Kirby Drills

This morning, Susan Garrett posted her famous 'Puppy One Hundred' (well, it actually stretched into 135, but who's counting).  The puppy one hundred (and thirty five) is a list of things to teach your puppy/dog before you begin working on agility or putting your dog on equiptment.  This is especially excellent if you have a puppy or younger dog who you plan on training in agility, but they might be too young to actually start some of the physical stuff (waiting for growth plates to close, etc). 

My lovely Kirby...

...he is mature enough to begin the more physical training.  Um, er, mature enough physically I should say.  He still does this:

So I can't say much about his mental maturity at this point. 

Moving on...  **eye roll**

Because I wasted so much time in the beginning trying to push Frisbee onto him, I didn't put a whole lot of thought into an agility career for Kirby, so he still needs to learn all of the basics required of an agility dog.  Susan's puppy one hundred (and thirty five) is a perfect place to begin. 

Kirby and I completed an obedience class this past fall and learned some of the basics and it put us on the right track for clicker training, shaping, positive reinforcement, etc.  SG's list takes it a step (or five) forward.  For the past couple of months as winter reared it's ugly head and the holidays sucked up much of my time, the pack and I have been hibernating mostly with our spare time, with short walks every other day and 2 minute nano training sessions as often as possible.  Kirby's been getting stuck with a lot of boring basics, such as sit, lay down, don't chew on my arm, take, out, paw, etc. Not his fault, its mine for being lazy and not wanting to use my brain long enough to think of better, more interesting things for him to do.

Now that we've grown accustomed to the cold time is on our side again, the Aussies especially have been getting more walks and Kirby has become my funny running partner.  I would like to take a handful things from SG's list each week and work on them.  It's a goal.  It might work, it might not.  I dont plan on working them all every night.  But mixing them up and pulling out 2 or 3 for each session.

For this week:
1) Smack da baby. We do it, but not frequently enough and it really does work on Kirby.
2) Hand targeting. It's good shaping work and lets face it.  It's fun!
3) Recall from distraction.  Kirby is easily distracted. His recall is pretty good... But we haven't done enough distraction work.
4) Walking on a loose lead. Very basic. We worked on it in ob class and he did well... most of the time.
5) Duration sit. Kirby's got a great sit. But he needs work on sitting until I release him.
6) Chase games. Kirby loves to chase his toys. He will think we're playing instead of working.
7) Back up. I'd like to teach it to all of my dogs.

I'm debating signing Kirby up for a beginner agility class in the spring. I took Frankie through a beginner class and so I know how to introduce a dog to obsticals and we have some of the basics at home.  Weave poles and jumps and that.  But I dont think I want to go there yet.