Jump To It

Cleaning House

2011-11-05T22:46:00.004+10:30

Billie is helping me clean...

One of the things I have been working on with both dogs is retrieving - not just chasing a thrown object, but picking up many and varied things. Billie has found the concept of bringing things and placing them in my offered hand somewhat difficult. She likes to bounce around and play with them and 'kill' them then thrust them randomly at me.

She does like to pick things up though, anything lying randomly on the ground, so I started playing little games with her when I was hanging out washing - I have done it with both pegs and socks/small items of clothing, dropping them next to me when she is close by and rewarding her for picking them up. I then made it a little more tricky by not accepting the item if she was shaking it or jumping up at me - as soon as she does that now I take my hand away, therefore removing her chance to put the item there and earn her treat. Whilst I initially just rewarded picking up the item, I am now requiring her to put it in whichever hand I have held out. If she drops it I remove the hand, if she picks it up again the hand returns. Lots of little informal training sessions like this have helped her start to figure it out. Next thing we'll move up to is bringing the item back without dropping it - currently as she has only just started to bring it reliably to hand we are going to cement that in the brain for a bit longer before making it harder.

The little game I videoed above was really done more because I thought it was cute rather than a real training session :) But it does show basically what we've been doing. If I were really training properly I would be trying to use less vocal encouragement and let her figure it out, and I would also have done some tugging or fun running games to raise her arousal level before starting.

What's Shaping You?

2010-12-18T21:24:00.003+10:30

You might be surprised...

After spending five wonderful days with Susan Garrett (a blog entry I still plan to do one day!) one of the things I am more aware of now is the many things that shape US in our everyday lives. Throughout her days of lecturing Susan wore a microphone headset with a portable speaker. If she crossed in front of the speaker or went too close it made a loud unpleasant buzzing noise, which led her to mention on several occasions about how the speaker had shaped her not to walk in front of it!!

I have since smiled to myself on numerous occasions about how I'M being shaped by apparently inanimate objects. My iPhone is a prime example.

When I first got my iPhone, I was a little worried that it didn't come with an extensive booklet of how to operate it. I guess I could have looked it all up on the Net, but that seemed altogether too much effort so I opted instead for the trial and error method. Being as it is a touch screen, I just touched various things to see what they did and learnt through this (i.e. the phone SHAPED me to offer various behaviours that would reward me with the successful operation of its features, in exactly the same way I would shape a dog to perform whatever behaviour I wanted him to learn).

A great example of machine shaping human occurred just last night - incidentally, this involved me trying to view Susan's blog!

Previous history of reinforcement has led to me to believe that when I see the link to Susan's blog posted in my news feed on Facebook (on my phone in this case), tapping it with my finger will reward me with being able to view the blog. Not this time. After making me wait a long time, up came the error message. Hmph. Tapping the link on FB usually works. Well, what shall I try next? Go out of FB and open my Safari app and try typing the blog address directly in there. Also has a strong history of reinforcement. Hmph. Same error message. (Getting more frustrated now because I want that high value reward of reading Susan's blog and have not been successful in receiving it). Must keep trying... what if I hit the refresh button? What if I hit it again? And again????!!!! HMPH!!! What if I hit it again whilst this time glaring angrily at the screen and pressing exceptionally hard?

So far, the phone has now shaped me to offer repeated taps at the refresh button. If I'd been rewarded at the end of this by the blog appearing, possibly in the future I would then have been more likely to hit refresh even MORE times and even MORE forcefully in an attempt to get that reward. Thinking doggy nose taps anyone???

However, because there was no reward at the end, this behaviour eventually extinguished itself - at least for the time being. Now, I tried a different behaviour which had also been successful in the past (but which I had not tried initially because of the higher response cost) - getting up, walking through the house to the study, turning on the computer and viewing the blog there - SUCCESS! High value reward! Read the latest blog entry and have a party!!!! :) :) :)

Planning to Fail

2010-10-17T14:47:00.011+10:30

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry...

One of the most important factors in dog training is failure. We use failure as a way for our dogs to learn, not only the behaviours themselves but how to RECOVER from failure - that failure itself is not a downer, it's just a chance to try again until you get it right.

However, putting it into practice in your training can be tricky. When deciding to work on a particular behaviour, I often think through the steps I will take to train it and what I expect the finished product to look like. However, I spend considerably less time thinking 'But what if THIS happens?' or 'What if THAT doesn't work?' So sometimes when a training session doesn't go as planned I don't have an immediate response to something the dog has thrown at me.

I should point out here that the dogs are much better at working through failure than I - I myself am much more likely to be disappointed and/or frustrated at things not going as I thought they would. I think this is even MORE so because I know it is pretty much always my own fault. Then I get cross at myself and the whole thing basically falls apart as I put the dog away and then put myself away until I am in a calmer and more objective state of mind.

Case in point is the session I had the other night with Billie - having decided to start her 2x2 training in earnest I pulled the good ol' weave poles out, set up two in the backyard, chose a high value toy and off we went. We had already had a good session earlier in the day so I went in feeling pretty confident all would go well.

However, in hindsight (isn't that a wonderful thing?) there were quite a few factors I hadn't taken into account. Firstly, I was doing this late in the evening, and was a little tired and looking forward to snuggling into my warm bed and relaxing, so planned this as just a quick session. Secondly, this was dinner time for the dogs, and they knew it - I just figured this would be another good incentive. Thirdly, I hadn't planned what I would do if things DIDN'T go to plan.

So, the 'training' session went like this. Start with crate games, release from the crate to me. Offer the tuggy (Billie is usually quite enthusiastic at tug games). Nope, she didn't want that. She was hyperactively jumping around, moving away from me presumably to check where her dinner bowl was (I hadn't even brought it outside) and generally totally distracted. So, the ONE smart thing I did was realise that trying to do any 2x2 work was useless, and we decided to focus just on getting some tugging. Nope, she wasn't having much of that - Trying to get her excited about the tug by dragging it around and jazzing her up only led to an even more hyperactive dog jumping and pawing at me (but not tugging). The closest we would get is a quick mouth on the tug and then back to jumping at me or looking back at the verandah in the hopes of getting her dinner. By this point, having already spent longer than I planned to, and already feeling tired to begin with, I began to get frustrated. The ability to make good decisions went downhill from here. Perhaps I could use IYC to get some better tugging. So I went and retrieved two bowls, split the dinner between them and place them at opposite ends of the yard. Billie is quite good at IYC, but bear in mind by now she too was very frustrated, hungry and somewhat frenzied. So I went back to trying to get some tugging. However what I hadn't done is specified my exact criteria - which, given the high distraction and previous failures, should have been considerably less than it usually is. So it was hardly surprising that, after a few tries at tugging and not getting anywhere, the lure of the food bowl was too much and she decided to help herself, at which point I corrected her and took the food away. So now I have a cross and frustrated trainer, a stressed and confused dog, and a 'training' session that has gone on way too long, not to mention the use of a correction which I do not want to use in my training. Finally recognising that there was little to be salvaged, I moved a good distance away from the food, offered the tug again and then released her to the first bowl after a very quick tug; same again with the other food bowl.

Having spent quite a bit of time thinking about this in the last couple of days, it reminded me of a story Lynda Orton-Hill told during one of her workshops, about some of their students trialling their young dogs for the first time. She mentioned the importance of them knowing what to do when the dog DIDN'T do what they wanted - i.e. what if the dog came off a contact or popped the weavers in the ring? How would they handle that?

The same is true in training. There should always be a plan of what you set out to do - but there ALSO be a plan of what to do if things go wrong.

Looking back now, before I started that training session I should have had two plans.

When working out an initial training plan, I should ask myself things such as:
Am I using a high value reward? (Or is it just the reward *I* prefer to use?)
What are my criteria for a correct response? (i.e. dog enters between the two poles from the correct side)
Where will I be positioned?
Where will the dog be positioned?
Where will the treats/toy be positioned?
How will I start the session? (i.e. will I release the dog from the crate, play tug to the training area, do a recall to the training areas etc)
How will I end the session? (i.e. how long will it run/how many repetitions will we do?)
What equipment do I need? (Toy/treats, weave pole spikes, poles, collar, leash, crate etc)
What distractions are in the areas an how will I use/manage them?
Am *I* in the right frame of mind do do a training session? (Am I tired/sick/in a bad mood?)

However after taking into account all of the above, I should also have planned for potential failure in any of these areas, i.e.
What if she doesn't go between the poles?
What if she goes the wrong way through the poles?
What is she repeatedly offers the wrong behaviour?
What if she stops offering behaviours?
What if she gets distracted by something else in the training area?
What if she chooses to leave the training area?
What if she doesn't want the reward?
What if *I* get frustrated?

Hopefully, many of these will have been avoided by careful planning in the first place, however even if I'd considered them only in passing, I believe I could have had a much better training session. As part of my FUTURE training plans I will make these lists required reading before I do anything!

And just to finish on something fun, here is a little vid of Billie playing IYC with a bag of food treats, and some of Billie and Josh playing with balloons :)

Fun with Fyre

2010-08-07T18:13:00.003+09:30

Some footage for you!

Thought it was time I added a few more vids and will try to do this more regularly (along with piccies) to break up all the text.

I would have had several up except SOMEONE was silly enough to spend most of the video outside of the frame of her iPhone propped on a chair so basically all you see is my rear end and hearing me make silly noises while playing with the dog. Not really worth the upload time I hope to re-do the ones of Billie and Josh tomorrow.

I did get a couple of good ones of Fyre however. There wasn’t any major plan around these – just to video a few things we have been doing. As always, looking at them does point out a few things I need to work on.

Fyre has huge value for his crate (I literally can’t go near a crate now without him hovering around the door desperate to get in) so it’s no problem for me to have a big game of tug once he comes out. With Billie however we are still building value for going in the crate, so I tend to focus on her driving INTO the crate more than playing when she gets out. Pity my backyard isn’t bigger because Fyre really does have awesome drive into the crate – he will race ahead of me and bound in. With this video I was trying to illustrate that.

You can also see here one of my rules of tug games, which is that the dog picks the toy up to play – my dogs all play tug regularly now so I expect them to fetch a toy to me. As Fyre still needs encouragement to do this sometimes, I probably need to go back and work on it some more, perhaps with a higher value toy than this. All he wants to do is get back in the crate 

Then we did some practice sending him in from different places around the crate as I have done very little of this – first off, I really should have moved the crate further out so I wasn’t obstructed either side (mechanics!!) which made manoeuvring the dog into the right spot difficult. You can see Fyre look at me the first time like ‘Hmm, what do I do now?’ but because he loves the crate so much by default that is the first thing he tries.

You can also see me working criteria for crate games - at one point he moves to sniff something on the floor of the crate, so the door shuts and we start again. No paw movement is the rule!

I am also trying to be aware of reward placement – I have done a LOT of rewarding from in front, tugging, treats etc so my circle work has been made somewhat harder because the dogs always want to come around in front – that is where the most value is. I am trying to be aware of this now and rewarding as much as possible at either side. Of course it is easier to tug from the front so I have to be careful not to forget myself and simply follow the easiest path!

The second video is Fyre playing It’s Your Choice with food – his criteria in crate games is to sit when my hand goes on the door and then hold that sit (no feet moving) til I release him. So here he holds his sit while I throw treats on the ground in front of him, then because he chooses to hold position he gets to have those treats as I retrieve them from the ground. If at any point he moved a foot or stood up or tried to come out I would have shut the door and started again, but he has played this a few times now so has pretty good self control. Next time we might up the ante and make it a bit more of a challenge.

The other thing I have been aware of with all the dogs is which way they turn when they go into the crate. The dog should always turn towards you, never ‘flick away’ – this is the basis for agility handling – and prevents the dog from taking off course obstacles. Unfortunately you can’t see me when I send Fyre in the crate the last time or you’d see that he started on my left side and therefore should circle right when going in the crate (towards me) which is why I took him out and sent him in again before rewarding. This isn’t a punishment – simply a ‘Let’s try that again’ and then he gets his food reward. He has improved at this a lot. However this really is a behaviour I’d prefer to work away from the crate because I don’t like re-dos when the dog has done a great job otherwise of driving in. So I am also working all three dogs around a cone, as well as shadow handling/circle work so they are always rewarded for turning TOWARD me and not away. (Must try and get some video of the cone work too as the visual illustrates it better than my trying to describe it).

Getting Sidetracked In A Good Way

2010-08-05T13:56:00.004+09:30

One thing leads to another and I never know what I'll end up doing next...

We are currently working the exercises in Susan Garrett's 5 Minute Recall course and of course as one thing leads to another I find myself also incidentally working lots of little other things in association with the recall games, and coming up with lots of new ideas too. It is a lot of fun :)

This week I have started occasionally using the dogs' sack bed in place of a crate as a starting/ending point for exercises. They actually love it because they can take a flying leap to land on it, so it has become quite exciting. The only thing I have to watch is that the whole bed goes skidding across the floor with the force of their leaps both to and from! This is less of a problem when outside on the grass though. Whilst they are very excited to jump on and off I need to work on them staying there until I release them. Fair enough, as I have only just started doing this, so our focus the next few days will be building value for staying on the bed no matter what I do, and gradually introducing more distractions to the point where I can have one of them staying on the bed whilst I work another dog. Obviously our continuing training in crate games will help with this also. I see it being a very handy tool, being able to place the dog on a bed/table or such and know they will wait there until released. It will also transfer over to the 'official' table in agility, having a dog with great drive TO the table (or bed as it may be), with an excellent stay once there and also able to blast off at full speed once released.

A Solid Foundation

2010-08-01T19:32:00.008+09:30

Putting foundation training in perspective - turns out it really is worth the effort!

My dogs continually amaze me. Just the other night I took Billie out to do some training for only the second week in a row at club and was amazed and more than a little stoked at how well she did.

Now, Billie is a 20 month old Aussie who tears around the yard like a maniac at top speed chasing (or being chased by) my other two dogs much of the time, uses walls as a pushing off point by leaping against them, jumps over and onto everything she can reach with no thought for her own safety and generally does things at a million miles an hour.

This same dog was able to work off lead in a relatively strange area (she has only been on the club grounds a few times previously and not recently) with multiple other dogs running, barking, jumping very close by (there were three or four other classes going on around us at various distances). She never left me once. She focussed on me. She played tug with me. She offered behaviours on and around the equipment. She maintained a high level of enthusiasm and confidence throughout.

I was surprised (interpretation: drop dead amazed).

It pointed out to me yet again how often we underestimate our dogs, and how easy it is to focus on the things they CAN'T do over the things they CAN. It also confirmed to me that I have chosen the right path to do so much focus on foundation work, and that the positive style of training I am using now is the right one for me.

I am very grateful to have gained all the training knowledge I have, particularly from attending the seminars with Greg & Laura Derrett and Lynda Orton-Hill and of course everything Susan Garrett has published. (I am eagerly anticipating Susan's workshops here in November as well as her 5 Minute Formula Recall internet course that we have signed up for). I have learned so, so much in the last couple of years. I am beginning to feel now that I have the knowledge to not only give my dogs a good foundation, but also that I am explanding my ability to apply that knowledge to many different scenarios.

For example looking at Billie's training session on Fri night. We probably did about 20 mins of 'training' total. I'd say at least 15 mins of that involved playing with toys and/or crate games (so it was really broken up into multiple very short sessions). I don't know how I ever trained a dog without crate games. My often hyperative and easily distracted Billie was able to do multiple perfect sit stays in an environment with a huge number of distractions. How long would it have taken me to train that without crate games? Not only can she hold a sit stay she is focussed on me and poised for action so when I do release her she comes right away at full speed. She can also drive ahead of me in a straight line with confidence (in fact, she went so fast once when she leapt into the crate she practically bounced off the back wall before she could turn around!)

Because I have tried very hard not to use corrections when training, I have a dog who is confident to try things and therefore learns very quickly. After seeing a tyre for the first time, it took her a total of about 5 seconds to work out she needed to go through it. Head through hoop, stand on hoop rim, walk through hoop - oh, hey, that worked! Well, I can do that again easy! And now I can do it more quickly, and do it as a jump!

The ability to fail and recover - how much more quickly we can progress. Second night working on a table - we simply spent a lot of time building value for the table, tugging in the table, playing sit-tug on the table, rewarding her for offering different positions on the table. Very quickly I was able to progress that to me walking around the table in both directions, me starting to walk/jog away from the table, and so on. I never used a stay/wait command. She made the CHOICE to stay there. When she did jump off once she quickly worked out that she could start earning treats again by hopping back up again with no cue from me.

We also started 2x2 training, and she was able to quickly hit entries from both left and right with fantasyic speed/drive, and then displaying the same returning to me with the toy.

To say I was thrilled with this training session is an understatement! I have a dog who is fast, responsive, happy, confident and focussed, exhibits the ability to make intelligent choices, recover from failures and exhibits SELF-control. I'd say that's about everything you want for an excellent agility dog.

Can Billie sequence four obstacles in a row? Not yet. But she has the foundations of many behaviours associated with negotiating those four obstacles correctly - she will be able to hold a start line stay while I lead out, she will be able to break from that stay on command to take those obstacles at full speed, she will focus on my cues of where to go next or alternatively have the ability to drive ahead of me in a straight line. And if she does fail she will have the confidence to re-attempt until she gets it right.

Look! I actually wrote something!

2010-07-27T20:53:00.003+09:30

Just so it looks like I'm actually posting something... here's another blog well worth a read until I get MY act together again!

Hyperbole and a Half

(Seriously, check out the spider post - that is a scarily acurate representation of my own dealings with spiders)

Procrastinators Anonymous

2010-05-30T18:52:00.003+09:30

The first step is admitting you have a problem..!

Hi, I'm Kim. I'm a procrastinator.

Now, obviously this group doesn't really exist because who would ever get around to organising it? (Just a bit of procrastination humour there). I am a prime candidate for such a group. I put things off. The other week I made an 'I really must do that' list of things that I had been putting off for months just so I would actually get some of them done! I have good intentions - I *think* about doing things. It's just the actual DOING part that I fall down on.

When it comes to dog training for instance, I have LOTS of good ideas, I spent LOTS of time thinking about what I want to teach the dogs and how I can do it, and what I want their final performances to look like. I understand the theory behind how I want to train. But when it comes to actually training... well, then the excuses come out. I work full time, so my week day daylight hours are pretty much taken up by that. As we know from my previous posts, I hate getting up early. Though I have managed to 'shape' myself to getting up a little earlier, it's nowhere near enough time yet to give me proper training time with the dogs. When I get home at night, the first excuse is 'I'll just let the dogs out so they can toilet before I do some training' possibly followed by 'I'll just sit down for a few minutes since I've been at work all day and I'm tired' followed by 'Must do some cleaning in the house, empty cat litter trays, get stuff sorted for work tomorrow' followed by 'Ooooo Masterchef is about to start, I'll just watch that' followed by 'I still haven't fed the dogs yet, really should use their dinner for training, but that will take so long...' or 'It's raining out there now, it's all muddy and wet' followed by 'Perhaps I'll just do a quick training session tonight and do some more tomorrow' and usually ends up with me doing something akin to doing a collar grab and having the dog drive into his crate then giving him his dinner. Or if I'm REALLY organised I might release him from the crate over a bar and send him back into the crate, practicing my decel cue and front cross. But that's it. That's my 'regular' training. Not nearly enough obviously.

I do try to fit in little extra bits of training when I can, for example as in my previous post walking the dogs to the door in the morning, releasing them in/out the door and the dog yard, having them inside with me so they can learn to settle and so on. But I don't regularly work on skills and build on them. Yes, I have done the basis of crate games, and this is the game we play most (along with variations of It's Your Choice) but it's not 'proper' training.

Side note - somewhat ironically, I just took a break halfway through writing this. No, it wasn't intentional

So I do bits and pieces. I do try and keep records of what I do when I do train... but I only have a very broad plan of where I am heading (i.e. my current aim, which is very broad, is to not look like a total idiot when I do the Susan Garrett workshops in November). Nothing specific on what skills I working on and what my aim is for this particular session/day/week. Lack of focus. I think that is what I am missing. So I need a training plan. If I have something to go by I will know a) if progress is being made b) what I should actually be working on each session and c) what I need to change. I also need to simplify my record-keeping - it is too time consuming currently, so I hate doing it and therefore it sometimes doesn't get done.

So aim this week is to make a proper training plan, including the dogs' strengths and weaknesses and how I can use them to my best training advantage. Also so I can work out how to make the best use of my time - no use planning to drive the dogs out to a park on a night I do the late finish at work for example because it just won't happen. I also need to pencil in time to watch my many and varied training vids again. Perhaps that is something I could use to set up training sessions for the week - pick some skills from one of the vids and work them through then something different next time. Hmmmmm... lots of planning to do!

Point of Order...

2010-05-15T15:37:00.002+09:30

Just re-reading some of my notes from Lynda's workshops... about It's Your Choice... and should clarify that in case I got carried away with enthusiasm in my post yesterday and forgot what I was talking about, IYC is not meant to be a shaping exercise in itself, it is simply to teach self control. I'd better go back and re-read what I've written to make sure my plans fit that context!

FYI so far so good... up at 8AM today (Allowed myself that extra half hour because it is a weekend... this is still very good consdering I usually get up around 10.30 on weekends!)

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go - An Experiment In Human Shaping

2010-05-14T14:20:00.002+09:30

Can our methods of shaping dogs (and other animals) be applied to ourselves?

I hate getting up in the morning. I am no good at it. I hit the snooze button multiple times and then when I finally stumble out of bed I rush around like a half-asleep idiot because I am then running late. This has been ongoing for some time now. This morning, it occurred to me to look at this from the point of view of if it was a behaviour I wanted to teach my dogs. Suddenly a multitude of fascinating possibilties came to light.

So, to start with – sleep is obviously a self-reinforcing behaviour. (It is in itself highly enjoyable for me anyway). Then you add the associated factors – the warmth and comfort of the bed. It is heading towards winter now, the mornings are getting colder and darker. Therefore staying in the bed is considerably more reinforcing than getting out into the cold and going to work. Even though I enjoy my work once I’m there, it isn’t so enjoyable I can’t wait to leap out of bed in the morning! Then on weekends when I don’t have to go to work, I have the option of choosing to get up at a reasonable hour or insetad sleep in even later (guess which option I choose?)

Now, to dissect this from the dog training view point. How can I shape my own behaviour to make getting up early something I really want to do? Is it possible? I propose an experiment!

It’s Your Choice game – the getting up in the morning version (didn’t I say there were endless applications??)
If I were shaping a dog, I would do the following:
1) Make the correct choice easier for the dog, and gradually increase the difficulty by manipulating their environment and limiting access to other potential reinforcements.
2) Use very high value rewards.
3) Make sure the dog was in a heightened arousal state before we began working on anything.

Applying my knowledge of dog shaping then, I propose the following for HUMAN shaping:

I can’t really limit my access to the bed if I am already in it. I can make adjustments however, like turning off the snooze option on my alarm, thereby removing the choice to hit snooze and go back to sleep (more on this below). I can move the alarm away from next to the bed so I have to actually get out of the bed to turn it off (though I suppose this could be conisdered to be use of an aversive – I get up because I want to remove the unpleasant stimulus of the loud alarm going off).

I can make the option of getting up more appealing by being more organised the night before – i.e. I can make sure my clothes are ironed, everything I need for the following day is set out, I can wash my hair. All things that take up time in the morning and might lead to stress and therefore make the getting up option more unappealing, like racing around looking for where I dropped my work shoes (yesterday AND today), discovering the only clean work shirt I have is unironed AND has a stain, spending extra time in the shower to wash my hair and making myself late (stress!) Without these added stressors I can adjust my morning routine to become more relaxed and enjoyable, perhaps the option to sit down and have a leisurely cup of tea or coffee. If it becomes a more pleasant experience I am more likely to choose that option. I can also make sure I don’t go to bed at, say, 3AM which would decrease the likelihood of getting up just 4.5 hours later.

I can give myself a higher chance of success by adding criteria gradually (and being specific – success is more likely to result if you know exactly what you are shaping at each stage). I therefore propose that my initial criteria is to get up 5 minutes earlier each day (say the baseline is 7.30AM, I will therefore initially aim to get up at 7.25AM. At this stage I will set an end goal of 7.00AM). If I went straight to setting the alarm an hour earlier, what do you think my likelihood of success is? (Very low).

In this case criteria can be set as the amount of minutes earlier I get up – rather than trying to shape the finished behaviour, I will shape it in steps. 5 mins earlier is an achieavable goal (even just sitting here now I think ‘Heck, 5 minutes earlier, I can do that!’) As I achieve success with that it will be easier to add another 5 minutes and so on. I will feel good because I have will have succeeded several times in a row before adding new criteria, and will therefore be more likely to succeed with the new criteria also . (I will also be specific in that a SUCCESS in the terms of ‘getting up earlier’ means me up and out of bed and getting ready, and not returning to bed, and not just lying in bed awake.)

As I have more success, I may choose to make the correct choice more difficult to challenge myself – I can move the alarm back closer to the bed for example. The coming of winter will add to this too, as it continues to get colder and darker in the morning (though I could help control this by setting the heater to come on at certain time on the morning). Sometimes there will be environmental factors I cannot control, such as my partner being home on the weekend and able to sleep in (he usually leaves before me in the morning). This will make the option of staying in the bed and spending extra time with him even more appealing. However, being a good trainer I know that these environmental reinforcers will pop up now and again and all I can do is make sure I control everything available to me. I can still control many other factors and therefore maintain a good chance for success.

(I will add here that because I am choosing to shape myself using POSITIVE methods I will not be using aversives such as having my partner rip the blankets off in the morning and throwing a bucket of cold water over me. I will also not be using lures, such as having my partner make me a cup of coffee and encouraging me to get up to have it.)

OK, so I have adjusted my environment, set my criteria and mapped out a course of steps that should be easy to let me succeed at each stage to reach the finished behaviour. Now to find a high value reward.

Firstly, just having a more relaxing start to the day will be reinforcing. I could try something like laying out a chocolate before I go to bed and rewarding myself with that when I get up – however, I have to admit the value of the chocolate will be low compared to the value of staying in the bed!!! I suppose it could also be classified as a lure. This will really require some thought... since sleeping in is SUCH a high value reinforcement for me, topping it will be difficult (suggestions anyone???) I propose for the time being that getting up earlier will be self-reinforcing as I have more time to do things I enjoy, perhaps training the dogs or having a chance to sit down and relax before heading off to work. Plus the feeling of having achieved a success in my path to my goal.

Hmmm, heightened arousal state – I suppose in some ways that should be easy to achieve, since I am starting off asleep. One thing I can think of for myself is setting some favourite music to come on in the morning as my alarm – I love to sing and dance around the house (and I know you all do it too so wipe that smirk off your face) so waking up to something a bit energetic could be helpful. Like when your favourite song comes on the radio and you start belting it out at the top of your lungs and inadvertently tapping your feet or fingers – that is a heightened arousal state.

Now, back to the issue of the alarm clock – this is actually the first thing that came into my mind and led to me going on to examine all the other issues in detail. In fact, my initial title for this post was going to be ‘What are you REALLY reinforcing?’ Let me outline it for you below.

For quite some time, I have set my alarm earlier than I plan to get up, so I can hit the snooze button once (or twice, or three times or so on!) and sleep a bit longer. It’s a bit like when you wake up in the middle of the night, say 3AM, and it feels so good to look at the clock and know you still have another 3-4 hours of sleep before you have to get up. It felt so good to be able to grab those few extra minutes of sleep each time in the morning.

Looking at this from a dog training perspective though, I came to a startling conclusion – what if I had inadvertently shaped myself to respond to the alarm as a cue to go back to sleep? Let’s break it down – what I think my alarm is cueing is ‘time to get up’. In reality, what behaviour have I learnt to associate with the alarm? Hitting snooze and going back to sleep. So really, my alarm has become a cue for ‘go back to sleep’. Same as if you cue your dog to ‘give’ when he is tugging and he doesn’t let go. What behaviour has the dog REALLY learned for your ‘give’ cue? He’s learnt ‘keep tugging until mum prys it out of my mouth’. And by setting it so I had the chance to hit the snooze button several times before getting up, I was giving myself multiple chances for self-reinforcement. So the going back to sleep behaviour has therefore been reinforced over and over again – is it any wonder then that I don’t want to get up in the morning when my alarm goes off??

Then I thought about it some more and tried to decide whether in fact the alarm had now become a conditioned reinforcer – the alarm was in effect marking my ‘correct’ behaviour of going back to sleep. So subconsciously when the alarm went off my brain interpreted it as ‘good job, keep doing that’. Same as using a clicker for a dog. I offer the behaviour of sleep, the alarm goes off and marks me as correct and I am then reinforced by getting to go back to sleep. It is the circle of reinforcemnent in action!

I was truly astonished when I thought about this. It is said that only the dog ever knows what you are clicking/marking. I didn’t even realise what behaviour I was reinforcing on MYSELF!!

So now I know this, I could say that the alarm is a poisoned cue. It doesn’t mean what I want it to. I need to change it. Now, I could try to go back and alter what the cue means (could be time consuming and difficult, even impossible). Or I could just add a new one altogether.

Now that I know what I know, hopefully I can avoid the same thing happening again! Luckily my alarm (which is my phone) had several options for different alarm noises. How can I make the new alarm my cue to get up? Normally one would add a cue once the behaviour has been shaped to where you want it. (i.e. you wouldn’t add a ‘sit’ cue for a dog that was doing very slow, cautious sits). How can I shape a cue for ‘get up’? Can I set the new alarm to go off when I am doing things during the day, things I do when I get up? What if I decided to set the alarm every time I planned to have a coffee, so the alarm became a cue to ‘go and make a coffee’? It isn’t exactly a cue for getting up, but since I will have to get up to make the coffee in the morning, it still achieves the same result. Plus getting to drink the coffee is reinforcing!!

My goodness but my brain hurts now. When it comes to shaping my dogs I feel like I am beginning to get a handle on it – when it comes to shaping ME it requires much more in depth concentration!

Check back for updates on how my experiment is proceeding. For now, I need to go and make myself a coffee (as reinforcement for thinking all this out )

It's Your Choice

2010-05-13T19:22:00.002+09:30

The game of a thousand faces...

OK, so yesterday I wrote about 'Invisible Training'. Incorporated into that are a lot of 'It's Your Choice Moments' as Lynda referred to them during her workshops. (For a description of 'It's Your Choice' game see Susan Garrett's book 'Shaping Success').

Basically, the premise is that the dog always has the CHOICE of what he does when you are working with him, though you manipulate the situation so that the RIGHT choice is the easier one. Then you can gradually increase the difficulty level. For example, I am doing a lot of exercises at the moment which involve the dogs working around their treats. Currently the treats are still in a little zip loc bag, which sits open on the ground. Eventually I will work them up to having treats free on the ground. The scenario is often this: I place the treat bag just a little off to the side of the crate door (dog starting in crate). We play crate games: as I put my hand on the crate door, the dog sits and provided he stays in a sit and doesn't move any feet, I will retrieve one of the treats from the bag and reward. (Initially I started with the bag a good distance away - now it is quite close).

Then I lead out and release the dog to me. If he chooses to come to me, and on the side I have indicated with my body language, I produce a tugy toy and we have a fun game of tug, then I race the dog back to the crate and reward with treats from the bag. Billie had an excellent 'It's Your Choice' moment tonight when we first played this game - she came out of the crate and paused to sniff at the treat bag. She could easily have chosen to go ahead and delve into them, and since we have dine some work on this I gave her the chance to make that decision for herself rather than race over and try to stop her. I was utterly thrilled then when after a sniff she continued to me and had a great game of tug. Next time she burst straight out of the crate to me and ignored the treats totally. She has improved sensationally since we first started playing IYC - I used not to be able to get her to tug if I also had treats - she simply wanted the treats. So to get her to follow me on a lead out and then play tug enthusiastically is just excellent.

The brilliant thing about this game is that it teaches the dog to put in an excellent performance in the face of distractions. The distractions themselves can actually become cues to pay MORE attention to the handler! And of course you can do it with more than just treats - you can use anything the dog wants (has value for). It's an IYC moment when I take the dogs from their room to the back door in the morning - if you CHOOSE to stay in a sit whilst I open the door and step out myself, I will then release you outside. If you CHOOSE not to stay in that sit, I will close the door and your chance to go run outside is removed.

The other great thing about IYC is that it creates a dog with a lot more drive to work - the arousal level is up because they know that making the right choice earns rewards, and are therefore more likely to keep trying to find out WHICH is the right choice and work through any failures.

It also just makes life easier - tonight doing nose touches for example I had treats sitting on the ground next to me within easy reach where I was kneeling. I could grab more and keep working with the dog rather than fumble about in my pockets, and I knew I could do this without the dog being distracted by the treats and spending the whole time trying to get them.

The applications are endless. You can play IYC in virtually any situation. If the dog fails too many times, you can re-start and make the correct choice more easy (perhaps add some distance) and then work back up to the more difficult one. I enjoy it because the dogs learn very quickly and I can therefore keep challenging them (like Billie tonight) to see how well they have really learnt!

Invisible Training

2010-05-12T18:34:00.002+09:30

I have borrowed this term from my good friend Donna :)

Now that I am back home from my various trips and starting to settle back into a routine again, I am back to working with the dogs.

It is amazing the things I notice now that I would not have 12, 24, 36 months ago from a training point of view. The many and varied types of reinforcement for one, and the dogs' access to them. This is the basis for my 'invisible training' (in Donna's words, the training you are doing when the dogs don't realise it is training).

Once you start looking, there are so many skills you can work on without actually going out and 'training' (this is the basis of crate games too of course). First example - my dogs have their own room where they sleep at night, Billie in her crate so she doesn't create too much chaos (!) and the boys having their choice of doggy bed in the room. In the morning, we go from the room through the house to the back door (and the reverse at night). Now, it occurred to me that apart from Fyre (who makes a beeline each way both times) the other two were helping themselves to all sorts of free reinforcements along the way - Josh would wander over to check out where the cat had been eating or sniff the litter box, Billie would race through like a whirlwind looking for a toy to grab. If they were doing this on such a short walk inside the house rather than paying attention to me calling them to the door, how could I expect excellent concentration or recalls out in the wide world?

So, first order of business: dogs on lead from room to back door and vice versa. This therefore limits their chances to grab 'free' reinforcement, and also makes it much more likely I will have a chance to reinforce them for behaviour I DO want. It also means there is more reinforcement from me throughout (i.e. rather than just giving a treat when they come to me, I can treat them the whole way from door to door for paying attention, maybe ten treats). This has already made a big difference. Billie actually now almost looks like a polished obedience dog with head up and watching me at my side the whole way!

Their criteria also involves sitting at the doorway so I can put the leash on - another chance for reinforcement (R+). I.e. sit, R+, leash on, R+, one step, R+, dog gives attention, R+ and so on. (For Billie she has to sit with no paws moving in her crate as I put the leash on).

Then, once we get to the next door the criteria is to sit, and stay sitting whilst I remove the leash (lots more R+) and not move until I walk out the door ahead and give my release cue. (Which it occurred to me was an excellent way to practice start line stays - it is the same process as lining up at the start line - dog sits, remove lead, wait for release cue - hence 'invisible training'). Because they are also excited first thing in the morning and keen to race outside, it also allows them to perform these behaviours with a high arousal level - good practice for the exciting trial environment.

This is just one part of what we have been working on, but there are so many more applications - I might go through a few more when I have more time!

Motivational Website

2010-05-09T17:49:00.003+09:30

http://www.happinessinthisworld.com/

This is a link I happened across on another blog (Cathy Bishop - Caitland Aussies) and even having just read a few pages it is well worth checking out. Lots of great motivational stuff!

The Nationals Experience

2010-05-08T20:52:00.021+09:30

What a delight it was to spend four days at the gorgeous DogsWest grounds, catch up with friends and watch some truly awesome performances by both dogs and handlers

Wednesday - Arrival in Perth
My Nationals adventure began early - 5AM early! I had booked an early flight out of Adelaide so in case I did take the dogs with me they would not have any chance of being stuck on the tarmac in the hot sun (one does hear horror stories) and also so I would have a day to settle in before the trials began.

The first drama happened mid-flight when I suddenly realised that Chris, after dropping me off at the airport, had gone straight to work rather than home again as I'd thought he would, and therefore my poor dogs were still shut inside, not having been let out for close to 12 hours. Crossing my legs on their behalf, obviously the first thing I did when I got off the plane was frantic phone call to mum to see if she could pop round and let them out. Phew! Disaster averted.

My taxi driver, although fitting the Indian stereotype, most UN-stereotypically had a GPS!!!! Unfortunately the GPS could not warn us that a tanker had rolled on the main road just near our accommodation, and that we would be stuck in traffic which all had to take the same backstreets. At this point also, my taxi driver (who was actually quite a nice fellow and intrigued by the idea of agility) lost some faith in the GPS and hopped out of the car to retrieve his street directory from the boot and asked me to check where we were and where we were going!! Ah well - I guess no-one's perfect.

Still, I finally arrived in one piece, paid the taxi fare (gulp) and found the cabin I was sharing with Gary and Lee-Anne, who had driven over and already been there a couple of days. We were staying at the Cee and See caravan park which is in Rockingham and directly across from a dog friendly beach. Gary and Lee were already down on the beach with their gorgeous 2yo daughter Chantelle, so I headed right down there after dumping my gear on the cabin doorstep. Here is a view of the ocean that day, and the view from our cabin - as you can see, just beautiful!

Then back home and head off to the grounds to pick up numbers, merchandise and stake out a spot. Sitting in the back of the car with Chantelle I was beset by a constant barrage of questions (“What that?” “What your name?” “What you doing?”) and was quickly amazed at how much a 2yo really does understand and actually a little bit envious of the innocence and amazing imagination of that age – wouldn’t it be nice to be so carefree! (I should also note here that Chatelle was also the only one running and jumping around the cabin enthusiastically at 5.30AM every morning as the rest of us dragged ourselves from bed )

We met up with Lee-Anne’s friend Helen and kindly offered us to come back to her boarding kennels for the afternoon, where we relaxed with cool drinks under the gazebo in her beautiful garden. It was just lovely – tall palm trees and green all around, the gazebo itself decked out in fairy lights, so it must look even more lovely lit up at night.

On the way to Helen’s, driving through a relatively new housing development area, we spotted something out of place – a giant, golden monkey man statue! Gary determined that this would make an excellent Facebook profile picture for him, so on the way home we were obliged to stop so he could take photos of it (all the while hoping we were not offending a deeply religious person who would come barrelling out of the house with a shotgun).

We did discover a very nice Chinese shop close by (Gary and I were just a little nervous when we went in to order and there was no-one else in the entire restaurant and a well-dead yabby in their fish tank) but in fact the food was excellent and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

By 9PM we were all buggered, and with an early start the next morning we were soon crashed out in bed. Of course, since Chantelle had had a nap during the evening she was considerably more rested, so for the first half hour I was kept well amused by her questions floating up in the dark until she finally drifted off :)

Thursday - First Day of Heats
5.30AM – up and at ‘em! A plus for me was that since Adelaide is 1.5 hours ahead of Perth, the early hour didn’t feel *quite* so early. Rugged up against the early morning cold we piled into the car and sharing the backseat with Chantelle again I watched the first of many viewings of ‘Tinkerbell’, which enthralled Chantelle equally as much the 30th time as it had the first!

At the grounds it was a fresh morning, the ground just touched by dew, the first morning sun just starting to bring some warmth. Our shelter was set up just in front of the novice/excellent agility ring – here are views in each direction.

Everywhere was activity – stewards getting their last minute instructions and judges tweaking the equipment in their rings, people setting up their shelters and crates, exercising dogs and walking courses. Before the trial officially started we gathered at the top of the ground for a general welcome and the judges’ briefings. The excitement and anticipation in the air was palpable – everyone couldn’t wait to get started! Luckily the coffee van rocked up nice and early so hot, caffeinated beverages were readily available to calm (or perhaps further jangle?) everyone’s nerves.

Then it was on! The first dogs were in the ring. Having taken photos at the last two Nationals I was keen this time to get as much video as possible (well, actually I could have gotten more but only realised on the last day that my camera has a ‘long play’ function – d’oh!) Still, I managed to get probably 5-6 hours of footage. I am hoping to get some of it uploaded to YouTube when I have a chance to go through it, which will likely take some weeks.

I saw some truly amazing runs. Masters agility the first day I was lucky enough to get on tape the dog that won the class, Kriszty and her border collie Terra – what an AWESOME run – anyone watching it knew right away that this was going to be the winning run. I was particularly blown away by the speed and accuracy of her contacts – just fantastic. It reminded me of my last trip to Perth, for the 2005 Nationals. I clearly remember all us South Australians coming home after that thinking ‘geez, we really need to improve our contacts!’ I had never seen dogs doing contacts like that before. In particular that year I was truly in awe of Simone and her border collie Raven – her drive and her running contacts became the standard I would try to reach with my own dogs.

The South Australians were putting on a good performance – quite a few clear runs over some great courses. The overall standard was very high – VERY fast dogs, well trained with excellent handlers. It was truly a pleasure to watch. One of the reasons I wanted to video was so I could bring it home and study it – these were some of the top handlers and dogs in Australia so I am sure I will learn a lot by watching them again in detail. It’s one thing to be working through the training yourself, but quite another to see firsthand the finished product you are aiming for.

The day began to heat up (literally) as afternoon approached, and the sun really had some bite to it. Sitting in the shade however was just delightful, and it was very nice to retire to our shelter and relax watching the novice agility dogs. Some great dogs coming up there that I’m sure we will see at future Nationals in the higher classes.

Each day was organised to have an agility/jumping heat in the morning and a game in the afternoons, with all classes to be awarded in separate height categories, no small task for a National but one that the ANWA committee met and then some – helping to shift prizes over from the storage shed I could hardly believe how much great stuff they had.

The whole event had a wonderful atmosphere – everyone was cheerful, the rings ran smoothly and efficiently no doubt in large part to the exceptional performance of the stewards who kept everyone well organised even with multiple dogs running out of order. They were friendly and quick and worked the whole day through with smiles! The competitors too seemed more relaxed, due to the scheduling there was less of a need to race here, there and everywhere even with multiple dogs (or so it appeared from my non-competitor’s perspective anyhow). Everyone was quick to ask everyone else how their dogs were faring and congratulating or commiserating as required, and generally just enjoying a chance to socialise and chat with their fellow agility enthusiasts from interstate. With the Nationals only a two yearly event now, these occasions to catch up with interstate agiliteers are few and far between so everyone was making the most of it!

The day gradually drew to a close, the temperature quickly becoming quite cool after the warm day. As Lee-Anne thought she had not Q’d in any class we headed off home before presentations started, with a reasonable drive to get back to our cabin and another early start the following day. We actually did get home in time to catch Masterchef (my latest TV addiction!) but were in bed not too long after that.

Friday - Second Day of Heats

Up early again – it seems ironic that most of my doggy ‘holidays’ require me to get up considerably earlier than I do for work. What’s up with that??

First good news of the day (apart from a steaming hot cappuccino, mmmmmmmm) was that Lee-Anne’s Toby (Calanais Look At Me) actually HAD Q’d in Excellent Snooker, gaining a leg towards his title and not only that finishing in 4th place! (Below - Toby showing style in SDX through the tyre)

This day also turned out to have nicer weather – just that little bit cooler made a huge difference, with people and dogs enjoying it just that much more. With the first day of competition now behind us everyone had settled in a bit more and there were many excellent performances. Lee-Anne had offered Helen Cassie (Tamaari Eyesasensation) to run in JDM and they managed a great quallie! 13th place at a Nationals is nothing to be sneezed at, especially with Cassie doing it at age 10!

Another bright spot was having a chance to catch up with Ash and meet her puppy Ace – back when Ash was searching for a Coolie breeder I was sworn to secrecy as I received gorgeous puppy photos from various breeders to offer an opinion (which was difficult cos they were ALL gorgeous ) Eventually Ace came home and he really is quite the charmer! Ash is another handler I remember from several of the earlier Nationals, running her Greyhound x Kelpie Bayley and putting in some great performances. Another of those dogs I had watched with envy! It was great to see Ash again since Bayley has been retired for a few years now and thus she has not attended the last few Nationals.

Friday also saw the first round of the teams event. SA had a great team in this year, and we were thrilled when they all put in really good performances, ending with two clear rounds and two rounds with just one fault each. We were now well placed coming into the second round for the following day and keeping our fingers crossed our luck would hold out!

This time we did hang around for presentations, after a long day it was pleasant to sit with all the other competitors and watch the dogs and kids chilling out – the dogs were loving the prizes from the second chance box (anyone who missed a Q could put their numbers in to be drawn out for a prize – and true to form WA had SO MANY second-chance prizes that on the final day they literally had to offer a free for all to try and get rid of them!) My new Nationals jacket came in handy, keeping the cold wind off as I sat and cheered with the other South Australians as several of the ‘home team’ went up to collect Q’s and placings. Toby had again done Lee-Anne proud gaining a Q and 5th place.

Then it was time to bundle back into the car again, enjoy watching the first ten minutes of Tinkerbell for the 15th or so time (Chantelle insisted on kicking her feet up and re-starting the DVD at regular intervals) and head home for another early night. Incidentally, I was sleeping in the top bunk (Lee-Anne had wisely removed Chantelle’s mattress from the bottom bunk and placed it next to their own bed, lest the whole structure gave way underneath me!) which is the first time I’d slept in a top bunk bed since... you guessed it... my LAST trip to Perth! Despite the bed being slightly too short for me, apparently having being designed for children, it was actually quite comfortable. Not that it would have made much difference I don’t think, by now we were all so exhausted at the end of each day we were conking out as soon as out heads touched the pillow!

Saturday - Final Day of Heats
Even Chantelle took some encouraging to get out of bed this time. The early starts and long days were starting to tell, but with cups of coffee to fortify us we were once again out the door just after 6.30AM. This day started out overcast and cool, with the possibility of some showers, but after a few initial showers on the drive down the day cleared up beautifully once again.

The morning went well – SA had probably their best day yet, lots of Q’s and several more dogs qualifying for the following day’s finals. Helen took Cassie into JDM again and managed another great run and another Q, andJust a few minutes after that Lee-Anne took her back for JDO and finished off back to back Q’s! I got a lot more great video footage (thanking the stars Chris had bought me the new extended life battery for my camera) and then we settled in the relax for the afternoon as Lee-Anne was not entered in Strategic Pairs.

Before that though, we had the Teams jumping round. SA’s own Michael Vigor was judging and had put together a course with his patented multiple tunnel entrances close together. It was a fast course which caught out a few people, and unfortunately SA’s excellent performance in the agility wasn’t enough to save them in the placings – we finished fourth. Still a great performance considering it was first time in the National team for several of the dogs. Taking out first prize was NSW, followed by VIC and TAS.

Lee and I enjoyed the afternoon, wandering around and watching the teams. As most of the rings were winding down, we took the dogs out to have a run, so they could wind down after three days of high pressure competition. It seemed we weren’t the only ones with this idea, and soon there was a large group of dogs all running and playing together with nary an argument between any of them. It was truly wonderful to see so many dogs running together and just being DOGS. Below are a couple of little videos I shot and some candid photos. As you can see, even when standing still they were poised and ready for action at a moment’s notice!

Presentations were once again an enjoyable evening - Cassie gained an 11th spot in JDM and 17th in JDO, again amidst very high level competition.

On the way home we decided it was pasta for tea tonight, and duly the GPS guided us to the right spot. It turned out to be an EXCEPTIONALLY good decision as in the same block of shops as the pasta place was a LOLLY shop, still open at 7.30PM! (I immediately decided that Perth really was my kinda place). Even better than that, they sold *drool* Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I ADORE peanut butter flavoured things, ESPECIALLY these delicacies. Unfortunately they are somewhat hard to come by in Adelaide apart from specialty stores (though a good friend at work kindly pointed out that they do in fact sell them in a supermarket in North Adelaide – must check that out!!!) The lolly shop also had another favourite of mine, this time of New Zealand origin – ‘Rashuns’. These cheese and bacon flavoured corn snacks are consumed in great quantities every time I visit NZ, so it was a doubly good discovery to see some here in Oz. Even now, I wish I had some of those PBC... mmm... they are soooooo good.... ok, must finish blog entry!!

Sunday - Finals

The final day we didn’t need to be up quite so early, as Lee-Anne did not need to attend any finals we didn’t have to worry about setting ourselves up for the day. She and Gary had decided to make the most of their trip and take Chantelle so see a bit more of Perth, but they kindly dropped me at the grounds on the way so I could watch the finals. Helen had also been nice enough to offer to pick me up if by any chance the day finished before Gary and Lee were back, which I greatly appreciated.

Another warm day – I was determined to get on video all of the finals, though unfortunately it turned out I had one less tape than I thought I had and ran out of room (why oh why didn’t I discover that long play function earlier – argggghhhh!) and had to make the decision not to film JD and JDX apart from the SA dogs (thought I got so caught up in cheering for them that I think I may have missed one or two – sorry guys!) I got everything else though so 6 out of the 8 isn’t too bad. It did get bloody hot standing under the sun. I was very glad to have my hat and suncream, and was actually quite relieved when the morning runs were over so I could get into the shade and sit down – in order to get the best view I had been standing up to video the whole time. One never realises how tiring it is just to stand up until one tries to do it for several hours non-stop! The agility runs saw SA’s Natalie with Halley go clear in ADM, and Danni and Gabby go clear in ADO, both with great runs.

During the lunch break I received more exciting news – an e-mail to say that Susan Garrett would be returning to Australia for workshops in November. I had been waiting in anticipation of this news since attending Lynda Orton-Hill’s workshops in February, and what with being caught up in the excitement of the Nationals, what better time to receive it! I had vowed that when Susan came I would apply for working spots as I have audited the previous two workshops I attended, and feel it’s time I actually throw myself in the deep end!

After lunch we reconvened for the jumping rounds – again SA did us proud, Neville and Rio and Elaine and Cherry both gaining clears in JD, Danni and Gabby clear in JDO. There were also several other ‘so close’ runs from SA competitors – it was edge of your seat stuff! The JDO class was particularly exciting, it being a very fast course with just a few little tricks, each dog coming in and trying to beat the last fastest time. There some absolutely BLITZING runs there.

I should mention also that there was a lovely Aussie running in the Novice finals who did some excellent work and so here he is then, the token Aussie photo :)

Last final of the day was JDM – the best of the best in jumping. Once again it was a race against the clock as several dogs posted fast, clear rounds. There were groans and sighs from the crowd as a bar wobbled, sharp intake of breath and gasps at a last second save by a handler, oohs and aahs as dog and handler worked in perfect unison to make a difficult part of the course look easy. It was like watching a perfectly drilled dance performed at high speed, every movement precise, each half of the team knowing what exactly which move their partner would make next. As the last dog crossed the final bar there were cheers and clapping for the amazing achievement of the ANWA team – it had been a truly great event, fun, superbly well run and exceptional in that it was the first Nationals to offer separate height categories, a feat in itself.

It was a little sad as everyone began to withdraw and pack up their gear – how quickly the four days had passed! As we gathered around before presentations, the ANWA team once again proved they had thought of every little thing, handing round boxes of Cadbury Favourites (which were enthusiastically accepted by all). Then we all headed back up to the top of the grounds for the finals presentations, and for the dinner that the ANWA committee had organised – an excellent idea considering everyone was tired and hungry after a long day, and especially since it was now quite cold with the sun dropping behind the horizon.

I sat in my chair and relaxed, watching a group of Corellas arguing amongst themselves and flapping in the gum trees high above, and reflected on the last few days and how much I had enjoyed it. Much as I would have loved to be running my own dogs, I didn’t regret for a moment my decision not to bring them, nor the decision then to still attend myself. I know they were the right ones. The time will come when my dogs are ready, and they will go out and do me proud, of that I have no doubt, but they will not attempt it until I know they and I are both confident in our abilities.

As the day had taken longer than expected, Gary and Lee-Anne were back before presentations had started, and rather than try to score a lift home with someone else or make them wait, I decided to head off. Thanks to my iPhone, I knew I would have access to the results as soon as they were posted online, so I headed off home.

The following day Gary was going to be up early to head off for a fishing charter, so we were all in bed early again. Because my flight didn’t leave until late afternoon the following day, I knew I could relax and finally have a bit of a sleep in!

Monday - Last Day in Perth
Surprisingly, even with early bird Chantelle we managed to sleep until close to 8AM – pretty late considering we’d been getting up at 5.30! We had a lovely leisurely morning, then packed Chantelle into her stroller and headed off walking along a purpose-built path next to the beach. It was just about 3km walk into Rockingham, and though it was a bit warm it was thoroughly enjoyable to be out strolling in the fresh air, with Chantelle pointing out along the way every single slippery dip (admittedly, I have never seen quite so many in once place!!) and many of the passersby in the opposite direction smiling and calling ‘Good morning’.

We had breakfast in the open air at a nice little cafe, and then wandered down to look at the sculpture show they had on the beach – the theme being to use recycled materials. There were some amazing sculptures there – I particularly liked the huge dinosaur constructed entirely from pieces of old tyres, and both Lee and I really liked the sea-themed one with fish whose scales were made of old sunglass lenses, driftwood and shells. We even put in our votes for the ‘People’s Choice’ award because we were so impressed at the skill of the artists and the great variety in the materials they had chosen. (I was also impressed at the amount of patience some of them must have to work with said materials!) Photos of some of the sculptures below.

Then, as we wandered through Rockingham to find somewhere to check my lottery ticket and see if I was now a millionaire (I wasn’t) we discovered yet another awesome lolly shop, the Sweet Memories Candy Emporium. Even more exciting, they had an EXCELLENT range of Reese's products. It was probably a good thing they only accept cash, because they offer the option for buying an entire CARTON of your chosen goody (admittedly I was tempted). In the end however I settled for some PBC in a dark chocolate variety, which I had never tried before and which were delicious (hardly surprising) and some more of the regular milk chocolate ones, as well as various other chocolatey goodies to be presents for friends and family back home. They really did have a great range of many chocolate bars I had never heard of before. I highly recommend visiting their shop if you are ever in the area, or checking out their website. Below - look at all those REESE'S products!!!

By the time we walked home we were ready for a sit down, and I set to getting my suitcase re-packed to fit the new chocolate additions. Chantelle amused herself with the stickers off my suitcase from the flight in, and I was once again amazed at her imagination. Just a suitcase and some stickers and she was amused for over an hour!

Finally the time was drawing near. My trusty taxi driver had given me his business card after the trip down, and because he had done a pretty decent job on the drive down, and because I was fairly sure he would turn up on time (unlike some other taxi companies I have used in Adelaide!) I gave him a call. True to his word he was there exactly on time and actually remembered me and what I was visiting for, and asked how all the dogs had gone over the weekend.

At the airport, determining that this time I would not be forced to watch a crappy movie during my flight, I spied a bookstore advertising the latest from Candace Bushnell, a prequel to Sex & The City (which, incidentally I haven’t yet read) and picked up a copy. Done! Lucky too because the movie on the way home, whilst it starting out promising, soon proved to be too slow moving for my liking, so I happily absorbed myself in the book.

Despite taking off late, we arrived ahead of schedule and I was home. The Nationals adventure was over. Next time hopefully I will be back competing again, so until then keep an eye for updates on how the dogs are progressing – some day soon I will have to work out how many days left til NSW 2012!!!

One Day To Go...

2010-04-27T18:44:00.004+09:30

Almost Nationals time!

The time has flown and here we are - tomorrow morning at a disgracefully early hour of the morning I am flying out to Perth. The camera batteries are charging, the online check-in has been done, the packing is... well... in progress... and the excitement level is climbing all the time. I am looking forward to catching up with friends, preparing to be amazed at the skills of both handlers and dogs, and generally have a great time.

I am just a *little* disappointed that I will not be running my own dogs, but I do know it was the right decision. Their time will come! I have heard a whisper also that the Trans-Tasman Challenge is well into its planning stages, and with Josh and Billie's breeder living just out of Auckland, I may be taking one or both of them back for a visit this time next year :) Something new to aim for - this time with a whole year to plan and train, I hope we can make it. It would be wonderful to represent Australia, and wonderful for my dear friends Lindy and Nancy to see the dogs they bred in action right in their own backyard.

Things have been quiet on the training front here - I have been very busy what with a recent trip to New Zealand (will have to do a blog entry on that at some point because, as always, I learnt a lot :>) Once I am home from the Nats and settling back into a routine I will try to get some more updates happening on the dogs' progress. My current goals include returning Billie to the showring, getting Fyre up to agility trialling standard and working with Josh to improve both our skills in herding.

On Saturday I was lucky enough to secure a spot in a sheep herding clinic with Tull Luttrell who was visiting from Tasmania and judged our two herding trials this weekend just gone. Josh has his HT title, and I believe will get his PT without too much trouble, but I really want us both to learn more skills and be able to do it really well, and be able to also proceed on to Started and potentially further. Josh was a wonderful natural instinct when it comes to herding - it is quite amazing to watch dogs that have had little to no exposure to stock just do what comes naturally when they see sheep or ducks for the first time. That was Josh - from the first time he saw sheep all he wanted to do was bring them to me. I can walk anywhere and he will bring the sheep after me. For a dog that is generally relaxed and happy, he gets quite intensely focussed around sheep, but is not over-enthusiastic as some Aussies can be. I am so proud of him - to me he is the perfect herding dog :)

Tull helped to point out several things I can practice with him to improve, I need to start teaching him directional cues (as to which way he circles the sheep), I need to work on him knowing to go on the outside of me rather than between me and the sheep (which I can do by walking in to the sheep if he heads in that direction) and I certainly want to work on a more solid stop. As always, he surprised me in that he actually was able to give a reasonable stop, another hint from Tull being that to practice stops I need to first wait until the sheep are still, i.e. to lead them into a corner and then cue to stop. Same as with the agility workshops I have attended, I came home quite enthusiastic from this day and determined to put some proper work into it.

One thing I have wanted to try for quite some time is using balloons to train some herding commands to Josh. The things Josh is second-most intense about (after sheep) is balloons and bubbles. Watching him play with balloons in the past, I noticed he exhibited the same circling/herding behaviour he does with sheep, and the same locked-on focus to their movements. Which is a big plus in itself, as trying to get him to perform e.g. a sit/stop whilst being so focussed on the sheep is hard to practice when you don't have sheep. The theory was that balloons would at the very least give me a chance to work with him in a higher than usual state of arousal, and thus allow us to practice the basics and make the most of the rare times we do get to see sheep. Here is a little video of oour first attempt at using balloons (just skip the first 30 seconds - it took me that long to set up my phone to record it and then to retrieve the dog!)

Things to work on - obviously we need to work on sits and downs with him at a high arousal level and gradually build up to distractions. As you can see, the handler at one point cues sit, the dog does not sit, so the handler decides to change to a drop, and then uses a cue that lasts about 20 sec!!! Obviously not the best training. So some work to do there. It does show you a little how focussed he really is on those balloons though, which is good because that's what I want from this exercise. You can also see him offering to circle around behind the balloons, and currently I am giving him big, obvious arm signals. I think I can also work on shaping this a bit better.

Lots to think on anyway! However with that I really need to go and get started on my packing now, as one does not want to miss one's new addiction 'Masterchef'. See you on the other side of the Nationals - good luck and have fun to everyone who is attending - I can't WAIT!!!!

Test Run For New Toys!

2010-03-29T21:44:00.003+10:30

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!)

Finding Motivation

2010-03-24T16:43:00.003+10:30

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!

Knowing When To Call It Quits

2010-03-21T16:50:00.002+10:30

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 :)

Fun and Crate Games

2010-03-13T15:45:00.004+10:30

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!

Because Overthinking Kills The Fun

2010-03-08T14:45:00.004+10:30

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 :) :)

Back to Basics

2010-02-26T21:40:00.003+10:30

60 days to go...

Time seems to be running out quickly now, and I still have SO much to do.

Over the last weekend from Sat-Tues I spent a wonderful four days auditing training days with Lynda Orton-Hill. Wow. I knew the basics of shaping and the associated Say Yes games but these four days really helped to bring it all together and how the foundation stuff sets the basis for an excellent agility dog. It made me realise the stuff I have been skipping over like crate games, working more on tug drive, rear end awareness and so on is so much more than just games. As with the days we did last year with Greg and Laura Derrett more often than not it was a case of thinkg 'Duh, that's SO obvious - why didn't *I* make that connection?' It will definitely be altering the areas I emphasise in my training sessions from this point on.

I haven't re-read my notes yet as haven't had time, so may have some more observations to make later, but for the time being one of the things I liked best was Lynda's insistence that all training be FAST and FUN - so from the moment the dog is released from the crate it is fun and play all the way to wherever your training exercise is, then all the way back once it is done. And the point that since dogs run agility at a high level of arousal, you need to make sure to train them at a high level of arousal also (rather than trying to calm them down before training/trialling). I can already see how this will apply to multiple other situations - Billie's show training for example - I will now be sure to get her very excited before we do any show training, so we will both be more set to cope with the more exciting arena of an actual show ring when we go back to that (not til after Nationals I think as all my focus is on the boys currently).

My Nationals entries have been posted so now it is official - the boys are entered in all the Open and Novice classes, so hopefully I can get them to that point in 60 days. I think Novice we should be ok... perhaps Open was a bit optimistic of me, but you never know. I feel much more confident, having done Lynda's training days, of which direction I need to go now.

Watch this space :)

Milestones of Mention

2010-02-04T08:37:00.003+10:30

82 days to go...

This last week has been excellent so far as training goes. This is the first time I feel like all the foundation stuff is starting to pay off.

Starting with last Thursday evening. Lee-Anne had offered to come do some training with us so both of us could get more motivated so she brought Toby and Cassie round and after the dogs had run round the backyard like lunatics for a while (and created a dust storm - this is what happens when the dogs have already worn off most of the grass!) we lugged the jumps, weaves, contact plank and various other doggy items across the road to the park.

Since Lee-Anne's two are far advanced to my own dogs, we each set up our own little exercises and worked the dogs through them. This was fantastic for me, because my dogs have never worked with other dogs also working close by. This is was the night for Josh to blow me away, because I assumed he would be the more distracted one. However, despite thw two dogs running and barking right next to him, and even another strange dog running around on the other side of the park, I had excellent attention from him, I was able to work him off lead and call him back to me. He did down stays right next to Toby and Cassie flying over bars in front of him and did recalls there as well, and continued to offer behaviours throughout. He did a little bit of jumping and weaving, but it was the attention and recalls that really put me on a high.

Fyre did less because I realised once again that whilst he is excellent in the backyard he needs more work in different areas - what is exciting in the backyard is much LESS exciting at the park, i.e. the fluffy noise-making toys that he usually goes nuts for were less impressive outside of the yard. To that end, I went straight to the food box as reward because that is his all-time highest value reward, and we did manage to get some nice weaves and a couple of jumps.

The weaving has really started to improve in leaps and bounds this week too - Fyre is now doing 4 poles with very little rotation, so they are just off being straight. This is a little video I did of him last night:

As you can see, the handler still needs to improve her timing on throwing the reward, and the dog is still not 100% (though bear in mind this was only his second session using the poles almost-straight) but starting to show some style hhitting entries and moving through the poles. I am very happy and expect we will be able to get the next set of 2x2 added by the weekend and maybe 6 straight poles by then as well. Just have to see how much time I have :)

Fyre's jump training is going well too - here is a video from last night showing him doing a practice grid.

In the first run I returned to him and rewarded because I saw him about to launch himself and then decide to stay where he was since he hadn't been released yet, so I wanted to makr a good decision on his part. (Though he did move a foot, yes, need more work on criteria there :>) First time he just did the three bounce jumps as he hasn't done much distance between bars before, and I wanted to start on a good note than challenge him too early on. The fourth bar was set, by my approximate measurement, to have room for a single stride between, and he did exactly as I'd hoped :) To continue reinforcing his wait, I had one run where I left him, then threw the food box back to him and released as a reward simply for staying there.

Then this morning we worked on 2o2o and I was again blow away as I was able in one session to move the foot target, and also rotate my position so I was no longer facing the end of the plank but standing almost alongside it and facing away and still had him take up position. It's sessions like these that show me I must be doing SOMETHING right and the dogs understand what I want.

Of note, Josh is currently having some time off after minor surgery, but I promise to get some new videos of him up in the coming weeks too.

FYI

2010-01-31T20:03:00.002+10:30

Still 86 days to go...

Our first training session with the new weave poles - brilliant. They are great. I shall be making a return trip to Bunnings sometime during the coming week!

Thinking Outside the Box

2010-01-31T16:51:00.004+10:30

86 days to go...

Over my years of training in agility, I have made (or attempted to make!) much of my own equipment to practice on at home. The idea being that it would be cheaper, be made just how I wanted it and mostly... yeah, cheaper

Despite me creating things 'on the fly' most of my gear has stood the test of time, still in use now after it was made several years back for Porter. Some of the things I have made in the past are:

A broad jump - after looking at the cost of wood I decided free would be better (I had minimal income at this stage) and scored myself an old wooden pallet. I then set about to saw through all the nails holding the thing together, and after a bit of sweat had a pile of wooden boards. Because the wood was rough and splintery, I then sanded it down (electric sander, not by hand thank God) then used the wood and some other odd bits of scrap wood I had to create two broad jumps. A slap of paint and they looked bloody good. Because the wood was not of the greatest quality, some of it has warped and the ends that were nailed together fell off, but most of it is still perfectly usable!

A tyre - who wants to pay for a real tyre? I used an old plastic rubbish bin lid, sawed right around the rim and then wrapped the rim in masking tape and painted it white. Initially, I just nailed it to a single pole as a lollipop tyre, however it wasn't very stable so I then when and bought (yes, I did actually pay for SOMETHING *gasp*) some long, thick, square garden stakes (I think that's what they were - I don't rightly remember, but I know they were cheap!) built a frame around the 'tyre' and attached feet then drilled holes so the feet could be pegged down. I haven't used it for years and not sure if I still would - it is quite solid and I would worry about the dogs catching themselves on it, plus it is probably smaller than a regulation hoop, not good for my large dogs.

Jumps - To start with, I found some old metal spikes in the shed (I imagine they were actually meant to be used for welding). I sawed them into pieces and estimated which drill bit matched the diameter, then used more scrap timber pieces to create jump uprights. I did this by drilling into the base and then adding glue and hammering the spikes in, and used nails to hold the bars. I later decided I needed taller, more refined uprights, and discovered that wooden broom handles could be purchased cheaply from the supermarket (though what they thought I was doing with all those broom handles I can only imagine). This time I improved upon my spike method - I bought some very long nails, sawed off the heads and then proceeded with the same method as previously. They are still fantastic - the spike on the end of the nail makes them relatively easy to drive into the ground anywhere, even under the current drought conditions in my backyard. At the time I made them, I also used fine dowelling to hold the jump bars, but I didn't like the possibility of the dogs stabbing themselves on it so I eventually knocked all of those off with a hammer and created new jump cups using plastic aquarium tubing stuffed with wire - these are quite soft but can be bent up into hooks that easily hold bars. I then simply cable tied them to the uprights. They have worked well for years, and can easily be re-bent back into shape if they start to flatten out. As actual jump bars I used the same cheap wooden broomsticks, just painted them black and white with gloss paint. They are still going strong (though many have disappeared to who knows where!!)

Weaving poles - my first set of weaving poles were permanent to one spot of the yard - I managed to drag up ten reasonably pole-shaped objects from around the yard and banged them all into the ground then painted them blue and yellow (my club colours). Porter learnt to weave using these poles. I later made myself a more portable set using the same method as for the jump uprights, with spikes and wooden dowel sawed up into approx 1m lengths. I found these to be quite flimsy so I then bought myself some regular wooden garden stakes and added more solid spikes to the bottom of them and painted - even though they are 'square' and some have cracked under the pressure over years of use and hard ground, at least half of them are still with us.

Contacts - I never really had any contact gear at home when training Porter. I did buy a wooden plank (probably the most expensive thing I've ever bought to make equipment!) and glued some of that cheap rubbery non-slip backing to it (which Josh promptly removed as a puppy). Even though it is somewhat warped now as it has been left outside and was never painted, it still serves as a useful contact trainer. I made my own foot target for the dogs by buying a cheap wooden placemat at Go-Lo and gluing felt to each side, one side yellow, one side blue so I could switch according to ground colour and how much I wanted it to stand out.

Flexi-Tunnel - I actually bought one of these - I know, by now you're probably amazed I didn't just create one out of paper mache :)

Today began to next round of equipment building. Because many of my jump bars have mysteriously disappeared, I decided it was time to get some more, and to that end made a trip to Bunnings to purchase some PVC pipe. Less keen to spend days painting it prettily black and white as I had previously with the broomsticks, I picked up some coloured tape to use to produce contrasting stripes on them. Of course, one can never go into Bunnings without finding multiple OTHER useful things, and if you have an open mind you can create a LOT of agility equipment from relatively cheap stuff.

Many of my original weaving poles have 'died' since I first made them, so I now need to replace those once the dogs get past weaving just 4 poles. Cruising for ideas I checked out the wooden garden stakes - could I just pound some of them into the ground and drop PVC pipe over them? Nah, that would be too much work every time I wanted to use them. Re-creating them with spikes would be better. Perhaps I'd go for some nice wooden dowelling then. However, in looking for the long nails to act as spikes, I made a wonderful discovery - decking spikes. Much like thick, giant nails, I found they could be bought at a decent length of 200mm, and so it was back to the PVC piping aisle to pick up some of the thinner piping in the hopes it would sit nicely over the decking spikes and act as poles. I was thrilled when I got home and discovered that the spikes banged into the ground very easily and the pipes were held up perfectly. I will have to go back and buy more now, as I just grabbed 4 to start with in case they didn't work.

I also found the special corner pipe connectors I needed to make my scramble training box, and also some screw-in pieces to add to them and therefore raise the box of the ground a bit more. In my excitement however, I didn't notice that of the four screw-in additions I grabbed out of the box only two were the same, the others were different types! One might think I would have noticed this since I DID check to see that they were all the correct diameter! Not to worry though - although two of them don't actually screw in, they still sit in the connectors enough to hold the box up for training.

So all in all it was quite a productive day! I shall report back on how the new weaving poles stand up to an actual training session (fingers crossed!!)

Two Dogs, Two On/Two Off

2010-01-30T12:26:00.005+10:30

87 days to go...

I really need to do two (or several!) posts but this is the most overdue one so I shall start here :)

This week we started contact training (well, apart from box training which we'd already started, so I guess that does count as contact training too). Perhaps 2o2o training is a more accurate way to describe it then :)

I haven't trained a dog for 2o2o before. Well, Porter did a little bit of it briefly, but never really consistently and at the level I'd want now. The dogs have all been doing some nose touching to my hand and to a clear plastic target, and they can all use a foot target (a felt-covered wooden placemet - thank you Go-Lo!), plus some months ago I spent some time getting the boys used to walking on a plank set up off the ground on blocks. So it was really time to start putting the elements together.

I thought I would start them using steps. Now, the maximum number of steps in my house is two, the ones going out the backdoor, so I propped the doors open, did some practice foot touches to the target then took turns bringing each of the dogs in and setting them one step above the target and then standing in front of them ready to click when they made motion towards it. It only took me one session to realise I didn't like this at all, it felt way too clumsy, too much of me putting the dog into position rather than them taking up position themselves. So I abandoned the step idea.

Next idea was to simply train them on the plank (the plank is quite old and weather worn after two years sitting outside now, and somewhat warped, so it rocks a little rather than being flat. I figured it would be good for them to get used to a little motion under their feet anyway though). So I started doing the same thing - putting the dog on the end of the plank and rewarding them for moving their front feet onto the foot target. However, after a bit MORE consideration I decided this wasn't working for me either - I didn't like having to PUT the dog anywhere, I wanted them to do it themselves so they were really learning what to do and how to do it. When I tried to let them step onto the plank themselves there would inevitably be a paw or two still standing on the ground. (At this stage I should note that one end of the plank was up on a low block).

So once again I decided this wasn't good enough, and I needed clearer critera for the dog to be able to do it for himself. I grabbed another low block for the other end of the plank, thereby raising the whole thing off the ground by 10cm or so (very low, but not so low it wasn't obvious to them when a paw was still off the side). It was amazing how quickly they remembered the work we'd done with the plank (6-8 months ago now). Each of them was quickly walking over it, scratching it with front paws, trying lots of interacting with it.

I decided my first criteria then would be 4 paws on the plank. To start with I marked them as soon as they got 4 paws on. I positioned myself at one end of the plank so they had the whole length to walk along and get themselves straight and all four paws up, then as long as they stayed in position, I kept feeding. If they moved feet but keep all four on the plank I marked that also because obviously on real equipment they will be moving on it, not standing still. Only a couple of sessions and me switching ends regularly, and they both were quickly getting up on the plank and happy to move along it. (Though once again it was amusing to watch everything they tried, i.e. jumping over the plank, bowing with their front end on the plank, sitting or dropping next to the plank, walking along the plank with their front feet on it and their hind feet on the ground, scratching at it with their front feet and so on).

Next step - introduce the foot target. I put the foot target right at the end of the plank and stood on it, so it wasn't available for them to step on until they got themselves into position on the plank. Once I'd rewarded the 4 paws on, I stepped back from the end slightly - any steps forward I marked, and indication of paying attention to the target (i.e. head moving down to look at it) I marked. Because it was an obvious step down, I felt this gave them much clearer criteria to start with than the end of the plank being on the ground. It was clearly - two hind feet on plank, two front feet on target. I gradually moved further back and eventually they each took that step down onto the target. (Fyre pawed at it a couple of times first which I did mark, but only a couple of times because I didn't want him to think that was the permanent behaviour I wanted). I rewarded them multiple times as long as they stayed in position - each time I gave a piece of food I presented it very low, practically on the ground, so they had to put their nose right down to get it (starting to give them the idea for the nose targeting, though it wasn't a nose target as such. Josh did start to offer dropping his head down though so I was pleased that it seemed to be working).

If at any point one back foot came off the plank, I simply stopped feeding, said 'Oops! What happened? Let's try again.' Then I once again stepped onto the target and waited for the dog to take up position. Since Josh learned this very quickly, I decided to remove the foot target after a couple of sessions. Whilst it was vey helpful to teach him where exactly his feet needed to go, I didn't want him to become reliant on it being there. Rather I wanted him to learn the 2o2o position itself (not, two paws on plank, two paws on target).

So after a run through with the target, I then released him, removed the target and went through the whole process again in exactly the same fashion but without the target present. Good boy, he did it almost right away :) Fyre is still not 100% sure so he will keep using the target for the time being. Josh may also use it again if I take the plank to different locations, or start to move my body position (I did the very beginnings of this with both dogs by moving around to each side whilst rewarding them for being in position).

I am very happy with how this is progressing. Just have to get out more and do lots of practice in different locations. (And actually get some contact equipment so I can really get into training it properly!)

Getting A Jump On Things

2010-01-26T21:29:00.004+10:30

91 days to go...

Busy week! First few days of last week got in some good training and some good power walks with both the dogs. To make it easier to cover what we're done the past week I will split it into separate headings.

2x2
Both dogs are now working at the same level, having brought Fyre up to where Josh is, and keeping both there to proof their entries under different circumstances. Lots of progress being made - obviously would have been nice to do it over just 12 days but I simply don't have the time to get several weaving sessions in as well as doing other stuff. Plus I am still learning this technique at each step, making my own mistakes and having to go back and fix them :) Currently they are doing two sets of 2x2s with a gap of 120cm between. Occasionally they both miss entries from hard angles, going straight for the second set of 2x2s, but generally much improved and a much lower error rate. I think they are grasping very well what I want from them now, so we are adding things in to make it tricker to find that entry - more distance, more motion from me, really tricky angles from both sides. I think over the next few days I will be able to move the two sets closer again and start to straighten the poles. Josh did an absolutely AWESOME entry last night, a tight angle from the right where I saw him really dig in to turn in around that first pole. Fyre did some FANTASTIC work tonight too, easy entries but with me starting to run with him, which he has had trouble with previously and did really well this time.

Jump Work
With the success of the work over one crossbar, I starting adding more challenges. I worked on waits in front of the bar (in a sit) returning to reward the wait occasionally and then releasing over the bar. This was a problem for Josh previously, with him wanting to go around the bar. He did that once but I reset him for another go and then he got it. Once he got it that first time he hasn't looked back! His waits have been excellent too, interesting since I haven't done a lot of leaving him in a sit (though I often leave both dogs in downs throughout a session when I am setting up, just for practice). Fyre is a bit less stable, wanting to break and go off over the bar. To work on this, and to work on both dogs getting into position in the first place (they are both incredibly keen to head off over the jump as soon as they see it!) I have been doing a lot of rewarding them in heel (both left and right) position as we set up and then U-turn to face the jump. I have incorporated this into various other exercises too, i.e. Fyre gets heeled back and forth from the table where I sit my extra treats, toys etc in between runs. Every so often Fyre also gets his plastic food container thrown back behind him and released to it when he doesn't break position on a wait.

We then moved on to two crossbars in a row, both from a wait with lead out and from me with forward motion and them moving ahead. Josh I am usually using a toy, and Fyre his food container as those are the things each likes best, though I try to make sure to mix it up between rewards so they work for a variety of things. Interestingly, as I had the two jumps set a reasonable distance apart, Josh bounce jumped them both from a standing start and on the move, whereas Fyre put in an extra stride between. Since we are working towards doing more jump grids, I shortened the distance slightly to encourage Fyre to bounce them also and he managed that no trouble at all.

Tonight just for fun I dragged out the tunnel, which all the dogs have been exposed to some time ago. I just pulled it out straight (after checking for spiders since it has been sitting outside for quite a while) let them each have a couple of runs through using a toy reward thrown ahead of the exit. Then I worked on leaving them in a down and releasing to the tunnel, which both managed very well. From there, we started very basic sequencing by putting a crossbar in front of one end of the tunnel. Figuring Josh would easily drive to the tunnel I set him up in front of the bar, led out and released him - perfect! Second time was trickier - set up in a down at the opposite side (so tunnel first). I started with a lead out to just past the jump and sure enough he came belting out of the tunnel and didn't even look at the jump. Hmm, too much too soon? Once more over the jump from that direction as some backchaining, then try again. This time I didn't lead out as far, and when he exited the tunnel I was midway between tunnel and jump and moving toward the jump (slowly so as not to kill myself if he decided to run in front of my legs). But I needn't have worried, he did it perfectly this time :)

Fyre found this a bit more challenging. As I probably should have expected, with me doing such a long lead out he ran past the tunnel the first time and straight for the jump. Hmmm, some more backchaining required! So we did another lead out this time with me just at the end of the tunnel, and rewarded him for that, then did the longer lead out over the jump to a target and this time he did it great!

Cones
I had the bright idea that I might be able to use the tunnel and the cones together, by using the tunnel as the reward for the dog going around the cone and therefore each reinforcing the other. In my head, this would work as having a cone at each end of the tunnel, me sending the dog around the cone then front crossing them back into the tunnel and so on. This would be a classic example of transfer of value, the value of the tunnel (which both dogs love) would increase the value of going around the cone. Sure enough, I lumped a pile of criteria together and at first attempt had the tunnel too close to the cone and had both dogs trying to head for the tunnel and me calling them back, and then not really interested in the cone because they really wanted the tunnel!! So in the end I decided to shelve that idea for the future and just work on single cones. Tunnel away, I used food rewards for the dog going around the cone in both directions so I could do lots of quick repetitions. I really must work on cones more, because whilst the dog won't need to know how to go round cones in an actual agility course, I can see them being exceptionally helpful in training to practice handling.

Still have to go through the contact work we have started, but that will take too long so will have to be an entry for next time!

Don't Try This At Home

2010-01-18T22:34:00.003+10:30

99 days to go...

Ooooooo down to double digits! *shivers* This is to be a very quick entry so I can actually get to bed before midnight (!!) So, first point of interest I will be auditing the first four days of the Lynda Orton-Hill seminars in Victoria come February and CAN'T WAIT!!!! I expect this will be VERY helpful to all the training I am doing currently.

What we covered tonight (cos who needs a life outside of dogs anyway?):
2x2 weavers: Josh did one session, responding very well to the loud squeaky toy. Fyre did three sessions, I have added the second set of 2x2s about 3m or so from the first and currently back to easier entries and lots of reinforcement for correct entries.
Cones: Introduced a second cone, in anticipation of teaching them to go round one cone then the next. Cones right next to each other for this early stage then will start moving them out. All three dogs have one particular side they did better at, and at various points went between the cones, jumped over the cones and so on, but all were starting to cotton on! Probably need to get them more confident with just single cones though.
Nose touches: Just a very quick few minutes each, me trying to get my timing right so they hit the target with their nose and nothing else.
Box work: All did excellent at this, almost right off getting into the box and worked out almost straight away to move all four feet inside.
Jump work: Cross bar again, me in the chair, Josh and Fyre are both offering actually jumps over the bars now so I am very pleased. Billie still just stepping over but getting more confident.

Josh and I also walked to a different nearby park and had a couple of sessions of settling and relaxing, lots of recall work on the long line, and various little exercises in between, i.e. leaving him in a sit and rewarding staying there then calling him to me. Several dogs were around during this time so we did 'Who's That?' and although he is still too tense and excited watching other dogs, he isn't trying to bolt after them - he will stay in a down next to me and watch them and 'quiver'! I was very pleased though with one situation where I saw a large dog off lead heading towards us, I quickly put him in a down and even though he stood up when it came and stood right over him, as soon as it moved off I was able to tell him to get back into a down and he responded, then we did 'Who's That?' and I was thrilled when, even though still very excited, he offered a paw touch in between looking at the retreating dog. A real sign of progress I think.

As for the title, that's to let all of you out there know that it is NOT a good idea to begin one's agility training with a deadline of 156 days because it goes WAY too quickly, especially with multiple dogs, and unless you can drop everything for six months it's a LOT of work and stress (stress for me, not for the dogs - far as they're concerned they're beng showered with toys and food and fun things to do so they're loving it )

Sitting Down On The Job

2010-01-17T18:38:00.004+10:30

100 days to go...

Holy crap where did the 56 days since I started this blog go??!!! Scary. So much to do, so much LESS time to do it in!!

This week I made a real effort to get in two or three 2x2 sessions a day. Most days I managed it, but once you try to add in any other training (or really any other part of your life whatsoever...!) that free time disappears all too quickly.

Fyre's entries have improved so much - I am glad I went back to just the one set of 2x2s to really work the entries with him - he is now getting some truly awesome entries, especially on the right side which was always harder for him, he can now usually hit it from a distance and an extreme angle where he has to U-turn around the pole to get the entry. Just a couple more sessions and I will be adding back in the second set. Josh on the other hand I have taken a step back and put more distance between the two sets, as I felt he was skipping the entry too often to go straight to the second set and therefore we re-started training by reinforcing the correct entries in between the 2 sets. His entries are improving again now.

Also during the week we did various other things - Josh and I went to the park a few times and he practiced settling down and relaxing in a different environment. We did some massage and I marked him for showing signs of relaxation like soft eyes, floppy ears etc. We also did some more recall work, building value for recalls, and I allowed him more room to move using the longer line. He has definitely improved - occasionally he just can't tear himself away from a smell and then we work through that as discussed in my previous post so he can be successful. I should mention that I'm also rewarding him for voluntarily returning to me, and consequently he is now a lot more aware of where I am and to not stray too far from me. This week we may go to a new park with different distractions and work through it all again, then maybe somewhere with a higher level of distraction. I am taking it a step at a time because I really want an excellent recall. You never know when you might want your dog to drop what he's doing and race back to you (my question for whether I should let him off lead yet or not is 'If he chased another dog towards the street with oncoming traffic, could you call him back?' If the answer to that is no, he needs to stay on lead.)

Today I decided we were spending too much time on weaving and needed to bring a lot more stuff into the training program (especially with just 100 days to go!) So today we did several short sessions.

Firstly we started nose touch to a clear plastic target (the small round lid off a container for anyone that's interested). All the dogs are quite willing to offer nose touches to my hand, so after a few regular nose touches I held the target in my hand and let them hit that instead. They all did pretty well, though it is so hard to time the click correctly - they all offered several variations of the nose touch behavious including licking, grabbing at the target with their mouths, hitting it open mouthed, hitting it with their chin; I need to practice, practice, practice getting my timing right so I reinforce the correct behaviour.

Next time we started some box work, in preparation for their scramble training (as per Rachel Sanders' DVD). Because this is all basic foundation stuff, no jumping or high impact work, Billie can do all of it too. I parked my chair facing the edge of the box and clicked the dogs when they got all four feet inside. They all caught onto this very quickly. I threw most of the treats outside of the box to move them out of it so they could go back in again, and to get them started thinking about the process of moving across in front of me. Sitting down also meant I was less likely to inadvertently coerce them into the box with body movement. We also did a few more nose touches this session.

Third session for the day, wanting to do some jump work but not having my plastic pipes cut up for speed bumps yet, I started thinking about the box work session and realised I could do the same thing with a bar jump. So I set up a cross bar i.e. two bars that crossed in the middle with one end in the lowest jump cup on one side and the other on the ground against the other upright. This made a very low point on the middle so they really didn't need to jump and we could simply work on bulding value for going over the bars. I set myself at one side of the jump facing the upright. I found it endlessly amusing watching all the behaviours they offered. The most common one was to walk all the way around the far upright and come back (since Josh and Fyre have been doing the 2x2 work I guess they were trying a similar thing here, but interestingly Billie did this too and she hasn't done any 2x2 yet). They also offered sits, downs, attempted hand touches (though I kept my hands in my lap out of the way) and various other random things. Eventually though all of them stepped over the bars. Once they did I clicked and threw food forward to keep them moving across and to get them away from the bar so they could turn back for another go. At this stage there was no handling involved - they could go over the bars from any direction and at any angle regardless of me. They all caught on very quickly, and Josh and Fyre were soon moving quite quickly across the cross bar, to the point where they were starting to do a little jump. I swapped sides with my chair and did it all again, then progressed to standing up, and then began to bring in some handling. This was at the point where I was reasonably sure they would go over the cross bar.

It was very basic stuff - me beginning to the show them the picture they would see if we were really handling this jump, i.e. as I threw the food for one reward I turned into the jump staying on the spot alongside it (basically a front cross) so my shoulders were now facing the direction we were 'going' as the dog turned back around again. Because they were beginning to see the value in the jump they automatically returned and went over it. I increased my distance from the upright, and then began to add a small amount of handler motion, i.e. as I threw the food I moved forward with the dog at a walk, as they turned back I turned in to them (front cross) and walked back towards the cross bar again. Both Josh and Fyre were able to do this with 100% success rate so I think I am progressing at the right speed here. In fact, they became more enthusiastic about the jump and with me moving actually began to jump over it. Billie reached the point where she was going back and forth across it but I didn't feel she was ready to do any 'handling' so we stopped at that point. I can see where this will be useful for lots of basic stuff. Josh for example had trouble going over a bar after being left in a wait (back some time ago when we did just a little jump work). I expect once I work through these exercises with him a bit more I will then be able to practice releasing him from a wait over the bar and have him be successful. Having worked through this with the dogs today I think the jump stuff I was doing with them previously was really expecting too much of them to start with, and this foundation stuff, plus the speed bumps when I eventually get them ready to go, will improve them much more quickly.

So generally happy with how we went today. Hopefully with several new things to teach now on the go I will begin to see some real progress.

The Circle of Reinforcement

2010-01-09T16:57:00.005+10:30

108 days to go...

Not much to report for the last few days... it has been hot here, high 30s, so I've done very little with the dogs. We are all inside in the air-conditioning today :) As usual though, I have been trying to find ways to do little bits of training. Today for example I had the treat jar on the couch with me, and every so often would reward some little things like Billie lying quietly on her mat, or giving things to me. (This includes every little thing she manages to find like tissues, cat toys, bits of fluff - if she brings them to me when I call her she can have a treat.) Eventually we did a little retireving game, where Billie would bring me a toy and get a treat, I would put it back on the floor, she would give it back and so on. Josh eventually joined this game too. The point of this is reinforcing them for bringing the toy back to me. Currently both are very keen to chase the toy but slower to bring it back. Billie in particular will want to play chase with toys if either of the other dogs are free in the yard with her.

Anyway, I had too much to write in my last entry to include the second part of what I wanted to, which is reinforcement and trying to use it effectively. This includes things which I consider 'self-reinforcement' for the dogs - things they like doing but which don't necessarily come from me. This could be stuff like sniffing the ground, peeing on a post, whatever. I have been trying to work these into my training so they become reinforcements for behaviours. This really follows on from what I was saying in my previous post, about criteria. So currently with Josh in particular I am working on improving recalls. To give him lots of chances at success, I have manipulated the situation as follows - currently he is on lead, a reasonably short lead at this stage. We haven't yet worked up to any place with a huge number of distractions. What distractions we do encounter I try to keep low level so he has a better chance of responding to me, i.e. other dogs running at the park, we work at a distance from them. I haven't added a 'come' cue as yet, but I do expect him to give me attention when he hears me call his name, first time, no matter what he is doing. He is allowed to wander and sniff and so on when released, I usually use 'go sniff' or 'off you go'. However, as he is still on lead, he has an added criteria that the lead must remain slack - if he pulls on the lead, I stop and wait for him to back up and give back some slack. In this case, the reinforcement is him being allowed to move towards something he wants. (To get what you want, you first have to do what I want, the Premack Principle - there is an excellent explanation of this and how it applies to dog training throughout Susan Garrett's book Shaping Success.) I am doing a similar thing if he doesn't respond to the first call of his name fairly quickly (within a second say). If he continues what he was doing, i.e. sniffing the ground I say nothing else but immediately use the lead (not as a correction, just a guide) to move him away from reach of that spot, then pause and call him again. If he responds this time we move back closer to that spot and do another. If he responds to that we move back to the original spot and repeat the exercise from there. If he responds to that he gets released back to finish sniffing whatever it was. I am also using food treats as reinforcement for coming back to me. I am also commonly asking for a nose touch by offering my palm as he approaches, so it isn't simply a case of him reaching me and racing straight back to what he was doing. I think of it as a circle of reinforcement - coming to me he gets reinforced (food) and then sent back to another reinforcement (the smell) and so on and so forth.

Occasionally I also do things like putting him in a down and recalling him, or reinforcing the wait as well by starting with 'Ready...' then rewarding him for staying. As mentioned previously, I have also being playing the 'Look At That!' game with him (see Control Unleashed). I believe that he HAS improved. The other day when we did 2x2 at the park for the first time, although he did get distracted and wander towards other things, he did respond quickly and come back when I called his name. Still lots of work to do but we'll get there!

The delivery of reinforcement is also important - certainly my dogs are more enthused if I throw food for them than just give it out of my hand. The plus to this as well is that it immediately moves the dog away from you so they then have another chance to come back and offer that behaviour and be reinforced again. Very handy for things like recall practice in the backyard - call the dog, mark 'yes' then throw the food; as he scoops it up call again and repeat the process. Suddenly returning quickly to the handler becomes a much more interesting game.

Dogs' rules - the reinforcement YOU consider high value may not necessarily be high value for the dog. I try to bear this in mind. For example, Fyre finds his dinner, regular dry dog food, extraordinarily exciting because he associated dinner time with high excitement. So me using a plastic container of dry food as a reinforcer is equally if not MORE rewarding for him than using fresh liver. Josh, I discovered by accident, is nutty about balloons and bubbles. A balloon is a high value reward for him, so occasionally I use balloons in my training - he does well, he gets to punch the balloon in the air for a few goes.

Handler reinforcement - I mention this because obviously it comes into the mix somewhere - why else would one spend all one's spare time out training/walking/playing with their dogs? It can lead to training traps though. For example - in agility, it is much more fun (note: high value reinforcement for handler) to put up a row of jumps and watch gleefully as your dog goes soaring over them, than it is to do circle work (note: potentially low reinforcement to handler). Whilst we know good foundation produces the best results, we all want instant gratification and can therefore be tempted to move onto doing things our dogs aren't ready for. Which leads to problems down the track, and frustration for dog AND handler. I try to bear this in mind to remind myself it WILL be worth doing all the foundation stuff for the end product, and also to make sure that even if *I* don't find an exercise particularly exciting, my dogs still think it is a great game. Often times also, it is possible to convince (note: shape ) oneself into finding these games more exciting anyway - if you get your dogs happy and excited to play, it is reinforcing to you as a handler to see them happy and excited. Thus the Circle of Reinforcement is complete

Rules of Engagement

2010-01-06T22:48:00.007+10:30

111 days to go...

Have to try and keep this blog more up to date so I can track my progress! It's hard though, because all my spare time is devoted to the ACTUAL training... well, ok, some of it is devoted to Cafe World on Facebook, but everyone needs a hobby right?

My main New Year's resolution this year was to stop procrastinating (a very bad habit of mine) and actually DO stuff. One of those things is obviously working with the dogs. I still wonder if I haven't taken on too much, trying to get two dogs up to trialling standard then flying them to the Nationals when they will have had minimal (if any!) trial experience. It wouldn't be so bad if it were just ME, but with Donna flying all the way from Canberra to see her boy Fyre in action... eek! Pressure's on! I hope we can do it.

This weekend I spent some time re-watching the first few chapters of Susan Garrett's 2x2 DVD, and sure enough I realised I had skipped a few steps in the program which probably accounted for Fyre's high failure rate. Josh, much more willing to work through problems, wasn't affected to quite the same extent, but I certainly rushed him too, so I have taken a step back with both of them now. Fyre is back to doing just one set of 2x2s until he can hit the entry from anywhere with confidence. Josh I have opened the angle of the two sets of 2x2s a little more and extended the distance between the two sets slightly, so he can gain confidence and work on getting great entries also. I have already seen a VAST improvement with Fyre's entries. I have also switched back to using a toy with him, and picked two very special soft toys that make noises, as soft toys are his favourites, and their noise-making revs him up even more. He is now getting entries at speed from good distance, ones from the left are excellent, ones from the right pretty darn good considering he didn't used to be able to do them at anything like even a slight angle, but the more extreme angles on the right still need work. Still, he is enthusiastic and confident so I am pleased.

Deciding I needed to get out of the backyard, I took my four poles, my tuggy and a bag of nice, smelly treats to the park across the road with Josh last night. I decided one dog at a time would be best so I could focus on just that dog and not worry about what the other was doing (the other dogs did get worked at home though). Sure enough, with so many new distractions about the place Josh was much less focussed and much less interested in the toy or the poles. So we did some little things he already knows well - nose touches, playing with the tug toy, sits, offering a paw, really anything he wanted to do. I had a long line with me as we are still working on having excellent recalls, and I spent some time just sitting on the grass and sending him off to sniff, then rewarding when he chose of his own will to come back to me, or offered a behaviour. When other dogs or people appeared in the park, we played the 'Look At That' game as described in Leslie McDevitt's Control Unleashed book. Basically this just involves marking and rewarding for him looking at other dogs/people, etc. (With Josh the main distraction is other dogs). We have done this a few times now so I started adding a cue, 'Who's That?' when he looked at something. The aim eventually is that when another dog comes on the scene that will be the signal to turn his focus to me (i.e. look at dog = earn reinforcement from handler). We did do a couple of repetitions of the 2x2s, after much enthusiastic playing with a tug toy. Due to it being a more difficult environment for him, once I threw the toy I also ran after it, so pretty much as soon as he picked it up I was right there to start another fun game of tug. I did this rather than let him pick the toy up and then get distracted by something on the way back to me. It was a good start.

The title of this entry is something I have been thinking about the last few days. Everything we do with our dogs (or really with anything in life!) is determined to be a success or failure according to the criteria we have set, the 'rules'. Criteria is all important in dog training - how do you know if your dog has been successful if you yourself weren't 100% sure of what you wanted in the first place? i.e. when you cue sit, your criteria for your dog may be 'butt on ground'. But is that really all you want? Perhaps you might also want it within a certainh timeframe, i.e. 1 second, 2 seconds; perhaps you want the dog so sit up straight, rather than a slouch. Perhaps you want him to hold the sit until you choose to release him. Every bit of 'criteria' has to be met for it to be a success. If you look at it in this way, perhaps 'butt on ground' was actually only a small part of what you were really wanting the dog to do. But to get everything happening together, you have to start small - we have to remember, our dogs don't KNOW these rules we have decided for them - they have to guess and keep trying until we let them know they have it right. So in the sit example, you might start off marking butt on ground. Then you might increase your criteria to butt on ground + sit up straight. And so on. Since our dogs don't know the rules, we need to SHAPE them towards the correct response. You wouldn't expect your brand new puppy to sit on the command 'sit' his first day home with you, and you certainly wouldn't expect him to sit and meet all the multiple criteria as above.

Setting out the exact criteria you expect from each step of training a new behaviour makes life much easier for you AND your dog. I will be the first to say I am guilty of lumping behaviours together rather than splitting them into small pieces and giving my dog a high chance of success. Tonight was no exception.

I decided to go back to using the dogs' dinners as rewards, since dinner is the most exciting meal of the day - especially for Fyre :) However, previously I have sat their food up on a high table on the verandah and retrieved it from there when needed. The downfall of this was that the dogs tended to hover near the table, often times even when there was no food there. So I decided to use my food pots once again (snap-lock lid plastic containers). With 3 small containers, I started with Fyre, splitting his food three ways into the boxes then placing them at random spots in the backyard. The idea of this was that he could see the food, but he had to work out how to get it. With him I decided to work on tugging. So I let him run round sniffing and pawing at the pots (but unable to open them) and then called him and asked him to tug. First this was just a short duration tug and then marked him 'Yes! Get it!' and we ran to one of the pots. Really I was probably asking too much of him considering this was the first time we'd tried this. I was expecting him to recall to me (leaving the food) and then also play tug. Perhaps a more realistic expectation would have been me standing close to the food pot and simply marking him once he stopped trying to get into the box. Nevertheless, it did get him very excited about tugging!!!

Josh is where I really did the big boo-boo though. Stupidly, I though to myself "He'll be ok, I'll put this chicken quarter in the open dog bowl rather than a closed one". This was stupid on SO MANY levels. One, he had NO IDEA whatsoever of the rules of this new 'game'. Two, *I* had no specific criteria for him (so what hope did he really have?) Three, I have never asked any of the dogs to work around open food bowls on the ground, and certainly not in such a tempting manner. Four, even if he did do an excellent job and not touch the food, it wouldn't be because he chose to offer me a behaviour and be released to it, it would be because I had told him to leave it alone. So in short, I had set him up to fail. (Bad, bad trainer!!) I used the tug with him as well, rewarding in much the same way as I had with Fyre, only sure enough eventually he decided that open bowl smelt just too good, went to check it out, didn't come back when I called his name (good work, teaching the dog to hear his name means ignore me and go get the food, the COMPLETE opposite of what I wanted!) and though he hesitated decided it was just too tempting and took the chicken. I then verbally corrected him even though it was obviously my fault, removed the chicken from him, took the bowl and the chicken away and realised how stupid I had been. Cross with myself that I had stuffed up I put him in a down and had a pause to calm down and regather my thoughts. Then I left the food bowl out of reach, released Josh from the down and called him to me to play tug and have a fun game to make sure the correction had done no lasting damage. I am trying to learn shaping behaviours properly, no corrections, but every so often I lapse into my old ways. Another reason to work my criteria out VERY carefully and explicitly in advance BEFORE attempting to teach a new behaviour. To finish, I brought the food bowl to the ground again, but this time put it way off to the other side of the yard and called Josh to me out of a down from a short distance and had a short game of tug before running with him to encourage him to the food bowl to 'get it'. My set up was MUCH better that time - he had a much greater chance of success from the outset.

Still so much more to catch up on... but have to leave it there for tonight so I can actually get some sleep!

Cos the flat is where it's at

2009-12-29T21:25:00.006+10:30

119 days to go...

It struck me yesterday afternoon that the one thing in common with all the training techniques I like is they all come back to flat work. If your flatwork isn't top notch 'Don't even go there girlfriend'! The seminars I did with Greg and Laura Derrett, much of the Susan Garrett stuff, the Susan Salo grids, the Rachel Sanders running A-frame training and quick release contact training - ALL of it is perfected on the flat before the dogs ever get on the equipment. And if you ARE having problems with the equipment? The advice is the same again - go back to your flatwork, and oftentimes the problem will be there as well. The other plus with flatwork - you can really work on all those handling techniques, on the dog getting his footwork, position, responses down to the letter rather than risking mucking up their equipment performance. So this weekend my aim is to pop down to Bunnings and get myself some speed bumps to practice grids, and some piping to start the Rachel Sanders box work.

It actually made me feel better about not having done any jump work with the dogs for several weeks. It reassured me I was doing the right thing.

Tonight we did lots of little things, lots of dog swapping, lots of rewards. Since this was all flatwork, Billie could do it too, and I imagine her training will progress a lot more quickly than the boys because by the time she reaches Josh's age she will have done all the foundation stuff I'm only just doing with him now.

We started with some cone work - shaping the dogs to go round a small orange cone (I haven't been able to swipe any of those nice, big traffic cones... yet... *rubs hands together evilly*). This was pretty easy - just a few goes and all three dogs were going around the cone, albeit not hugely quickly and not from a great distance but it was a very good start. Fyre is hilarious, he just offers behaviours so quickly you barely have time to pick one - once he worked out it was to do with the cone for example, he nose-touched the cone, kicked the cone, shoved the cone and so on!

Tonight we were using the Tug-It as a reward, since I've had it for AGES and never used it. I am using it to reinforce their game of tug too - they like to grab it because it has food inside, but interestingly they don't tug on it as enthusiastically as they do on 'proper' tug toys. However, I can mark them for a good tug and immediately reward them by opening it and taking a piece of food out. I also discovered that Josh is exceptionally good at catching even small pieces of food mid-air, and with no encouragement whatsoever he also offered a leap into the air to catch it at the height of its flight. This is great for me because now I know I can deliver treats to him in a more exciting way than just handing them over - will come in handy if I want to reward stays and such from a distance.

We also did 2x2 of course, and with Fyre worked on lots of very close and quick entries, mostly from the left. As part of this I also rewarded equally his coming straight back to me when called rather than continuing to head to the poles before I was ready or going back through the poles after a successful entry. We are still at about 75% entry rewards currently, and certainly I do see a difference already - whilst he is still very quick to go on and do the second set of poles if he doesn't get his reward after the entry, the entries have really improved - I can see him looking for that first set of poles now. We will do a few more sessions like this - very quick, lots of rewards - then start to add distance and motion, then start to move the two sets together again.

Josh is continuing to do well with his 2x2s, the thing I am starting to add with him now is more handler movement, me moving towards the poles, me moving away from the poles once he's entered and so on. Once I can start to run him at them from various angles we will rotate them close to straight.

I also did some little games with Fyre to help him concentratem, since sometimes I think he gets too wildly excited and has blonde moments I love his enthusiasm, the way he busts out of the crate or dog yard to have his turn, but I really don't want him to get into a habit of thinking he can run rampant for the first few minutes before settling. So we did motivating little games like puppy push-ups (alternating sits and downs) and rewarding him with the tug when got in position at my side. He doesn't give me the focus that Josh does, but I have decided not to work on a lot of eye contact on me because whilst I want him in position at my side, I also want him looking for the next obstacle AHEAD rather than watching me all the time. So we just did little things like U turns, finishing him to either side and so on. I did a little of this with Josh also, and Billie.

It was also a good chance to reinforce their good behaviour in the crate/ex-pen. Since Billie has been doing so well in the crate I moved her to the ex-pen tonight and continued to reward her good behaviour there. I love that I can now work on dog in front of the other two without having whinging and hyperactive carry-on. Billie still whines occasionally but she is SO much better. I can play wild tug games in front of her now and she maintains really good self control. Eventually I will rotate her into the dog yard again too and practice the same there, which will be more difficult as she can actually bounce off the walls there with a lot more room to move, so we will leave that for a while yet.

All in all, it was a great session and I came away feeling very positive - it was nice being able to do lots of little things in one session too. Any day now I will finally find time to do some little videos again too!

'Tis the season

2009-12-28T12:29:00.005+10:30

120 days to go...

Well, the Christmas season kept me away from making a blog entry, though I DID manage to keep up some training with the dogs. I try to take every opportunity to work on SOMETHING when I am with them, no matter how small, whether it is simple manners or the foundation for agility/obedience.

For instance, this morning I have Billie inside with me. I have limited what areas of the house she can access, put the mat down near me in this room, and set the treat box within easy reach of my hand. One of the things she needs to work on is settling down. She is a constantly in motion dog. Josh and Fyre are happy to lie down wherever I am, and if they are outside they may play for a while but then they will just lie near the door til Chris or I reappears. Billie will rarely do this - most often if I glance out the window she is patrolling the yard, sniffing out anything interesting, playing in the pond or with a toy. Inside, she will trot between the rooms, play a game of 'step on the cat' with Izzy (Flick doesn't put up with such nonsense) or find something else to poke her nose into.

She still has those options available to her. She can wander around, get a drink, do whatever, but when she comes onto the mat she gets a treat. When she lies down on the mat she gets a treat. Once she has been lying on the mat for a while she gets another treat. If she were wildly distracted and running round like a maniac I would probably limit her to just this room, or even put a lead on. However, she has been quite good so far, even with Izzy rolling over practically under her nose! Her duration is still quite short, but I am pleased that she is offering to lie down quietly of her own choice. The OTHER thing I am hoping will come from this is a very positive association with getting on the mat. Useful for targeting work when we come to that.

As for the boys, I have been trying to get in a minimum of two 2x2 sessions per day, though it has been quite warm the last few days and I won't do too many repetitions in the hot sun as their enthusiasm drops off more quickly and higher percentage of errors inevitably ensues. However, that said, Josh is doing very well - the second set of 2x2s is now almost straight line - I have left the entry more open as he still misses that occasionally. His right entries have now gone from being the better side to the less good side (probably because I did all that work on improving his left-sided entries!) But that said, this is mostly from EXTREME angles on the right, and on re-attempt he usually gets it right. It is all learning.

Fyre struggles if I miss a day's training. Currently we have had to get back to widening the gap between the two sets so I can build more value for the first two poles. I did persist for several sessions giving him the chance to improve and start hitting the entries again on his own, but even very simply entries he was now missing and often heading just for the second set, or entering at a random spot. So I decided rather than persist with him at such a low success rate we would go back and do LOTS of reinforcing for getting the first entry correct. Once he can get that from all angles at a high success rate I will move the two sets closer together again.

2x2s is the main thing we have been working on, though I now have several more DVDs that I am working through, including Susan Salo's Puppy Jumping and Rachel Sanders' Reliable Running A-Frames. I have finished the A-Frame one and really like the method, so I am definitely going to attempt this with my own dogs. A running A-frame/scramble was definitely in my training plans, I was just waiting to find the right weay to teach it, so very happy there. The puppy jumping is also going to give me a chance to do a LOT of groundwork with the dogs before they have to worry about height, but it does also provide exercises for introducing the height as well. Now I just need to get to a hardware store and get myself the gear I need to start the training!

In other areas, we have started some work outside the backyard (an area where I have been more lax than I should have been). This currently consists of me taking the dogs across the road to the park. Every bit of a walk is a training opportunity... when we leave the house, I expect them not to pull. To this end we do lots of stop/start, U turns, multiple quick 90 degree turns and so on. Josh and Fyre are generally very good (Josh expecially is excellent). I can walk them both down the street to the park gate with them nicely at my side on loose leads. They do tend to be a BIT more distracted once we actually get into the park, but then we simply work through some quick turns again and once they settle we do some work. At the moment with the boys, one gets put in a down stay and the other gets worked for a few minutes. These are just little things, since they have done very little outside the backyard (bad, bad handler! ) that I know they will do well at. So we do nose touches, circle work at a very slow pace on both sides, finishing to the left and right, and tugging. Fyre, who loves to tug in the backyard, is much less interested when he has a whole park available to explore. So we are working on that. It usually involves me harrassing him with the toy until he finally takes it and offer a good tug, which I mark verbally and reward with food (since the food is much higher value for him in this environment). Last night whilst it took quite a while to get him to tug at first, on the second go he took to it much more quickly. Josh did quite well at this, as some time ago now we worked this the same way.

This is also a good chance for the dogs to practice their down stay whilst another dog is working near them. Both dogs have a good down stay, though Josh needs more work with distractions. I am very alert as to whether other people or dogs may be entering the park, at which point I would take hold of the lead so he doesn't have a chance to bolt off for some doggy play. I use some of the techniques in the book Control Unleashed (an excellent read) such as marking him for looking at a person or another dog. Incidentally, I am also using this with Billie who has a tendency to bark at other dogs that bark at her from behind a fence - last night a dog up on a balcony was barking down at her, so we stopped and every time she was able to look at the dog (without barking back/jumping etc) she was rewarded. She settled amazingly quickly, so this is something we will continue to work on.

Josh and Billie are also working recalls - whilst both are OK, they are nowhere near as good as I want (again, bad trainer), as I want them to leave whatever they are doing and come back right away, wherever they are. To this end, neither of them gets leash-free runs currently. I have a long line, but at the moment we are just working on a regular length lead. Once they are always successful with that I will increase the radius they can reach, and so on. The rule is that they must come on the first call, if they do not stop what they are doing I remove them from that spot and call again. If they do come that time we will gradually move closer to the original spot until we can do a recall from that spot successfully. The same no-pulling rule applies here also. If they pull on the lead, I simply stop moving. When they choose to come back to me they are rewarded and we move forward again. What I am trying to get across to them is: By checking in with me you may then have an opporunity to check out that interesting smell. By ignoring me you do NOT have that opportunity. So it is always a choice. Yes, they can continue to pull and try to get to it (hopefully unsuccessfully provided the handler maintains good lead handling skills ) or alertnatively they can choose to return to me and then be rewarded by being allowed to move away (though I am also using food rewards - of note, it is often recommended that a toy be used to reinforce recalls as a game of tug lasts much longer than a simple food reward. Since my dogs are still not that hyped about tug outside of the backyard, this would not be especially reinfrocing to them, so currently we are using lots and lots of high value food rewards).

That should get us mostly up to date for now. Hopefully with the silly season nearing an end I will now be back to keeping more regular records of our work. With just four months to go until Nationals (shivers) we have a LOT of ground to cover.

Of shows and spiders

2009-12-21T14:09:00.003+10:30

127 days to go...

With a few moments to spare I thought I'd post an update.

A relatively busy weekend, though most of it not to do with the dogs - darn Christmas rush! Billie was entered in shows both Sat and Sun, and though she is out of coat I decided I'd still go so did the whole bath/blow dry/beatifying process Fri night. And she did look nice (even after half her coat blew away during the drying process).

I will divert from the story at hand for a moment to mention that also on Friday night, happily updating my Facebook status, my internal spider proximity sensors started to alarm and sure enough when I glanced up, there was a huge spider sitting on the skirting board over the computer. (For those of you who do not know me, I am a terrible arachnophobe). Speaking calmly to myself ('It's just a spider, it won't hurt you, it isn't going to launch itself off the ceiling and attack your face when you move') I managed to remove myself from the room whilst maintaining a relatively cam demeanor. Once out of the room, I retrieved my phone, placed myself in a spot where I could watch every move the spider made (from a safe distance) and proceeded to text Chris and tell him he needed to come home ASAP and remove said spider from my computer room. Then I texted my mum who I knew would appreciate the situation I was in (she is also lacking in any ability to deal with spiders - I guess it must be genetic). With Chris assuring me he would be home soon, I dragged a chair opposite the doorway to the computer room and settled in to try and read a book whilst monitoring the spider's movements. At first the outlook was quite positive. The spider hardly moved the whole time I was watching it. However, the inevitable eventually occurred: I glanced up and in between the gap of 2 seconds since I'd LAST looked up, the spider had completely disappeared. 2 seconds after THAT, I heard Chris's car pull into the driveway (bloody typical that it would wait until then to disappear).

So now, having horrors that I would never again be able to enter that room, I fair dragged Chris in and insisted he initiate a thorough search to find the wayward creature. After a cursory glance around the walls, under the curtain and behind the desk, Chris concluded we were never going to find the spider and it had probably gone back outside (which was answered by my shrill cries of 'You know what this means? I can never go in that room again. Perhaps I can permanently borrow the laptop from work... No, of course it hasn't gone back outside, they NEVER go back outside, they hide and then reappear out of nowhere and give you a heart attack!')

All of which Chris managed to suffer through with an admirable control of sarcasm and exasperation. At my instruction he then also turned off the computer and retrieved my shoes so I wouldn't have to go back in. I then closed the door, stuffed a towel against the crack under the door so the spider wouldn't remove itself to the house at large, and wished fervently that by morning it would reappear and Chris would be able to remove it. (Despite my fear of spiders, I still don't like to kill them - another fact that almost drives Chris mad).

Sure enough, next morning I insisted Chris re-enter the computer room and was extremely disappointed when the spider was nowhere in sight. However, luck finally turned my way when Chris managed to spot a few legs just visible on the top of the window frame. With considerably more calm and bravery than I could ever show, he caught the spider in a glass and remove it to the park across the road (the extent of my involvement was holding the front door open and saying 'Don't get it anywhere near me, I don't even want to see it').

Now, that had nothing to do with dog training (thought I suppose I did impact on my ability to update this blog) so to bring this back to a slightly on topic post, I will discuss our experience at the show on Saturday.

Since I have been focussing on the boys' agility training, Billie has had very little (ok, ZERO) show training. We have been doing crate games but definitely no show stuff. So it's hardly surprising that she wouldn't gait properly, she was either looking at me or looking elsewhere rather than go in a straight line, she decided she didn't like the judge examining her head and contorted herself in all directions to escape him, and generally put in a less than brilliant performance. (She ended up RBCC). After this, I made the decision that we would not show on the Sunday, firstly because I really had too much Christmas stuff that still needed doing, and secondly because I don't think it is fair of me to put her in that position to keep failing when it's my fault for not having trained her to do it correct in the first place.

It did get me thinking though - would I enter my dogs in an obedience trial before I could be confident of them not ony passing but passing on a high (190+) score? Would I enter an agility trial before my dogs were confident, fast and knew the equipment back to front? No. Yet I would take Billie to a show and expect her to know how to move, free stack, stand still and happy whilst enduring a much more thorough exam than in the obedience ring, and generally do exactly what I want without KNOWING what I want. Put like that, it seems ridiculous. So Billie will not be re-entering the show ring now until I have put some serious time into teaching her the RIGHT way to do things, so we can both enoy ourselves and she can show herself off to her best advantage.

More to update later on the boys' 2x2 progress... but that will do for now.

Two in a row

2009-12-17T19:18:00.003+10:30

131 days to go...

Had a great 2x2 session - did the first half with the two sets of 2x2s at 120cm separation and then because the dogs did pretty well (only the odd error on a tricky entry) I decided to reduce the separation back to the correct 60cm.

Both dogs were fantastic. It gave us a good chance to work left tricky side entries because they really had to collect and turn back to make that second set of 2x2s - Fyre especially will need more work on this because he tends to go wide, but even he did a really cool entry from a tight angle where he had to enter on the left and weave back down to me (basically a 180 degree turn round the first pole). With both of them I saw the beginnings of that real weaving action, the body weaving between the poles and the feet starting to find the right spots. All going well, I will be able to begin to straighten the poles over the coming few days. I will try and get some video too as they really have improved since the last film I took.

And with that, I'm off to see Avatar in 3D!!!!

New TOY!

2009-12-16T22:14:00.003+10:30

132 days to go...

Not much to report tonight - HOT weather here the last couple of days plus me being unwell so minimal training. I did get out and do a few repeitions of 2x2s tonight, mainly because I wanted to try out the new toy I just received in the post today. (FYI people in Australia - I have ordered DVDs, books and toys from Agility Click several times now and have received excellent service and my order to me usually in under a week). The dogs thought this toy was absolutely FANTASTIC so I may well have to get another one (or two... ) Both got very excited and did some good work, but because it was hot I didn't try to advance them any further tonight, just did a few entries and kept with the 2x2s at the 120cm separation. Maybe tomorrow we will do some more, though admittedly I am very tempted to go and see Avatar 3D tomorrow night so we'll see... :)

Awesome again

2009-12-14T21:23:00.005+10:30

134 days to go...

Well, of course after I wrote that last post we went out and had an utterly brilliant session last night! One of the 'problems' I have now is that Fyre gets SO excited when we are about to start that he spends the first couple of goes bouncing around like a maniac and running everywhere before he finally remembers what he has to do! Not too bad of a 'problem' to have anyway :)

In fact, they were so good last night I decided tonight if they did the first few repetitions ok I would move the two sets of 2x2s closer together. So duly, after the first couple of goes and with a high success rate, I then moved the second set in by 60cm (I am using my weaving rope which is pre-marked in 60cm segments, so this seemed easiest). So they now had a gap of 120cm between each set. I was utterly thrilled when this appeared to present no problems whatsoever. I have cut back to rewarding the correct entry only about 25% of the time now, and rewarding doing the two sets in sequence the rest. I have been able to add in quite a bit of handler motion with both dogs. They can hit some really tricky entries, but we are still working on getting the easier entries from a greater distance away. Admittedly I have spent more time working on the difficult angles of entry than fast entries, but it's only a small thing and I think will be no problem to improve relatively quickly.

Josh still tends to have more trouble with entries from the left (I say trouble, but this is only with extreme angles, like me standing down the opposite end of the poles and he having to go back and 'weave' down towards me). So I will make sure to continue to reward some of those tricky left hand entries for at least the next few sessions. If all is going well in the next few days hopefully I can look to doing some 'real' weaving, moving the poles the correct distance apart and rotating them towards being straight in line.

I have decided to concentrate on 2x2s at the moment, maybe the next week or so, for a couple of reasons - one, because I want to make real progress on this now, and two, I have ordered Susan Salo's Puppy Jumping DVD which I want to use to do a lot of the very basic foundation work with the two dogs before going back to some 'proper' jump grids. I may work in a few games of Touch and Go here and there though, and we did do our first perch shaping session last Friday with both dogs after just a few minutes having learned to stand both front feet up on an old hat box :)

So things are looking up again! Maybe we will be ready for the Nationals after all *lol*

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2009-12-13T18:26:00.004+10:30

135 days to go...

That's what it feels like sometimes. I may have an absolutely fantastic training session with the dogs where they astoud me with how well they have progressed, then I'll have the next one which frustrates the hell out of me and makes me think we're going nowhere fast.

Last night, possibly enthused due to have having been out to watch the Games trial, I came home and set up my two sets of 2x2s. It was a GREAT session, both dogs were SO good, getting some excellent entries and going through the two sets of 2x2s. Still a few errors but I was generally very happy. I re-watched some of the 2x2 DVD yesterday to make sure I was on the right track, and did adjust my training slightly by rewarding the entries about equal to the times I rewarded dong both sets of 2x2s in succession. Since I want to work on Josh's retrieve before going back to toys with him, I am now using food with both of them, throwing either large pieces or the plastic container. The other thing I realised I need to work on is where I throw the reward for correct entry i.e. making sure it hits on the reward line and doesn't go out wide, as I think this may be encouraging them to look out wide of the poles instead of coming back to aim between them.

So, feeling very good about last night, I got myself organised and have done two sessions so far today. The entries have definitely improved, both dogs finding the entry a lot more consistently now, but still not as good as I'd like. Hopefully my being more aware of the throwing on the reward line will help this as well. Their hitting the second 2x2 though has probably gone backwards a bit (probably due to me rewarding in the wrong spot for the entry) which is disappointing and frustrating. The dogs are no doubt equally as confused as I am, and resort to trying different things, such as in the session just now when Fyre had trouble going on to do the second 2x2, and when he didn't get a reward for hitting the entry, went back and did other things like drop, bark, walk backwards near the poles, stand just at the entry and look at the poles or at me. It's time like these when one becomes SOOOOOO tempted to lure the dog to get it right, but I grit my teeth and simply circled the dog back into position for another try each time, remaining quiet and calm except for the occasional 'Oops!' when the dogs made a mistake. Eventually, Fyre did get some good 2x2s in succession. It wasn't REALLY that bad of a session, when you look at it plainly like that, but still disheartening when you watch the DVD or go online and see dogs weaving 12 poles beautifully in under two weeks and here I am still stuck at two sets of 2x2. Have I been going too slowly? Should I have challenged the dogs more quickly rather than wait for them to improve on the exercise at hand? Obviously I have not been able to do several sessions a day, which has slowed us down, but ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH sometimes I just want to punch the wall! Had my dogs been with someone who was familiar with this method I'm sure they'd be doing better by now because they would not have made all the errors that subsequently require more training to fix as have I.

At times like these it is tempting to just set up several jumps, tunnels, etc and run the dogs over them rather than all this foundation stuff. 'Porter worked out ok,' says a little voice in the back of my head 'And that's how HE was trained.' But then I remind myself of all the things I wanted to IMPROVE with Porter, and how much better he COULD have been if I'd trained him right from the start. I won't be happy with myself or my dogs unless I do it properly.

However, to look on the bright side, I must remember the fact that when I first started this training, Fyre would pay no attention to the poles whatsoever and would often spend several minutes just sitting or lying next to me. THAT was frustrating too, so at least I know we HAVE progressed.

Also, Billie is doing so well in her crate now, every time the other two are doing their 2x2s she is close by in the crate, receiving rewards for being clam and quiet, and has improved by a vast amount even just in the last few days. I can now do several run throughs with one of the others without any whining or barking or carrying on.

I think we'll have time for one more session later tonight, so at that one I will aim to hit the reward line, and get some more good 2x2s in succession.

My dogs are AWESOME

2009-12-12T23:16:00.001+10:30

136 days to go...

And... Well, I think the title just about covers it :)

Never Enough Time In The Day

2009-12-09T21:54:00.003+10:30

139 days to go...

One of the things I find most irritating about work is how it gets in the way of dog training. However, instead of coming home and collapsing on the couch, even though I'd had a late finish, I reminded myself how much training we still had to do and headed virtually straight out to the dogs. I find it helps raise one's enthusiasm to phrase questions to oneself such as 'Which do you want more, to watch that repeat of The Simpsons for the thirtieth time or win the Nationals?" When you put it like that, it certainly puts it all in perspective!

So since there was not much daylight left, I did 2x2s right off because my artificial lighting is less than brilliant and I want them to be able to see where they are going! Fyre was absolutely awesome tonight, still some things that need polishing, but wicked entries and SO much enthusiasm - throwing the food container has really been great for that. Once again re-iterating the point on transfer of value - the food container has a much higher value than any of the toys I was using, thus the improved performance.

Josh did ok, though he did some nice entries and did both sets of 2x2s in sequence several times he was less interested in the toy than sniffing about where Fyre had been. Note to self - must work on retrieves with Josh. Bringing the toy back has certainly been a weak point and it's time I put some proper work into it.

Billie was part of the training session too, doing crate games. As you may have heard in previous videos she tends to whinge and bark and get herself all stirred up when I work the other dogs, which usually leads to her being shut inside. Deciding I was being altogether too slack in not working on this issue, I today set her up in the crate where she could see everything and rewarded her for being quiet, for eye contact with me, for sitting etc. Basically any behaviour she offered that was not jumping around or barking/whining. I did this between each run with the other dog I was working, and towards the end of the session I saw improvement already.

Then, determined not to give up on my power walks, I put the other two away and Fyre and I had a lovely brisk walk down to the beach where he had a quick run and then back home again. By this time it was after 9 so just enough time to spend a few minutes on the computer and make my own tea, then on to updating this blog! In a moment I am off to feed the canine and feline kids, and may have a quick game of Touch and Go with the dogs, since I can do that in just a few minutes each. And some time after that I'll be able to fall into bed and start all over again tomorrow!!!

Like I said, never enough time in the day :)

Touch and Go

2009-12-07T21:21:00.004+10:30

141 days to go...

Recognising the fact that fitness is all-important in agility (for both dogs and handlers), and that I was sadly lacking in this area, I decided to start up daily power walks for myself and the dogs (let's see how long this bold resolution will last). I will be the first to admit that whilst I am happy to do a good, long, fast walk with one of the dogs, I am not going to do it with all three every day (I simply don't have the time anyway). So they are going to have to alternate, with the focus being on building up Fyre and Josh mainly, as Billie is still just 12 months and thus has not finished her growing, so I don't want to put any strain on those young bones and joints. Josh got to be first tonight by virtue of the fact that he was the first to appear at the back door. We had a lovely walk actually, it was a beautiful mild evening. Wonder if I'll be so enthusiastic if it's freezing and pouring with rain??

When we got home, with plenty of light still left I set up the two sets of 2x2s and did a few with Josh after he'd had a chance to have a break. I had moved them further apart again and rewarded entry to the correct first set of 2x2s a couple of times as well as for doing both sets in sequence. Entries on the left seem to be his weakness (perhaps I spent too much time working the right with him after Fyre's weakness on the right entries - typical!) Fyre himself had a great session, very excited with his plastic snap lock container of food, and though it took him a few tries he eventually did several very nice entries and sequencing the two together. What I need to work on with him is motion (handler motion that is) as currently he is too busy looking at me if I am moving with him than he is looking at where he's going.

Then, in my effort to make circle work more interesting, I invented a new game which I have called Touch and Go. This game works on building drive for nose touches, and teaching the dog to follow my shoulders. Initially I was going to use a clicker to mark the nose touch but quickly discovered I could not handler the food and offer a hand to touch AND hold a clicker, so I simply used 'Yes' as a marker.

The game goes like this - I hold both hands, with the food in one for quick access, in front of me, just above waist height (so I can't be tempted to lure the dog to the correct spot) then just start walking with one shoulder 'open' to the side I want the dog on. When the dog gets in position I can then choose when to offer my hand for a nose touch - I may offer it right away, I may continue walking with the dog maintaining position, or I may do a U turn or front cross. Once my hand comes out the dog touches and I mark and throw a (reasonably large and visible) piece of food, then as the dog goes after this take up a new pattern with an 'open' shoulder once again until the dog runs back to take up position again.

Considering this was my first attempt at this game that I had just made up off the top of my head, I was very pleased with the result. Josh has a very good nose touch so he found this quite easy I think, but both dogs improved their position relative to me and their turns - sometimes I would have them come up on one side then do a front cross and as soon as the dog turned into me offer my hand - this resulted in them responding more quickly to my shoulder turns and also turning more tightly. I did the same on U turns. Fyre took a little while to settle into position the first time as he was very excited and gambolling around (as he does ) but I simply kept walking and kept my shoulder open and eventually he settled and was very good. Both dogs found this quite a fun, exciting game and would race back to me to play again after chasing down their piece of food.

I did have to issue myself another speeding ticket however - since we were going so well, I thought I'd try putting in a low jump with Josh. This went ok the first few times, with me working around it and occasionally turning so he was encouraged to go over it, however he often squeezed between the upright and me rather than going over, and when I tried to set him up to go over he became a bit stressed and wanted to avoid the bar altogether, so I finished there and immediately decided NOT to use the bar with Fyre. My next session with Josh and bar jumps (I might do this before his dinner tonight) will simply be re-building some confidence for him to take them, so I will put one up and just reward him for going over it from whatever angle and direction he chooses. Then we will gradually work up to taking bars from a standing start, which admittedly had been spotty for him up to this point.

Fyre also needs work on his nose touches, since he tends to want to lick rather than nose-touch, though one certainly can't fault his enthusiasm for it!!

Speeding Ticket

2009-12-05T14:24:00.000+10:30

143 days to go...

I think we need speed cameras that work in the context of dog training. Seriously, it's my newest creative idea. Certainly *I* would have got a speeding ticket today if I'd had one of those cameras on me. I'm almost expecting to get an expiation notice that says 'You were adding criteria at an unacceptable rate. This resulted in a failure rate for your dogs that was far too high. Your privileges to add more than one criteria in a session have been revoked.'

Ok, so that probably isn't going to happen. But I do like the analogy :)

This afternoon, having not done anything since Tuesday (yes, slack, i know, no excuses!!!) I thought I'd pull out the 2x2s, and since Josh had done so well last time I moved them a little closer together (first mistake). So the first couple of repetitions went quite well. He missed the entry once but after that did a nice entry on the left, then on the right, then we went back to do one on the left again since he'd missed the first one. By this time, Josh was clearly thinking 'Aha! So now she wants me to do that second set of poles. Bugger the first set, I can get my toy more quickly if I go straight for the second set!' So although it was quite a nice, easy entry he was entirely focussed on the second set of 2x2s and just repeated them over and over. I usually try and give each dog a chance to get it right for themsevles without making it easier, but clearly this time I'd gone too far too fast. This many failures in a row told me I'd certainly been 'speeding' as far as my training is concerned. So what will we do next time? I will widen the gap between the two sets again. I will be sure to reward entry to the first set (the correct entry) every few repetitions, thus building value into that. Who can blame the dog, really? If the reward always comes after that second entry, why bother with the first? Our dogs are much smarter than we given them credit for sometimes (or all the time really!!)

Silly me forgot the sets were too close together when I sttarted with Fyre, but I figured I'd give him a few goes anyway, from a very easy entry on the left, and lo and behold after a couple of tries he hit it beautifully. Although the video is unfortunately zoomed in too much here so you can't see everything, do note that most of the time in this session was spent playing with the (new) toy after he got it right. That length of session os bordering on too long for Fyre, so I wanted to finish whilst he was still all bright and 'up' and make the reward for getting it correct an extended and very fun time for him.

(Incidentally, this toy is one I picked up at Go-Lo in the kids' toy section - I don't know what it is actually meant to be used for, but it is soft plastic rippled tubing and sure enough the dogs had a lovely time grabbing and tugging on it. Once again re-affirming my decision that $2.50 toys are nearly always the way to go.)

In summary: Speeding: Think About The Impact (I couldn't resist )

2x2 by two

2009-12-01T21:34:00.000+10:30

147 days to go...

So it has been a busy few days! The dogs didn't get really any training from Fri night and over the weekend because I was busy getting Billie ready for a weekend of showing, and then when I wasn't at the shows I had my work Christmas do... and was otherwise exhausted! So they had a few days off.

Monday it was back to work though - we did a variety of little things, some more targeting of the mat with the drop, some breaking from the crate, some focus on the mat and the jump. Both dogs are still too inclined to look at me rather than the jump in front of them though I did manage to capture a couple of glances I think. I added the second set of 2x2 for Josh for the first time in ages, and he did quite well. Fyre had a go too, though it is tougher with him because he won't maintain his enthusiasm to work through a problem like Josh will. So I find I have to take MUCH smaller steps i.e. with entry angle, me moving, distance from the entry etc. Josh, as long as I don't go TOO wild and crazy, will keep going and going til he gets it and after that he will get it right almost every time. One thing I do want to get them both better at is setting up for a wait in front of a jump (or any obstacle really, but I've only used a jump thus far) since they are both inclined to go over the jump and muck about for a while before finally getting them to sit next to me. Of course, this is my own fault, and I need to work on several behaviours associated with this - 'finishing' to both my right and left sides when directed, and waiting for a release command before leaving position. The finishing I think I will try and accomplish using some perch work (another thing to add to my list of 'things to do') and the waits I will start off at a much greater distance from the jump so they have a higher chance of success, and then gradually move the start closer as we progress.

Tonight we just did weaving - in between my ACTUAL work and doing stuff around the house I find it hard to get in as much training as I would like. I toyed with the idea of getting up early in the morning to do another session, but it's definitely not going to happen any time soon - I am just not an early morning person! As we get closer to trialling maybe I'll manage to do it :)

Anyway, tonight I set up two sets of 2x2 and started with Josh, once again rotating to a different toy. Almost right away he remembered what to do and in no time was getting some excellent entries from a variety of angles and distances. In actual fact, I think his entries have IMPROVED with the addition of the second set of 2x2s because it forces him to turn more tightly around the first pole so he can make the second entry. Here is a quick little video of one of our run-throughs tonight.

As you can see here, on the first attempt at the right-sided entry he did get the entry but missed the second set of 2x2s. I simply directed him back onto my right side as a starting point and with no further indication from me he quickly re-attempted and this time got it right.

Fyre did ok, but after going through both sets once from a left side entry began to lose his enthusiasm and so I put him away for about 15 mins and when I came out again had switched the toy for a food container (just a little plastic container with a lid that snaps shut - these are perfect for throwing because they won't bust open when they hit the ground). I used the food container in the same way as a toy, throwing it ahead so he could drive to it and then I would rush up and open it for him. Sure enough, as it has in the past, this worked to keep him at it and once he got it right the first time he got two more in reasonably quick succession. I only did left sided entries with him tonight, as right-sided has always been more difficult for him and I really wanted him to be successful. The only thing I am not sure how to fix currently is that he sometimes spins to the left after coming out of the poles, because I am too slow to throw the reward ahead of him. It's a catch 22, because since he is not always reliable I hold off on throwing until I am sure he will make the correct choice, but by waiting that long it also means the timing of the reward is late. Hopefully, with a bit more practice of him always seeing the reward thrown ahead past the end of the poles he will start to head that way anyway, and as he gets more confident I will be able to get my throws in earlier. It will also help when I can stand closer to the exit of the poles and send him back to go through the entry - currently, with the additional new criteria of the second set of 2x2s I stayed back at the entry on a very slight angle so he had more of a chance for success. Once I am able to stand down near the exit I'll be able to get my throw in more quickly.

Tomorrow night I want to get in some more circle work, something I haven't done much on of late - I have a few ideas on how I can make it more interesting for both myself and the dogs rather than just making circuits of the backyard, but I guess I'll have to report back on how it actually works out!

And that's why God created ad breaks

2009-11-26T21:07:00.000+10:30

152 days to go...

I didn't end up having time to make an entry last night, but I DID take some little videos. Last night I thought I might try to add a jump into our work with crate games and targeting the mat. I dragged the crate to the edge of the verandah, lined up a low bar jump in a straight line a short distance away, and then laid the mat out from that. Fyre got to be first up and this is how his session went:

Let's look at what I learned from this. First of all, though you may not be able to hear it on the video, I gave Fyre his release word shortly after opening the crate. When he didn't respond I waited a period of time before giving it again, as I did not want him to learn that he needs TWO cues before acting. But it did bring home to me again that we need to work on breaks. What was also lacking on my part was the timing of the food reward - though I wanted to reward the break, in between releasing him and rewarding him he had time to come back to me and sit, so what was I actually rewarding? The sit. In future I will have my reward ready before cueing his release, perhaps by throwing food or a toy as soon as he moves.

Next, although my plan was to set him up for the jump, we were still close to the open crate door and he jumped right back in. Although it wasn't what I wanted, he had done the right thing because there is no cue for either dog to enter the crate just yet, other than them seeing the open door. So I rewarded that behaviour because I WANT them to have high drive to get in the crate.

Now, ironically, I probably would have been better to leave him in the crate and do a lead out so I could stand next to or ahead of the target, but since he has occasionally gone around jumps in the past I thought I'd start off by just sending him over the jump and letting him see where the target was, before starting him from the crate (backchaining). As you can see, he practically did it on his own anyway and because he did go for the mat I should have marked that and rewarded instead of waiting for him to come back so I could set him up again.

We have done quite a bit of work on building value for bar jumps, hence his enthusiasm to go over it. The other thing the video shows is that we clearly need to work on his waits - with one foot moved and then breaking before his release cue, and then moving TWO feet the next time I set him up and left him, the criteria of moving NO feet is obviously not clear to him. Bad trainer! Hence why I then chose to reinforce the wait before breaking him again, firstly by returning to him and rewarding, and then by doing a lead out but throwing the reward back behind him and releasing him with a 'Get it!' What I also notice is that when I lead out again, he is simply watching me and not where he has to go... so we need to do more work on him focussing in the obstacle rather than me. Because I wanted him to target the mat, even though he went over the jump nicely I waited for him to leave me and go back to the mat, but this was not ideal as I want him to drive straight to the mat when he sees it anywhere.

So based on all this, it was quite clear to me that I had gone way too far too fast by throwing together a pile of different behaviours despite the fact that they certainly weren't anywhere near proofed even individually (let alone chained together). So I decided to forget about the jump, the crate and the waits, and just work on the targeting. At this point, the critera was simply two front feet touch the mat. I then moved to the other side of the mat so we weren't just going from the same spot all the time. Having considered it further, I may also do some work on him focussing on the mat (as with the jump) rather than me, by having him in a wait and rewarding him for looking at the mat. Hopefully this may help him learn to drive straight to it.

Having realised I was asking too much of Fyre, I resolved to simply work on targeting with Josh. So out to the mat we went.

I started off using food rewards and requiring the same criteria as for Fyre - hit the mat with two front feet. You can see Josh is used to these shaping sessions - hence why he returns to me after the first target, offers his default behaviour (sit) and then one of his other favourites, one paw up. Then realising this hasn't worked, but touching the mat worked just a moment ago, he returned to that. I also decided at this point that perhaps just touching the mat with feet was too ambiguous, so I decided to shape a drop on the mat. I figure this will also be useful when he come to training and automatic drop on the table for agility. So this time, instead of rewarding Josh as soon as he put his front feet on the mat, I waited for him to offer the drop (which is another behaviour he readily offers so it was no problem). I made another decision not long after this too - the food rewards were creating too much sniffing and no as much excitement as I would have liked - so I switched to the toy. I'm sure you'll see the difference in the level of drive and speed/regularity at which behaviours are offered with a fun toy on offer :)

You will see at one point Josh offers a drop NEXT to the mat but with only the tips of his toes actually on it. This wasn't good enough for me, I want at least his front half dropped on the mat so I simply waited and he very quickly offered the behaviour that earnt him a reward the last time. I also picked up the mat and moved it so he would learn that the behaviour was linked with the mat, not that particular spot of ground the mat was on. Josh also needs work on his stays/waits, which is why when he popped out of a drop when I was replacing the mat, I signalled him to drop once more and then walked around squeaking the ball before rewarding him in the drop position for staying, then giving my release cue. In future I will probably do the same with him as I will with Fyre, marking him for looking at the mat and then releasing him to it to get his reward. Generally Josh is more focussed on what is ahead of him than Fyre is, so it is always interesting having two dogs with different strengths and weaknesses to work with.

Then it was Fyre's turn again, this time to do some targeting using the toy reward and having added the drop criteria.

Fyre has a shorter 'high intensity' training timeframe than Josh, so his sessions are usually shorter as I want him to always maintain that high level of enthusiasm. As you can see, he also figured out the drop very quickly, I initially marked and rewarded him for just his front end going down rather than requiring a straight drop right off.

It was a good session for both dogs, and pointed out a lot of BASIC things that I need to work on them with, so we will go back to lots of little wait games, perhaps do some '1-2-3-break' games breaking them to the mat. No doubt I will be adjusting these again and again as I go on :)

Tonight's training I decided would be ad break training. The idea was that we got multiple very quick, high intensity sessions so the dogs would do everything in a state of high arousal and be more likelt to offer behaviours and keep working through any mistakes. (It also meant I could watch Two and a Half Men). So duly I set up my 2x2 entry in line with the back door, brought all three dogs inside and left them in the dining room whilst I went in the lounge. I wanted them separate from me so when I came barrelling out in the ad break it was even more exciting.

So each ad break I raced out to the dining room, snatched up a toy and bounded out the back door calling one dog with me. Hyping him up with excited voice we did 2 or 3 entries mixing up distances/angles, me moving or still and from both left and right, throwing the toy each time he drove through a correct entry. As soon as he was after the toy I ran away, encouraging him to race back to me and then turning straight for the poles again. Then I would quickly switch dogs at the back door and repeat. I managed to do this several times with each time slightly raising the difficult of the entries and getting consistent excellent results. Then I decided to have some fun with jumps as well, setting up two low bar jumps in a slight curve again leading out from the back door. Doing two obstacles in a row separated by distance other than the short distances in jump drills has been a weak point thus far, because I really haven't done much work on sequencing as we want to get the basics right first! But I was thrilled tonight when Josh with no hesitation raced over the first bar and then drove on over the second one also to receive the reward of the toy thrown ahead, followed by an exciting tug game. I also threw in a few front cross turns, sending him over the jump then turning into him and getting him to come to my hand with the tug.

Fyre, since he still needs to work on looking for obstacles and not me, had a bit more trouble with this, inclined as he was to simply go over the first bar then follow close to me past the second. However, I made myself very aware of where my shoulders were pointing and with a little adjustment he did do a good job going over both bars. (Incidentally, when he did follow me around the bar I rewarded him with a tug game because as far as I knew my shoulders indicated I was turning that way and he was following my body position correctly. At least I know he is paying attention to what I was doing!!) Josh finds the value of bar jumps to be extremely high now after many weeks of rewarding him every time he goes over them, so our next task will be working on waits. Quite likely I will do this with no jumps in sight to start with, so he never learns to break over a jump without my cue. Playing the '1-2-3-mat' game I am hopeful will help this since it will not only teach him to break quickly and race to the mat, it will also teach him self control in holding his wait. I am not yet sure whether I want to leave him in a sit or stand (obviously we will work on waits in all positions). In his sits he still liks to sit his weight back, and occasionally flop his back feet out. I would prefer him to have his weight forward allowing him to break and hit stride right away than have to first heave his centre of gravity forward. So I will likely either start him standing, or I might try to shape him to sit with his weight forward.

So many little things to work on!! I think the next week or so at oleast will be a lot of these mini games to teach the foundations, though I would also like to start setting up the jump drills again so they can work on learning to jump properly (these are drills from the DVD set 'Susan Salo's Foundation Jumping' - another excellent buy!)

Oh, and as a last little note - our dining room window, which has a narrow windowsill about waist height, faces onto the backyard. The cats often get up and sit there to watch me if I am outside. However, tonight it was an enterprising blue merle Aussie girl who must have climbed first onto the dining room table before slipping behind the vertical blinds and poising herself on the window sill broadside to the window so she could see out at the fun stuff I was doing with Fyre!!!! I have no doubt that she'll take to agility like a duck to water when she is old enough :)

In and Out

2009-11-24T21:05:00.000+10:30

154 days to go...

Tonight I am feeling a bit tired, due largely to the fact that I haven't gone to sleep til after midnight the last two nights - Sunday because I started watching Congo at 11.30PM and remembered I quite enjoyed that movie so KEPT watching it, and Monday because, well, I was finishing off last night's long blog entry :)

Anyway, with low enthusiasm for doing anything requiring much (translate to ANY) running, I decided we'd work on some more basic skills (that didn't require me to run, as per above ). The most active I got was when we worked the 2x2 weave entries, because that involved me throwing the toy and then playing with the dog with the toy after, where I always try to maintain a high level of enthusiasm throughout to make it highly rewarding and exciting for the dogs. They are getting better, and my throwing is getting better too (well, at least a little). Josh did a fantastic entry from the right at a difficult angle and a long distance away and Fyre's entries on the right, which have been his weak point thus far, are improving also. I would love to be able to do ten quick sessions per day as I think they'd improve much more quickly, but time just does not allow me that luxury!

So after my short-lived burst of energy with the 2x2, we went on to some targeting and crate games. Josh more so than Fyre needs work on targeting a mat (which I use when doing jump drills or wanting the dog to drive forward in a straight line without looking back at me or circling). Same as with the tug toy though, the training of both dogs will benefit by reinforcing and raising the value of hitting the mat. Yet it is another one of those things that gets put aside in favor of more 'exciting' stuff.

Both Fyre and Josh know the basics of crate games (for more info check Susan Garrett's Crate Games) and this session gave me a chance to polish some of that work also. To the dogs, it was all just a fun game. We started off easy - a couple of times reinforcing the dog for getting in the crate, for sitting before opening the door, breaking them (verbally releasing them from the crate) then letting them choose to go back and reinforce once again. I do not have a cue for either of them to get in the crate yet, as they still both occasionally try out other behaviours near the open crate door, and when I add a cue I want them to be driving straight into that crate. (Oh, for anyone interested, I was using food as reinforcement for this session, and a clicker as a marker for when they hit the mat or entered the crate).

Once we'd done that little warm up, I put the mat down (the mat is just a regular doggy bed mat that I picked up from Cheap as Chips or the like) but fairly close to the crate. This meant that once released as the dog bounded out he was pretty much going to hit it right away anyway and thus be reinforced. I did need to modify this slightly because being this close, and having done some targeting to the mat before, both dogs wanted to go straight back to the mat rather than back to the crate. So having moved the mat further away, and leaving the crate door open, I alternated sending the dog to the crate (in this case, I simply remained near the crate and called the dog to get his attention and then waited for him to enter the crate before rewarding with food. I never actually verbally or physically told either of them to get in the crate - as explained above, why I haven't put it on cue). I stood varying distances between the crate and the mat - sometimes I released the dog whilst I was moving away, sometimes whilst standing still. Sometimes I jumped up and down or pretended to sprint away without releasing them. In those cases I would return and reward the dog for staying in the crate. It worked well for me as the dogs raced back and forth but I needed to expel only minimal energy myself (as was the plan all along ). I did variations on their length of wait in the crate also - sometimes I would give the release as soon as all four paws hit the crate floor, so they were literally racing in and dashing back out.

Once I finished the session, it occurred to me that perhaps I should also be reinforcing my release word - after the practice at NOT breaking from the crate, Fyre paused once and didn't leave the crate when I gave my release word. I want them busting out of whatever position they are in when I give that release word, so next time I do this I will add in another little exercise where I remove the mat and just reward for the dog breaking position on cue.

Billie had just a little session tonight also, some games of 1-2-3 tug where I wait for her to sit, then count threeeeeeeeeee...Get it! Eventually this will become One...two....three.... get it! but she is still learning. It is s fantastic way to teach self control in sit stays - already I can see herself holding herself back, poised for that release. This game is one of many I learned from Susan Garrett's book Shaping Success - a MUST have book for anyone considering using shaping/positive reinforcement/clicker with their dog.

That's me for tonight! Now to sit back and relax and hopefully get to bed on time for once :)

The Economic Crisis

2009-11-23T22:55:00.001+10:30

155 days to go... (my partner Chris actually came up with the idea of counting down how many days there are to go with each post - I thought this was rather good!)

How does the economic crisis relate to the training of my dogs I hear you ask - well, simply put, the value of my tug toys is just not what it used to be. As far as the dogs are concerned, they're pretty fun - most of the time. On the weekend, doing some weave entries, I had a squeaky toy out for Josh. I try to rotate through as many toys as I can, and usually pick ones that can provide some sort of tug game so they are interacting with me rather than playing on their own. Now, Josh loves squeaky toys but it was a bit warm during the day and he was somewhat halfhearted about this one - it was like 'Oh, yeah, I guess that toy's ok' rather than 'OH MY GOD I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!'

Thus I decided this would be my 'skill of the week'. The aim here being that every week I will pick something that needs work, something that usually gets put aside in favor of the 'real' agility training. Increasing the value of tugging will be enormously helpful to the rest of my training, because as we know, transfer of value is everything. If I want my dogs to have the drive to work through their mistakes and maintain a high level of enthusiasm, the reinforcement on offer has to be of very high value. High value reinforcement transfers over to high value for that piece of equipment. Yet despite this, how many training sessions do we devote to maintaining/increasing the value of our toys (or whatever reinforcement we might be using)? It's MUCH more fun to do contacts, jumps, weaves, run courses...

To improve the value of tugging in the eyes of the dogs, I first selected a very high value reinforement - their dinner. NOTHING is more exciting than dinner time. (Incidentally, this is how I got Josh to tug in the first place - he initially had no interest in it whatsoever). Then I simply chose a toy at random and stood in the backyard with the dinner bowl close by. Because my Aussies are raw fed, this did necessitate some preparation in cutting the food up into smaller pieces rather than the usual one big lump, as I wanted to have several opportunities per session to reinforce them.

My criteria started off simple enough - pay attention to the tug toy. Reward with a piece of food (or a handful in the case of Fyre, who has dry food). After that came touch the tug toy. Mouth the tug toy. Grab and hold the tug toy. Grab and hold the tug toy and apply pressure against me. Hold pressure for a longer time. Hold on and start tugging back against me. I want the dog doing all the work here - I am not a cheer squad. I want the tug game to be innately exciting no matter what I am doing. There are other rules too - don't grab the end of the tug on the other side of my fist - your end is the long end. Don't make contact with my hand. All four feet on the ground (no jumping up at me or pawing at the tug - this one is mostly for Billie's sake!!!) There are no corrections during the tug game - I simply choose not to reinforce any of these unwanted behaviours. Eventually I will raise the criteria again so I become more involved, i.e. maintain backward pressure against me as I move forward/backward, sideways, stand up, reach down, touch you on the back etc

Because Josh has done this before, he picked it up again very quickly. Josh's criteria is currently to grab the end of the toy, apply strong pressure and tug backward against me until I decide the game can end (I use 'Yes' as a marker, and the release of pressure as a cue to let go). If he lets go before I choose to end the game, he gets no reinforcement. The rule is we continue to play until *I* decide it is enough. Alternatively, if he offers a behaviour I like he can earn reinforcement more quickly - so if he makes a noise, like a growl or squeal I will reinforce that, because Josh is innately a very quiet dog and any sound like that indicates a high level of excitement which is what I want. Fyre and Billie are not quite so advanced, Fyre gets EXTREMELY excited at the presence of his dinner dish and bounces around all over the place, but quickly worked out he could get the food by tugging the toy. Billie tried a few different things to start with - I could see the wheels in her head turning 'This sit worked for me before... hmm, nothing. Standing on my back legs - there's the food but I can't reach it. Leaping around like a maniac... hmph, no luck there either. Sniff the toy in the owner's hand - oooo look, food! Now what did I do to get that?' From there she very quickly caught on.

Well, after that being much longer than I intended, there is no time now to go into detail about what else we worked on tonight, but suffice to say it was all flat work - circle work with the boys on both left/right, inner/outer circles, U-turns, spirals and so on. Fyre needs much more work on the right, he still tends to automatically want to duck behind me to the left out of habit. Josh is better but working on the right is not quite as stable as working on the left. But we shall persist!

So, I have this blog...

2009-11-22T20:23:00.000+10:30

So, the story up to this point: I currently have three dogs, my own two Aussies Josh (2 and a bit years old), Billie (almost 1 year old) and a long-term visitor Golden Fyre (7 years old). Fyre arrived in December 08 and was hopefully to have been trialling for some time by now, however 'twas not to be this year. Josh commenced his agility training when he turned 2, but the training 'schedule' for both dogs has been somewhat patchy up to this point.

Having missed running a dog at the last two Nationals due to Porter being injured in 2007 and retired thereafter, and Josh not being old enough in 2008, I was loath to miss the upcoming Perth Nationals, especially as we had such a great time there in 2005. This was exactly the incentive I needed to really get into the dogs into some sort of regular training - now the accommodation deposit is paid, the flights are booked, and I have some 156 days from this point onwards to get Josh and Fyre to trialling standard. Phew!

So the purpose of this blog is to give me somewhere to record what we are achieving in our training sessions, what our goals are, what we need to work on... thus allowing me to track our progress and also make sure I actually do SOMETHING with them every day :)

To start with here are some little vids I took yesterday (by sitting the dodgy little camera on an upturned bucked) of the dogs practicing 2x2 entries. What did I learn from this? I need to be more co-ordinated with throwing the toy - especially with Fyre I am throwing it far too late (worried he's going to go around the entry) which is encouraging him to look back over his shoulder and/or spin when he should be driving forward. Same with Josh but to a lesser extent because I trust him a bit more. The positive to take out of this session was that neither had done a jump into the entry before so I was pretty stoked that they both managed to figure that one out very quickly!