Steve agility videos!

I am super insecure, so please be kind!

And we did measure him (twice) and he measures about 21.5", definitely over 21. So I will have to make the decision whether to jump him big or not. His breeder is in favor of it. His dad and his uncles are about the same size and jump 26" comfortably. I figure I'll see how he jumps at 26 and then make the decision from there.

Some steering fail, but he STUCK HIS TABLE

Mom, I love the weave poles. Mom, the weave poles are over there. Weave poles!!

Steve actually holding his start line. A MIRACLE. This one is at 22" (the others were at 20). He jumps the double stupid though.

Front crossing the ending to that sequence.

Yay Steve! He's so darn cute. Looks like he has oodles of potential and is trying hard to understand the game. His determination to do the weaves on #2 was hilarious lol. Your link name for that video is perfect. Gorgeous weaves though, I can see why he wanted to show them off

He looks great. Love his weaves, I need to sit Dekka down and go LOOK, some dogs LOVE the weaves..

Wow! For some reason I was thinking Steve was just starting agility and here he is running courses

Awesome!! Love his weaves!! You guys are going to be rockstars.

Lol, I've been missing the fact that there's a BC in your avatar, I was expecting some bully agility.

Steve is a great dog!!! My only advice would be to get more into it yourself.....run harder, race him to the end of the dogwalk, be more confident in your handling.

However, it's obvious that you guys are going to grow into an awesome team together! And I would jump him at full height. You can always go down later, but I'd give it a go at 26".

Keep sharing!

Looks awesome, well done, lovely weaves and consistant contacts, the rest is what I call novice dog/handler bobbles and they are to be expected. Good thing is you realize why.
You must be pleased with how you are doing, what are the plans of when to compete?

How did you train his weaves? Very nice indeed.

I think she did 2x2, aren't they awesome??

Like I said on FB, you're really kicking butt. Congrats! (and you thought you'd never get there with Steve... )

This was only our fourth class of sequencing, so yeah, we are still total beginners. I'm pretty happy with what I have in him right now with the exception of total start line stay failure and him not understanding the table really at all. Everything else is my simply not knowing what the heck I'm doing. He makes us look better than we are. I still feel like a clueless newb most of the time.

His weaves were taught with 2x2s and a tiny bit of channels. He LOVES the weaves. Weirdo.

Thanks guys! I wouldn't watch the videos last night until I was home and alone so I could cry without embarrassing myself, but then I was actually pretty pleasantly surprised

Holy crap, I didn't realize you were that new to agility. You guys are doing really great.

Do you practice at home at all? How is his sit stay away from the context of agility?

Wow he looks nice!!! Love the weaves - they are Kimma's favorite obstacle, too LOL. How old is he?

We've been going over to the training club once a week since the beginning of the year to practice on our own. I have a couple 16" jumps and 6 weaves but that's it. I need to make more jumps.

He has a good sit stay outside of agility/jumps. But at agility he vultures or breaks before I've even left him.

He turned three in October. Finally growing a brain.

Hope for the lemur...

I agree - the weaves are excellent! How long did the 2x2 take with Steve? I'm experimenting with 2x2 training now, just started it with Savvy. I may go back and re-train Whim with it, depending on how well what I'm currently doing works out.

Great advice! And Steve seems like a very good boy The only thing I'd add is that stopping and fixing mistakes is often either demotivating and/or very frustrating to most dogs. Usually taking the wrong end of tunnels or the wrong obstacle or missing jumps or whatever is due to either handling errors or just inexperience on the dog's part. IOWs things that will work themselves out over time. As long as the dog is running and responding well, just keep running for at least a couple obstacles, reward the dog then go back and try the tricky part again. Too often, people get so hung up on getting everything right that they aren't rewarding their dog's efforts and the dog ends up like "What?! I thought I was doing good!". Then depending on the dog, they get more and more wound from frustration, which in turns tends to cause more and more mistakes. Or they get more and more stressy or careful because they don't want to be wrong and learn that you should run agility carefully because your person changes their mind a lot

Well, I'm *not* confident in my handling because I often feel like I don't have a clue what I'm doing.

I can't race him. He gets wild and jumps off dogwalks or starts crashing jumps. I used to feel like I always had to try to race him to get ahead of him but I've learned that having him adjust himself to my speed instead of trying to catch up to him results in a safer and saner performance. Right now, that's what I want.

ETA: It took him... 10 days? to go from nothing to six straight poles. And then longer to proof, obviously. And then 6 to 12 happened when I asked him to take a tunnel and he chose to take the weaves instead. He's had a few momentary brain farts and I've split them back into two sets of 6 for a couple repetitions, but for the most part, he's got 'em as long as the entry isn't super ugly.

ETA (again): Y'all need to understand that only a few months ago I was set to quit agility once and for all because I'd take my dog to class and he'd crash (not knock, crash) like 70% of jumps put in front of him. I had people telling me that it was a jumping problem due to flyball, but really the problem was that my dog was just so high and so insane that he didn't have any control over himself at all. Thankfully I emailed this instructor and said "will you just look at my dog because I'm about ready to walk away from the sport for good" because I knew she did flyball and agility successfully (among other things). She has a very high BC as well, and she has helped me so much.

She put us in this class because she teaches it (not her assistant) even though she didn't expect us to be at the same level as everybody else. And I'm certainly not, but my dog is. I'm learning a lot, but at the same time, I wish I could have some of it broken down more for me, piece by piece, instead of trying to put it all together so fast.

That's awesome!

IME Flyball does tend to encourage poor jumping skills. Not that dogs can't do both or can't be successful at both, just dogs who have done a lot of Flyball tend to make really poor jumping choices when presented with agility jumps. Flyball is fast, flat jumping (something most BCs don't need encouragement for) that doesn't require the dog judge the jumps much at all because they are always the same. This can be addressed through jump training and dogs can learn the difference though and it seems like Steve is on his way!

It sounds like you maybe haven't done a lot of foundation work with him? It's never too late to start

That is awesome.

Aleron, I'm going to take that advice for Sloan, I think she's getting a bit too cautious and I bet I caused it by stopping and fixing too often.

He doesn't knock bars really at all now that he's not over threshold