Can you spell Perfection?

Z-A-P.
wow, so today I set up two jumps, a tire, a straight tunnel, then two more jumps all in a straight line. I had Zap run through it once and was using the words go-go-go-go. Previously, we have done only jumps in a row, so he thinks I mean only jumps. He did the first two jumps, ran around the tire and tunnel, then did the last two jumps. Too smart! So I did it again and used the words for the tire and tunnel and he ran all the way through at TOP SPEED. He faced forward the entire time even with me way behind him. Zap is so amazing! We have also been working on obedience and Zap has an excellent off lead heel, stand for exam, stays, and recall! We need to work on longer heeling patterns, longer stays, the figure 8, and the "front" position for the recall. But we should be ready for the fair in 3 weeks and my 8 month old puppy is going to PWN the adult dogs in level 2 obedience at state. haha

Class

Zap was great in class today! There were race cars practicing at the fairgrounds and he ignored all the people and noises! In the back during the obedience class we played and we worked on sending to the crate from a distance and stayiong in the crate while i dropped toys and treats and people walked by. Then we worked on sits, downs, and heeling. He heels sideways so he is really understanding the position. He sat in his crate quietly when I needed him to....overall, I was extremely impressed with my boy! He even tugs enthusiastically with distractions.

Running Contacts and Obedience

We have an 8 foot plank set at about 7-8 inches high currently that we are training contacts on. I have a jump set after it and Zap is running straight through the contact every time! We are doing contact sessions about once a week tops and he seems to be grasping the concept very well.

We are also working on our "waits", recalls, and heeling. His stays are getting better and we are working on sends to the table and lead outs from the table with lots of distractions. I am using the table as a variation of a crate in crate games. His recall is very solid and he is a very good retriever, haha. He is learning the heel position and he would have solid heeling right now if I wasn't so lazy/poorly motivated to train it. We also work on left and right spins and jumps wraps, though not often.

Spring Goals!

I am going to start taking Flick up to my friend's house to run in agility so I'll take Zap along since she has a ton of big kennels to hold dogs right by the field. We have been working on tricks, obedience, and foundation work for agility. We only do an agility element, whether contacts or jump wraps, once a week....he's young. We have been going for a 1+ hour walk almost everyday lately. Shadow and Libby are mainly outside most of the time and Flick sleeps in Karyn's room and goes with her wherever she is during the day. This means I just have two 2 boys around all the time so Li and Zap are becoming close friends.
In early spring, we want to work on:
-Heeling
-Obedience
-Recalls
-Control Games
-Left and Right
-Tricks
-Crosses, mainly rears

Along with a few contact and wrap sessions.

This is an interesting turn I became aware of last fall. Li does these very well. They work very well for tight turns because as soon as he sees me turned the other way, he turns. If I stay next to him with my arm out, he sometimes just keeps running straight if I don't turn fast enough. Anyway, I want to try them with Zap eventually, because they make sense to me. A lot of trainers love fronts, with some rears. I like to explore lots of different options like blinds and ketschkers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVO4CJ0nLI

Well, that's all.
-Ria

Tricks and foundation

Zap woke me up at 8 this morning which is okay...except I took a 2 hour walk with my friend last night and went to bed at 1 am so I'm sore AND tired. But enough about me because this blog is for Zap! This morning I worked with Li and Zap and it was good. I am kinda paranoid about teaching jump wraps to Zap early because I don't want him bending his spine like that when he is going so fast....and there is no "slow" speed with him! I'm loving him so far, he is everything I love in a dog. He is confident so that when we shape, he offers stuff like crazy. He is extremely driven and tugs really well. He does everything at full speed with 100% intensity. He reminds me so much of Li, and you know how much I love that dog. Zap is following in Li's footsteps of being a very fast accurate agility dog and brings it up a notch with his amazing people skills, which Li doesn't possess...unless you consider barking up a storm and growling an appropriate greeting. =]
Anyway, we went through each of his tricks, he is funny. His favourites to offer are wave, scratching the ground with his rear leg, pushing off me with his front legs and spinning [like a baby version of a vault], attempting to sit up [he falls over after a second or two, lol], and standing on his hind legs. He is getting good at the latter, he offering it without me raising my hand up as a lure and can hold it for 4 seconds! haha
We also did some box work. He was hilarious trying to incorporate all his tricks into one thing like Li does. Li is funny when he shakes his head, waves, barks, and sits up at the same time...as if he can't decide which trick to do so he does them all within .000001 seconds of each other! Anyway, Zap tried spinning on the box, jumping over it, jumping onto it then off again, pushing it ith his nose or paws, and he even sat on it once. It was just a game box, probably 10 by 10 inches and 3 inches high. Eventually he cooled off his insane little brain and started offering calm, collected 2o2o positions. lol
As far as jump wraps go, I am training them with the actual jump [no bar of course...!] because using a cone or one vertical bar to train them sometimes doesn't teach them to know the difference between wrapping the jump and going to the other side and taking the jump towards the handler. I want him to understand the concept of the jump itself....as in "yes, cap means right but that doesn't mean I can wrap around the left wing going around the back." xD. As I said, I don't want to over do this so I'm just luring each side 3-5 times each and ending it. Eventually, I want to be able to stand on the other side of him and lure him away from me into a wrap, then work on adding the cues and distance and reliability so he can do either direction based on my commands, not my position. This will be helpful when I want to do rear crosses and stuff.
I don't remember if I posted about this yet and I'm too lazy to check. Anyway, I've been doing running contact training with Zap. I started a few weeks ago after the snow melted just to see if he would run along the board. It took Li 6 months to not jump off the side so I started early with Zap just in case. He is great! No worries here. I have an 8ft board set at about 8-10 inches and it will stay like that for a long time. We practice no more than once a week and do 5-10 reps. He has a 100% success rate so far and hits 4-6 paws in the yellow each time, and always hits the bottom third of it. I have a pole set up on either side of the end of the board so we do one or two turns in a session and he knows to run to the end of the board before turning.
Well, very busy day ahead of me here so I'll leave it all at that!

Tricks and Junk

Zap is getting so tall! He is as handsome as ever! We are learning more tricks. Our goals are to be stacking bowls and moving around a box with rear feet soon. He is picking up and carry bowls so we just have to work on stacking them, haha. I have a loooong list of all the tricks I wanna teach him as a pup so we are very busy.

Training and Picture Update!

Sorry it's been so long. Didn't figure anyone would want to hear about Zap's obedience and tricks training. lol

I've been thinking about agility and we are definitely not going to be doing anything [including barless jumps] for at least another month. April sounds good and he will be 5 months then. At that age I think we will do barless jumps and tunnel and stuff. Until then, we are learning obedience, tricks, body awareness stuff, and directionals for agility. I'm holding off on teaching jump wraps as well because he runs so fast and I don't want him bending so fast.

Now for the pictures I promised!







All for now!