Retiring dogs - difficult decisions

Another era in dog agility may be coming to a close.  The decision of when to retire a dog is so much easier when we can make the choice ourselves.  It is much harder when the dog makes it for us before we are ready to let go of the joy of running agility with our canine partner.

My very first dog and the one who got my hooked on agility died when she was two years old - shortly after we discovered the fun of agility!  Then Demi was the next one who went blind just when she was starting to get the hang of agility and being a teammate with me (she didn't come to me until she was a year and a half old and she had no training).  The cataract surgery was not enough to help her see to do agility safely in different types of lighting so it wasn't worth the risk of injury.  Then Bradish came along and really got me hooked on competitive agility.  He loved flyball and agility.  I had planned on obedience as his post-agility career.  However the years of flyball took their toll on his carpal joints and he was not sound enough to do the jumps required in Obedience Utility or Open so he was retired from that activity before I was ready.  Then Nigel was always watched carefully because he was diagnosed with moderate hip dysplasia at 2 years old by two different Orthopedic surgeons (one at the U of M) even though OFA said his hips were "good."  He developed Spondylosis as well as severe arthritis in hips and his agility career was very short lived.  He didn't like agility much and probably because it was painful to him at times even though he was plenty fast enough when he felt good. 

Then the next generation came along.  Leysha loved herding and liked agility and obedience.  I tried to do obedience earlier in her life than I did with Bradish in the hopes of actually finishing a UD with her.  Leysha was retired from agility in 2003 after she gave me the run of a lifetime with a fast clean run at the USDAA Veterans Grand Prix Finals.  We took second then.  She learned to love agility with a lot of help from me and I wanted to remember her running agility with that run in mind when we were in sync, she was giving me 200% and having a ton of fun.  She didn't need to do anymore agility after that - that was my gift to her.  She spent much of her retirement doing herding chores around here and earning started sheep and duck titles in AKC.  She became too stressed trying to earn a UD so I retired her from that.  I was able to work her through her initial stress in agility but doing it again at the age of 9-10 in obedience just didn't seem fair to her.  I wanted our obedience runs to be fun together and if she didn't enjoy it then I was not going to try to make her enjoy it.  She has loved her retirement life and she is still going strong and runs around the yard eager to help with any barn chore.  I love seeing her so happy just doing things around here - she was never that happy to go to an agility trial even though she earned many upper level agility championship titles and won national competitions.

Tobie is the next one in this generation.  He came to me at a year and a half.  I learned a lot from him, he loved agility and ran fast.  He taught me what it is like to train and run a fast dog.  He also taught me what it is like to have a reactive dog who is aggressive.  I learned a lot about training and managing a reactive dog.  He was a lot of work to manage at an agility trial.  He also was what I call an adrenaline junkie in that he would get so high he couldn't think when he was running.  It would interfere with our teamwork at trials.  He would listen and follow direction well in training and even at seminars but at a trial he would become like a drug addict who can't hear or follow directions.  He did earn a couple of champion agility titles but it was not fun for me as his teammate to run him at trials.  Yes he was very fast but when he was not a team player more than he was it made it not as much fun for me.  I retired him when he was 9 years old.  I also was concerned that he does get so high in agility that if he did hurt himself he would keep running and as he aged the likelihood of hurting himself increases dramatically.   He actually doesn't seem to mind retirement.  Due to his dog aggressiveness I can't take him to trials with me and I really can't do many other activities with him.  He and I did Rally but he gets high doing that and started barking while waiting his turn and then he can't think clearly.  He is a great dog around the house and easy to live with.

Amigo had to be retired from agility at the age of 3.  His structure with his front-end was causing repeated tears in his pectoral muscles when jumping.  He would have on again and off again lameness.  After rehabbing him twice from the injuries I consulted with a few different people and decided that retiring him from agility made the most sense.  He is a reminder that structure is really important for agility.  If you know your dog has poor structure for agility in some capacity or another you need to take extra care of that area and you need to be prepared that your dog may have to be retired from the sport at a younger age than most dogs.  When selecting a dog for agility it is so important to look at structure in terms of longevity in this sport.

Sonic, well most of you know he lived a short life with us. He left me long before I was ready at the age of 6.  He was just coming into his prime in agility.  He is a constant reminder that they can leave us all too soon at anytime and we need to cherish our time with them all the time. 

Pam's Jedi falls into this generation.  Her is what Pam writes about her struggle with the decision about when to retire him.

Pam writes: "Jedi is almost 11 years old, and a small sheltie who I expected to be able to play with in agility until he was at least 12 or 13. I thought that in the next year I would move him to 8" jumps in the organizations that have that option, and run with him that way for a few more years. I thought he and I had a lot more opportunities to step to the line together and smile at each other before taking off to play our favorite game. Now it's possible that he and I have had our last agility run together. Two different vets have told me it is time to think about retiring him. Mostly I don't want to think about it. I tell myself to wait until he's had time to heal from his latest episode of limping and pain, and then make a decision. I tell myself how much he loves the game. I tell myself lots of things to try to rationalize how this would be an OK thing to keep doing with him. But in my (broken) heart, I think that he and I have run our last agility course together.


I want to stop doing agility with him before it becomes something he is only doing to make me happy. I want to remember his joy and enthusiasm while running a course, not the little worried look he gets when something goes wrong because he was hurting. I want to remember him running fast with me, not struggling to get around a course. And mostly, I want him as strong and healthy as he can be, so his senior years are as joyful to him as his younger years were. I may have to stretch myself to learn new dog activities that Jedi and I can do together with his aging body, but his wonderful attitude that is about loving to do things with me, not necessarily about loving to do agility.

I'm not ready to make a total commitment to retiring him from agility -- I keep telling myself that maybe he will heal well and I will be able to feel good about continuing to play with him. But I hope I am able to make the right decision at the right time. He deserves that from me for all he is and for all he has done for me for so long." - Pam


As Pam notes too, we are the guardians of our canine partners/friends/family members.  It is up to us to decide when it is time to quit/change activities.  They can be so stoic and not show how much pain they are in.  When I see my dogs doing any one of these things: running slower than usual, running around obstacles, missing weave poles and not seeming as interested in doing agility, I stop to check for physical problems.  I don't ever want to knowingly run my dogs when they are in pain.  We have the privilege to say "I know you really like this game but it hurts you too much to do it anymore."  Agility is a game for athletes and it does take a toll on our dogs.  Many dogs will keep playing because they love us and they want to please us so much.  I want my dogs to play because THEY love it not because I love it.  Knowing your dog is very important and being honest about it.  Dogs don't care about titles, placements or national competitions.

Also keep in mind that it is not just the jumps that are hard on our dogs.  We can lower their jump heights but tunnels can be slippery, contacts can be hard on their front ends, weaves are very hard on backs and legs and turns can be hard on the body too.

So give your canine partners a hug and kiss and love them for who they are and not just for what they can do on the agility field!

Annelise

Sinco Video

From this past weekend's ASCA trial and courtesy of Linda Heaton here is a link to a video of one of Sinco's runs!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkoH-hMrzQY

Thanks Linda!

Annelise

Tay's amazing January!

Tay started out her agility career trialing at 18-20 months in novice AKC and ASCA and in levels 2 in CPE and P1 in USDAA.  She did really well and did not seem any different at trials than she was at home training.  She was really fun and consistent.  Then when she was about 25 months old at an ASCA trial I put her on a stay and did a four jump lead out.  It was something I had done many times in training so I thought I would try it at a trial.  Those of you who know what ASCA/NADAC jumpers courses are like - it can be really nice to have that long lead-out.  Tay became visibily stressed and by the time I got to jump four she got up and left the start line sniffing.  I took her off the course and began to ponder things.  At an AKC trial around the same time her dogwalk criteria started to fall apart and she was becoming visibly stressed about it.  I tried verbally marking it and that didn't seem to help.  Then I tried taking her off the course for not doing it and it only made matters worse.  These were all things I had done in training with her when she had gotten too excited to be able to maintain her criteria.

Tay is a dog who in training is very resilient.  She has no problem making mistakes and learning from them.  She loves clicker training and she will work endlessly to figure out what I want.  If she gets excited and misses a contact in training it doesn't take much to fix it.

Since she was about two years old I have spent the last almost two years working to get the dog back at trials who loves to train in agility.  It has been a long road with a lot of learnings for both of us.  Tay has had more "PQ" runs ("personal Qs" or "Party Qs") than any dog I've had.  She and I have tried essential oils, Florida Water, Pelliscastle collar and stones, talking to Mary Stoffel, past life clearings, Shamanic healings, T-Touch, Massage, Healing Touch, Chiropractic and probably a few other things I'm forgetting about. She and I have had more short training runs in trials.  I stopped showing her in AKC all together and only entered her in trials and classes where it was going to be easy to make up our own courses.  We did classes where we didn't have to do a dogwalk or weaves.  I would use ASCA and NADAC trials to work on those things where we can repeat the obstacles or sequences and where it is ok to make up your own course even on a regular course.  I stopped asking for a start line stay in trials and began running with her. 

In the beginning of all of this as I let go of asking for a start line stay I saw her ability to do weaves and any contact go downhill.  I figured that they were all linked together under the "self control" issue and if I don't ask for control at the start then it is hard to ask for it later in the run.  I stopped asking for those obstacles and just worked on having her run and have fun doing jumps, tunnels and teeters.  You'd be amazed how many classes you can do with just those obstacles and even pick up some Qs along the way!

Back when the meltdown first occurred I spent some time playing with a running dogwalk contact.  She has a running aframe.  I thought it might help.  I think it made matters worse.  In training she would offer me the two on two off.  So several months ago I went back to proofing the two on two off contacts on the dogwalk.  I really made it hard for her to maintain criteria with treats and chewies within reach of the dogwalk and by tossing things and running in different directions.  She got it.  Mind you had I proofed these things when she was younger but I think this time around she was more mature and the proofing started to sink in.  I did the same with the weaves poles. In training I threw the hardest and most difficult weave entries at her and I put all kinds of distractions by the poles.  I would run backwards and far away and up close on the poles.  She just got faster and faster in training and seemed to love the game.

However in trials she was still stressed if I asked her to do weaves or a dogwalk.  There would be avoidance or sloppy performances if I "tested" it at a trial to see where we were with it.  I also entered her mainly in ACTS trials where I knew what the situation would be like and the equipment would be familiar and honestly I would not feel like I was out of a ton of money in entries and travel!

At ASCA Nationals I totally planned to train in the ring - expensive training but good experience.  She totally melted down when I tried to train the weaves there and she totally stressed and avoided them.  After that I made the decision to move her back to Novice in ASCA and enter FEO so she could gain confidence again on 6 weave poles.  I did that this past Fall.  I think it really helped build her confidence back up.  So in January I decided to try her back in Elite Regular to see how she is doing.

At our January USDAA trial Tay ran the best she has run in years at a trial.  She earned a Starters Standard leg with a perfect run!  I was so thrilled and amazed.  She was really focused and fast and fun to run!  She had more great runs in a trial setting than we have had in ages!

This past weekend at the ASCA trial she gave me her first fast (like she gives me in training) two on two off dogwalk in public in two years on an elite regular run!  I was so thrilled I just wanted to make my way out of the ring and she hit a set of twelve poles like a pro!  I was so excited (she had an off course) that you would have thought we had earned an ATCH on that run!  It was her very FIRST Elite Regular Q.  This was in spite of being a bit sore and by Sunday I pulled her from most runs because Kristin thought she had a rib out.  I won't run her when she is sore, I've worked too hard to make it fun to run that I don't want to ask her to run when she is sore.

While I know enough not to rest on our laurels here I will continue to do proofing and to do calming things with her at a trial.  I still think and know she is sensitive to her environment but I also think she is learning to cope with it much better as her confidence increases.

The one thing that has not come back in trials and I'm still "testing" is a stay at the start line.  I've been training her with both me running with her and with stay leadouts.  I'd like to get a leadout back with her - it is really helpful with ASCA courses.  She still glazes over in a trial setting if I ask her for one there and can't do it.  I need to keep working on it.  She was able to do it at Dana's seminar on Friday which is progress.  She can do it a run thrus too.  I've had to go back and retrain a stay by having her sit on a stool/pedestal so she is more aware of her her foot movement.  Stays have always been hard for her to comprehend.  So I will keep working on it. Since she showed me she can do a two on two off fast and confident at a trial and she can hit 12 poles perfectly with speed I am optimistic we will get our stay at a trial back too!  I am grateful for organizations like NADAC and ASCA where we have more liberal training in the ring policies to help ring-wise and ring-stressed dogs work through things.  Trials are different than run-thrus to many dogs (and handlers) so it is helpful to be able to use these places to work through things.   I have done a lot of positive training in the ring with her.  I tried using corrections with her and didn't realize that her mindset at trials was different from training and it was causing her too much stress.  So after creating my own problem I am finally seeing improvement two years later and I have hope that we can move forward now and both of us enjoy trialing together again!

So it is just a reminder that every dog is a unique individual and the way a dog is in training may not be how they are at a trial.  Many of us are very different in training compared to trialing. 

I am also realistic and know I have a lot more PQs waiting for me than Qs still for Tay and me but it is much more fun this way!

Annelise and the "Amazing Miss Tay"

What is drive and how does it relate to ring stress?

This past week at the ASCA National Specialty I spent a lot of time thinking and talking about "drive." I'm planning to breed Sinco to a dog who has not competed in any official performance event. I was asked "does he have drive?" and "does he play with toys?" and "is he fast?" I had to think about all of this quite a bit.

How does one assess "drive" in an adult dog that hasn't been trained or reinforced for doing things fast? or for playing with toys? For that matter, how does one assess "drive" in an 8 week old puppy?

I first gave a lot of thought to the puppies I've personally had under my roof. I've had puppies I picked because they were cute and the "last one", because the breeder said it was the "pick" of the litter, because they were really outgoing and fearless, because they were the best choice out of two and because the puppy picked me. I've had experienced breeders, experienced agility competitors and experienced dog people help me pick puppies for agility and I've made inexperienced choices too. I've looked at dozens of litters of puppies over the years and I've been asked to help pick puppies for various people. I reflected a lot this past week on what are the most important qualities for both parents and puppies to have. I've been reading some articles and discussions about puppy raising and breeding since I've decided to breed Sinco last spring.

First of all what are the qualities of the temperament that we as agility competitors are really looking for in a dog?

1. Self-confidence: this can represent itself as fearlessness, outgoingness and resilience.

2. Sociability with people: desires to interact with people and seeks out people.

3. Biddability: ease with with the dog can be taught and willingness to be a teammate.

4. Quickness: quick to learn and assimilate information, quick to move and body awareness and agileness.

5.  Determination: whether it is determination to go faster, determination to be right or determination to do the job.  This requires focus.

After a lot of thought about this I really believe that "drive" boils down to these five aspects. "Drive" is not just about speed in my mind. When we think of humans who are driven they are goal oriented and determined to do something, so determination is a part of it. This requires intelligence and self-confidence. The quickness is both in mental and physical aspects. If a puppy is missing any one of these five aspects I think their success in agility with a human teammate could require more work to develop it in the puppy.

I've had or worked with puppies who were missing one or more of these qualities. A puppy who lacks self-confidence is a fairly obvious one with regard to agility because these puppies may be more fearful of agility obstacles and/or fearful of new places like trial sites.  However agility training in and of itself can increase a dog's confidence when done properly.

The puppy missing sociability with people is a very hard one to develop a good working relationship with even though it may play with toys like crazy.  I've had a puppy who was very toy motivated but really had very little interest in me and in working with me as a teammate.  This puppy was in it for himself and not really as a team.  He was extremely easy to distract.

Biddability is really important for agility.  A dog has to want to be trained, want to work with people and want to follow instructions in order to be a good teammate in agility.  There is not a lot of room for independent thinking in agility.

The puppy who is lacking quickness in learning may have trouble generalizing to new environments, may take longer to learn complex behaviors and/or may have trouble thinking independently when necessary. Lastly a puppy who is not quick will have a hard time keeping up with the fast pace of agility.

Determination is something that is seen in hunting dogs when hunting, herding dogs when working stock and any dog doing something they really love to do.  This is an important aspect of drive in agility dogs.  Agility is a man-made dog sport so there is not an instinctual desire to do it, dogs have to develop positive associations with it.  Some dogs discover early on that it is a sport they love.

These are all characteristics that can be present in an older dog and can be present without the need for specific "toy drive."  I saw all of these qualities in the dog I plan to breed to Sinco.  I also saw that he did these things in a novel environment and with people he had just met.  What is an unknown to some extent is how would this dog do in a high intensity performance environment such as a large agility trial.  He has done well at smaller 4-H trials.  I have yet to figure out what are predictors of success in a trial setting.  There are the handler considerations - their stress level, experience level and confidence level.  But if those are removed from the equation or made equal such as the case with my dogs then how do you determine which puppies will excel in the competitive arena?

Out of these characteristics I think self-confidence, biddability and determination are the most important aspects. I look at Sinco. She was a very confident puppy - she exhibited all four of these characteristics before she came to live with me. She knew she wanted my attention and she figured out how to escape out of ex-pens to come look for me, she would scream loudly when I left in order to get my attention, she would seek out interactions with people, especially me and she had a lot of confidence in doing things. As she grew her confidence changed. She wants to be right and has a strong determination to be "right." This desire to be right is about biddability.  She wants to be a team player.  When she is not sure how to be "right" she will lose some self-confidence however it is very easy to get it back. The more confident she becomes in herself the better she performs. I saw that at a young age when she would sit faster and better each time when she truly understood what I wanted her to do. That determination is a large component of drive but the underlying aspect is confidence. She was confident when she knew she was right.  From the very beginning many experienced trainers described Sinco as "high drive."  It is interesting because she is not what I would call an "operant" dog - she does not like "trial and error" learning at all.  She wants me to show her what I want and then she will do it.  Luring works well for her.  So how a dog learns is not correlated with their speed in agility.  Sinco has determination, she likes to "do stuff" and she likes to do it well whether that means doing it fast, doing it accurately or doing it well.

When I look at Tay I see something a bit different. She learns very rapidly and she loves to do things with me and she can move very quickly. She can offer behaviors in very rapid sequence and she can be very aware of what behavior is being clicked and when.  She is very quick mentally and physically.  She can come across as appearing to be high drive but she doesn't have the focus and determination that helps to maintain that.  Her energy level is very high.  Self-control is very difficult for her and even though she is very outgoing and very fearless she seems to have low self-esteem. She is anxious when left alone and she has trouble sitting still which interferes with her ability to be a good team player. The breeder selected her for me because she was one of the tougher puppies in the litter. She is very resilient and she is not a soft dog in the usual sense. She needs a firm hand in training because she can lose focus.  However she is prone to stressing in trial environments which makes competition very difficult for her.  She learned agility very quickly and she loves doing it.  However in trial settings she has trouble doing those behaviors which require self-control and she can freeze or shut down when asked to do those in competition. 

Then there is Feisty.  She is a very quick dog both mentally and physically, she is very biddable when she is in the mood, she is very self-confident and she has a lot of determination.   She is very willing to work with the few people that she trusts.  Overall she likes people as long as they have a postive attitude.  She has a lot of speed out there on agility courses which do not include the table.  She likes to make people laugh and she likes to turn negative energy into positive energy.  The way in which she does this is not always the way I would like her to do it.  Is she a team player 100% of the time, no she is not, but when she is then she is really fun.  If she has a different agenda then there is no changing her mind.  In her mind she does answer to a higher power. 

When I evaluated all three of these dogs as puppies I knew they had all of the individual characteristics of my idea of "drive."   However what I have not yet figured out how to evaluate as young puppies is how well they will handle stress like that of a trial environment which contains a lot of negative energy.  Many dogs are very sensitive to negative energy.  Now Sinco is very soft and I just look at her and she will melt and yet she is very able to tune out the negative energy of a trial and tune in to the fun.  Tay and Feisty are more resilient and it can take a stronger correction for things to get them to respond and neither of them ever melt or submit the way Sinco does.  So that response is not an indicator. 

I've seen a number of dogs do things on course that do not make sense at the time however it garners a laugh from the handler, the judge and/or the audience.  Don't underestimate the power of that transformation of energy.  There are a lot of dogs out there like Feisty who will do things because it gets a positive response from others at the trial.  That can be very reinforcing to dogs who are sensitive to energy levels and energy types.  I truly believe this is at the heart of the table problems I have with Feisty.  Judges often smile or laugh when they see her stop and dance around avoiding the table by staying 3-4 feet away from it.  She is about transforming their energy and not about mine.  I know this because I was able to turn the energy around a bit at a small trial when Feisty was doing all kinds of odd things one day.  At the end of the day I asked people around the ring to be totally quiet and not respond emotionally to anything she did except for a perfectly clean run.  After a couple of runs like that she was running clean runs by the next day.  Now if I could influence all judges and exhibitors at trials like that it would be great.  I also think this is what allows her to be a great obedience dog.  Obedience judges just light up when they see her and how cute she is.  Feisty thrives on this.  The one time where our run was just awful was the one time the judge did not smile at us and the worse the run got the more disgusted the judge got with us and Feisty just shut down totally.  So I really believe she responds more to how everyone else around us responds than to me.  I have to work hard to break into that mood of hers. 

I have yet to figure out what it is about crossing over the line between the warm-up area and the ring that causes Tay to totally check-out.  At this point if I try to ask for a stay at the start line I can't even get through to her to make her sit.  If I don't run with her from the start line she can't function.  However this stress affects her ability to do weave entries and dogwalk contacts because they involve self control which she totally loses when we enter the ring.  At the warm-up jump she can sit and stay and I can run around her and jump up and down and she doesn't leave.  So I'm in the process of trying to figure out how to bridge the gap from the warm-up jump to the start line.  I have finally been able to teach her a stay and to do proofing of it to the point where I feel confident she understands the concept.  Until recently I was not sure she really understood the concept.

So I would really like to figure out a predictor in 8 week old puppies for which ones will stress in a trial environment and which ones won't.  I'm not sure that taking them to novel environments is an indicator.  The first time I met Feisty was in a brand new place and she ran around like she owned the place.  Tay very quickly adapted to her new home and did well on the plane ride home in a sherpa bag. 

All of these dogs came to trials from about 10-12 weeks of age onward so they were all very familiar with the environment from a very early age.  All of these puppies were well socialized before 8 - 10 weeks of age.  All of these puppies were viewed as performance prospects by their respective breeders. 

If anyone out there has ideas on how to evaluate how a puppy will handle stress at trials as an adult please let me know.  I continue to ponder this question as I plan to breed Sinco and wonder how those puppies will turn out.

What's the rush?

It has been a month since my last entry - time just flies by. A lot has happened in the last month. Now I have some down time as I transition into the winter season and wind up the outdoor training season. I've had more time to spend training Spring who is now 16 months old. It is interesting that I was just thinking that it has been good for Spring to have been laid up quite a bit during his adolesence because it actually gave me more time to work on his flatwork skills. He has probably had more training on turns, stays, following my hands and sends to targets than any of my other dogs. He just started low teeter training and low dogwalk/aframe training and he still have barriers on his weave poles. However because of all of the flatwork he has done he is now doing serpentines, 270s, wraps, 180s and straight lines with ease and speed. Adding the jumps to the flatwork was such an easy transition for him because he knew what to do between obstacles.

Stacy Peardot-Goudy talks about this in her most recent blog entry as well. It is hard to go slowly with the young dogs and spend time on these foundation skills but it so makes everything else easier. I also agree with Stacy, if you do that and you don't teach them the full obstacles then there is no danger of trialing a dog too early. I learned this with Sinco who had trouble with the teeter so she didn't do standard courses until last fall when she was about 27 months old. It also helps to wait for the obstacle training until they are older - they learn it so much better then. If we try to train 6-12 month old puppies about doing full obstacles we almost always end up having to retrain it later. Their minds and bodies are not really equipped for that kind of training and precision. Time is much better spent on training attention, stays, turns, following hands and speed cues. These are the kinds of things that puppies learn well and when taught first will stick with them for life. They are also much easier for us to train and we are less likely to "screw it up." It also gives me a lot of time to get to know the puppy and to then to make decisions about how I want to proceed with the contact and weave training. Knowing the drive, personality, physical abilities and mental stamina of your dog is important before you embark on training obstacles that require both speed and accuracy as well as balance and coordination.

It is also so important to train your dog to follow YOUR hand cues. If you don't have a training method in place when you start then your dog has to figure things out on the fly. If you are always changing your handling cues because someone told you to try something different then your dog is always a step behind trying to figure out what you are doing. Being consistent from the start with your young dog and your training will pay off in the long run.

I've started Spring on his contact training, after a lot of thought and reading and watching what others are doing, with a modified version of Sylvia Trkman's contact training method. I made a wide board about 8 feet long and 3 feet wide and laid it flat on the ground. I put a small hoop on the end of the board and then an empty target about 10-15 feet from the end. After a couple of sessions he was running down the board and driving out to the target. Then I raised the board up a few inches on to a table top. He continued to race down the board and out to the target. The target helped him to keep driving ahead regardless of where I am. We did that for awhile and then I moved him to a low dogwalk - about 18" or so off the ground. I backchained it by having him start in the middle of the down plank and go through the hoop to the target which was again about 10 - 12 feet from the end of the board. It didn't take long for him to be able to do the entire low dogwalk. We are staying at this stage for awhile. He is getting faster and faster on it all the time. Running contacts are much harder to train and take more space and more time than a two on/two off if you want it to be a consistent behavior. Feisty is almost 4 years old and I am just now starting to trust her running dogwalk contacts. It has been a lot of hard work. The aframe was much easier for her to do. However Spring is having a harder time with the aframe and I'm having to go even slower with that obstacle. But I have lots of time to work on it. Sinco and Windy were over two years old before they began serious trialing and when they did they were ready. I'd rather go slowly and make sure things are well understood by the dog rather than push him too fast.

Annelise

Tay Update

Tay and I have had a second trial in a row where the dog I have fun with in training showed up at the trial!

Last weekend at the ASCA trial I was prepared to do short courses and to work on weaves and contacts. On both rounds of jumpers she was great - I didn't support one jump and she missed it but otherwise she was focused and fast. This was in Leatherdale arena where she has been the most stressed in the past - she has even started shaking in the middle of the ring.

In the first round of regular she was a bit wired and she was missing her dogwalk contact. I was trying to get her to stop 2on/2off. She finally came close on the third attempt and we left to a party. I was amazed that she kept trying in a trial - in the past she would have gone off sniffing and been too stressed to repeat it. On round two of regular she did better and we left early. We didn't get to work on the weaves until the second day. A couple of the gambles were going to be too hard for her - involving weaves or aframes and we just skipped those gambles.

On Sunday we were able to train the weave poles a bit more - repeating the sequence before the weaves. She did great the second time through them and we left to a party. She earned one gamblers leg on Sunday with a fun tunnel gamble.

This past weekend at the CPE trial she ran so well at Soccer Blast. She earned quite a few Qs and she played fast and focused with me. Sometimes she was a bit sticky on the start line on Sat but by Sunday she started with me right way. She only went off sniffing once and that was when the dogwalk seemed odd to her on Sunday and she went up and came back down. The judge was great and let us repeat the dogwalk after we fixed it. She was fine then. Tay even did 6 weave poles on the first try for the first time in a trial in several weeks.

At the ASCA trial the weather was nice enough that I was able to keep her in the van during the trial. I thought it would be less stressful for her. This past weekend it was too hot to leave her in the van so she was crated inside near the back of the building. I was amazed that she was actually napping in her crate. In the past she would pace and circle and be standing almost all the time in her crate. She seemed very relaxed. It was such a relief. She also *walked* - and I mean WALKED around the trial area - normally she is such a bundle of energy and can not calmly walk at a trial. Yet when I was ready to start the run she was right there with me running full speed! She finally beat Sinco in time and/or points in some classes!!! Now I've known all along that she can be very fast and can when she puts her mind to it run faster than Sinco - few people have seen it or believe me but I know because I run both of them! She also did a lot of collected turns which she does in training and in the past could not do in trials!

So I had a blast running my Tay Tay this past weekend!

So you may ask what do I think brought about this transformation?

I think it is a combination of things and I believe the combination is the key.

1. I am much more vocal running her and praising her a LOT for things. If I see her head start to drop to sniff I immediately say something in a loud happy voice and she would pick up her nose and keep running.
2. She started wearing her custom made collar that has a LOT of Jade stones on it last weekend at the ASCA trial. She just wears it at trials and I take it off right before she runs and put it back on after she runs - she usually wants it on and will put her head into it. Jade stones are known for providing protection from negative energy and spirits and are self clearing.
3. I sprayed "Florida water" in the van at the ASCA trial and in our crating area and on me. It is a special water created by Shamans in Peru that provides protection from negativity and it smells wonderful. I immediately feel relaxed when I smell it. Tay actually doesn't mind it and she is very sensitive to most essential oils.
4. I once again abandoned the 2o/2o dogwalk criteria for her when she started to collect and trot through the contact zone. Would I like it to be faster and to be less managed by me - yes! But that will take more time and practice with her. For her, as it was with Sonic, it is too hard for her to do a running aframe and a stopping dogwalk. I've seen dogs who can handle different criteria on the different obstacles but it is a hard concept for many dogs. Tay has to really be thinking hard to stop on the dogwalk which she was originally taught and I've asked her to do many times in practice. But trials are stressful for her and it is very hard for to concentrate to do it. It just isn't automatic for her enough to do it under stress. How many of us can think clearly under stress?
5. Lastly the other thing that has happened which can not be discounted in how it may have impacted her is that she had surgery 10 days before the ASCA trial to remove an implode sebaceous cyst from her neck. She had drains in her neck for a few days. Going to the vet is very stressful and it was an emergency situation. She may have undergone some sort of change under anesthesia.

Now she will have a break from trialing until Labor Day weekend. This will be good for her. I plan to not run her in AKC at all or USDAA standard for several months - I'm going to wait until I am sure her confidence in trials is here to stay and her weave pole performance improves in trials. In the meantime I will use ASCA and NADAC trials for training it and run her in CPE trials where there are a lot of classes where weaves can be avoided or where there are only 6 poles.

I had more fun running her at these past trials because she was RUNNING and she was trying really hard to stay focused - she was the fun dog I have in training! To see her run with joy and not stress was so rewarding and she was so proud of herself too! I could tell she was having more fun than she has had in a long time at a trial.

Progress! Woohoo!!!

Frustration Tolerance and Stress

I've had a lot of thoughts about Tay lately. Her performance at trials has been troublesome and such a contrast to the dog I have in training (at different places) and at seminars. It has been taking me back to my days with Sonic and how he stressed about weave poles in trials.

She was the kind of puppy who was "easy" to train. My first dog like this. She learned almost everything very quickly and was eager to do more. She loves clicker training and while she is moving constantly when I'm shaping behaviors with her, she still knows what she was doing when I clicked. She could be a little circus dog. She learned to skateboard, roll buckets and balls, put her feet on anything - moving or not.



At trials Tay has been running between pole one and two of the weaves and then putting her nose on the ground and running around. If I repeat the weaves with my happy voice (thinking I'm de-stressing her) she usually does them perfectly. I've been doing AKC and USDAA lately where I can not repeat obstacles before the weaves. I've been concerned that I'm teaching her that I will "fix" the weaves for her in a trial. (Been there and made that mistake with my first Border Collie many years ago.)

She will sometimes go wide around obstacles and have her nose on the ground looking like she is sniffing in a stressed manor. She has frozen on the table and won't sit or lie down quickly and sometimes not want to get on it at all.

She has also been launching her aframe contact which is not as bothersome because I know her running contacts are a "work in progress" and will always require some management. She was taught a 2on/2off on the dogwalk which morphed into a running dogwalk via a quick release. The aframe was taught as a running aframe from the start but no one method seemed to work for her. This has been her weakest area of learning and yet she still seemed to gain an understanding of what was expected fairly easily. Her weaves however have been stellar in training.

So what could be causing these problems?

1. Lack of frustration tolerance. One of the things I've come to realize is that she has a very low frustration tolerance. Since she learned so quickly she never really had any extended "frustration" or stress in learning something new. She didn't really make a lot of mistakes as a puppy so she didn't need to be corrected much at all. However she loses focus at trials which causes her to miss cues and make more mistakes than she does in training situations. So I am theorizing that one aspect of the problem is that she stresses because she is not used to making mistakes like that and doesn't know how to recover. My other dogs have had some training issue to overcome where they have had to take time to work through it and have learned how to cope with struggles in training in their own way.

2. Lack of focus. I've observed that Tay seems to do best with courses that have more complex sequences of obstacles. The novice courses at trials have too much open space where she can get easily distracted. I talked to someone who was judging at one of our trials who knows her littermates out in California. I asked him how they were running and if there were any similarities with Tay. There are - he told me that the handler/breeder of her sister talks a LOT when running her sister and he also gets on her case when she loses focus. This handler is an excellent distance handler and is very quiet and soft spoken. So to hear that he is louder with her sister than with his other dogs was interesting. So I have tried talking more to Tay on course at trials and really keeping a very happy voice. It seemed to help somewhat.

3. Lack of self-control. Tay has some mild separation anxiety. At trials if crated indoors I've noticed that she doesn't seem to rest very well, especially before the first few runs. She gets very anxious if I take out any of the other dogs instead of her and spins in her crate. My other dogs will merely lift their heads to see if it is their turn or not. She wants it to be her turn all the time. She doesn't have a lot of natural self control.

What things could I do to improve these "problem areas"?

1. Proofing. I did more proofing in general and with the weaves in particular so they would be harder in training than at a trial. I placed open bags of treats so that they were leaning on the weave poles and she weaved beautifully - this is from an incredibly food oriented dog. I've tossed toys and done things with my body and she will stay in the weaves. I've had toys and bags of treats laying around the agility field while training her and she ignores them. I take her to a group class and she handles distractions of people acting like judges and ring stewards well. I've been taking her to group classes for a couple of years to help her deal with these distractions.

2. Minimize the situation. I've pulled her from AKC runs until I can figure out how to get her more focused and motivated at a trial. I've lentered her in trials such as ASCA and NADAC where I can repeat sequence and train to some extent.

3. Additional work. I've been trying to come up with additional "jobs" for her. Perhaps teaching her some new things will help with her frustration tolerance. My other young dogs have at least two performance type jobs. Tay has lacked the self control to do well in obedience and she has been slow to turn on to livestock for herding. I read Silvia Trkman's website for the first time (I had been meaning to read it for ages now). I was inspired from the first page alone because of her enthusiasm for obedience and for trick training. http://silvia.trkman.net/
Tay loves to do tricks and to be able to set a goal of teaching her 100 tricks really excited me. I have wanted to teach her more tricks but I need a goal of some sort - she is not a candidate for commercials because she is too dark so I needed some other reason.

4. Reduce her exposure to stimuli. I unexpectedly was able to recreate her trial behavior in training this week. I've been trying to do more with her and really try to find other "jobs" for her to do. I took her to Prior Lake for my classes down there and let her "hang out" with me. I worked on tricks during our down time and I worked on rewarding her for hanging out quietly (very hard for her to do). I usually practice in Prior Lake with her every week and she does very well - she is fast and focused. I've done weave proofing there and she has been great. This evening, she started out very anxious and antsy and then she settled down! I was very happy with how calm she was hanging out while I taught the classes. After the last class I wanted to run her to see how she would do after hanging with me for 3 hours. I had hoped she would be very fast and focused having to wait for three hours for her "turn" to play and having worked on "hanging out." To my surprise she was distracted right off of the second obstacle and I was able to get her back and restarted. Then she did what she does at trials and went between pole one and two in the weaves and put her nose on the ground to sniff. I was very surprised - it is the first time she has ever done that in a training situation. So I got to thinking and wondered if the hanging around all day at trials is contributing to her stress. This is not uncommon for many dogs. I am considering that she needs to be more isolated from my other dogs and agility at trials so she doesn't become overstimulated to the point of losing focus.

5. Be more interactive on course from the beginning. I took her to her group class later in the week and had her out for the whole class hoping to recreate her stress behaviors. I also worked a stay at the start line which does increase her stress. The first time through she was great through the weaves. I rewarded the weaves. Then I tried the sequence to the weaves again and she couldn't do them. After making my voice sound happier and happier and making it easier and easier she finally got the weaves so we went on and then she launched the aframe contact. I had her redo the aframe and she launched again so I put a jump after it about 5-6 feet from the bottom. She did the aframe well and I rewarded. When I went to move the jump away so we could do the rest, she got distracted and I couldn't get her re-focused no matter how happy I sounded. So I gave her a time-out. I was starting to wonder who was training whom. She seems to like agility but I really wondered if she was using the sniffing as a way to change my behavior or was she really stressing because of not knowing how to cope with a mistake. It occurred to me that this was like the behavior of one of my student's dogs but with a twist. I have seen an Aussie belonging to one of my students do amazing off courses that were not at all handler induced or miss entire obstacles at trials and then proceed to run the rest of the course fast and focused. The handler in that case admits she gets very stressed at trials and my theory is that the dog learned that the stress was gone once he made a "mistake" on the course. The handler would then relax because the pressure was off. This was a team that would often qualify in the classes that "didn't matter" but could not qualify in the ones that "did matter." I wondered if Tay was trying to train me to lighten up and to be more verbal because that is exactly what I would do when she would seem stressed. So I need to work on being more verbal on course and working on anticipating when I might lose her so I can be proactive. My default is to be very quiet when handling my dogs so I tend to get louder when I see she has lost focus.

6. Adding meaningful consequences for missed cues. At the group class this week, I trained the other girls and then came back to Tay. I did a short sequence and she did the one weave pole and went off sniffing. I stopped and took her by the collar and wanted to determine what to do because I had decided that taking her off the course was not meaningful to her. All of us in the class were in agreement that Tay should have some different consequences for not weaving. I also think she needed to start learning how to handle her mistakes. I weaved her on-leash through the poles, a correction that I have used occasionally with other dogs. She still tried to miss the poles but was not able to do so. Then I removed the leash and repeated the tunnel before the weaves and she did the weaves perfectly and I rewarded with a big party. We started at that point and finished the rest of the course with a very fast and focused dog.

In sum, I am going to handle her differently from my other dogs in that I will be more vocal throughout the course with her. I am more vocal with Feisty than with Sinco but I need to be more vocal evenly throughout the entire course and not just when a problem occurs. I will continue to do proofing with her to make training situations harder than trials and I am going to set her up for success by picking and choosing where I trial her until we start to see improvement in her demeanor on course at trials. I am also going to try to keep her by herself at trials so she is not aware of when I'm running the other dogs to help lower her stimulation level. I am going to teach her to do more things to help with her frustration tolerance and to help increase her focus and attention. Lastly the consequences will be different in training for mistakes that she makes when I'm confident that she understands what is expected. I never introduce corrections before I truly believe a dog understands what is expected.

Once again I have a dog pushing me out of my comfort zone and in need of different training and handling techniques than my other dogs. The alternative is to not trial her at all and I'm not ready to go that route just yet. She is a very fun dog with a lot of potential to do well in agility.