Agility training

Ok. AKC question here. I'm trying to learn how their title system works with T2B, FAST, MACH etc.

So if you move into Excellent B and then say you Q in standard but don't Q in jumpers. Would you get any championship points from your standard run. Or do you only get championship points from your QQ runs?

You get speed/championship/MACH/PACH points from any qualifying Masters run (no longer Excellent A and B, it is Novice > Open > Excellent > Masters.) So long as you Q and are under time, you get X speed points. There used to be multipliers based on placements but they got rid of that (too bad for Auggie.)

The QQ doesn't have any affect on your speed points. It's simply "Did QQ? Y/N."


If you're lucky you have a nice dog who keeps pretty even in both, but otherwise you have two groups of people - people who Q and then look at the clock to see if they got enough points to celebrate or not, and people who rack up huge numbers of points because their dog is fast and all they need is the QQ, and if they got it, they got the MACH/PACH, if they didn't they still don't have it (but they probably have like 20 more points to throw on the pile.)


You can also start racking up speed points even if you're not in Masters in both standard and jumpers. Like say Georgie got into Masters Jumpers but she was still in Excellent Standard, her speed points for JWW will still count toward the MACH even though there's no way for us to knock down one of the QQ requirements.

I must be reading an out of date rulebook. It was still saying excellent A and B.

That makes a lot more sense, thanks Beanie! I was getting so confused about A versus B and then speed points and QQs.

I see how that could make people end up with lots of QQs or lots of points and then missing the other. I guess the goal is to reward consistency and speed?

EDIT: So T2B and FAST are just additional titles you can earn? They're not really needed for anything else?



EDIT 2: Also a fun run is happening on the 7th. I think I am going to enter both Summer and Hank. :yikes: No pressure for Summer to do much and with Hank I can bring a toy and just do a few obstacles then play. I think Summer will really enjoy playing.

Here's the link for the current one on AKC's website, this might help!
http://images.akc.org/pdf/rulebooks/REAGIL.pdf

There was talk about making FAST and triple Qs something you needed for the MACH/PACH (this was before T2B was a class) but it got some backlash from people who don't like the games classes. I'm not sure it even made it to the "official survey" stage. So right now they are just separate titles on their own and they don't have anything to do with the championship titles.


Auggie's dad has hundreds upon hundreds of speed points... his brother too. But the QQs are harder to come by for them. Some dogs are the other way around, they can QQ easily but they aren't fast enough to just rack up massive amounts of speed points. A nice balanced dog will get a MACH easily though.

Guess which category Payton will be in. ;P I'm thinking Georgie will be a more balanced dog and should hit everything at about the same time.

FAST can count toward triple-Qs (Master Standard, Jumpers, and FAST Qs all in one day). 10 QQQs earns the TQX title. There are no speed point requirements for the TQX title.

T2B is completely separate and Qs/placements at regular trials never count toward anything other than T2B titles.

Does anybody have any advice for teeter/dogwalk issues?

Sam will *not* go over the teeter no matter how much I work with tippy board, awesome treats, nothing. Once upon a time he was totally cool with it but all of a sudden he decided it is absolutely terrifying, no incident that I can think of. He goes up right to about the point where it moves and then either freezes or jumps off the side. I've tried lowering it, doing tippy boards, rewarding for just being near it, banging it on the ground and rewarding, he just has an issue with it and I'm stumped and so is the trainer. This has also transferred to the dogwalk now, I'm guessing because it's the similar width he thinks it's a teeter. No issues with the a-frame at all.

How long has this been going on?
Have you tried taking a break from the teeter? Just spend several weeks not anywhere near it at all?

Try just having him do the end behaviour with a really small bang. Either use a chair under the "up" side (to prevent it from going all the way back down on its own) or straddle the "down" side, again to prevent it from reaching its full height. Then ask your dog to just bang the board. And work up to asking him to jump up on it, bang it, and offer his 2on-2off behaviour.

It's been going on since I think a couple of months after we started doing agility. We did take a two-ish year break from doing agility at all but not just specifically from the teeter.

He's totally cool with hopping up on the end and doing 2 on 2 off. That's actually what he seems to want to believe the behavior is, go halfway up it, jump off, and then pull it down and do a 2-on 2-off at the end (were working on a lowered teeter.

We do a game called "happiest place". Someone stands at the end of the teeter and holds it up, no tipping and rewards heavily for the dog running all the way up. Then comes "surfing", you slowly add in movement up and down when the dog is comfortable with the first step and so on and so forth until they will stay on while it's moving. Then finish off with essentially the bang game at the end.

It's a slow process, but I've seen it work wonders. Teeter problems can be pretty tough to fix though.

It's been a while since I've been on here, but since the last time I visited Karma can now officially weave 6 straight poles!
[YOUTUBE]mUHe82bNhVU[/YOUTUBE]

And Abby's still loving agility. She's been on break for over a year(with a run thru here and there) now dealing with allergies(fun stuff), but we've finally got that under control and plan to re-debut her next month!

Very simple recipe.

15 g of cooked white rice + 500 mg L-carnitine within 20 minutes of stopping exercise. She also suggested Nutri-cal... for those of us that are too lazy to cook rice.

We have a CKC trial tomorrow so I might try this recipe out if I can find time after work to go and buy some L-carnitine capsules.

Yesterday we had our first trial of the season, just taking the dogs out to knock the rust off before Louisville in two weeks.

Georgie went first and oh boy. Not surprisingly, my mom hasn't done hardly any work with her, so she is basically exactly the same dog as when we stopped in November. Poor impulse control, she still doesn't understand contacts, and her weaves are questionable. Her standard run was pretty bad. Jumpers was better, she even saved my ass when I didn't get a cross in like I was hoping and I instead made a desperate push to a jump that was kind of hidden behind a pole - she totally read the push, saw the jump, and took it. She would have had a Q except she stopped halfway through the weave poles to go sniff at the wall (??? REALLY???) I don't even know what to do with her because she's not my dog so I can't just take her away and train her, and even when I make up a plan and tell my mom "work on THIS and do THIS on THIS day" she just doesn't do it. It's a shame, she's a great dog but if nobody puts time into her, she won't develop like I know she can. We'll just have to see... it's not Georgie's fault.


Payton. Payton Payton Payton. I don't remember if he got his a-frame contact or not because I am trying this new thing called "trust your dog." The dog has been trained, he knows what to do, so I am going to trust him to do what he was been trained to do. I do know he got his dog walk contact even though I was high-tailing it at top speed away from him, so that's a big deal. He missed his weave entrance the first time, got in the second and then popped at the end, got it the third time. He also got several refusals because his commitment has suffered through the off-season. I really need to work more on sending him to a variety of obstacles, because he kept second-guessing me and coming off obstacles instead of taking them. But that's not all bad, because it means he's paying more attention to me and trying to do what I want rather than just playing Paytongility without concern for what I really want him to do.
His jumpers run was looooovely, weaves first time, beautiful, fast, it was a great run. He did drop two bars but I think he was struggling a bit with the flooring, or potentially he is sore (he also didn't want to jump up into his crate stacked on top of Georgie's, and he didn't want to jump into his crate in the car when we left either.) If not for dropped bars we would have a second OAJ leg.

Cautiously optimistic, it felt really good. We also got some nice all-out fast as hell running at the end of the JWW course which I always love and so does he, so that put the cherry on top. Better commitment in JWW too. My friend did tell me he thinks this will be the year Payton starts to settle in so I'm hoping it's true, hoping we are going to really start to gel as a team and we'll finally get somewhere together.


We didn't stay for the second day because of the snow storm coming, a whole bunch of people were leaving and not going to come back, they were discussing canceling the trial, and one person said if the snow is bad enough they close roads and then people can't get out of the town, so I just checked out of my hotel early and came home yesterday. I regret it a bit because Georgie at least could really use the ring time, but the roads in both states are apparently horrible and I am super sick now so it was probably the right call. Whomp.

Kili made a relatively successful CKC debut today! She was 2/4 today qualifying in both JWW runs and just missing out on a Standard (pulled the last bar). But not to be COMPLETELY out of character, she had a really terrible second Standard run.

That said though, I think she may have actually had a REASON this time. I think she surprised herself on the teeter in the first run. In her second run she refused the dog walk for no real reason (I think because she thought it was the teeter) and then she refused the teeter about 3 times before I managed to get her on it. And then I just lost her after that. She refused the jump before the A-frame (now, my trainer thinks for the same reason she pulled the bar... both jumps were at the edge of the ring facing a wall without a lot of landing space, and she's a big dog with a big stride) and then she blew the A-frame so I just went ahead and pulled her out of the ring.

But really, all things considered, this is actually her best and most successful trial to date. My favourite part? The very end of the second JWW was a straight away of about 4 jumps. There was no way I was keeping up to her on that, so I just sent her and hoped like heck she'd go without looking back! Pretty breathtaking to watch.

[YOUTUBE]DPRfD6gJJ0Y[/YOUTUBE]

I think I finally found private lessons! Woohoo! It's back at my old agility place, since I'll be moving home April 1st and ending my ridiculous work situation. So excited to just deal with Watson's zooming problems instead of trying to wedge him into a class and do what the other dogs are doing. I was so worried about him running up to other dogs and either creating a dangerous situation or just being reinforced for leaving me. I think we an empty ring and some 1:1 attention we might be able to fix this. I got him to work with me outside in my field off leash (though in a fenced area) after a few sessions, so I have hope.

I LOVE privates!!!! And if you can get a few people together you still get "distraction" training without a set schedule or random draw of people who signed up. I always look forward to my lessons!!! I hope you and Watson find them as awesome as I do!

So I am debating when exactly I want to enter our first trial. Right now I am thinking June or July. I have my eye on a few of them to enter. We're going to start in CPE since there are a TON around and they seem like a more laid back venue.

And Krissy thank you for the recipe! We will put it to good use. Haha.

Summer and I did a couple of jumps today. she hasn't seen anything in months and she was SO excited. I do still worry about a nasal tumor with her but I don't see why she can't come out and fun run on Saturday. I dunno if I'll run her or just take her to say hi.

I'm entering Sam in his first trial in mid-April. Still got a little bit of work to do but our trainer thinks were ready. This'll be fun opcorn:

How do y'all handle threadles? I have always pulled my opposite hand across me to pull the dog in but the handling I just watched had the handler rotate in and end up sending with the left, facing backwards (opposed to dog's direction) then calling in with the right and then rotating towards the jump and sending with the left.

Hank and I have really really been struggling with threadles.

Hope I made some sense.

I always prefer to use threadle arms like you do, but Recon reads the second handling option much better, so I have been working on that sort of thing. He needs more pull with my shoulders, I guess? That's if I'm understanding you correctly.

My good news is that we are getting all of our contacts resurfaced in the next two weeks! WOOOOHOOOO!