The opportunity to play with new dog toys is just as reinforcing for the handler as it is for the dogs!!!Tonight, having done minimal training at all over the past week, I decided it was time to start getting back into it again. With no deadline now, I can really work the foundation stuff and take everything at my own pace. Having Lynda's workshop behind me also is a huge step in the right direction and I feel I have come a long way since I started this blog!So first up I took Josh for a jog - the plan being to rotate the dogs so each gets to go running with me alternately. (Note - this is also good fitness for the HANDLER ) Then back home and some quiet time to rest up before a training session. I really still need a proper training plan, but since I haven't sat down and done that yet, I made the decision that currently I am going to work through weavers and nose touches. So I set up four weavers, had the entry slightly 'open' but the second two poles straight. I pulled out the brand new toys that arrived last week, using the moo tug for Josh and the Tug-N-Treat for Fyre. I did spend a few minutes playing with moo tug with both of them when it first arrived, and had been very pleased with the response. Both thought it was utterly fantastic. The Tug-N-Treat I hadn't used before, so was keen to see what Fyre's reaction would be, as this was my planned replacement for the treat container I have been throwing up til now. (FYI, the website I ordered them from, which is where the links above go, is fantastic - an awesome range of dog toys and other doggy training gear, and it all arrived very quickly too).I couldn't have been more pleased with both of them. To start with, both were HIGHLY enthused over their toys, showing a very high amount of drive which transferred readily to the poles. Secondly, the weave performance itself was excellent, I got some great entries from both dogs almost right away, which was especially exciting as I have been battling those difficult angles for Fyre in particular. He just loved the Tug-N-Treat (which I will now shorten to TNT to save my typing fingers!) and I very quickly got some very enthusiastic tugging. For anyone contemplating using these, ones of the tips Lynda gave us was that when you open it up to reward the dog to let them shove their nose right in and get the food then quickly snatch it away, close it up and continue the game so it is all very fast and exciting. (As opposed to you opening it and taking a piece of food out to give to the dog - much more mundane and boring). I will try and get some video of them doing weaves this weekend when I have some daylight - and I'll just add here that I can't believe daylight savings is about to end, how will I survive??!!Fyre also did some nose touches then. (I opted to give Josh a shorter session because he'd already been out for a jog). So, still using the TNT I started by offering a high nose touch (to minimise his likelihood of licking, the behaviour I really want to curb ASAP). Pretty much in between every single correct nouse touch he got the food reward and then more tugging to keep his arousal level high. It was a really great session - he was very excited, and I even managed to get a few touches towards the end that were lower as he got the idea of not licking. Very pleased with the progress made in just a few short minutes.Although Billie will also work the agility foundation stuff, I decided number one on her agenda was show training, as showing is what I want to get back into once I return from Perth and life settles down a bit once again. So tonight we played tug and did circle work, her on the outside circle left and right, inside circle left and obviously inside right needs more work! Then we played It's Your Choice (IYC) with the food rewards (I was using a handful of beef mince in this case), working up to her leaving the food in my open hand, leaving the food on the ground, leaving the food on the ground and recalling past it to me. Then I began working on shaping her to stand. Since we have done quite a bit of work on sit (through the sit-tug game) she will readily offer sit, and also a drop which is her second favourite behaviour. She also likes to stand up on her hind legs and either jump or walk around. So to start with I simply clicked for her getting out of a sit. Then she had to actually stand with all four paws on the ground. Then she had to take up the stand position in front of me herself. In between each attempt I was stirring her up, just running around and playing with her with my hands. As soon as I wanted to start shaping I stopped moving and simply stood quietly (another technique as described by Lynda - wow, boy was that workshop worth every penny!) It was then up to her to figure it out. I was thrilled when after just a few goes she turned out two really excellent free stacks in front of me, simply put all her feet in the right place and stood to attention. Beautiful! Those were given multiple rewards because I *really* liked them. Next step will be freezing her in position once she is there, and then teaching her to move her feet individually as needed, but for now we are just working her taking up the right position straight off. So overall it was a good night - I really enjoyed it and looking forward to working with them over the next week (at least until I head off to NZ for my holiday - whoo-hoo!)
At the very least, I found the motivation to update the blog!You may notice I've changed the slogan on the blog header. Well, it seemed appropriate since the Nationals is no longer my aim, but what to change it to? I spent quite a bit of time pondering this. I could have changed it to something simple like 'A Dog Training Blog' but it just didn't seem to fit. So I thought a bit more. What lies at the heart of what I am trying to do with my dogs? One word seemed to sum it up - motivation.The whole reason I started this blog was to motivate myself to train the dogs, and using the Nationals as a goal was the motivation to make sure I did go out and do it. Motivation is everything - no-one does ANYTHING without some form of motivation. In terms of dog training, we may train our dogs because we are motivated to trial them, we trial them because we are motivated to test ourselves against the course and the clock, and to gain titles, we are motivated to train our dogs WELL so they can not only Q but WIN. We are also motivated to do these things because they are highly enjoyable and addictive, for both dog and handler :) :)Motivation is also tied in closely with transfer of value. The motivation for the dog to do a correct and speedy weave pole entry is getting the toy thrown at the end; the toy is highly MOTIVATING because it is HIGH VALUE. Thus weave poles also become high value because there is a transfer of the toy's value to the weave performance. I want my dogs to be HIGHLY motivated in everything they do, I want speed, accuracy and high arousal level (I want them to really ENJOY training, whatever it is). It is something I am always thinking about and working on - how can I motivate my dogs to enjoy, i.e. tugging? That was outlined in one of my recent posts about how I used crate games to increase the value of playing tug, to make it more exciting, in short to MOTIVATE the dogs to want to do it. What about handler motivation? Getting ready for the Nationals motivated me to drag myself out of bed early in the morning (something that is practically unheard of). Now that I am no longer taking the dogs to the Nationals, suddenly the possibility of sleeping in a bit longer has once again clawed it's way to the top of the 6AM priority list. So I'm going to need to find other ways to motivate myself. One of the first things I am going to do is start to set some clear goals. This will give me the motivation of something to work towards, and will also allow me to more accurately judge our progress. I also want to put together some better training plans, not just 'Well, I might do some 2x2 today, and maybe tomorrow I'll take the dogs for a run on the beach'. I need to be specific, I need to set major goals as well as minor goals, so I can still feel I'm achieving something along the way (working towards a goal = motivation; reaching a goal = reinforcement). Currently I am highly MOTIVATED to go and find some chocolate, so that's it for today!
37 days to go...Sometimes the decision NOT to do something can be the hardest (but also the most important). How many times when training do we think 'Wow, that least weave entry was so good, maybe I can do it just once more, push just a little bit further...' What if the dog then goes on and fails that subsequent weave entry? Now you have to go back again so the dog can get it right and 'finish on a good note'. However, the dog's arousal level has now dropped. He has had a failure. You try again and he fails again. Hmmm, now you REALLY want him to get it right. You make the entry easier, maybe move a bit closer. Eventually, the dog makes the entry again but with considerably less speed and confidence, and from a much easier angle than the first one he nailed beautifully. So now you praise the dog and reward him for shaping YOU to make it easier and for a slower, more cautious performance. Would it not have been better to 'quit whilst ahead' and have a big party for the dog's first awesome entry? Of course, all dogs are different and therefore it is up to us as trainers to know their (and our) limitations. To know when pushing them just a bit further will pay off, and when it will lead to shut down. To know the difference when 'push' becomes 'shove'. Anyway, the above is simply an analogy which can be applied to any area of training. It pertains to my most recent decision of withdrawing all my entries for both dogs at the Nationals. ***pause for effect*** Yes, that's right, I have made the decision NOT to take the dogs (I will hopefully still go over as a spectator since I have been looking forward to the event for months - ok, well, since the last Nats actually). Josh missed 5-6 weeks of training due to complications from surgery, so I knew he was really going to be pushing it. Fyre I believe would have made it round a JD and even possibly JDO course, but being honest with myself, it would have been rushed. I would not have been trialling a dog that was confident, knew all the handling moves to a T, had extensive experience in knowing HOW to jump, and the ability to put it all together for his first ever trial, at a big event, after travelling. All the same, it was an EXTRAORDINARILY hard decision to make. I had SO been looking forward to trialling my dogs at a National again. My last one now was NSW 2006 with Porter, so it has been quite a while. Would it have been the right thing for my dogs though? No. When it comes down to it, the Nationals are after all, just another trial as far as my dog is concerned. Would it be fair of me to put all that pressure on them to commence their trialling careers under those conditions? And to expect them to do well? Because, truth be told, why would I want to take my dog to a National event unless I thought he had a good chance of being right up there with the top dogs? (Well, that's my personal aim anyway). With Porter, I was always confident he would put in a good performance, and although he didn't win classes he managed some fantastic placings, four finals runs over three different Nats, and from our two years as a member of the SA state team only ever accrued ONE course fault. Luckily, Fyre's owner Donna, who is a very good friend of mine, understands exactly how I feel about this and despite the fact that we would lose money by having to cancel pre-booked accom, her flights etc left the decision entirely up to me with no pressure whatsoever either way (I am lucky to have such a good friend :>). So after discussion we both agreed it was best to leave the dogs home and I will continue to work Fyre here, and get him trialling when he is really ready, and hopefully get some titles before he heads back home. (Originally the plan was for him to fly home with Donna after that Nats). Interestingly, I didn't realise how much pressure I had put MYSELF under until I made this decision last night and felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Phew! Now I could work on things at my own pace, run the training program I really WANTED to, and make sure my dogs could give me the high level of performance I really want to trial them at. Another sign that I was pushing too hard - my training plans immediately changed. LOTS more foundation work planned now, rear end awareness, more crate games, more building drive. Flatwork, start lines, tugging, improving general fitness, really working through all the difficult weave entries, no cutting corners just to get a dog up to being able to run round a course. From the dog's point of view anyway, agility is just fun (or should be). Only the handler cares about Nationals, titles, awards. Looking back at my previous posts about making sure we are all having FUN why would I want to do anything that made it LESS fun? Now I can relax and REALLY enjoy all our training time together with no time limits. Guess it's time to change the header of my blog now :)
45 days to go...Another 5 days past... After due consideration, I decided to spend the whole of this week just on building drive. No jumps, no weavers etc. Being so close now to the Nats, I at first wondered if I could afford to give up a whole week of training to work on drive, and really I have Porter to thank for helping me make the decision (prepare now for another chapter on why Porter was and always will be truly AWESOME). Thinking back through those dim, dark memories of when I first started training Porter, I recalled that he always had tonnes of drive for food and toys, without me so much as doing anything specific to build it. He loved squeakies, loved retireving, in fact was self-taught in many things. Looking back now, I think for the millionith time how blessed I was to have a dog that was so keen to work with me no matter what. Every time I left him on a start line stay he would start to bark as I led out. He wouldn't move - just bark. He was that excited. He would growl at me as he went into the weave poles or through a tunnel and whine with excitement. I then compared that picture to my current dogs. Hmmmm. Something was different. My two were basically doing things, they were tugging, they were going over bars, but they weren't EXCITED about it. They weren't like 'LET ME AT IT!!!' they were more like 'Oh, well if you want me to.' Though I had been attempting to get them excited about toys, I realised they simply weren't, and their equipment performance was therefore suffering. They weren't aroused enough to drive to their weave entry or zoom over even a low bar. They weren't tensed on the start line ready to go, they were sitting relaxed and not paying 100% attention to me or the gear in front of them. Yes, perhaps I could have taught them the mechanics of doing agility and even got them around a course eventually, but they wouldn't have been excited. They wouldn't have been doing it with the joy that Porter did. Would I be happy with that peformance? No. And I'd have known it was totally my own fault for skipping over the foundation stuff. So to Porter I once again say 'thank you'.Now, since coming back from Lynda's workshops I had been doing quite a bit of work on crate games. The dogs were getting quite enthusiastic about it now. So I decided to use the high value of the crate to build value for the tug toys. To make sure it generalised, I made sure to rotate toys and locations. AM session before work, pack soft crate, toys, dogs and high value treats all into my Corolla hatch and drive to a random park. Unpack everything, do two or three repetitions of the dogs bursting out of the crate to tug then sending them back in and throwing food in the crate. Then pack everything back up and rush home to get off to work. PM session, get home from work, grab a drink so I don't faint before tea, then repack everything and do it all over again at a different park. Then we might also go down the beach and go for a run (building fitness for dogs AND handler) during which we would work on recalls. Incidentally, Josh did some excellent recalls the other night - he stayed with me and even with other dogs going past in reasonably close proximity did not run after them. The 'Look At That' game outlined in Control Unleashed (which I have renamed 'Who's That' as I find it easier to say) has worked wonders - I can now cue 'Who's That' and Josh will look around to find a dog and then look back at me for his treat or offer a behaviour, usually one or two paws up on me are his favourites.Anyway, getting off the track slightly there, but nevertheless...! I made myself some basic rules during this time also - no feeding the dogs in the backyard. The dogs dinners, which is one of their highest value rewards, must be pre-packed and taken 'on location' to be used during the training session. No training in the backyard in general - I know they can do it there so it is a waste of both our time. *I* must be highly excited during the whole play process, there must be no slacking off at all on my part. How excited is that? Well, if you aren't breathless and the other people in the park aren't looking at you, you probably need to be more excited :) Affter a week of this, Fyre had his first night out at agility training with Para Districts. I was running late from work so he didn't actually get to do any training as such, but I set up his crate in a couple of different locations and we did some tug sessions same as we have been doing during the week, and he maintained excellent focus on me, very excited about the toy and some great tugging. I even got him to go over a low single bar a couple of times before driving back to his crate. This was quite thrilling for me because the last time I took him out (probably a year ago now) he was more interested in sniffing the ground than paying attention to me. Lynda's workshops made all the difference - if only she'd been here six months earlier!!! So in just a week, I have been able to get both dogs much more excited about tugging, even MORE excited about crate games (they will try to drag themselves out of my hold to get in the crate now) and maintaining that level of excitement in multiple locations. Now we are ready to go back to 'training' but this will remain an important part of each session. So I've said it before, and I'll say it again, if you haven't got the Crate Games DVD yet you simply MUST. It can be applied to so many areas of your training. LOVE THEM!
50 days to go...Where the friggin' heck did 106 days go???The last week has seen me dragging myself out of bed so I have an extra hour before work to train the dogs. They need to train in different places now, so the equipment has been thrown in the back of the car and I am once again staking out all the parks in the neighborhood (luckily we have quite a lot around here). First few changes of scenery we lost a bit of focus. The dogs wanted to wander and sniff. One of the MANY things I took away from Lynda's workshops was that if your dog is giving you a behaviour you don't like, i.e. sniffing, barking, you can interrupt this behaviour. (This is one piece of the puzzle I had been missing from my attempts at positive training - what do you do if the dog chooses to do the wrong thing or loses attention?) Lynda's advice was simply to 'interrupt the behaviour', i.e. just gently chuck the dog under his chin to get his noise off the ground, maybe chatting to him like 'Hey, we're working here, we're doing something, let's get on with it!' Incidentally, this has also worked well for Billie's occasionals burst of barking at the dog behind the back fence - simply walk over, interrupt the behaviour by performing a collar grab and removing her from that area. Once she is away she then has the choice to stay with me and ignore the other dog and maybe play with a toy or earn a treat, or she can go back and we can repeat the process all over again!Anyway, one of the problems I have been having is keeping the dogs' enthusiasm up, most especially Fyre. Fyre usually starts off VERY enthusiastic but after a few run throughs he fades out. This is particularly evidenct when I try to move to more difficult weave entries or as in yesterday when I obviously increased the jump height on the set point too quickly for him and he refused, and thereafter continued to refuse even very low jumps so we had to go back to just a single low bar so as to end the session on a good note. Note to self - get a watch. I must, must, must remember with Fyre that he needs short, sharp and shiny training sessions. Two repetitions, finish. Two repetitions, finish. LOTS of play and excitement. I need to be less finicky. I am not allowing the dogs to make mistakes, in fact I think I have been moving too slowly and they are unutterably sick of me trying to perfect all the basics and not challenging them enough. The other thing I am going to try with Fyre is let him have two attempts and then finish the exercise and switch dogs, then give him another go. I don't want him to 'rehearse failure' and I DO want him to be able to hit those entries when he is at his most excited, not allow him to make some mistakes and then finally get them once he has 'settled'.So today, instead of doing setpoint again, or weave poles again, I showed them a broad jump for the first time (no qualms there, both went over it first go) then added a couple more bar jumps and even dragged the tunnel out. I started with low (300mm) bars, then left one bar low and added a second bar at 500mm and we just played around going in a U shape. They did knock the bars a couple of times, but I didn't worry about it, we just went back around again and kept going. To be honest, they were probably very close, only just 4m apart, and especially tricky with them blasting out a tunnel straight onto a bar. Plus I have done very little jumping with them having the bars with any height, so this was another new element. All I really wanted though was for them to have fun, for me to see where they are at as far as doing any sequencing, and where I need to work. FYI - crate games. Definitely, definitely get this DVD and work through it. My dogs LOVE crate games and they have ENDLESS applications. Today for example I was using it to keep them driving over the last bar and straight back into their crates. I recently purchased a soft crate for the sole reason that it is more easy to cart around with me and I can therefore take it when I go out to various parks training. They get very excited when we play crate games, so it helps to keep them 'up' as well. One of the other things Lynda said in her workshops was that we Australians are so SERIOUS! She said we need to loosen up, to let go and have more fun with our dogs, not be so dead set on getting every handling manouvre, every bar, every contact perfect. We should ENJOY our training with our dogs. That is one of my aims now, to really enjoy every moment with them, not just 'Oh shit, only 50 days til Nationals, better go train the dogs'. (Incidentally, I will be spending 11 of those days in New Zealand so it is actually only 39 TRAINING days left... *gulp*)I am hoping the dogs will be ready to do Novice Jumping at the Mt Gambier trials. Entries have to go off early this week so I have about another 24 hours to make the decision... then I think also, should I enter them in Open as well and hope they have decent weaves by then? Will that challenge me to do a good job with my weave training the next three weeks? Guess I will see how this afternoon's and tomorrow's AM training sessions go and make a decision based on that. Once thing for sure, no matter what happens I'm going to make damn sure I have FUN with it :) :)
