Penny Spencer’s sighthound cross Panshanger (pronounced pan shanger) has had an eventful life. For example Pan was hit by a car in a freak accident in April of 2008. She had a fractured skull and lost an eye. Fortunately Pan is a resilient dog, she not only survived the accident, but has come back to full agility competition.
Pan had a reliable stopped A-frame (two on, two off) but when she sustained a carpal injury (a different incident), Penny decided to train a running A-frame instead. She chose Rachel Sanders “Box Method” for the training.
First Sessions of Box Work
Penny has a thorough account of the training process on her YouTube channel and everything is nicely described in her blog. It can be hard to search LiveJournal blogs so I have put links below to the most relevant posts. Penny has an entertaining writing style and an off-beat sense of humour that makes her blog a lot of fun to read. The videos are great because they are tightly edited so that you can see a lot of training in a short period of time. Many of them also have slow motion replays.
One of the most difficult things for trainers to overcome when training with this method is developing the trainer’s eye so that they can see when the dog does a clean four-foot hit in the box. It is common for dogs to hit with three feet and Rachel is adamant that all four feet are necessary for reliable performance.
The great thing about people’s training blogs (and the reason that I’m trying to link to them all here) is that they allow you to get some experience watching for good performances without the pressure of being in a real training situation. Penny has made that even better. Some of her videos have a a red “X” or a green “+” to help you see the hits yourself. Here’s an example of that.
Spot the Correct Hits
All of the videos are on Penny’s YouTube channel and are also embedded in her blog. I’ve linked to the blog posts that refer to the running contact training below.
Penny Spencer’s Running Contact Posts
June 2, 2009 After Pan has recovered from a carpal injury Penny decides to teach her a running A-Frame using Rachel Sanders Box Method. First video session.
June 8, 2009 Penny starts to us the Manners Minder remote feeder to stop Pan watching her in anticipation of the toy. Penny has a table of attempts vs rewards that shows just how hard it is to see the proper footwork in the beginning. Video is a great help!
June 14, 2009 Penny (like everyone it seems) struggles to see the difference between a three foot hit and a four foot hit.
June 18, 2009 Detailed record keeping and video shows that both Penny and Pan are getting better. Developing the trainer’s eye is an important element.
June 19, 2009 A beautiful session with motion. Pan is overcoming a problem that stems from being blind on one side. When Penny is behind, and on Pan’s sighted side, Pan sometimes turns towards her and then can’t see the box.
June 23, 2009 Working through the same problem.
June 25, 2009 A couple of sessions working on Pan focusing her attention forward when Penny is behind.
June 29, 2009 Can you spot the three 3 paw hits?
July 8, 2009 94% for Pan 100% for Penny!
July 17, 2009 The first session with adding the jumps in front of the box.
July 20, 2009 Another session with the grid.
August 5, 2009 A bit rusty after a bit of a break. Pan sometime is sometimes not going straight through the box.
August 20, 2009 Working on collection to hit the box more consistently with speed.
August 28, 2009 A session with the Manners Minder to slow things down a bit from the thrown toy, and have more success.
August 31, 2009 Raising the exit side of the box to ensure a pounce behaviour. Huge improvement!
Sepember 2, 2009 Steady improvement.
September 7, 2009 Disappointment! Penny discovers that her measurements for the grid differ from the dimensions of the ANKC A-Frame which has planks just under 8′ in length, instead of the 9′ planks used in most organizations.
October 11, 2009 More foundation videos with the new dimensions.
October 14, 2009 Penny adds a sheet of wood under the grid. Rachel Sanders told me that it was a Wendy Pape innovation to lie an A-frame flat on the ground under the box and grid. The idea is that it gets the dog used to the wood and slats before there is any height of a real A-frame. Separating the components for the dog to work through one at a time. The plywood is a similar idea.
October 21, 2009 The most recent video.
I hope Penny continues to blog about Pan’s progress so that we can all learn from her experiences. I know that I’ll be following along.
Tags: A-Frame, Rachel Sanders, Running Contacts, Sanders Method, Training
I was wondering if you know of anyone who has applied Rachels Sanders methode to the dogwalk?
There are some people attempting to Use Rachel’s box method to train a running Dogwalk. However, Rachel herself doesn’t recommend it and doesn’t feel that it would be reliable. Nonetheless, she is keeping in touch with some people who are trying it out. One of the reasons she doesn’t feel it will be effective is because her method promotes a certain striding which assures the dog hits the contact on an A-frame, but dogwalk performances have much more variation in striding so the consistency won’t be there. Rachel’s box is not a foot target in the same way as Ali Roukas’ method.
Personally, for a dogwalk I would choose either the Trkman or Roukas-Canova method.