Amp'd (a.k.a. Dream Weaver's Volume On High, Amp, Ampere (if I want him to come), Munchkin, Amp-Man, Awesome Amp Man, Goober) was born on December 4, 2008, in California. He came to me from Stacy Peardot-Goudy (Dream Weaver Border Collies). He is out of Stephanie Spyr's Rage and Stacy's Riesen.

Amp is a fantastic puppy! He probably has the most drive and motivation at this age of any of the dogs I've trained. He loves his Chuck-It (a.k.a. Sqrl) and is a blast to train. It seems like he can just go and go and go. He's incredibly smart and picks up on new things in no time. After thinking long and hard, I decided to do running contacts with Amp and so began our journey.

I began teaching Amp running contacts using Sylvia Trkman's method in March 2010. Sylvia's name is the one you hear most often when trainers talk about running contacts. Her contacts are legendary and pretty incredible. Her method teaches the dog to run through the contact without jumping. The criteria is the lack of a jump. Amp is the first dog I've ever tried this method with so he was my experiment.

I started slightly differently than Sylvia recommends, starting with the A-frame flat on the ground. (Sylvia recommends starting with something lower to the ground like a flat, wide board.) Our beginning was rough as I wasn't sure what to look for. I finally started videotaping our sessions and realized that Amp had three distinctly different behaviors. He either 1) ran straight through, 2) ran most of the way but then jumped the last bit, with his rear feet incidentally hitting the end of the A-frame, or he 3) jumped. Through videotaping, I learned to recognize what his body looked like from the corner of my eye when he performed each behavior and I rewarded the one I wanted. I most likely did not reward enough attempts and probably should have even rewarded the ones where he jumped at the end, just not as highly. This was one piece of learning I took from my experiment.

I slowly raised Amp's A-frame, putting bricks and such under it until the chains could be used, about 1 to 1 1/2 inches each time. Once the apex of the A-frame was as high as the lowest my dogwalk could go, I transitioned him to the dogwalk. We had to rework some of the stuff we'd done on the A-frame but he picked it up pretty quickly.

As of this writing on February 27, 2011, our running contacts are progressing nicely. Both the dogwalk and A-frame are full USDAA height and he strides through nicely. I'm really exited. His dogwalk is probably about 90 to 95% consistent and his A-frame closer to 99%. I'm working on speed and confidence with him now. He's still a little uncertain at times, mostly when we repeat his dogwalk a number of times (I blame this on my not rewarding those so-so attempts I mentioned earlier). So, I'll occasionally place his Chuck-It (aka Squrl) out ahead of the dogwalk and have him run to it. Stacy also recommended doing the dogwalk once or twice and then moving on to something else for a bit and maybe returning to the dogwalk once more before we quit. I'll try this next time we train.

I'm also been working on angles and turns off contacts with Amp and I'm really excited about how good they look! I can cue him for a turn while he's running across the top of the dogwalk (or A-frame) and he continues to stride through and then turn. It's loads of fun!

Amp is just over two and I plan to start competition after October 2011. (That's after USDAA Nationals and the end of the 2012 IFCS qualifying period for Petey and Whim.) I'm really happy with how his jumping looks and the dog turns on a dime! Mostly we're working on speed and confidence. He's a thinker, Amp is, so I'm taking things really slowly. He's going to be an absolutely amazing agility dog and I'm really excited to start competition.