Rivi's Running Contacts...the Project Continues

The project for Rivi's running contacts has rested, recharged and continues. As my view long term is that I think RC are the best option for Rivi. As I said in my posting on the 18th March 2012, I was down but not out. And this past two months I think we have made significant headway on the plank and it is just (late May) starting to appear on the DW. I think she is starting to actually understand what I am striving to explain to her :-)

My action has been to put the plank in amongst the other agility equipment and placing a sequence of obstacles do to before and after. This took a while for her to adjust to, but I think it is really helping Rivi to do the plank in that context. As to get her reward she had to do the next obstacle. The complexity of the performance for dogs is really very high, as the no stopping means not only moving at speed with an accurate performance but following additional cues at speed.

The most important concept for Rivi to grasp was to let go and just run either when all the stimuli indicated that she should offer her previously learnt 2o2o behaviours. A weird and alien concept for Rivi!!!! but really good for her and my mind set and I am so thankful to Nicky Garratt for supporting and providing encouragement in how I am going forward with Rivi on this.

And over the actual DW there is now video evidence of the improve moving across and through the contact zone.  Rivi's thoughts of what she is doing is changing and the video shows how much she is enjoying the retraining. 
The DW is still high but I am focused on the moving, the refining will come later. And I am also getting more 'thunder' behaviour on the plank. I think with the DW there may be at least another years worth of training to achieve ideal performance levels.
Perhaps they will become like Zev's?

However, I am so relieved I found the way forward with this project rather than quitting :-) it would have bugged me if I had quit...