There's no place like home :-)

Well, I am back, again... It is always so great to get home and see Geoff and the pups. Geoff would probably fall over in shock to see that I mentioned him before the dogs :-) 

Both Vandal and SoBe got to stay with Auntie Deb while I was away this time, I am forever in her debt for all of the time she has kept my dogs while I have been gone over these past few months, especially since SoBe seems to always have issues, pulled muscles, in season, stomach bug, you name it Deb has dealt with it, so THANK YOU Deb!

It was of course awesome to see them and it was quite obvious that Vandal has grown! We got home today and it was so beautiful outside that we were able to get in a nice walk.

there was no agility training today because it was a very long day of travel but I am excited to get back at it with the youngsters tomorrow :-) 

These trips are always tiring but also invigorating! I am always super excited to train when I get back from a great time teaching. I taught in Vermont on Saturday and Sunday and although I had the pleasure of working with a few people that I have worked with before I also had the pleasure of meeting a whole bunch of new people and their wonderful dogs. What a fantastic group it was, we got so much work done and honestly after it was all over I really felt like I had helped many people to gain confidence in their ability to do things they never thought they could do! That is what makes my job so wonderful and of course what makes it worth spending so much time away.

I find it so incredibly gratifying to watch a person light up with joy after they have been able to negotiate that seemingly impossible front cross or never before tried lateral lead out. It is amazing to see the impossible become the possible with just a little push from yours truly, what a rush!

Wally had a really great time as well, he was spoiled rotten and I became sort of the official mascot of the seminar.

I also tried to spend at least a bit of time working on C Spot Teach this weekend, I am really excited about the C Spot Teach program because there is such a void of material out there for the agility instructor and those that train alone.

It is my intention to get the C Spot Teach website up and running soon, it will be a subscription based site but will include a free forum available to all who are interested. The intention of the forum is to have open discussion, including, of course, questions and answers regarding the materials available as well as any instructing and training issues that you might have.

C Spot Teach will be the teaching assistant that you have always dreamed of :-) C Spot teach will include teaching guidelines and etiquette, detailed lesson plans, homework suggestions, photocopy friendly handouts, exercise illustrations, exercise set-ups, full course examples, and, course walking strategies and hints.

The C Spot Teach program is going to be designed to help you help your students achieve their goals whether it be local trials, National, or, International competition. You or your students may not even want to compete but C Spot Teach will make training yourself and others easy!

C Spot Teach will center around a user friendly format of common sense training and handling techniques that promote the utmost in teamwork. The teaching guidelines, lesson plans, homework suggestions, and exercise illustrations will be based on the same common sense approach.

Now, with the infomercial all done, I am open to any thoughts, questions, or suggestions you my have to help make this the best teaching/training tool ever! Bring on the comments!

Frustration at a new high!

So, I am not frustrated by dogs or even their handlers, I am increasingly frustrated by this Blog!!! I am so happy to see that people are enjoying it and even happier to get feedback that tells me that they are learning not only how to train certain behaviors but learning something as important as what kind of personality type they are working with. 

The problem is that my time is short and I have been really having a hard time staying current on updates of training progress, etc... 

So, last night after a long day of teaching I parked myself on my Hotel bed and wrote, and wrote, and wrote only to once again realize that the Hotels WiFi was essentially worthless and the blog was once again not auto saving. No worries I thought, i will just save the text as a document and import it later and send. 

Sounds great except that although I can pull up the file no matter what this computer illiterate tried it absolutely would not import to the Blog, more time wasted, so here I sit complaining and once I finish the complaining I will essentially rewrite what has already been written!

I will stick with it though because I have become rather addicted but I do need to stop wasting so much time with these doggone technical difficulties!!

Anyway on to brighter topics, 2 great days of teaching seminars in CT. I had a wonderful group of people and dogs who, most of which, I have had the pleasure to work with many times before. Because of the fact that I know these dog and handler teams quite well we were able to really dig deep into the handling process and go way beyond the basic front cross here, rear cross there handling philosophy.

Today in particular we really picked apart the whole course strategy and analysis process as well as dealing in depth with how use your training time in a manner that promotes success and reinforces what you want to see on the course on any given Sat. or Sunday.

I stressed the point that when training you need to be able to let go of the need to "do the whole thing" and be prepared to break whatever the exercise is into as many parts as necessary to insure that you are only accepting behaviors that you would be happy with on a competition course. 

Your primary objective as you walk on to the training field may be to negotiate a 10 obstacle exercise but for whatever reason you and/or your dog are having a terrible time getting the turn from 2 to 3 with the efficiency, collection and flexion that you want, instead of just making it work so that you can move on to obstacles 4 thru 10 you should stop there and work out the issues with 2 to 3. 

Once you have worked out the problems associated with this short sequence and rewarded the dog for their successes and your mistakes, and, you achieve an outcome that you would like to see on course you can move on to the next piece.

training is a dress rehearsal for the big gig and you need be prepared while training to stop more than you go. I stop and reward when I really like a behavior, I stop and reward when I make a mistake, I stop and reward after my dog works out a trouble spot, the moral of the story is I spend a lot of time rewarding, tweaking, training, playing, etc... the small pieces make up the big picture.

We talked a lot about the dogs trajectory over obstacles and how influential handler position is to setting the proper line for the dog. We worked on establishing proper lines and creating course flow that makes it appear that the dog designed the course. It was a great day!

We also talked at length about keeping an open mind to new ideas and handling options, as well as the importance of not becoming sedentary in your handling and continuing to hone your existing skills as well as learning and practicing new ones.

It is so easy to get to a point at the upper levels that you quit trying new handling maneuvers because you have developed a comfort level with the ones you practice and practice and practice.

If you allow this to happen you will ultimately paint yourself into a corner that you will not be able to handle out of, I don't know about the rest of you but I will never be willing to forfeit a run because I have not practiced all of the available handling options.  

So, with me and my dogs it is an ongoing quest to improve both mine and my dogs skills never believing for one moment that we have learned all that there is to learn. There is always room for improvement and there are always new skills to be sought after and perfected! 

Well, I am off to bed tomorrow I get a whole new group with a whole new set of skills to perfect :-)   

 

Boy am I sore!

I am competing in a 3 day AKC trial this weekend in Castle Rock, Colorado and I had a "first" happen to me :-) In all of my years of competing I have never taken a full on digger while I was running a course!

What is a digger, in simple terms, I fell, hard! Of course it was ultimately very funny but I must admit I am feeling it today! 

Wally and I were having a great run when I caught my toe in the dirt as I was running him off of the dog walk and even though I tried very, very hard to stay upright it was just not to be! 

The very bad news is that Wally and I had a clean run going and because my wonderful dog was worried about his handler and came back to see that I was alright we incurred a refusal, however, I did get up and finish the course without further incident or additional course faults! PLease note that Wally did indeed have a spectacular running dog walk, as he did today in his standard class. His contacts really are coming along famously :-)

Here you will see the body and ego bruising run as well as his standard run today that I just needed to include to make me feel better!

Vandal and SoBe came along to the trial as well, but of course SoBe was restricted to the car a a couple of 5 minute walks each day. She did get a massage today though and she was very happy about that!

Vandal was a very good boy and of course once again got to meet bunches of new people and see lots of new things, all of which he just took in stride. He did get to go over to the park with his brother Amp and do some restrained recalls, puppy races and some focus work with toys and treats. It is going to be great fun to watch the pups grow up together!

I am starting to do so many things with Vandal that I am having trouble remembering them all to put on the list :-) Let's see, tons of "drive" work, restrained recalls and chase games every chance we get, name recognition work with distractions. Vandal knows his name VERY well but is not quite sure that it matters when there is anything to look at.

We played with this today a great deal at the park with brother Amp, who by the way is awesome at responding to his name even with minor distractions! 

Vandal was realizing the value of looking at mommy when she says his name with the help of Great Bait liver treats :-)

One of the things I love so much about these pups is their ability to tune out all distractions when they are "on the toy" or, while already offering behaviors before the distractions enter the picture.

Vandal is a toy and tugging maniac and I am doing everything in my power to keep his toy drive on "overdrive"!

We do a lot of racing each other to the toy, winner gets the toy :-) It seriously encourages Vandal to move it or lose it! 

We are also continuing our perch work and he is so cute when he sort of dances around the stool with his front feet securely on the stool/perch and his hind feet on the floor.

The game came is very popular as he gets to chase and gets his toy, you can't go wrong there!

Vandal is learning Heel and side as well as his basic obedience positions of sit and down. We continue to work on the verbal release and have started his 2on/2off training on the travel plank. Vandal is also running his 12' plank at a slight incline and he has fortunately gotten over his momentary teeter phobia and we are working on bouncing on and off of the low teeter plank as well.

He has been through the short chute and seen 12" spaced channel weaves as well. Please keep in mind all of these obstacles are presented with play and are not intended to be finished product performances, just introductions to the various pieces of equipment. Never lose sight of the fact that agility is first and foremost structured play!

Tomorrow is another day of competition and my goals are to have a great time with Wally and stay on my feet!

SoBe and Vandal had to have their pictures included today, they just wanted to say HI! 

 

To think or not think...

...that is the question of the day. 

In my opinion dogs come in 3 varieties, thinkers, doers, and, thinking doers :-) 

The thinkers have a tendency to be a bit slow to turn on from a speed standpoint, this makes perfect sense when you think about the fact that they are so busy thinking that they cannot possibly run! Each piece of every puzzle must be thoroughly thought out, all of the addition done, i's dotted, t's crossed, etc.. 

The beautiful thing is that once all of this has been done and the dog truly understands what the job is they will do it with gusto and precision more often than not.

You must, however, be patient and not get frustrated with the process. Some of you that know me, and, know that I have one of the most thoughtful dogs on the planet are probably at this moment either rolling on the ground laughing, rolling your eyes, storing this info to feed back to me at a moments notice, or, all of the above!

Trust me I have not lost sight of what I have gone through training this dog, or what I still have to do to keep it the most upbeat, awesome experience imaginable every time we train. The really good news is that when I said that the ultimate outcome has the potential to be fantastic and that it will all be worth it I could not have been more right.

Although there was a supreme level of frustration at times, some serious tears sometimes and thoughts revolving around who would be my next agility dog because obviously it was not going to be "this" dog, well "this" dog is not only my heart and soul but one of the greatest agility dogs I have ever had the pleasure of running and I have had the pleasure of running MANY incredible dogs! Jack, Secret, Buzz, Rumor and Able would definitely kick my butt if I did not mention their greatness and incredibleness :-)

However, this thinker that I refer to is of course Wally :-)

Let's see, if I was to classify the above mentioned dogs into one of the 3 categories I described it would read like this: Jack (doer), Secret (thinking doer), Buzz (thinker), Rumor (thinking doer), Able (doer). The list continues with SoBe (thinking doer), and, Merger (doer).

There is a bit more to these labels and how I go about classifying the dogs, Wally is not just a thinker but VERY sensitive which is a tremendously difficult combination that would test any trainer. 

Able is a problem solver, but, it was always much harder to get behaviors initially solidified with him because doing always came first.

So, with the doer, speed and drive are not an issue they are always there, but, if it was necessary to choose between thinking through a choice or just running, running always wins.

Although you have the instant gratification of speed with a doer, the thinker will generally learn things faster and retain the information better right out of the box, because it is of course impossible to learn something at full speed it is just that nobody told the doer that! 

The necessity for breakdown of behaviors into even smaller increments for the doer becomes obvious as they are whizzing around freelancing on all of the obstacles while you stand stupefied.

This is not to say that the thinkers do not need behaviors broken down, they just need them broken down for different reasons. The thinker will be easily overwhelmed with large chunks of information, it is way too hard to do the charts and graphs on huge behavior chunks.

If I had to choose between a thinker and a doer I would choose, drumroll please..., a thinker! OK, stop laughing, I really would!

HOWEVER, my first choice if I actually got one would be the thinking doer. They are wonderful little speed demons with awesome processing skills. I will go about the training of these dogs the exact same way as I would for either of the above but you can count on greater level of understanding at a greater rate of speed much sooner! 

Please do not read more into this than I mean, there is still an incredible amount of training involved, just as much training as a matter of fact. 

You cannot avoid training if you want to succeed at anything you do, but, with these dog's it is just more fun! Yes, I said it, it is more fun! 

The fact remains that we do not have a choice, we get the pup we get and it is our job to train them to be what we want, regardless of their predisposition towards any of the above types.

What brought all of this on you ask? Well, I was working Merger again today and it occurred to me that this dog just does not think, now, I could allow this to frustrate me, or, I can realize what I am dealing with and be very careful to set him up for success when ever we are working on something new.

To expect Merger to read the situation and think through the problem to come up with the right response without a tremendous amount of guidance would be a futile gesture :-) I know this sounds harsh but it is true. 

I think I have already mentioned that Merger is a voracious tugger and that he has a brilliant 2on/2off behavior that is so solid no amount of proofing foils him, however, he will not tug on the end of the board while in a 2on/2off position. 

Trust me we are working on this because I fully intend to teach him to do both things at once. At this point it is just beyond his capabilities because he is working so hard to wrap his mind around the bottom behavior that he could not possibly think about tugging "and" holding position!

Merger is brilliant at offering the last behavior that you ask for because it is right there in the front of his brain, if you try to change it without clearly setting up the new behavior he will just bounce around like a goof ball, he understands that I no longer want the previous behavior but he cannot stop and think about what I may want instead. So, I show him :-)

It will never be a problem to teach Merger new behaviors, the part that will always be the most work is putting more than 1 behavior together.

The good news is that I not only have tons of experience with this type of dog but I also believe that it will be worth it in the end and it will help me to become a better trainer just like every new dog does.

In this video clip I was working on entries with Merger, what you cannot see is that when I am setting Merger up in his heel or side position, (my dogs always start every exercise in a position parallel to me), Merger was all amp'd up about doing the weaves, which is great, but, since we have only done them with a straight send or very slightly offset send he was having a very hard time honoring the parallel position and wanted to just wrap around me and get to the poles, on the second attempt he chose to jump the little gate I use as a guide so on the next attempt I stepped into his path to a greater degree to make the task easier so he essentially could not fail.

If I had not done that Merger would most likely continue to try to jump the gate, he is not "thinking" about how to alter his behavior, he is simply "doing" something the way he has done it in the past because he enjoyed it and was rewarded for it.

Of course I withhold reward for not offering the correct behavior and I reward handsomely for ultimately choosing the correct behavior but with a doer it would be more failures than successes to get to that point and that is not how I train my dogs.

It makes far more sense to Merger and to me to simply make the exercise a bit easier, help him be successful,and, reward for that success. 

Even if I make an exercise easier it is still a notch up from the last rep so there is incremental increase in the level of difficulty and therefore forward progress.

Dogs are so much fun!!!

In this video Merger and I are working on a modified version of Rachel Sanders box method for the A-frame. Merger has already learned to go to the box on the flat :-) I am also breaking this down into bunches of pieces to keep it simple but still encourage learning!

I also threw in a video of the Merge doing the plank, it is hysterical because his huge size is bouncing the plank all over the place. I was very impressed that he was not the least bit put off by the movement of the plank.

Today Vandal learned that there is a food that is truly worth working for, chicken livers! We used these new found treasures to learn to pounce on the hit it board with 2 front feet and to start perch work :-) We also had lots of toy time, worked on heel and side and played the cone game. Oh, yea and decided that the teeter board hitting the floor is sort of scary, of course it was not scary yesterday but that of course was yesterday for god's sake!

So, the chicken livers came into play again and the "work" session ended when Vandal could put 2 feet on the teeter board and keep them there without bouncing off like he had just put his feet on a hot stovetop :-) Then we played...

Wally was simply brilliant and SoBe was very angry that it was never her turn!!!

And it begins...

SoBe went to see Dr. Keesling today, she is a Veterinarian who specializes in PT.  

We were able to actually isolate the issue today, SoBe has a pulled Iliopsoas muscle. Her symptoms make perfect sense with the diagnosis, the reason SoBe has been on again, off again three-legged lame which of course has scared the crap out of me.

I have been worried sick that it is a knee/cruciate injury, knowing that it is a muscle pull, although a major muscle is definitely a relief!

When the muscle spasms, it causes her to pull her leg up in order to get relief. We are looking at about a 6 week rehab program, in which we will be gradually easing her back into her active lifestyle. Huge sigh of relief!!!

I had a busy day today and did not get much of a chance to train dogs but I did take Vandal down to the training building before one of my lessons showed up and we played on the plank.

Truly Vandals plank work should begin with the plank on the floor but he is quite the brave young man and he really thought the plank on the floor was an unnecessary obstacle so I put it up on the edge of a 12" table.

Doing this turned out to be very beneficial for 2 reasons, first he really enjoyed running down the elevated plank but we also got a first look at the table and how much fun it can be.

I started by encouraging Vandal up on to the table and rewarded him with treats and play when he hopped up. There was no duration involved just fun!

To introduce the plank I moved down the plank with him and rewarded him for running all the way through it. He was very quick to figure out what I wanted and within a rep or 2 I was able to place a target out about 3 feet from the bottom of the plank and send him to it. You will see this on the video, yes another video!!!

 

The most interesting part of this whole exercise was the fact that although I had placed a couple of really yummy treats on the "target" he ran down the plank, grabbed the target and took off! I continued to put treats on the target plate but made sure that I got there as fast as I could so that after he actually ate the treat we played tug with the target plate. 

I am totally fine with the fact that he wants to play with the target plate, play is always good and of course I do not have intentions of using the target for very long.

The plank was quite bouncy and although it did not bother Vandal even a little bit, not every dog is going to be quite so receptive to that much motion, so use caution if you are trying this yourself.

On the same yet slightly different note, a question was posed regarding my running contact decision. 

The question was in reference to how I will handle a running contact in a gamble situation? Well, a lot of the success in running contacts has to do with the handlers physical cues as well as verbals, once my dog is truly understanding the concept of "running" the contacts which generally involve driving to obstacles straight ahead I will spend an equal amount of time training turns off of the contacts.

This will involve asking Vandal to turn both left and right as well as doing 180 degree turns to obstacles as he runs off of the contact obstacle. I have to be sure that my physical position/cue supports the direction I am asking Vandal to go.

Wally has running contacts and has managed to Q on several Masters level gambles that involved contacts, it can be done :-)

Speaking of Wally, as long as I have gotten so darn good at "up" loading these videos, here is a video of a standard run from the Colorado Kennel Club AKC trial a couple of weeks ago :-) Enjoy!

Tomorrow, Merger, Beep!, and, Vivid are going to play with Sheepies! It is supposed to be the most beautiful day tomorrow and hopefully we will get in a great walk, sheepies and some serious quality agility training with Merger, Wally and Vandal. I will let you all know how the sheep wrangling goes!

Not even close to a computer whiz!

So, the video did not upload properly, so much for the computer whiz thing!! Not only that but I went to edit the post and then could not get back in to add stuff before posting. I am a long way from "whiz" status, fortunately I am a much better dog trainer than computer geek!

A few more thoughts, then off to bed for me...

I took the Merge man down to train tonight and he was a really good boy! He still cannot walk more than 3 feet without bumping into something but there are things that we can work on that are a bit less physical :-)

Actually our mission tonight was to start clarifying for Merger that he needs to seek out and take obstacles if they are between me and him. 

We played on low jumps in a pinwheel configuration, tunnels, the chute and even the tire. He really seemed to be getting it! It helps that he is so incredibly in love with the flying squirrel toys and that he only gets the toy when he "chooses" to take the obstacle in line with our path. 

We worked on the weave pole channels and I am happy to say he will stay at the beginning of the set of 12 poles and wait until released then drive through the poles to me. Merger is also doing the poles with me and away from me as well.

It is time to start working on entries, I will employ the help of my little guide gates for this new challenge.

It was fun to have Merger back in training, I just have to remember that his giant size does not match the active brain cells at this point, it will surely catch up, someday!

Time for bed...

I am a computer whiz!

OK, I am not a computer whiz, but, I actually downloaded, oops I mean "up"loaded a video to this blog!!

This is a clip of SoBe doing some A-frame training that I took a few weeks ago :-) Of course there are no A-frames happening right now as the lameness continues, we are going back to the specialty clinic tomorrow and hopefully will receive good news regarding the direction we take from here.

I am not sure who is more bummed about this forced lay-off, SoBe or myself! I have so much fun training the little monkey and I am actually home for 10 days, of course she is out of commission, AARRRGHHH!

I apologize, I need to whine a bit to keep from worrying even more about her.

OK, I may have lost my mind completely but I am seriously considering teaching Vandal a running dog walk as well as a running A-frame.

I have been heard to say that I would never teach a running dog walk again after Wally, yet here I am already thinking about it and I am still working on Wally's dog walk :-)

So, why am I thinking such outrageous thoughts? 

Honestly, because in this day and age of agility competition it is becoming less and less likely that a stopped contact performance will be competitive at the level that I choose to compete. 

Don't get me wrong, a well trained 2on/2off contact performance is very fast and there is always the quick release, however, I feel that it is the "quick" or "early" release that can undermine the whole process. 

Even if I have done all of my proofing exercises and am careful to "bank" the early releases, the very driven and pushy dogs will eventually question their responsibilities and there will very likely be an erosion of performance at least in a competition setting.

I am not really interested in putting all of the time and energy into teaching a solid 2on/2off performance if I am going to have to loosen my criteria to be competitive, at this moment I am thinking I would rather put the time into teaching a running contact and be done with it.

Keep in mind, a running contact requires just as much, if not more training. A running contact is not an alternative to training the contacts.

I am in the process of trying to figure out exactly how I want to teach these running dog walks. I used stride regulators with Wally and I am very satisfied with stride regulators to train a running A-frame, but I am trying to establish a method that minimizes the use of visual props as much as possible.

I will certainly keep the blog updated with whatever I decide to do.