at least she knows verbal markers so she knows when she’s right even if the MM doesn’t think she is!). I also love how she pounces at it to try and get it to feed her.
I love that she ignores the neighbor dog barking at her too!
Really loving training her, and really excited about her!
The hot weather broke somewhat so Sue and I took advantage of it and worked the puppies!
Alice is doing great! She’s 10.5 months old now, and she’s for sure in a bit of a young teenager phase, where she knows how to do the equipment so doesn’t really always think she needs me. She is already building speed and she has a ton of confidence. You will see in one of the teeter videos that she comes onto it too fast for her liking out of a tunnel, so she bails off. I absolutely encourage this because safety is way more important than qualifying. You can see the next time she runs onto the teeter with speed, she checks herself.
She worked on the teeter with the TipAssist quite a while ago (at least 2 months ago), but today we lowered the teeter for the babies and had them run the full length. She’s played the “go bang” game in the past also, and has done a lot of work on the baby teeter and also different balancing things so she is confident with unstable surfaces.
I had to walk her down and lead her back to the crate twice today because she didn’t think her turn was over when I said it was…but basically she’s a really easy puppy. That said, she needs a job, and thrives on work, and would be unhappy (and probably a PITA) if she didn’t have an outlet for her working drive. I wanted working dogs, I got working dogs.
I am definitely finding that the OneMind Dogs folks are really right that you need to start adding difficulty right away, like as soon as you have the dog working the obstacle, you add another obstacle, you add distance from the handler and changing handler positions right away. You up your reward rate, but I am definitely finding that this has made the process really flow well for Alice, she has been running sequences since she was really tiny (like 10-12 weeks old, with bars on the ground), so she already has some fluency with chaining obstacles together, and this has made it really easy for her to add new obstacles into sequences as she learns them (this was the first time she’s done a full (lowered) teeter on her own (i.e. without me lowering it slowly for her), and as soon as she’d done it a few times, I right away added other obstacles before and after (same with the a-frame), so now it’s just another obstacle she’s added to her repertoire. She still goes through the side of the tire occasionally, but other than that she is really working incredibly well.
I’m really amazed at how quickly she is coming together already. Love her!
It’s HOT here. But holy cow, when I bred this litter I wanted sane, correct Vallhunds with serious working drive. I got what I wanted IN SPADES. Alice literally DEMANDS to work and she will keep working and working until I make her stop. This is not to say she doesn’t get puppy brain, because of course she does, but holy moly am I loving working with her!
Here are some videos from training today. We worked the lowered a-frame and Alice says “no problem!”, she’s running over it enthusiastically and taking it well in a small sequence. She’s also working 2 x 2 weaves really well at home so I put them in a speed circle and small sequence to help her start seeing them as an obstacle in sequence early on (a mistake I made with Zhora is NOT doing this until we started trialing and this weakness in our training popped out). This puppy is already COLLECTING to go into the 2 x 2! The 2 x 2 speed circle is something I got from my training partner and BFF Sue Verbocy, and it’s ENORMOUSLY helpful to the dog in learning how to collect, learning how to see weaves as an obstacle in a course, and just generally helps with fluency with weaves. You can do it even with babies once they are performing one set of 2 x 2’s well, since you can do it with just single sets of 2 x 2’s (as I did here) and other obstacles in between, so it’s not hard on their growing bodies.
She is at the stage where she has the taste for how fun agility can be, so she often makes her own decisions about what she’ll do, but that’s normal and just something we will work through. Overall I am beyond impressed with how well she’s doing at this very early stage! She’s only 10.5 months old!
(please excuse the barking, the adult dogs wanted it to be their turn, nothing like training with barking dogs to make actual trial environments seem tranquil by comparison….)
Here is a short video of 10 month old Alice running through a wide open set of channel weaves (they’re stick in the ground poles set as channels). I misplaced one reward throw partway through this session and so she was popping out where the misplaced reward was (prior to that she’d been blasting through all the way). Just goes to show you how critical reward placement can be! VERY pleased with her. She is MAD when we stop working, she will work for as long as I want her to. Quitting while she’s still wanting more is easy, since she always wants more! I have to be strict with myself about stopping sooner rather than later and avoiding “just one more” syndrome.
She’s working two sets of 2 x 2 poles set apart from each other, and wide open channels. This way she is getting the idea of weave poles with no real stress on her body. I am making sure to move around myself so my position and movement (or lack thereof) are not a factor. I am really aiming for solid independent weave performance.
I actually videoed after we’d already been working for a bit, so this is towards the end of the (very short) session. It’s hard to throw accurately while videoing so I will use a tripod next time.
She’s in season but other than making her more cuddly than usual (she is the least cuddly of my Vallhunds usually), it hasn’t really affected her.
I was lucky enough to attend the Melanie Miller seminar at Stone Hill Training Center in Central Square NY this past week. Zhora and I attended the Masters day on Monday, and on Wednesday Alice and I attended Puppy in the morning and Green Dog/Young Dog in the afternoon.
It was a wonderful two days! I usually feel like if I get one or two things out of a seminar (things I will actually use), then I got my money’s worth. Well, I MORE than got my money’s worth!
The concept of the “mouse line” (which I think comes from Jenny Damm, IIRC), where the handler should be running where a mouse would be running.
The idea of teaching obstacle independence well enough that a step towards the correct obstacle should be enough for the dog to commit to it, allowing the handler to move to where they need to be next.
The idea of me needing to SHUT THE HELL UP and just tell the dog where to go, perhaps reinforce that they are correct with a verbal (like “weave” or “jump”), but not muddy the water with using the wrong verbals or too many verbals.
Zhora did great on a horribly hot and humid day, she came out of her crate raring to go every time, and I only had to really rev her up halfway through her last turn of the day, and she rallied wonderfully. Love her work ethic so much. On one of my turns Melanie said “you’ve got some moves, girl!”, which I took as a compliment!
Alice was a revelation. I haven’t done much of anything with her for a couple of weeks, so I wasn’t expecting much. She did well enough running a course in the afternoon that one of the people who were there all day asked me if she was really the same puppy as in the puppy session in the morning. She worked her butt off! If I am clear with my cues, she knows and does her job, and does it with speed! I really credit the OneMind Dogs puppy stuff I did with her with this for sure. She had a couple of zooms when her brain was getting a bit fried, but she came right back and worked. And I believe in USING the zoomies (you will see in the videos that I just use her momentum to start running where I want her to go), I think this helps with enthusiasm and it also helps with developing the “team” aspect of the sport. She has a really impressive work ethic.
I didn’t get any videos from Zhora’s day, but here are three from Alice’s. Thanks so much to Sue for videoing as always!
Alice is coming along nicely, not worried, learning well, focused. I need to work on obstacle focus, but I’m happy with how she’s doing, especially since right now we’re really only playing one day a week.
She’s in a bit of an 8 month old shithead phase, so today we did a bit of much-needed reminders about Crate Games and tricks and relationship building. She’s wonderful anyway, it’s normal testing the boundaries stuff, and it’s quite easy to pull her back to being her usual self. I wanted a strong-willed dog, and Vallhunds are that! She face planted while practicing today and got right back up and went back to work, not much phases her so far, which I love. And she is being great with Sue’s new puppy Blast for such a hellion!
(she is not actually weaving 12 poles, we’re still on wide open channels, but she does do a few in line)
Cora (AKA Popcorn), Alkemi Corona del Roble LS just became Alkemi Corona LS RATN! She earned her first title today at age 8 months (the first title for any of the C litter puppies): Barn Hunt Novice!
Cora lives with her uncle (Zhora’s brother) Lobo, Alkemi Beowulf del Roble LS, who was the first Swedish Vallhund to earn the Barn Hunt Open and Senior titles, so little Cora comes by it honestly.
Congratulations to Cora and her owner Jan! The Zhoraberts are kicking butt already!
We’ve been doing bits here and there but really haven’t done much other than some very basic things, and look what she can do!
Love this puppy so much. She’s 8 months and one day old. She does a few tiny jumps once a week or less (in case you’re wondering). Love her focus and working drive, love how she isn’t afraid to be wrong, and I LOVE how bombproof she is so far!
Really excited about how fast she’s running and how she’s taking distance and driving to obstacles. I also LOVE that she reads the deceleration cue at the wrap perfectly:
Love how she gets more confident as she goes along!
