I have been contemplating whether to make this video public or not... since 'dog's age' and agility is such a HUGE debate in general... Me? Well my dogs tell me what they want to do and I enforce the 'common sense' factor... So the following video is the TOTAL accumulation of every second of actual agility training he has ever done...
You know what I love about it? He loves it... I will probably not do any different exercises with him until he is about 10 months old... maybe older. The biggest mistake I made with the Spaz was wing wraps... Having chosen him because of his brother Blitz (from another litter), I taught him to wrap before anything else... Blitz is awesome (yes, Julie he is an uber dog :) ) but he has a very 'wide herding' style of agility... so I jumped in at the deep end without thinking that my Chaos dog is a DIFFERENT dog. So the end results is a dog that knocks wings and has no confidence in turns... MY fault. Since I vowed not to make that mistake again (haha, probably to end up making a load of other mistakes), I am just going to let Volt run, run, run and play, play, play... and from there analyze the training and handling styles he needs...
But, come on... I know I am bias, but he really is a little golden boy... I promise these are the only times he has EVER seen agility equipment... As for the rest... we play and run. Sigh, A LOT... the bloody little maniac tires me out... I don't have any 'pure play' video, as there is no one to tape me, and playing involves our entire property.
Note: There is no-one holding him or even present while we train :) He is THAT good... I adore this little Sheltie and I really hope all little Sheltie dogs are like him. He likes running so much that he ALWAYS drives at least 3m past his tug toy before coming back to it for the game. This little boy just wants to run.
Author's notes:
1. Not ONE of Volt's training sessions last longer than 2min at this stage. Whether it is agility or tricks.
2. I stop before he loses ANY enthusiasm... in fact I stop while he is still saying 'I want more'... and then we play. Not 'do something for a play reward', we just purely play.
3. I play at least double the amount I train. I play with him A LOT.
4. He always loves what he is doing.
Haha, those are just some of the 'Alett's training rules'
Sorry for the crappy video... the music and the vid WAS in sync when I did on Movie Maker, but somewhere in between a Gremlin crept in.
I think it's great that you're doing what you're doing though I do understand the controversy. It's not like you're jumping him full height and asking him to also throw in full height contact equipment while wrapping tightly around jumps. You are very right that common sense shoudl dictate what you do. Each pup is different and those formative years sholdn't be wasted doing nothing for fear that someone else might get offended.
ReplyDeleteI am glad to hear some more support of the 'common sense factor'... however heartbreaking it is to see some people dragging 8 month old pups around full courses or 2 year old dogs with sever injuries due to over training... it is just as sad seeing amazing dogs running mad and wild and confused around the ring because they were not allowed to develop slowly through their puppy hood, but rather thrown in the deep end when they reached the magical '18 month' benchmark.
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