Addictions in Dog Training

It's not so much the competitions, the trialing, the "winning" or the ribbons and titles that keeps me so interested in dog training. Those are like icing on the cake - they just make it a little sweeter that's all!

The fun is in how you can teach something (with shaping/clicker training and reinforcement) to a dog that wants to learn and work with you, and how absolutely awesome and cool that feels!

Take a step back from what is broadcast on national TV about being "the leader" and physically controlling or confronting the dog.

When you were a kid, did you listen better to your parents when the yelling, ultimatums, punishments and "physical corrections" got tossed around? Or did you listen better and do what they wanted if there was something in it for you? Which did you enjoy more? Was it fun wincing away from your parent if/when they raised a hand and you knew you were gonna get smacked for something? Remember, you at least spoke the same language as your parents and could actually understand what they wanted.

Or work. How many people are going to work hard  for a "good employee" and a pat on the head once when you do good? You're really going to keep working hard and toeing the company line? Even if the job is something that you LOVE I highly doubt it. Heck, even if you would, I sure wouldn't!

Anyway - off  the soapbox.

Once you have something that your dog is motivated for - food, a toy, chasing the broom, your cat (okay, maybe not the cat, but you get the idea.) You use it to reward and reinforce what you want, you don't bribe them with it.That means Fido doesn't see the treat until he does what you want. You're paying him for a job done well, not begging him to do what you ask!

Rewarding a dog for what you want is positive training, it's easier to ask them to do something than to tell them "no." Don't do this, don't do that - they don't know what they're supposed to do! It's your job to show them what you want.

Positive training is not permissive. There are still consequences, they just don't look like what is shown on TV. Chase that cat, and the dog calmly taken and put in a time out in a kennel. Look at the cat calmly, get a treat or maybe grab a toy and play for a few minutes. Pull on the leash and instead of walking your human does a impersonation of a tree until  the leash is loose.

Oh right, soapbox ...

Seriously though. It's amazing what you can teach your dog once you have a reward they'll work for. You don't speak a common language (mostly not anyway, dogs are very good at reading body language and humans can get good at reading the dogs body language with practice, but I digress) However, once you teach them that people are fun and you get awesome things for paying attention to them they're game to try provided you reward them for that effort.

The biggest  (lowest?) low in dog training is when you have something your dog is struggling with. They just do not understand what you want. Or they can't do it, for a variety of reasons. You break it down into little baby steps and teach the dog each step, not perfectly, but roughly what you want. Then slowly chain it back together. Still nothing.

You make it fun! As Susan Garrett says, work is play, and play is work. Other top trainers like Silvia Trkman and Denise Fenzi have slightly different takes on the same things. Building your relationship with your dog, playing with your dog and getting what you want through that.

Sometimes you might come at it from a different angle, with a different plan of attack, but always remember; your dog is doing this because they do not understand. Maybe they're worried and concerned about what you're asking for, maybe they just don't know how to do what you're asking for. Your job is to help them understand what you want, that they don't need to worry or be afraid and that this thing you want them to do is fun.

 Landing and then bouncing back off with all 4 feet on a vertical incline that makes noise and moves was very difficult.

This was an intermediate step toward the end behavior.

The biggest high is that light bulb moment at the end, when they understand what you want and they NAIL it. It's when you feel like a million bucks and it is ABSOLUTELY worth all the hard work =D

Motion Component Games and Teeter Work

We're still here! I may not be blogging (mostly because I have run out of pictures and hate my camera but can't get a new one) but we're still practicing.

It's somewhat un-nerving to be out practicing agility in the "country" (at Wet Noses last night) and have the coyotes start up howling sounding like they're just beyond eyesight in the adjacent field. If it weren't for the fenced agility field we would have been outta there then and there!

Motion component games have been a huge part of Spencer's training. What is a component game? It's making a component of a behavior into a fun game away from your finished behavior so that the dog LOVES to do it. Then, when you chain it all together you get a more enthusiastic response and a better finished behavior since hopefully your dog didn't learn (or more accurately, you didn't teach) anything you didn't want to see as part of the finished behavior.

Take for example the weave poles. If you teach by luring a dog through the poles you build several things you don't want to see into the performance;
1) Your body position is what tells the dog what to do and the dog's job/criteria are very unclear to them.
2) The dog learns to do the weaves very slowly and it is difficult to speed them up as you have built this into the performance.

As well, if the wheels should fall off somewhere down the road, you can work on particular games away from the finished behavior to "fix" it instead of rehearsing that behavior you don't want to see repeated. Bailing off the teeter before the pivot point anyone?!

But, back to Spencer.

He can wobble disc with the best of em, okay, well maybe just the best of thechihuahuas. Both extension (front feet on one disc, back feet on another) and compression (both sets of feet, same disc.) He can even balance on 2 discs stacked on top of each other.

Upping the ante with a travel plank on balance discs also poses no problem. Walk up it, walk down it, turn around in the middle of it. Not a problem!

Small ghetto wobble board, nary a issue. He'll bounce onto it and then spin around to grab his tug toy. I need a larger one though - this one is a little too small.

Confidence running full tilt across a plank, fantastic. I have a hard time beating him across the dog walk - he loves it!

Now for the hard part - the teeter. Last night was all about the teeter. With a high table under each end to reduce the motion, we practiced driving across the pivot point into end position. Super high value food rewards and then break to have a party with yellow ball. He noticed the pivot but didn't bail off of the teeter.

I also made a point of interspersing the teeter work with dog walk and a frame work. The frame to just mix it up, but the dog walk to make a point that it is NOT like the teeter. I've seen a lot of teeter nervous dogs end up with issues on the dog walk since they look similar. Not a problem though!

Since he "noticed" the pivot, the drop was reduced. What I should see before I up the difficulty is no fear across the pivot. Since he noticed, it's back to more extreme wobble board work before we work that particular teeter game again.

Slowly we're working our way through the content of the contact course.

What I'm happy with is how he will still work his way through something, despite being worried or stressed. This is the second time this week he handled stressful situation well and bounced back from the worry to continue working with me - which is huge! I couldn't believe how well he handled crazy barking dogs on Sunday, and being handled/held by a "stranger." He was concerned, but we moved away from the action a little bit and he would offer play and tug if I really worked for it.

Wheeeeeeee.......

The last Wednesday of every month Training Troop puts on Whee Wed trials. It's a little mini agility trial starting at 7 pm and hopefully not finishing super late. Usually there is one "all levels" dog class, like Steeplechase or Team Relay and then there is 1 starter/1 advanced class or 2 masters classes.

Septembers was Starter/Advanced Jumpers and a Steeplechase. I figured with the recent success of Flashing Canines, I might as well see how Spencer is going to handle a indoor trial at Wet Creek. As that is the venue where most of the trials are held around here.

Spencer has been joining Baxter at trials since last Dec. Just getting used to noises and people and dogs etc. Trying to teach him that they're not a bad place to be and even if it is a little scary, nothing bad will happen. We've practiced maybe 2-3 times out in that arena for drop-in but have mostly trained outside. I had no idea how my little guy was going to do.

I was in fact pretty prepared for scared, shut down dog, especially after the parade of bully breeds doing weight pulling filed in and set off all the reactive agility dogs. Fantastic! Loud, echoing, frantic barking dogs, just what Spencer loves. /face palm.

So, we went into the ring for starter jumpers I was pretty much caught with my proverbial pants down. Spencer exploded off of the start line, blew past me down a straight away, missed the tire jump and was already over the next jump after that before my brain kicked into gear. Ok, no tire, fine, whatever. He missed another jump on the straight away to the finish line, but all in all he did fantastic!

He was *just* a little high/frantic, and when one of the ladies timing or scribing said I could move up closer to the start line he had to take off like a bullet to go wiggle at them. But all in all, he was brilliant. Zoomies were directed at the course more or less and he stayed with me. Enthusiasm - check. Fun - check. Handler wasn't a bone head and didn't make him redo things that are her fault not his - check!

Steeplechase was a little slower, but still he did a good job. Not quite as high. He slipped in the loose dirt on his way into the weaves but stuck the entry and didn't pop. He's still a little odd with tunnels - I can't rear cross them near the tunnel mouth or I'm almost guaranteed to have him spin back out and sometimes if I don't support enough he'll spin out anyway - so I got that once. He was also hitting his A-frame contact really high and it isn't quite independent of handler position yet, so more proofing and work (which I knew) on those specific issues is needed. I'm not sure if the jackpot treats at Flashing Canines contributed to the fantastic attitude at Wet Creek, but I'm not discounting it. So those will continue.

For a baby dog I think he did very well. He is SO different to handle than Baxter. That is going to be a steep learning curve! Sadly, I have no video of these runs. I think I'm just going to bring a tripod next time and have it video me.

As for my big guy, Baxter had a weave bobble when he popped out 2 from the end. Then he also had a bar down. Both in Steeplechase. I didn't really fix the weaves and I should have, but he was still overtime. The shocker was the bar though. Baxter doesn't knock bars (unless we're in class and I am talking to him at the wrong time) but otherwise he is fantastic with that. This was a straight away of 5 jumps at full speed. I didn't think that it would be that challenging, but for a dog running flat out (I was ahead by a tiny bit, but he was moving) I can see that it would be hard to have the same control jumping over multiple jumps. So that's something we'll practice a bit too.

No Q's. But it was a very fun Wednesday!

First Trial

Spencer's first agility trial was a success!

Flashing Canines was a awesome trial because it was a little quieter and benching was pretty spread out. I LOVE the venue because of the other fenced baseball diamonds though. It is awesome beyond belief to be able to take your entire group of dogs for a offleash walk/run/game of fetch during the trial within sight of it! It makes pottying after staying in the hotel overnight a cinch and if you happen to have dogs with you not in the trial they don't spend a mind numbing day sitting in a crate with only potty breaks!

My goal was just to get my baby dog out to experience a trial environment, run around the ring and have a good time. Anything else is just a bonus. I was also really trying not care how he did, except that he would have fun and be enthusiastic. I think I succeeded.

We were just in starter jumpers (because it is easy) and gamblers so that I could run him over "strange" contact equipment a few times and then have a party. Mentally I was making a huge effort not to care about qualifying and not to let anything in my mind change my behavior. No pressure on the dog!

Spencer was a little unsure of agility. Watching the videos of our runs I can't really "see" the difference,  but in our first gamblers and jumpers run he was unsure. He stuck with me, but I didn't have my happy little dog from practice. He noticed the ring crew (but didn't bark at them!) and was sniffy with the chute, but I think that was more curiosity than stress behaviors.

Our third run, the second gamblers run was awesome. We hit the dogwalk and the Aframe, and he was with me the way he'll run in practice! It doesn't look faster/drivier/different on video though, which I found odd. It almost feels like he actually needs contact obstacles/weaves/table so that he is confident of what I am asking him to do, jumps/tunnels are not valuable enough and his enthusiasm and speed wanes as we do more of them without a reward - he thinks he is wrong maybe? I do reward mistakes in training with him so hopefully not! He's just so soft.

With Spencer, our pre-run routine still needs to be established. I have to pump him up and then cheerlead through the course. 110% of my attention is on my little guy so that he doesn't have a bad experience and shut down. He is very toy driven/ball obsessive, so I wanted to use a toy to motivate him instead of just food. But it's hard to bring that toy with you to the ring before you run and it's distracting for the other dogs or they focus on it and scare Spencer. He'll tug, but not with all the dogs around the gates at a trial. He jumps into my arms, but he doesn't do the personal play thing yet, there have always been toys or treats involved too, so definitely something to work on.

I wasn't sure what kind of "exit strategy" I wanted to use with Spencer either. Baxter gets a jackpot of treats at the end of his run, but it's kind of a pain to prep them. I wasn't sure I wanted to double that, but I think I will. Spencer was a little surprised the first time he got it, but after that "Where are your cookies? Good boy, lets go get the cookies" got lots of enthusiasm. Then we can play ball or tug, or whatever.

I think the hardest part is wanting for him to be successful. I just don't know if what I am doing is going to enable that. He doesn't have the most confidence and is really soft so I am trying to be proactive and avoid things I know can shake it. No start line stays yet, and any wrong obstacles or incorrectly done ones are my fault, not his. No major obstacle call offs of yelling his name either. If we look silly but have fun, so be it.

Baby dogs are fun, but stressful!

Just about a Year

Or it would have been had I posted this on time! So it's like a year and a month - whatever!!

Baxter started trialing and got his first Q last year on 31-Aug.

I am SO happy with how far he has come and how we've grown as a team. I'm pretty happy with me for sticking with the sport as well and growing as a person/trainer. Granted, Baxter isn't as difficult a starter dog as some people have had, but it's easy to start out with something and then decide that it really isn't for you.

I love it when there are photographers at the trials! I got one of each of the boys @ Medicine Hat! Photographers Album

Aside from guarding the hotel room, he was fantastic at the Flashing Canines trial last weekend. We came home with 2 Q's; his first master standard and his first master snooker. But, he tried in all his runs AND he hit all his weave pole entries and didn't pop out. I also got fast weave poles (we can get single stride weaves at home and are working on transferring that to other venues) in his qualifying master standard run. The things we've been working on are improving!

We had a couple little bobbles here and there, what I'll refer to as "baby dog" (and possibly baby handler) mistakes. I front crossed on the flat to push him onto the dogwalk and instead of going up the dogwalk plank he went beside it in a standard run. He missed a jump because I drifted a little bit laterally away from it in one jumpers. Then we both buggered up a backside of a jump in the other jumpers. But we're getting there. I have a happy dog who wants to work for me in a trial. THAT is what I care about, the rest will come with polishing. I didn't get lost on course either, which I am happy about!

Notice I don't mention either of our gamblers runs though. Those were just sad. First run I tried the mini's on, and he wasn't terribly successful. Not only did he not want to work away for the mini, we also didn't get the super awesome main gamble either. 3 jumps, 2 tunnels, 4 multi directional obstacles. It was like a gift!

So. I changed my plan after some advice. Stop worrying about the mini's. Plan a nice speedy path to wind him up instead of struggling in the first 40 sec which is going to pretty much guarantee me a melt down in the final gamble. Ok. Makes sense. I think we did better in the second gamblers run - except for Mr Excitement jumping a dogwalk contact >< That final gamble was hard though, out to 6 weaves, twice and some jumps, only a handful of dogs even got to the weaves, only one did the gamble correct but over time. We weren't any of those dogs!

So I need to break down distance work to not such a distance I think, and get it solid there. In our distance class we took I usually had to step over the line to get Baxter to read the handling right. If that's what it takes in a trial, that's what it takes. I'd rather step over the line and help him get it right than for my handling to be unclear and teach him not to trust it. That's the plan for now anyway. Gamblers is going to be the hardest thing for us to master, but I knew that right from the beginning when it took forever to even get our first gamblers Q's.

Even though he is doing good in agility, I'm thinking about dropping him into veterans once he turns 5 in January. It still feels like a little bit of a cop-out right now, but if he needs a couple extra seconds to qualify when he's trying I don't think I'm going to stay in specials until he's 7 just to make the a point of doing it "the hard way." I guess I'll see in Jan. We're in Steeplechase this Wed and I'm curious to see if he will make time or if he'll still be over.

Motivation

The dogs and I spent the weekend in Medicine Hat for the last outdoor trial of the season put on by Flashing Canines. It was a great trial and has given me lots of blog fodder! Before I start on the good stuff tho ...

...Irritation is motivation

I think I am sufficiently motivated enough after this past weekend to put a stop to barking at noises.

They look so cute and innocent ...

Rewind a few months. I went to get Spencer measured at a trial, just to practice and get used to it. It went badly, he was terrified and actually growled at the judge - not quite the way I wanted things to go. So we worked on that really hard. I made a little PVC wicket and he got "measured" and "petted" on the back and neck by the wicket every couple of days while he worked for his meals. This weekend he was great for measuring. Although I'm sure it helps that they had thin metal wickets and a female judge instead of huge PVC ones and a male judge.

I'm talking about this why? Because this weekend was the first time I've stayed in a hotel and I was pretty apprehensive about taking all 3 dogs with me. When they're together pack mentality is quite apparent, if one dog reacts to something even if the others individually are fine all 3 turn into little lunatics. Penny is very vocal while Spencer is really high strung, so I usually don't have both Chihuahuas with me - especially in new situations.

I guess it wasn't THAT bad (then again, I wasn't the people in the room next to mine, so who knows?) The 3 hour car ride had the boys pretty out of sorts and Baxter was a bit stressed by being in a strange place. I'm glad I came up the night before instead of making the drive the morning of.

The hotel put us in the very last room in the hall, the one right beside the door to the stairwell that also has a outside door. Instead of having a nice little handle you press it was one of those doors with the bar across it. You know, the ones with the bar you hammer on and smash into the door to open it. It's quite noisy. You can hear it from in the room ...

I had hoped that all the camping and staying in my parents trailer with the dogs would lend itself to a easy hotel stay but between the room location and being in a strange place, none of us got much sleep that night. I even crated and covered the smaller ones together in hopes it would keep them quieter. Didn't quite work.

Saturday night went better maybe because they were falling asleep on their feet from the day at the trail, but again, when people started moving and thunking and bashing around on Sunday morning starting at 5:30 the dogs would get a bark or two in before they would shush.

Ah well. Something to work on. 

Toys. Fading rewards and Building ring behaviours.

We had a great time today spending most of the day out at Wet Noses. Spencer and I are starting to click as a team in the face of distraction, which is good, because he's entered in his first trial in 2 weeks!

It will likely be the last outdoor trial of the season and may be a *little* bit early to begin to trial Spencer. However, I want him to have a good experience at his first couple of trials and outdoors is easier for him. Less weird echos, not so crowded. No dogs that attack the front of their crate when you walk by benched right by the entrance to the arena. Outdoors makes things easier when you're a soft, fragile little dog!

Spencer is also comfortable enough (at Wet Noses at least) to full out play tug with me. The kind of toy obsessive tug that I get at home when my little guy isn't worried about his environment.

What I'm working on right now is fading out the toy being on my person or at least visibly on my person. When we run courses or when we work drills, I usually am holding his toy. So he KNOWS it's there. He doesn't track(stare) the toy as he works, which was a nice side effect of training weaves by 2x2's, but he's anticipating earning it. When he can't see it, he's not as sure about working.

Baxter didn't do this, but then he was training for much longer and I primarily used treats with Baxter, only using his cherished ball to teach that burst of speed at the end through the finish line. Treats build value in a behavior, but toys build drive for it. With Baxter I've had to work on re-building his toy drive due to the focus on food rewards. With Spencer I am working on keeping both toy drive and motivation for food intact during training. Not focusing on the "easy" one to the exclusion of the other.

We've done a lot of small handling drills and double box work so he's used to frequent rewards to create enthusiasm and drive for the behaviors. So I'm lengthening the sequences we run before he earns his toy. We're not up to running a full course without a reward yet. If we're not there by the trial, that's fine, I'll just do partial courses and then have a party with him.

I'm also juicing up nose touches as a rewarding behavior. They're already pretty rewarding, but now I randomly jackpot them as well. Why? So in the event my soft little dog shuts down on a agility course, I can ask for a hugely reinforcing, easy behavior that he loves to do.

Yes, it will get us (me) faults for touching the dog, but it can be my "toy" on the course until we can get off of it to get his reward. It will also enable me to positively influence his frame of mind to get one more obstacle done with focus and enthusiasm so we can get outta there and not reward shut down or other stress behaviors by just leaving. As the truism reads, plan for the worst and hope for the best! It's also just plain fun =D

Just passing by

Where'd it go?

Tongues