Category: Performance Events ¤
  Author: Helix Fairweather ¤
   Title: Slowing Down for the Up Contact ¤

> feet were still in the zone but she said as the frame goes up, the bolting
> on gets worse. She suggested I may want to break her stride as she
> approaches or possibly teach a touch as she goes on. Suggestions??

I'm not an agility competitior (yet!) but it would seem to me that you
need to back up and retrain the behavior. I would teach her to follow a
target stick and use the target stick to have her WALK calmly and slowly
up the A-frame. I would also work with a ladder flat on the groun and use
the target stick to teach her *conscious* walking through the rungs of the
ladder.

The reason I am strong on a controlled, purposeful behavior first, THEN
later add speed is from something Lana Mitchell insists is important in
teaching the retrieve. In her book _The Clicked Retrieve_ she has you
shape looking at, moving towards, touching, etc. the bar of the db. She
says if you have a dog that will already take the db, you MUST do this any
way! It would at first seem silly to us - why? if you already have a dog
taking the db, would you go back to shaping the touch, then the take? It's
my opinion that it is a very *well* thought-out strategy to have the
behavior correct and being done consciously before raising criteria, i.e.
asking for it to be fast.


Helix

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Helix Fairweather
The Wild Women Beardies (CH Brady, CGC and CH Maggie, CGC)
helix@teleport.com  [NEW ADDRESS !!]     Turner, OR
Keeper Page - http://www.teleport.com/~helix/Keeper   [NEW URL !]
Clicker Page - http://www.phys.unm.edu/~helix/clicker.html




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