Memorial Day Agility Weekend, and Georgie’s New Title!
This weekend we drove down to Glen Carbon for three days of agility. Whenever I have a day off work for a holiday, I like to try and squeeze in three days of agility, since it gives me an extra chance to snag some Qs without having to take any vacation days. I’ve been hesitant to go down to Glen Carbon for a long time because it’s a bit far and the hotels aren’t very cheap. I hated to make a big, expensive trip out of it and waste all that money on brand new baby dogs who aren’t quite on their game yet, but my friends wanted me to go, so away we went.
I also decided to enter Auggie in one day, just for fun. Auggie and I haven’t really done any practicing since before Louisville, and being semi-retired, I don’t really care what he does, so it was just for the fun of running my old man. He ran both rings on Sunday and actually had some really nice runs. His jumping wasn’t the greatest since we haven’t done any work, and he knocked the final bar on the triple jump in both rings, and he also decided 11 weave poles were plenty, BUT – he was really running quite fast for Auggie runs. If he had Qd in standard he would have gotten about 10 points, and jumpers would have been about 4 or 5, which might not sound like much, but for a dog who had a career plagued by trying to make SCT, it’s a pretty big deal. The other big deal was I did all of this without using any treats at all with him. All of our warm-up and playing before his runs was done with his shark tug. This is a dog who wasn’t really into tugging for many, many, many years, and only really started to tug when he was six years old. Despite NQs it was really pretty awesome for Auggie, and of course, it’s always the best thing in the world to run my big dog.
Payton and I have spent the past two weeks doing self-control work and some more proofing on contacts. We also did some weave pole work, but that’s sort of frustrating for me because I cannot make the dog miss weave poles in the backyard. He’s excellent about it and I felt like I wasn’t really working on what I needed to be working on by flinging him into 12 weave poles from various difficult angles. Perhaps the weaves were really what we needed to work on, because all weekend long, Payton did not complete a single set of 12 weave poles. He made some entries. He also missed some entries. He did a few poles, and also skipped a few (several.)
On the upside, his startline stays were really great all weekend long. I have been hesitant to do a lot of lead outs with Payton because, in the backyard, he will sometimes decide the fastest way to release is to simply go around the jumps rather than actually taking the jumps in front of him. I hate to blow a run just because I’m trying to do a lead out, and given that my sport of choice is running, sprinting to keep up with my dog is well within my physical abilities, so I haven’t done a lot of them. This weekend I decided to try it, wondering if the extra self-control required to not break a stay might help with control on the rest of the course, too. I can tell you it doesn’t bleed over into self-control on the rest of the course, but he did several nice lead outs for me, including one through a tire jump, which it wasn’t too long ago that we had tire issues. His contacts were also pretty nice. The a-frame wasn’t what I wanted, but I wasn’t getting what I wanted from the a-frame in practice either, and I’ve been considering re-training the a-frame with the Rachel Sanders method to a running a-frame and reserving the 2o2o for the dog walk. He wasn’t called on the a-frame all weekend long, so there’s that. This weekend he actually chose to complete the teeter, waiting for it to tip rather than adopting our last agility weekend’s style of running up the teeter, pausing for about a quarter of a second, then diving off the side because it wasn’t tipping fast enough and he needs to GO GO GO GO! His dog walk, however, which is what I’ve really been working on, was rather nice. The first day he held it properly. The second day we had a minor fiasco at the table and I was a little irritated, so I held him on his contact for a LONG time. The third day I admit I was irritated at him because he didn’t get his weave poles and ran past the dog walk, only issuing one “touch” command as I blew far ahead of him, and he cleared off the down plank without getting anywhere near the yellow. Bad trainer for letting my irritation get to me and failing to try and maintain my own criteria.
A contributing factor may also be that this weekend, I tested out giving him multiple “touch” commands. Part of me hates to do this, because part of me really believes I should only need to give my dog one command for him to respond properly. I don’t have to tell my dogs to “sit” multiple times. I do not have to, nor do I, chatter “stay… stay… stay…” to my dogs to get them to stay. I do not have to tell him “jump jump jump!” So why should I have to tell Payton “Touch, touch, touch” on the agility course? One should be enough.
But the reality is that so far, one has NOT been enough. I also will happily tell my dogs “tunnel tunnel tunnel!!” to really drive and send them to a tunnel. The other part of me doesn’t care about this, remembering an article in Clean Run written by Silvia Trkman about how she talks a lot to her dogs and repeats commands like “tunnel tunnel tunnel.” So why, exactly, should “touch” be any different than “tunnel?” If I say “tunnel tunnel tunnel” to encourage them to drive forward into a tunnel, “touch touch touch” should encourage drive down to the contact. And with only a very small amount of data (three days this weekend), it appears multiple commands to Payton WILL get him into his position. It’s not like I’m trying to be on the World Team or anything anyway, I’m just trying to enjoy a sport with my dog, and if giving him multiple commands is the difference between an NQ and frustration and a Q and success, why shouldn’t I?
So that’s where things stand with Payton at the moment. Still work to do on the contacts and some challenges with weave poles. I will fully admit that excepting the weave poles and some weird table issues, most problems from this weekend were 100% my fault (resulting from bad handling position or one time I set him up too close to the start jump), and there were also things that looked really, really good, and should make me very proud of my young baby dog. I am confident we’ll eventually get there as a team, it’s just going to take time. I still haven’t learned that Payton is not Auggie and I cannot run Payton just like Auggie. There’s a lot of physical muscle memory stuff going on that I need to break from four years of running Auggie and less than a year of running Payton. It will happen, and once it does, I believe we will be beautiful. At this point you can cue Georgie Harrison and start singing “It’s gonna take money, a whole lotta spending money, it’s gonna take plenty of money, to do it right child. It’s gonna take time, a whole lotta precious time, it’s gonna take patience and time to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it right child.” YEP.
HOWEVER.
The real exciting moment of this weekend is that Georgie had some phenomenal runs of her own. After picking up the first Open Q in jumpers at our last trial, she followed up her performance by snagging a jumpers Q on Saturday, missing one on Sunday by one refusal, and then grabbing her third and final OAJ leg on Monday. So the baby girly has now blown past her best friend Payton and has her OAJ. She also was one refusal away from her first standard leg on Monday. She’s a very good dog and everybody had great things to say about her. A nice, steady dog. In my head I imagine she’s out on the course singing to Payton “Anything you can do, I can do better!” So in honor of the great little girly, here’s the video of all three of her OAJ qualifying legs:
So big congrats to Georgie! Now she gets to start chasing Excellent legs. She really only needs to get a few kinks ironed out with her weave poles and a few other baby dog things, and otherwise I think she’s going to be quite phenomenal.
So that was our long weekend, some ups and downs, plenty of alcohol was had by me, but overall, I remembered that even a bad weekend at agility is better than a good day at work. Fun was had by all. I’m pretty sure bad baby Pay had the most fun of the whole crew.
Trial weekend for Baby Dogs
Louisville is in the books, my fourth half-marathon is done, and it’s finally time to start moving forward with more training and other trials. So we did! This weekend we trekked our way to Indianapolis to take another crack at some Open Qs.
On Saturday, Payton’s standard run was rather typical for him as of late, completely blown contacts and apparently having no idea what weave poles are. Georgie came out next and had a better run; she got a refusal on the chute and then popped her weave poles at #10, but otherwise had a really nice run. Jumpers was a challenging course; we watched the Excellent/Masters dogs run first and there was a series of jumps in the middle that were causing a lot of dogs to go off-course. Just our luck, that same series of jumps stayed put for the course change down to Open. Payton got to take a crack at it first, and surprisingly, his only issue was (again) crappy weave pole performance. He otherwise navigated the course nicely without biting on any of the off-courses that were bombing a lot of more advanced, talented dogs. While it was frustrating to know he would have had that course if not for this annoying trial weave issue, I walked away from the course reminding myself he WAS successful in a way many other dogs had not managed to be.
Georgie got to come out next. Georgie is the one who is more likely to take off-courses, so this was a fair concern with her. But she navigated the course just fine! Even better – she got all of her weave poles! Baby Georgie snags the VERY FIRST open Q out of both young dogs. Way to go Georgie!!
Sunday we were a little delayed in getting checked out of our hotel, and as a result we ended up getting to the trial site just a couple minutes too late for my walkthrough. Even worse, Payton was the third dog in the ring for Open Jumpers. I didn’t have much time to do anything except watch a couple people ahead of me run their dogs. I watched a guy I know run his young portie and decided I was going to steal his handling maneuvers, even though it wasn’t how I would have normally handled the course, because I didn’t really have any other options to choose how to handle it at that point in time. So out I went with Payton. Our first challenge was a tunnel where the correct entry was about as likely as the wrong entry – he got the correct entry. Away we went around the rest of the course, looping back to the weave poles… and he got his entry. AND he got all twelve of them. Holy cow! So he DOES know how to weave, right? At that point it was just making sure I didn’t screw up my handling and make him drop a bar or pull off a jump… and he did it. Big Bad Baby Dog got HIS very Open Q.
Miss Georgie didn’t have such a great run, as I let her get out a little to angle her to the correct tunnel entry and she ended up taking the jump ahead of her instead of taking the tunnel. But otherwise she had a nice run and did a good job.
Standard was another mess for Payton; at one point I remember clearly thinking to myself “He is WAY too amped up right now.” He blew all his contacts spectacularly, and the lovely weaves from that morning were non-existent. Well, at least he’s consistently inconsistent.
Georgie’s standard run was pretty identical to Saturday; her contacts were certainly better than Payton’s. She did get a refusal on the tunnel, then a second at the weaves, and then did a peculiar new thing of popping out of the weaves at the last pole rather than skipping the last two as is her normal bad-weaves habit. So no Q for either puppy in the afternoon.
Overall it wasn’t a horrible weekend; some good things happened for both dogs. Georgie went the entire weekend without visiting anyone in the ring. Payton’s Saturday JWW run was quite nice even though he didn’t get his weaves. And both came home with their first Open Qs. My Q rate for the entire weekend was 2/8, but still, good things did happen.
Baby steps with the baby dogs… baby steps. Baby dogs.
I did get video of all the runs, but the only video I’ve bothered editing and uploading is Payton’s clean run Q in JWW. Not the smoothest, given I didn’t have a chance to walk it, but an ugly Q still counts as a Q.
Indy Trial Wrap-up
Well, Friday night brought on some excitement. I fell while bringing some things in from the car to our hotel room and twisted my ankle. Saturday morning I made an emergency run to Wal-Mart and bought some athletic tape to wrap it up because it still hurt, even though I slept with a pillow under my foot to keep it elevated. Even better – as I was packing up to leave the hotel and MAKE the emergency Wal-Mart run, I realized I was having a migraine aura. Awesome!! I took a migraine med and then a fistful of Ibuprofen, and happily, within about an hour, I was feeling back to normal (minus my sore ankle.) I had to wonder if it’s a GOOD thing or a BAD thing that I know how to wrap my ankle. Yay me for being a distance runner!
So Saturday was… interesting. Very interesting.
Georgie would have her NAJ after this weekend except I was stupid and sent her over a wrong jump. The ending of her course was the same as Payton’s for open jumpers, except in Payton’s course you took THIS jump then that, that, that one… and in her course you just did that, that, and that jump. Well, I sent her over the THIS jump. Bad bad handler ripped Georgie out of a Q and what would have otherwise been her title, because she got another jumpers Q on Sunday.
P came home from all three days with no ribbons and a handful of rotten performances, some for reasons that are just due to inexperienced baby dog, and some due to… I don’t really know what reasons. I wish I was able to point more clearly at what was going on (or what wasn’t going on.) The real plus I came away with for P this weekend: he ran his open jumpers course on Sunday at 5.91 YPS, and that speed is brought down by having to redo his weave entry (all that work on weave pole performance this past couple of weeks, and only ONE TIME did he get his entry the first time – and it was after he already NQ’d his run so OF COURSE) and a second spinning refusal later. Holy crap. I knew it felt really fast, but I didn’t realize until I looked at the times exactly how fast. SCT was 43 sec, his time was 23 sec. The closest time after that was a small border collie at 31 sec. If Payton had run clean and smooth he would have smoked the course under 20 sec.
So just a, um, minor problem of learning how to control the wild man. I’m hoping time and experience will shape things up. Some lady walked past us as I was taking P out to potty and she said “Oh, there’s that wild dog!!” Yeeeeep, that he is. That he is. Sunday on the drive home I announced I want a shirt that says PAYTON SUCKS. And I just saw that AKC is considering rules that will allow people to wear clothing with their dog’s name on it. PERFECT.
Editing the videos together was a little disheartening because they look worse to me than they felt at the time, but I’m probably just being far too critical of two baby dogs.
Georgie completely refused to do the chute this weekend:
And then there’s Payton…
Baby Payton’s First Agility Trial
The time leading up to this trial was… emotional.
I went through “We might actually be able to pull this off!” to “OH GOD HE WILL BE TERRIBLE WE ARE GOING TO BE LAUGHED OUT OF THE RING” and all kinds of turmoil. A friend asked me “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
And I didn’t answer because if I said it out loud, it was going to make me cry – the worst thing that can happen is that Payton is not Auggie. He is not Auggie and he will never be Auggie and it is unfair to Payton, and to myself, to continually compare the two.
“He is just a baby,” people said. “I never expect baby dogs to strike awe into people their first time out!”
Auggie did. Auggie’s first run ever. Remember? “One day that dog is going to be awesome,” from a total stranger.
He came home with a first and Q in his first ever jumpers run. It was a clean run, I still remember the feeling as I staggered out of the ring with my dog in my arms. My amazing Auggie.
And now? Now I have Payton.
I decided that we needed to just go and have fun. It’s just expensive practice, I reminded myself. All I want is for Payton to go in the ring, take a few of the jumps I ask him to take, not pee on anything, and also to get his weave poles.
The morning of our trial, I asked Auggie if it was okay that I was taking Payton to the trial instead. I also asked him if he had any advice for his baby brother.
I took Payton outside before his run. I had sliced up hot dog I was feeding him. I told him not to pee on anything. I asked if he could please remember how to do weave poles because I have video evidence that he DOES know how to do them, so please do them.
As I entered the ring I remembered what a friend said. “You only have one first trial with your dog.”
I gave him a kiss, then a second one.
Then we ran.
And you can’t see it in the video but I started crying right after the video cuts off. Because I couldn’t believe it. I really just wanted him to get his weaves… and he ran the whole course and he Q’d and everything.
I was crying and everybody kept saying “Oh, good job!” and I kept blubbering “He’s my baby dog!!” and took him outside and fed him the rest of his hot dog crying and telling him “You did so good! You were so good! You’re such a good boy!”
I just never believed it would happen. Sometimes I would be working with him and think “you know, maybe he COULD pull it off.” But I didn’t really think he would.
I didn’t care what happened the second day. If it was anything like Auggie’s first trial, the second day would be a disaster. But I really didn’t care. After that? After so much more than I ever dreamed possible? Heck, short of peeing in the ring Payton could do whatever he wanted.
\
So I says to him, “I don’t even Payton. I mean… I just don’t even.”
I hoped it would happen. But I never dreamed it really would.
I better get these weave poles cleaned up because I might need them sooner than I thought. Wow. Admittedly today’s weave pole bobble was ENTIRELY my fault. When I trained Auggie to do weave poles I trained him to do it by me chattering WEAVE WEAVE WEAVE the whole time he was in the poles. With Payton I did not do that. I just say “go weave.” And when I chatter he’s like “I’M ALREADY IN THE WEAVE POLES WHY DO YOU KEEP TELLING ME TO WEAVE I GOT IT OKAY???” And I caught myself walking the course yesterday and reminded myself to SHUT UP, but today I did not, and instead of just “go weave” I said “Go weave weave weave weave…” and realized what I had just done.
BAD TRAINER.
I guess whatever advice Auggie had for his baby brother was good advice.
Or maybe I just have the best Payton in the world.
A Few Foundations Videos with Payton
It was really really hot even at 6pm… he started getting really tired and hot by the end of the second video. We tried to do lesson 3 but he was just too hot so I didn’t force it. We’ll try again Wednesday…
Sends to the tunnel are going so well you can’t even see our starting point for most of this video. =P I did not film sends to a jump today.
This is where he starts getting hot and tired. These are really tight wraps and he’s not quite ready for some of them. Bars should be lower but I forgot to put them down… bad trainer.
Payton and Georgie’s First Fun Run!
Well, thanks to my mom apparently not understanding “PUSH THE BIG RED BUTTON TO RECORD” I only have one video of Payton. I impromptu decided this morning to take Georgie – it was only $5 and I thought it would be good to get her in a ring and have her do some jumps. Plus I am generally in a less serious mood playing with her, so I thought it might lighten my mood to bring her along. I thought about taking Auggie but he HATES the floor in this building so much, so I didn’t. I wished I had, but when I say he hates the floor I’m not kidding, so it wouldn’t have been fair to him.
Somehow my mom managed to get video of all three of Georgie’s runs… just not Payton.
Anyway, Payton did fairly good, no new problems presented themselves, all stuff I was expecting and dare I say maybe a bit better than I expected. One of the people I trial with locally showed up with their dog and I was like “oh yaaaay… people to see the terror…” hahaha. He took jumps, even most of the ones I asked him to take. He didn’t pee on anything, though he considered peeing on the table the first time he jumped on it. And he didn’t drop any bars. (I decided to run him at 12″ instead of 16″ today. He’s a baby, I don’t care.) He did surprisingly well considering what a horrible dog he is. My plan was to totally avoid all contact obstacles, but everything was basically right in our path and, well, we do have a teeter and have been working on it – so I took a chance with him. The first run (no video) he was like “errr nope, dunno” and took a pass on it. The second run (no video!!) he put a few steps on it then changed his mind, so I took him back and tried it again just telling him “go touch” – and this time he did a BEAUTIFUL drive to the end then once it was down stepped into a perfect 2o2o. I’m so mad I don’t have video of that. I was happily stuffing food down his throat while he held his 2o2o and specifically stepped out of the way so my mom could get it on the video… *flips table*
The third time he slid off the teeter, and it bounced up behind him while he was sitting there, which he believed warranted a telling off of the teeter for being rude. Yeah. That one’s mine.
Be warned, he doesn’t shut up for most of this video, so you might want to mute it. Also sorry for the Blair Witch Project type filming, apparently my mom had been drinking today.
Georgie was the surprise superstar, though I’m pretty sure my mom was underselling her to people and then when I ran her everybody was like “……” I couldn’t remember if she had ever seen a chute before – we just found mine buried in the storeroom – so I tried to put her through it, but no go. The first time a lady outside the ring said “oh, let’s lift the chute up and get her through it!” so we did that and she went through. I thought she might try again after that but nope. Not her fault, I really don’t remember if she’s ever seen one before or not, and I kinda think no.
Neither dog has ever done the table before (hence why I’m saying “on,” it’s just our cue for climbing up on something) so excuse all the shoddy table stuff, it’s their very first time just playing on it. I figured why not? I paid my money, let them see it.
Very proud of the baby girly today. And Payton was not terrible. I would have liked better, but for a baby dog I think he did pretty good. I realize on video they probably look fairly similar. I realize I’m being harder on Payton since he’s mine and I’ve trained him so my standards are higher. He got lots of cheese and kisses and got to sit in my lap between his second and third runs, so don’t feel sorry for him.
Payton Tricks: Riding a Skateboard
I’m cheating and also using the movement as a precursor to putting him back on a teeter (my adjustable teeter is almost ready!) so lots of rewarding whenever it moves under him too, even if it’s not closer to the final behaviour…
Session 2:
We’ll come back to this one, I absolutely must have a skateboard riding dog. It’s just necessary.
Back Stalls (or Push-up with Puppies)
Here’s Payton, Georgie, then Auggie who fails at the whole “stall” part of this game LOL. But he’s adorable and I don’t really care. Seriously for like ten minutes he jumped back and forth over me and I laughed the entire time. Also he totally whacked me in the head with his paw. And I still laughed.
Including a blooper at the beginning because we were trying to get the shot set up and neither of us realized my mom was cuing Payton to spin and he was totally doing it…
(yes I know my form is rubbish, these do not count as real push ups.)
Both P and Georgie are doing pretty good with me moving under them considering we just started this trick, but mostly just getting them more comfy with me moving while they’re standing rather than a sit. Payton is trickier because his weight is distributed along my entire back… my butt was up way higher than it should be for a push up because I was trying to keep him from sliding down along my back. We’ll have to keep working on it so he learns to distribute his weight forward a bit and NOT slide off. Georgie is easier because she’s small so fits pretty close to my shoulders and that’s about it. =P
Payton agility training 12/26/12
Baby P at the training building tonight.
Need to clean the teeter up some more, he thinks it’s faster to get on by hopping on it halfway. So I’m trying to reward both when he gets on it straight and when he exits. I really should decide if I want a 2o2o or not because I keep changing my mind and it’s going to confuse him…
Some handling stuff at the end and also a blooper clip very last. I laugh every time I see it. I’m so mean.
Pepper playing ball
Not monumental for most dogs, but Pepper is so goofy about playing it’s a pretty big deal!
And Payton is kind of annoying, sorry. Ignore him.
Pepper perch work
After “spin” wasn’t going well with Pepper, I decided to start perch work with her instead.
What’s funny is how many times she was offering me a left head check… I guess she WAS getting the spin shaping after all!
Trick Training: Spin
This week our trick training challenge is “spin.” Auggie and I worked on this one a few years ago but I never really put a cue on it or had it perfect, so cleaning it up will be Auggie’s challenge this week. I haven’t done this at all with Payton or Pepper.
Once again I just started shaping with Payton, clicking for back end swiveling. Payton already knows “pivot” of course, and starts offering that (it’s one of his favourite tricks to offer.) I decided to go ahead and reward that and see if we can’t turn that into spinning.
I tried to lure Pepper but she isn’t handling my arm going behind her back well, so I decided to just try and shape a head turn instead.
After this video I decided Pepper was just having a hard time and maybe she isn’t ready for something of this level yet. Having only just started clicker training with her a few weeks ago and so far only really doing some targeting work, this might just be too much. So I think Pepper will sit this week out in favour of me trying to shape her to do something else, like maybe climb into a box?
Final video! Just Auggie and Payton:
Both of them can only spin one direction reliably – teaching them to spin both directions is my next task!
Trick Training: “Sit Pretty”
The dog forum I belong to is having a trick training challenge. Each week we get a new trick to work on. This week we had “sit pretty” which is a trick I’ve been wanting to train anyway, so I worked on it with all three dogs. At first I just decided to lure with all three, but that wasn’t working very well for Payton who is quite good at shaping anyway, so I scrapped luring with Payton and switched to shaping. It worked out just fine with him. For both Auggie and Pepper, I lured, and then switched to targeting (which is also more or less luring, I know) my thumb. This will turn into my hand signal for the behaviour at a later point.
On with the videos!
This one has all three dogs in it:
Just Payton in this one:
All three dogs for the “final” version here! Of course we still have some cleaning up to do, but this was the end of the week so this is our final video rather than final version of the trick. Auggie is the one struggling the most with this, but I think physically it’s difficult for him. We’ll keep working on it though.
More Clicker Training with Pepper
Second target training session with Pepper! Once again, watch the video, then look below for more on what I did (and why) in this session!
I started this session with the same criteria as we ended last session: I wanted a nose push. She offered to dig at it with her paw pretty quickly, so I started rewarding for any kind of paw touch. I also flipped the frisbee back over at this point since I was no longer trying to catch my cookies in the middle of it. I pretty quickly got her to dig at the frisbee reliably. At this point I started holding out for a sustained touch rather than just digging. This is the first point where she starts to check out a little bit because she’s not sure what I’m wanting… I went a little too quickly for her. So I went back to rewarding for persistent pawing, and started rewarding low to the ground and in front of the frisbee, hoping that would result in her accidentally stepping onto the frisbee and getting the paw touch I was really looking for. It didn’t totally work, but I was also almost out of cookies in my hand so we just ended there with some pawing at the frisbee so we could end on a good note with success!
Clicker Training Pepper
Miss Pepper has never really been trained with the clicker before, at least not that I remember. I have started shaping behaviours a lot more often since getting Payton, so I don’t think I really did a lot with her previously. So now that she’s here, it’s time for the clicker training. Previous to this video, I did one quick session where I asked her for sits and downs and C&T for each. With Payton I really didn’t do any “charging” of the clicker and it has obviously not been a problem for him, but Pepper has four years of learning WITHOUT the clicker so I thought I would put a small deposit into her clicker training bank account before starting. But that is all I did.
I tried to figure out which behaviour I thought would be best to start with and decided one of the easiest things to do – and the easiest to “show” for video purposes – was to teach her how to target an object. Both of my boys are very good at this and even Georgie is pretty quick to try targetting stuff if she thinks it will get her a cookie… so easy enough, right? Right.
Watch the video, then read below for how I approached this training session!
At first I wasn’t sure what she would do when I put the frisbee (my favourite starting target) down on the floor. Would she go sniff it, mouth it, maybe even paw at it right off the bat? So I put the frisbee down and just watched to see what she would do before I decided what to click. Well, I should have predicted she wouldn’t do ANYTHING, but as usual I forgot that she is completely unlike my other dogs. So after a few seconds I knew my first move was to just click for looking at the frisbee. I quickly realized I also needed to use my treat placement to help out and started throwing the cookies towards the frisbee. I flipped it upside down, which is usually how I use it when it’s a food target, because the cookies would then get trapped in the frisbee. This let me reward for sniffing the frisbee, then I started waiting for an actual nose touch rather than just a sniff.
I started waiting for forward paw movement, but before she really started doing that, she actually pushed the frisbee with her nose. This was exciting to me, so I clicked it and decided to reward that for a while. We ended the session there!
Payton learning “shake”
Yeah, yeah, so my puppy is almost a year and a half old and I never bothered to teach him “shake.” I realized this is an issue when I told Payton he might need to start performing tricks on the side of the road to make us money, and then remembered HE DOESN’T REALLY KNOW ANY TRICKS. Are people really going to be impressed by a dog who can sit, stay, and do weave poles? I didn’t think so.
Well, if he’s going to do tricks to bring home the bacon, I guess I’d better train him up. I mean, he should at LEAST be able to shake.
Right off the bat I kept missing opportunities to reward him. DERP. I also realized I shouldn’t have been rewarding with the same hand I wanted him to “shake” – I was using that hand because the clicker was in my other hand, but rewarding with my right hand meant every time I wanted to reward him I had to take my hand (the target) AWAY. Not what I wanted to do! So I switched reward hands.
Obviously the trick isn’t 100% done by the end of this video, but I’ve got the behaviour I’m looking for! Next is to continue to reinforce it in different locations, and then to put it on cue and name it.
Next: “roll over.” Which is always hilarious to see Auggie do because he kind of THROWS himself over. We’ll see if Payton will be any better at it!
Auggie’s Retirement Video
I keep trying to put things into words and just… can’t. We finished our last run and I walked out laughing and smiling, then I took a breath, it sunk in, and I started to cry. It wasn’t a sobbing ugly cry like I thought it might be. Just tears rolling down my face and a bit of not able to say anything. He is just such a great dog and I love him so much. I know our journey together isn’t over, but this part of the story is, and it hurts a little. This is not how I ever pictured it ending.
I am now looking around to find somewhere he can play flyball, because I really think he would love it. We’re going to get back into getting him on sheep too. His breeder gave him a big kiss yesterday and said “You can still come to my house and play.” I know it’s not over. Stuff will be set up in my yard for the baby dogs and we will play on it. Just because we aren’t competing doesn’t mean he won’t play agility anymore. It just means I’m no longer throwing money at it, and we can just… have 100% fun without the pressure of trying to “fix” issues anymore. It’s all about fun from here on out and that’s how it should be.
until we start playing flyball.
Weavin’ Wednesdays
(Sing this to the tune of Maroon 5’s “Payphone.” Without Adam Levine’s really horrible falsetto. Think of Ne-Yo’s falsetto instead. Yeah, that’s it. Now sing.)
I’ve got a Payton, tryin’ to train him,
All of my change I spent on treats
Where has his brain gone,
Baby it’s all wrong,
Tryin’ to do these two by twos
Unfortunately every time I hear that song I FREAK out and practically kill myself trying to change the station, so I can’t parody the rest of the song because I have no idea how it goes.
BUT THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT.
LOOK AT THIS VIDEO.
Make sure you watch all the way to the end!
HE DID IT! Payton can weave!! This is the only time Payton is allowed to say “LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!” Yeaaaaaaah Pay!!
Impromptu Flatwork Session
The other day I decided to do some impromptu flatwork with the puppies. Click to watch the video below…
Admittedly I haven’t done hardly any flatwork with Georgie at all. Sometimes I’ll do a few handling maneuvers with her, but that’s about it. So her, uh, interesting take on flatwork in the video is not exactly her fault! She just needs more work. Lots more work. It’s okay, we’ll get there. She’s not even a year old yet, she has time.
Payton is improving a lot. Our biggest struggle is that instead of chasing the shoulder so to speak, he was more interested in trying to bite my legs. We have gotten past that at least, though the barking, THE BARKING. It doesn’t stop. Hopefully once he has something to do besides just chase the shoulder he will use his brain more and stop using it to vocalize!
Auggie was stuck in there just for fun. His session is rather different since we are working more on building drive and speed, though admittedly, we don’t really have drive or speed problems in the yard… only at agility trials… but whatever. We’re working on it. After this we had an impromptu game of tug and fetch, in which I threw the toy, he went to retrieve it, and as soon as he reached the toy, I turned around and ran the opposite direction and he had to catch up to me with the toy. GREAT fun for Auggie and I was dying before long, sprinting in circles around the yard and trying not to break my ankle stepping in any of the holes in the ground or trip over the garden or whatever. This is definitely a game we’ll play more.
All three dogs want to squirt behind me and take the wrong side, so there’s more to be done. It would obviously be nice to have a larger space to work in too… working on that one…
Easter Egg Hunt – VIDEO!
Unfortunately I couldn’t wield both the video and DSLR, so I gave Mom the video camera… and she doesn’t really know what she’s doing… so not the greatest video, but I think it carries the idea LOL.
This is how my puppy sings
He doesn’t do this much. He did it once the first day he was home and maybe once or twice other than that. I wanted to record it because I think it’s kind of funny how he kind of warbles, LOL, and he wasn’t doing it anymore so I was bummed and thought I missed it.
Well, he did it today when I came home from work and went to go to the bathroom first instead of letting them out. So I set up the camera and then went to go change into my running clothes, and this was the result.
(and yes, I realize it’s pretty much time to change out his crate for the bigger one. Unfortunately that means he won’t be able to sleep in my room anymore because there’s no room for a bigger crate in my room. He doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night but I kind of like having him in there with me and Auggie… I don’t trust him not to pee in my room in the middle of the night loose though… =<)
I keep watching it and I think it's hysterical. Does that make me a bad dog owner?
Auggie with sheep
It might seem like Pepper is dominating the blog right now, but that’s just because she is new and most of the annoying things Auggie is doing relate to her anyway.
HOWEVER… we are entered in our very first herding trial soon – we’re going to take a shot at herding at Sheltie Nationals 2011!
I took some photos while out at his breeder’s house while she was working him, but they are not very good – the sun was setting by the time we got to work so I didn’t have much light to take good action photos. The sheep are in focus more than Auggie.
And here is a link to a short video my mom took.
January 15th & 16th 2011 Trial
Here is video of our runs! Apologies they are not that great, my mom was camerawoman again and until I can train her to record better, this is what we get!
Pretty happy with our runs overall even though we only Q’d 2/4. His times (YPS) were good each run including the NQ runs. Not where I really want them and definitely not as fast as he can be, but it’s a definite improvement over a year ago.
His jumping was terrible in our first run but it started to improve through the next three runs. I can’t say I’m surprised since we haven’t been able to do hardly any practice. I got in a few days worth between finding out we were going to be in the trial and then getting just enough slick snow on the ground that he actually slipped and faceplanted – hard – Monday. Tuesday I took him to the chiropractor and he was out of alignment in his shoulder, elbow, and wrist, which he isn’t usually… and she said even his jaw was a little out of alignment. So no more practice for us after that because there was just enough snow on the ground to make it slick and I wasn’t going to risk him getting hurt. Also no more trials until Louisville in March so hopefully we’ll get enough of a thaw I can work with him and improve his jumping plenty before then.
Also, I don’t own a triple, and I need one. The triple in the standard run Sunday I knew was going to be a problem for him based on the angle AND the fact that the a-frame was right there like “hellooo, come run up me!!” and it turned out to be a problem for both his brother AND his dad too, so I’m not really surprised by that one – but the triple on Saturday shouldn’t really have happened, and if I owned one and we were able to practice with it, I would have had a Q that day. But oh well. I can’t do anything about it now except to build myself a triple and get to work.
I was sort of surprised Sunday when he decided to off-course to the a-frame instead of taking the dog walk. He used to love the a-frame, but we had an issue one time where a judge, wearing clothing that AKC highly recommends they do not wear, was standing RIGHT in his way by the a-frame and he refused it… and then developed buggies with the a-frame and refused it for multiple trials after that. So I was actually kind of glad to see him off-course to it. I know that sounds weird, but it’s the truth. I started laughing and telling him he was so bad, and when I brought him back and he tried to off-course it again I wanted to crack up hysterically. It was just so funny to me. And I know there are people out there who DIE when that stuff happens and get SOOOO mad at their dogs, and there I was going “You are SO bad, you bratface, bad bad bad,” and laughing. I know a lot of people were laughing at me but I’m sure there were people who were horrified that I was so amused by it all.
But the truth of it is that every time he does something like that – or like he did in Glen Carbon where he blew his down contact on the dog walk – I can’t do anything but laugh, because it symbolizes a return to the dog he used to be. As long as he is running with joy, I can’t be angry. We’ve been through too much and worked too hard to get him to start returning to that joyful dog that every sign I get that he is developing into the dog I want him to be, even if it’s “bad,” even if it costs us Q’s, is a reason for ME to be joyful too, ribbons be damned.
And even if it takes us five years to snag the QQ’s we need for a PAX – or even if we never manage it – if I can’t get us there with smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts, then it’s just not worth it.
Auggie’s Christmas Toys – Part 1
For Christmas, I ordered Auggie some new puzzle toys off Amazon. I racked up a few Amazon gift cards using Swagbucks so it was pretty cheap to order a handful for him. Tonight I gave Auggie his dinner in the Kyjen Paw Hide toy. Below is a video of how he did with it, sped up. I thought this might help since people are always asking about puzzle toys and treat dispensing toys and stuff. My main comments are in the video description.
It took him ten minutes, including the times he stopped and stared at me like “helloooooo, I’m supposed to be getting DINNER here…” and his half a minute barking fit (Auggie temper tantrum – I’m surprised it only lasted 30 seconds, but I think he was hungry.)
I’m not over the moon about it, but it only really cost me $5 out of pocket, so it’s not a huge loss if it doesn’t work out well. I might be able to sell it to some other agility people with border collies if I continue to be lukewarm about it.
I also bought him the treat wheel and I’m thinking I will like that one more. I wish the cups weren’t so darn flimsy though, they are the same in the treat wheel. There’s no way I can give him this and then go cook dinner, because I know he’d start chewing on the cups and would break them, and he’s not even a “chewer” the way some dogs are. The tug-a-jug and other puzzle toys I have, I feel confident in giving those to him and walking away… this one, nope. Kind of a bummer since I was hoping to get some more stuff to keep him occupied and leaving me alone. But at least it only cost me $5. I didn’t buy the star spinner which is the one that doesn’t have cups… I sort of wish I had to see if my opinion would improve without the flimsy cup aspect.
