Tay was cleared earlier in May to trial at BOTC AKC trial. I picked that one because it would be just 2-3 runs a day. Tay struggled with the weaves all weekend and I realized I had rehabbed her on 24" spaced weave poles and they had narrower ones at the trial. Once I realized that I stopped worrying about her weaves. I made sure to have someone watch her run or video it so I could be sure that she didn't hurt herself or appear sore in any run. She ran fast and she ran well. There were glitches but we are rusty as a team. Most of our rehab at the end was done working on individual obstacle performance and short sequences.
Well I was at a seminar with Stacy this morning and our first run involved a lot of tight turns. I asked folks to watch her to be sure she ran well. She ran great! I was pleased with how well she did. I did our usual warm-up and lengthy cool down. I put her away and then about 40 minutes later brought her out again and she was limping. It was noticeable to everyone there. I walked her around and around and she got better. I ran her on a shorter version of the sequence and cooled her down for awhile. I put her away. Lin Gelbmann came by and I asked her about it. Tay was again limping when I got her out and Lin palpated her bicep tendon and she was sore again. Lin thinks she is almost as sore as she was last January.
I'm so disappointed. I was hoping to be able to run her this summer and to focus on her more. So now I need to start over with the rehab. I now have a large wading pool which I will be able to incorporate into her rehab which may help. It is not clear whether I will be able to get her strong enough to do agility again for an extended period. Lin thinks she is stronger than she was last January. Lin thinks she is injuring it by planting that foot and turning.
Stay tuned to see how things go from here. It looks like I won't be trialing much at all this summer.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Feisty Files Update
It is time for another chapter in the "Feisty Files"!
As a refresher, in March of 2008 Feisty entered Excellent Standard and JWW. Since then she has earned 26 Excellent JWW legs (23 MXJ legs) and over 275 MACH points (all from JWW). She has also earned only 5 Excellent Standard legs. She earned her AXJ in March of 2008 and her AX in June of 2009.
In standard the table has been the biggest training issue. I have spent a lot of time working on proofing her table performance and making it fun. In February of this year at a USDAA trial she did the table which was situated right next to the ring stewards, timer and scribe as well as a row of people leaning over the railing AND the place where the noisy speaker had been. Feisty got on the table and went down without any hesitation at all. I knew we had made a huge breakthrough. After spending many runs in Standard getting an "E" for training the table (either leaving the ring to a party when she would finally get on it or leaving the ring because she refused to get on it at all, this was a huge victory.
May's TCOTC trial was our first time in Excellent standard in over 6 months. I was feeling good about her table performance and Jacque Hoye was the judge. We spent a lot of time working in Jacque's classes to proof her table performance so I thought this would be a good place to begin again. Feisty did a great table and a great everything else on Saturday to earn her FIRST Excellent B Standard leg in two years!!!! I was ecstatic! On Sunday she missed the weave entry which was right before the table. I made her redo the weaves so we could go to the table. She got on immediately and went down and we left right away to a huge party. Perfect way to reward the table!
This past weekend we ran in the BOTC AKC trial. On Saturday we ran JWW first. Feisty knocked a bar on jump 2 which is unusual for her but most likely due to the long grass in the ring. So I went into training mode and did more distance handling than usual at an AKC trial. I also "left" her in the weaves. She proceeded to miss the entry and pop out early and it was the next to last obstacle on the course. If I do this with my other dogs it is not a big deal. However I had a momentary lapse in memory of which dog I was running here. Feisty remembers everything and forgets nothing! Then on our standard run she popped out at pole 10. I remembered then that I better try it again and she popped out again so I took her off the course. I know I can't repeat my mistake from JWW and let her go on without weaviing again. On Sunday she ran JWW and popped out again at pole 10 - and I pulled her off right away. Then in Standard she took a wrong course into a tunnel when all who watched said that I was turned and calling her in plenty of time for her to come with me. So we left the course to cut our losses at that point. Needless to say I was feeling pretty frustrated with myself for having not "fixed" our weaves on rd 1 on Saturday.
So once again Feisty puts me into a position to consider something that I've only ever done with one other dog of mine (Tobie). I rarely recommend going home and training something between trial days. For most dogs they are too tired to really be able to process any training at the end of a day of trialing. For other dogs the adrenaline rush of the trial atmosphere or the stress of the trial scene is ultimately what is interfering with their performance so practice at home is not going to help that. I decided that I needed to make myself feel better that Feisty could weave 12 poles. I also realized that she had been practicing on the 24" poles so I should get out the 22" poles and practice with those. We stopped at the school on the way home and set up the narrower poles. I used the container of hot dogs as proofing material and placed the container by the 10th poles. The first time she weaved great right by it - she got hot dogs for it. Then she realized there were yummy treats in that container. Then she actually started to pop out to check out the container. Yippee! I recreated the problem and I verbally corrected her and asked her to weave again. She got faster and more excited about weaving and very quickly figured out how to weave past the container to get hot dogs. Then Pam offered to guard the container and we had it open and by the 10th pole. Feisty worked through it and got faster and more excited about weaving. Proofing does help build confidence and speed!!!
Our Sunday night training paid off! On Monday Feisty ran two perfectly clean runs to earn her FIRST Double Q - two years after getting into Excellent!!! It was great! She took second place behind Pam and Windy in JWW!
It is really hard to run a dog who has as much as potential as she does and is as skilled as she is when she can act so squirrelly at times! She is also the first dog I've had who is in that very small minority of dogs who exercises her independence. She has done this in seminars as well in trials where she has made up her own course that does not reflect my handling at all and she has refused to do obstacles by stopping and standing there staring at me. There have been times when I could tell it was stress related but there are times when she is definitely not stressed. So any time she is running as a teammate it is a real treat! She is a very high energy dog who loves to do things with me but everything has to be aligned just right for her to be willing and able to run as a teammate! She is also the kind of dog who loves to be challenged in her training and does not shut down when she is mentally challenged. She can be shut down with stress or boredom. Proofing is mentally challenging for her and she gets into it.
So I finally got the positive reinforcement I needed to keep going with her! We have had a LONG dry spell!
As a refresher, in March of 2008 Feisty entered Excellent Standard and JWW. Since then she has earned 26 Excellent JWW legs (23 MXJ legs) and over 275 MACH points (all from JWW). She has also earned only 5 Excellent Standard legs. She earned her AXJ in March of 2008 and her AX in June of 2009.
In standard the table has been the biggest training issue. I have spent a lot of time working on proofing her table performance and making it fun. In February of this year at a USDAA trial she did the table which was situated right next to the ring stewards, timer and scribe as well as a row of people leaning over the railing AND the place where the noisy speaker had been. Feisty got on the table and went down without any hesitation at all. I knew we had made a huge breakthrough. After spending many runs in Standard getting an "E" for training the table (either leaving the ring to a party when she would finally get on it or leaving the ring because she refused to get on it at all, this was a huge victory.
May's TCOTC trial was our first time in Excellent standard in over 6 months. I was feeling good about her table performance and Jacque Hoye was the judge. We spent a lot of time working in Jacque's classes to proof her table performance so I thought this would be a good place to begin again. Feisty did a great table and a great everything else on Saturday to earn her FIRST Excellent B Standard leg in two years!!!! I was ecstatic! On Sunday she missed the weave entry which was right before the table. I made her redo the weaves so we could go to the table. She got on immediately and went down and we left right away to a huge party. Perfect way to reward the table!
This past weekend we ran in the BOTC AKC trial. On Saturday we ran JWW first. Feisty knocked a bar on jump 2 which is unusual for her but most likely due to the long grass in the ring. So I went into training mode and did more distance handling than usual at an AKC trial. I also "left" her in the weaves. She proceeded to miss the entry and pop out early and it was the next to last obstacle on the course. If I do this with my other dogs it is not a big deal. However I had a momentary lapse in memory of which dog I was running here. Feisty remembers everything and forgets nothing! Then on our standard run she popped out at pole 10. I remembered then that I better try it again and she popped out again so I took her off the course. I know I can't repeat my mistake from JWW and let her go on without weaviing again. On Sunday she ran JWW and popped out again at pole 10 - and I pulled her off right away. Then in Standard she took a wrong course into a tunnel when all who watched said that I was turned and calling her in plenty of time for her to come with me. So we left the course to cut our losses at that point. Needless to say I was feeling pretty frustrated with myself for having not "fixed" our weaves on rd 1 on Saturday.
So once again Feisty puts me into a position to consider something that I've only ever done with one other dog of mine (Tobie). I rarely recommend going home and training something between trial days. For most dogs they are too tired to really be able to process any training at the end of a day of trialing. For other dogs the adrenaline rush of the trial atmosphere or the stress of the trial scene is ultimately what is interfering with their performance so practice at home is not going to help that. I decided that I needed to make myself feel better that Feisty could weave 12 poles. I also realized that she had been practicing on the 24" poles so I should get out the 22" poles and practice with those. We stopped at the school on the way home and set up the narrower poles. I used the container of hot dogs as proofing material and placed the container by the 10th poles. The first time she weaved great right by it - she got hot dogs for it. Then she realized there were yummy treats in that container. Then she actually started to pop out to check out the container. Yippee! I recreated the problem and I verbally corrected her and asked her to weave again. She got faster and more excited about weaving and very quickly figured out how to weave past the container to get hot dogs. Then Pam offered to guard the container and we had it open and by the 10th pole. Feisty worked through it and got faster and more excited about weaving. Proofing does help build confidence and speed!!!
Our Sunday night training paid off! On Monday Feisty ran two perfectly clean runs to earn her FIRST Double Q - two years after getting into Excellent!!! It was great! She took second place behind Pam and Windy in JWW!
It is really hard to run a dog who has as much as potential as she does and is as skilled as she is when she can act so squirrelly at times! She is also the first dog I've had who is in that very small minority of dogs who exercises her independence. She has done this in seminars as well in trials where she has made up her own course that does not reflect my handling at all and she has refused to do obstacles by stopping and standing there staring at me. There have been times when I could tell it was stress related but there are times when she is definitely not stressed. So any time she is running as a teammate it is a real treat! She is a very high energy dog who loves to do things with me but everything has to be aligned just right for her to be willing and able to run as a teammate! She is also the kind of dog who loves to be challenged in her training and does not shut down when she is mentally challenged. She can be shut down with stress or boredom. Proofing is mentally challenging for her and she gets into it.
So I finally got the positive reinforcement I needed to keep going with her! We have had a LONG dry spell!
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Busy couple of months!
It has been a very hectic couple of months. Mid-April saw Sinco come into heat, finally after waiting since October for that to happen! Then the mad-dash to decide how to get her to Canada to be bred. I had planned to do AI when I thought it was going to be a winter breeding but now the weather was better. I was doing the progesterone tests and it was starting to look like she was going to peak on a weekend which makes doing AI riskier. It can end up being done too early and too late. I looked up airfares and decided it would cost the same to send her on a plane with Myra and then in a rental car. So off they went to a small town 5 hours drive north of Vancouver. Sinco was great and two breedings took place.
Then Sinco came back and ran great at our April NADAC trial. The weather was chilly and damp but our spirits were not dampened and many of us wore our Hawaiian Shirts to show Mother Nature we would persevere. I ran Sinco, Spring and Feisty. Spring ran great all weekend. Sinco ran like a champ. Feisty had a blast with the wide open courses.
Then the first week of May my father fell and broke his hip the day before his 82nd birthday. He lives in North Carolina. He had been living alone since my mother died a year earlier. He had been doing alright on his own. He had surgery on his birthday and then a couple of days later was admitted into a rehab nursing home. He has been there ever since. He lost a lot of cognitive functioning through the ordeal and he is no longer able to read or write well, dress himself or even eat without help. Before this happened he was almost completely deaf so that doesn't help matters.
The following week Susan Perry came to town and put on an awesome seminar! She is great and I heard lots of positive feedback from it. Things were difficult with my Dad and I wasn't getting good information from the nursing home so I had to go to North Carolina in the middle of Susan's seminar. I was disappointed to have missed most of it. However it was good to go on the trip.
Then we had an ultrasound on Sinco and they heard NINE heartbeats! Wow that is a lot more than I was expecting! But it was nice to hear good news for a change!
Then I get back from that trip and have to head out the following weekend to supervise judge in Florida for two days. It was at this point that I decided to resign from judging for ASCA and to resign from doing course reviews. I just have too much going on with the school, my father and the puppies on the way.
Friday night I went to St. Peter to do an obedience run through with Feisty in Open. She did well and she did things I expected. She is rough around the edges and definitely not polished. However she is not the kind of dog I can drill or overtrain. I have her entered one day at the Lake Minnetonka obedience trial on June 12th.
Now this weekend I have been able to run my own dogs. Tay is making her re-debut after being in rehab for a strained/slightly torn triceps tendon that happened at the end of January. She is physically looking very good. Unfortunately today the folks in the tent next to me started grilling their lunch. Tay was freaked and incredibly stressed out by the smell of the smoke. The wind blew the smell all across the agility rings. I was able to get her to calm down enough that she was able to somewhat run in the ring farthest away. She ran better after they were done grilling and the smell had cleared. I did so much work on it last year and now to feel like I'm back at square one with it is disheartening. Feisty was a bit squirrelly today. Spring however had a very good novice standard run. He is still a bit tentative on contacts he doesn't know and his striding was not the best since he was thinking hard about them. He did have a clean run in standard and he had a great FAST run. We had a back jump in novice JWW but otherwise the run was great. He did very well for his debut in AKC standard.
Now to spend the next couple of weeks getting ready for puppies that are due between June 15-19! I have a very busy summer ahead of me!
Then Sinco came back and ran great at our April NADAC trial. The weather was chilly and damp but our spirits were not dampened and many of us wore our Hawaiian Shirts to show Mother Nature we would persevere. I ran Sinco, Spring and Feisty. Spring ran great all weekend. Sinco ran like a champ. Feisty had a blast with the wide open courses.
Then the first week of May my father fell and broke his hip the day before his 82nd birthday. He lives in North Carolina. He had been living alone since my mother died a year earlier. He had been doing alright on his own. He had surgery on his birthday and then a couple of days later was admitted into a rehab nursing home. He has been there ever since. He lost a lot of cognitive functioning through the ordeal and he is no longer able to read or write well, dress himself or even eat without help. Before this happened he was almost completely deaf so that doesn't help matters.
The following week Susan Perry came to town and put on an awesome seminar! She is great and I heard lots of positive feedback from it. Things were difficult with my Dad and I wasn't getting good information from the nursing home so I had to go to North Carolina in the middle of Susan's seminar. I was disappointed to have missed most of it. However it was good to go on the trip.
Then we had an ultrasound on Sinco and they heard NINE heartbeats! Wow that is a lot more than I was expecting! But it was nice to hear good news for a change!
Then I get back from that trip and have to head out the following weekend to supervise judge in Florida for two days. It was at this point that I decided to resign from judging for ASCA and to resign from doing course reviews. I just have too much going on with the school, my father and the puppies on the way.
Friday night I went to St. Peter to do an obedience run through with Feisty in Open. She did well and she did things I expected. She is rough around the edges and definitely not polished. However she is not the kind of dog I can drill or overtrain. I have her entered one day at the Lake Minnetonka obedience trial on June 12th.
Now this weekend I have been able to run my own dogs. Tay is making her re-debut after being in rehab for a strained/slightly torn triceps tendon that happened at the end of January. She is physically looking very good. Unfortunately today the folks in the tent next to me started grilling their lunch. Tay was freaked and incredibly stressed out by the smell of the smoke. The wind blew the smell all across the agility rings. I was able to get her to calm down enough that she was able to somewhat run in the ring farthest away. She ran better after they were done grilling and the smell had cleared. I did so much work on it last year and now to feel like I'm back at square one with it is disheartening. Feisty was a bit squirrelly today. Spring however had a very good novice standard run. He is still a bit tentative on contacts he doesn't know and his striding was not the best since he was thinking hard about them. He did have a clean run in standard and he had a great FAST run. We had a back jump in novice JWW but otherwise the run was great. He did very well for his debut in AKC standard.
Now to spend the next couple of weeks getting ready for puppies that are due between June 15-19! I have a very busy summer ahead of me!
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Teacup Trial
We had a fun weekend hosting our first Teacup Agility Trial in our new building! It was a lot of fun! Rachelle was a great judge with fun and challenging courses. Everyone pitched in and helped and we had a wonderful worker raffle organized by Chris Mosley. We had several vendors here on Saturday and a couple on Sunday. The food went over well both days having soup on Saturday and ham and turkey on Sunday.
As of this writing there were three TACHs! Chris and Winn earned their TACH, Dennis and Daisy earned their TACH and Kelly and Sired earned their TACH2. Wow!
Windy and Spring made their Teacup debuts and handled the tight little courses amazingly well. They are both much more adaptable to running collected than we ever imagined. I wasn't able to run Feisty much because her back is sore.
We had a great turnout with the most runs entered we've ever had and we had a number of entries brand new to TDAA and a few brand new to agility trials. Everyone had a great time and it is such a relaxed setting. We are going to look at our calendar and see when we can have some more of these here!
Annelise
As of this writing there were three TACHs! Chris and Winn earned their TACH, Dennis and Daisy earned their TACH and Kelly and Sired earned their TACH2. Wow!
Windy and Spring made their Teacup debuts and handled the tight little courses amazingly well. They are both much more adaptable to running collected than we ever imagined. I wasn't able to run Feisty much because her back is sore.
We had a great turnout with the most runs entered we've ever had and we had a number of entries brand new to TDAA and a few brand new to agility trials. Everyone had a great time and it is such a relaxed setting. We are going to look at our calendar and see when we can have some more of these here!
Annelise
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Great lessons!
Once again I am amazed at Suzanne Clothier's gift of observation. I never cease to learn from her and to hone my own observation skills. She really brought home the concept of "ask the dog" who they are. We tend to get caught up in what she refers to as the "frame" of what we already know about the dog and our preconceived notions about what that means. Looking and closely observing the dog without any prior knowledge from the human is an excellent skill to have.
I have always seen and believed in dogs being unique individuals and that "cookie cutter" dog training is not the way to go. My own dogs alone have shown me that, let alone the many others who have come before me for help over the years.
Suzanne is also the master of human analogies that can really help drive home a concept or point she wants to make. This makes her an excellent teacher of the human part of the team. It is important to learn from Suzanne with an open mind and also with a willingness to let go of your prior beliefs and ideas. She may upset you if you chose to go that route or you can thank her for the incredible insight she has shared with you.
This is exactly what happened to me this past weekend in a completely unexpected way. I decided to volunteer one of my dogs for the group exercise of asking the DOG who they are. I brought Tay out for the group. She was her usual happy self and wiggling around to visit everyone. The point of the exercise is to observe the dog and to not seek information from me. Tay didn't stop moving the entire time and she was aware of things in her environment. After several minutes Suzanne came over and observed that she is a dog that we don't get to see all the time but we should notice them more. She noticed immediately her sweet soft eyes. Many of us have seen her "sweet eyes", it is one of the most salient characteristics she has. I don't know of anyone who has met her who hasn't commented on her "sweetness." Well what I learned is that her eyes do lack that intensity and depth that many dogs have. This is so true. What does that mean? Suzanne believes it means that Tay may not be functioning fully cognitively.
Rather than feeling sad for her, I immediately felt relief! Now I had a reason why some things are so especially hard for Tay to learn and other things were incredibly easy. It was a huge "aha" moment for me. What else did Suzanne notice about her? She used the analogy that Tay does "not take notes." Now many of you who have read my posts and my blogs know about the detailed 20 volume set of notes that Feisty has and the shorter more concise notebook series that Sinco has. I have never felt like Tay was a note taker but I did feel that she would generalize some behaviors very easily. Tay at the seminar greeted everyone in the circle the same whether she knew them or not and she would repeatedly cycle through the group.
So for the past several days I've been pondering the kinds of things that Tay learned easily and the kinds of things that she still struggles to learn and I struggle to teach her. She learned the agility obstacles with incredible ease, even weave poles. I waited until she was 15 months old to start weaves. She learned 2on/2off very easily. She learned the cone exercises and hoop exercises I did with her from when she was a puppy. She has an awesome recall. She is awesome with targeting. She generalized agility obstacles with amazing ease and she generalized targeting from a lid on the floor to tape on the wall with amazing ease. She can play "101 things to do with X (fill in box, pedestal, etc.)" with the cue "show me something else." She learned to run and jump in a chair (be careful what you teach your dog!). She loves crate games and is wonderful in a crate anywhere. She has a very good automatic sit in front of any door and will turn toward me automatically when going through almost any door.
What kinds of things have been hard for Tay? Stays... - even though when I tried to video this she did one of the best stays (I was only a couple of feet away). She tends to keep moving her feet constantly on a stay whether in the house, by agility equipment or anywhere else. She has a marginal stay on a mat - it takes a lot of work to maintain. She has trouble with heel position. I teach all of my dogs to "choose to heel" with a clicker and treats and I do it on both sides of me. As I refine for obedience I set a distinct body posture and hand position to cue the heel position as well as the word. She can not orient to my side - she is a bit random and is often out in front curving around me. My other dogs have learned this with relative ease. She does not understand hand signals at all in spite of lots of use of them. She does not appear attentive at all to my body cues. My other dogs are very attentive to subtle changes in my body position - one twitch and I can send them off anywhere. I believe Tay does not understand obstacle names for discrimination. I am starting to believe it is 50/50 for her. It is something I work on with all of my dogs and she has the weakest skills in this regard and requires a lot of work on my part. Suzanne said she would have a hard time with distance. She has a lot of confidence on individual obstacle performance that she can do obstacles at a distance with ease. What she can not do is take direction AND do obstacles at a distance. This is what I'm discovering with her. In training I break things down and in pieces she can get it but when put together she has trouble keeping two ideas/thoughts in her head to be able to change direction or do discriminations at a distance. She will either head to what is in front of her but if she is derailed I can not redirect her at all unlike my other dogs who will redirect. The other thing she has a hard time with when outside in a field is "auto check-in." She can do it in familiar surroundings that are not too distracting if my treats are good enough. At the livestock arena and outside in a field she would not both keep an eye on me and be able to keep sniffing. I work on this with all my dogs when they are puppies and take them to different places. When off leash I will make sharp turns away from them and when they catch up with me they get a treat. Then they can go off sniffing and anytime they check-in they get a treat. My other dogs do this with ease but Tay often has to be called and then she turns on a dime and comes.
I have also in the last three weeks been working on her doing front paw lifts/stretches as part of her rehab. I knew it would be easy to shape it but what I didn't expect was how difficult it is to refine it. I want to try to teach her to do one paw a few times and then switch to the other paw. Even after three weeks she still will offer each paw equally and wildly and can not seem to repeatedly offer the same paw over and over in spite of reinforcement to try to shape that. I am using my hands as the cue. I am considering teaching her to touch an object to see if that will make it clearer to her rather than touching my body part.
For comparison I decided to train my dogs who had not ever been asked to do this trick to review how they do it. Two of the dogs had very strong right paw preference and I had a hard time getting them to offer the left paw (Sinco almost fell over a couple of times trying to do it!) One dog had a strong left paw preference - Feisty ;) Tay does not have nearly such a strong paw preference. Suzanne said that both in dogs and humans that lack of handedness/pawedness is associated with a lack of bilateralization in the brain. This may also be linked to my difficulty in teaching her left and right which I train all my dogs to do.
On Friday afternoon I set up a session to video for Suzanne. I had been trying to come up with different scenarios to show what Tay does. We did one thing which is the start of teaching a dog to find someone or something. I showed her where I was hiding a treat. We went out of the room for 3-5 seconds and came back in and allowed her to search for the treat. She had a really hard time with this and after 45 seconds or so needed help. We repeated this two times each with two different spots. Each time she needed help after a long time. She was wondering around sniffing but seemed to have no recall where the treat was. Then I had someone else hide the treat in one of the two spots and brought her in and she could not find those either without help or after a long time searching. This was interesting so I wanted to see how my other dogs would do with this exercise. I used all the dogs I had who had never been taught any tracking or scent discrimination. Sinco remembered the treats right away and ran to them every time. Amigo the JRT did as well (especially after a potty break). Then I did it with Spring and Tobie. They both did better than Tay but took a bit more time than Amigo or Sinco but caught on pretty quickly. After a break we brought Tay back and tried it again with different treats and she did much better the second time and was more like Tobie and Spring on the second time. Tay is a highly food motivated dog who also if very smell sensitive and uses her nose constantly so one would think she could find a hidden treat easily.
In a few days I am going to try it again with Tay in the same place to see how she does. If she does well then I will move it to a new place.
I have a theory about Tay. I think she can learn behaviors quickly when there is a clear large physical object (stimulus) involved. All of the behaviors she does well involve some object that is pretty visible. The behaviors she struggles with involve body cues from me or no physical objects at all. I knew early on that obedience would not be a good sport for her and clearly that is true - the precision and awareness of my body cues is not a strong suit for her. Agility is a good sport for her.
Tay is very high functioning on the spectrum. But she is here to remind us that there is a spectrum of cognitive functioning in dogs like there is in humans. We have seen ranges in emotional functioning in dogs (i.e. reactive dogs). We often overlook the fact that some dogs may not be able to learn what we want to teach them, may have difficulty learning the way we are teaching them or may not have the innate cognitive ability to do it. I am very glad that I taught Tay with a clicker early on - I think that may have been the smartest thing to do for her. She does not do well with luring - but the clicker is very powerful for her. I have been learning that clicker training works well with autistic children. I don't think Tay has trouble socially, she is very non-reactive and friendly but she does mediate well between people she knows and those she doesn't know. I am busy reading resources that Suzanne has given me to brush up on cognitive psychology.
The good thing for me about Tay is that she is taking me back to my college and grad school psychology studies and now I'm getting caught up on the latest research in the last 20 years since then! It is very exciting for me.
Since this has happened in the last week a number of top trainers have shared similar stories where they thought it was the owner not having a clue about training the dog so the trainer took the dog home to try to work with it. The top trainer also had a hard time with the dog. So remember it is not always the owner's fault when a dog is not understanding a concept. Sometimes it is part of who the dog is.
So when first looking at a training problem - open your mind and ask the dog "who are you?" There may be physical reasons, mental limitations or relationship with the owner problems that are affecting training the dog.
Open your minds as well as your hearts and you will be amazed at what is out there!
Annelise who never ceases to learn from her dogs and her dogs never cease to teach her!
PS For those of you who want some light reading (or listening) - Suzanne and I recommend the Sapolsky lectures available at http://itunes.stanford.edu/ or at http://www.thegreatcourses.com/.
I have always seen and believed in dogs being unique individuals and that "cookie cutter" dog training is not the way to go. My own dogs alone have shown me that, let alone the many others who have come before me for help over the years.
Suzanne is also the master of human analogies that can really help drive home a concept or point she wants to make. This makes her an excellent teacher of the human part of the team. It is important to learn from Suzanne with an open mind and also with a willingness to let go of your prior beliefs and ideas. She may upset you if you chose to go that route or you can thank her for the incredible insight she has shared with you.
This is exactly what happened to me this past weekend in a completely unexpected way. I decided to volunteer one of my dogs for the group exercise of asking the DOG who they are. I brought Tay out for the group. She was her usual happy self and wiggling around to visit everyone. The point of the exercise is to observe the dog and to not seek information from me. Tay didn't stop moving the entire time and she was aware of things in her environment. After several minutes Suzanne came over and observed that she is a dog that we don't get to see all the time but we should notice them more. She noticed immediately her sweet soft eyes. Many of us have seen her "sweet eyes", it is one of the most salient characteristics she has. I don't know of anyone who has met her who hasn't commented on her "sweetness." Well what I learned is that her eyes do lack that intensity and depth that many dogs have. This is so true. What does that mean? Suzanne believes it means that Tay may not be functioning fully cognitively.
Rather than feeling sad for her, I immediately felt relief! Now I had a reason why some things are so especially hard for Tay to learn and other things were incredibly easy. It was a huge "aha" moment for me. What else did Suzanne notice about her? She used the analogy that Tay does "not take notes." Now many of you who have read my posts and my blogs know about the detailed 20 volume set of notes that Feisty has and the shorter more concise notebook series that Sinco has. I have never felt like Tay was a note taker but I did feel that she would generalize some behaviors very easily. Tay at the seminar greeted everyone in the circle the same whether she knew them or not and she would repeatedly cycle through the group.
So for the past several days I've been pondering the kinds of things that Tay learned easily and the kinds of things that she still struggles to learn and I struggle to teach her. She learned the agility obstacles with incredible ease, even weave poles. I waited until she was 15 months old to start weaves. She learned 2on/2off very easily. She learned the cone exercises and hoop exercises I did with her from when she was a puppy. She has an awesome recall. She is awesome with targeting. She generalized agility obstacles with amazing ease and she generalized targeting from a lid on the floor to tape on the wall with amazing ease. She can play "101 things to do with X (fill in box, pedestal, etc.)" with the cue "show me something else." She learned to run and jump in a chair (be careful what you teach your dog!). She loves crate games and is wonderful in a crate anywhere. She has a very good automatic sit in front of any door and will turn toward me automatically when going through almost any door.
What kinds of things have been hard for Tay? Stays... - even though when I tried to video this she did one of the best stays (I was only a couple of feet away). She tends to keep moving her feet constantly on a stay whether in the house, by agility equipment or anywhere else. She has a marginal stay on a mat - it takes a lot of work to maintain. She has trouble with heel position. I teach all of my dogs to "choose to heel" with a clicker and treats and I do it on both sides of me. As I refine for obedience I set a distinct body posture and hand position to cue the heel position as well as the word. She can not orient to my side - she is a bit random and is often out in front curving around me. My other dogs have learned this with relative ease. She does not understand hand signals at all in spite of lots of use of them. She does not appear attentive at all to my body cues. My other dogs are very attentive to subtle changes in my body position - one twitch and I can send them off anywhere. I believe Tay does not understand obstacle names for discrimination. I am starting to believe it is 50/50 for her. It is something I work on with all of my dogs and she has the weakest skills in this regard and requires a lot of work on my part. Suzanne said she would have a hard time with distance. She has a lot of confidence on individual obstacle performance that she can do obstacles at a distance with ease. What she can not do is take direction AND do obstacles at a distance. This is what I'm discovering with her. In training I break things down and in pieces she can get it but when put together she has trouble keeping two ideas/thoughts in her head to be able to change direction or do discriminations at a distance. She will either head to what is in front of her but if she is derailed I can not redirect her at all unlike my other dogs who will redirect. The other thing she has a hard time with when outside in a field is "auto check-in." She can do it in familiar surroundings that are not too distracting if my treats are good enough. At the livestock arena and outside in a field she would not both keep an eye on me and be able to keep sniffing. I work on this with all my dogs when they are puppies and take them to different places. When off leash I will make sharp turns away from them and when they catch up with me they get a treat. Then they can go off sniffing and anytime they check-in they get a treat. My other dogs do this with ease but Tay often has to be called and then she turns on a dime and comes.
I have also in the last three weeks been working on her doing front paw lifts/stretches as part of her rehab. I knew it would be easy to shape it but what I didn't expect was how difficult it is to refine it. I want to try to teach her to do one paw a few times and then switch to the other paw. Even after three weeks she still will offer each paw equally and wildly and can not seem to repeatedly offer the same paw over and over in spite of reinforcement to try to shape that. I am using my hands as the cue. I am considering teaching her to touch an object to see if that will make it clearer to her rather than touching my body part.
For comparison I decided to train my dogs who had not ever been asked to do this trick to review how they do it. Two of the dogs had very strong right paw preference and I had a hard time getting them to offer the left paw (Sinco almost fell over a couple of times trying to do it!) One dog had a strong left paw preference - Feisty ;) Tay does not have nearly such a strong paw preference. Suzanne said that both in dogs and humans that lack of handedness/pawedness is associated with a lack of bilateralization in the brain. This may also be linked to my difficulty in teaching her left and right which I train all my dogs to do.
On Friday afternoon I set up a session to video for Suzanne. I had been trying to come up with different scenarios to show what Tay does. We did one thing which is the start of teaching a dog to find someone or something. I showed her where I was hiding a treat. We went out of the room for 3-5 seconds and came back in and allowed her to search for the treat. She had a really hard time with this and after 45 seconds or so needed help. We repeated this two times each with two different spots. Each time she needed help after a long time. She was wondering around sniffing but seemed to have no recall where the treat was. Then I had someone else hide the treat in one of the two spots and brought her in and she could not find those either without help or after a long time searching. This was interesting so I wanted to see how my other dogs would do with this exercise. I used all the dogs I had who had never been taught any tracking or scent discrimination. Sinco remembered the treats right away and ran to them every time. Amigo the JRT did as well (especially after a potty break). Then I did it with Spring and Tobie. They both did better than Tay but took a bit more time than Amigo or Sinco but caught on pretty quickly. After a break we brought Tay back and tried it again with different treats and she did much better the second time and was more like Tobie and Spring on the second time. Tay is a highly food motivated dog who also if very smell sensitive and uses her nose constantly so one would think she could find a hidden treat easily.
In a few days I am going to try it again with Tay in the same place to see how she does. If she does well then I will move it to a new place.
I have a theory about Tay. I think she can learn behaviors quickly when there is a clear large physical object (stimulus) involved. All of the behaviors she does well involve some object that is pretty visible. The behaviors she struggles with involve body cues from me or no physical objects at all. I knew early on that obedience would not be a good sport for her and clearly that is true - the precision and awareness of my body cues is not a strong suit for her. Agility is a good sport for her.
Tay is very high functioning on the spectrum. But she is here to remind us that there is a spectrum of cognitive functioning in dogs like there is in humans. We have seen ranges in emotional functioning in dogs (i.e. reactive dogs). We often overlook the fact that some dogs may not be able to learn what we want to teach them, may have difficulty learning the way we are teaching them or may not have the innate cognitive ability to do it. I am very glad that I taught Tay with a clicker early on - I think that may have been the smartest thing to do for her. She does not do well with luring - but the clicker is very powerful for her. I have been learning that clicker training works well with autistic children. I don't think Tay has trouble socially, she is very non-reactive and friendly but she does mediate well between people she knows and those she doesn't know. I am busy reading resources that Suzanne has given me to brush up on cognitive psychology.
The good thing for me about Tay is that she is taking me back to my college and grad school psychology studies and now I'm getting caught up on the latest research in the last 20 years since then! It is very exciting for me.
Since this has happened in the last week a number of top trainers have shared similar stories where they thought it was the owner not having a clue about training the dog so the trainer took the dog home to try to work with it. The top trainer also had a hard time with the dog. So remember it is not always the owner's fault when a dog is not understanding a concept. Sometimes it is part of who the dog is.
So when first looking at a training problem - open your mind and ask the dog "who are you?" There may be physical reasons, mental limitations or relationship with the owner problems that are affecting training the dog.
Open your minds as well as your hearts and you will be amazed at what is out there!
Annelise who never ceases to learn from her dogs and her dogs never cease to teach her!
PS For those of you who want some light reading (or listening) - Suzanne and I recommend the Sapolsky lectures available at http://itunes.stanford.edu/ or at http://www.thegreatcourses.com/.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Leysha, run free sweet girl!
Rising Sun Leysha S-NATCH ADCH ATCH APD MX MXJ TN-E TG-E WV-O CDX STDs,d FM HSAs,d
6/22/96 – 3/18/10
Leysha has brought me full circle and yet she took me to a lot of new places. She was born next door to where we live now before I lived here. She was out of an “oops” breeding from a dog I always really liked. She was an easy dog to train but 13 years ago we were still just figuring out how best to train dogs for agility. She taught me a LOT about motivating dogs and about ring stress. She was the first dog of mine to be great in the backyard but at trials she would either not want to leave the start line or she would run out of the ring part way through the course. She helped me learn about doing short courses/sequences at trials to build confidence. It worked well enough for her to win the 20” Open Division at NADAC Championships when she was just two years old. She was very consistent and fast enough for any agility organization. Our last competitive run together was in the Veterans Grand Prix Finals at the 2003 USDAA Nationals where she placed 2nd. It was a wonderful run that I can still see clearly as if it were yesterday (and I haven’t even watched the run on the DVD yet). Yes she was retired at age 7 because she clearly did agility for me and I had always promised her that we would do herding together. We focused on herding and obedience for the next couple of years before her complete retirement from the competitive world.
She got me started in competitive herding – it was what she loved doing best. She did most of it in spite of me – I learned from her how much natural talent in herding is a good thing but also how important foundation skills are for good teamwork in herding. We didn’t have the foundation skills. But we had fun. She loved herding ducks best , and she loved it when we moved to Stacy and had sheep and ducks that she needed to herd and keep in line.
She also did flyball (not the speediest but VERY consistent). She and I did obedience but the stress of Utility competition was too much for her and I retired her before she was able to earn a leg. She loved her retirement. She loved running around the front yard keeping an ever watchful eye on the sheep and ducks.
Leysha was also very willing to help students learn agility handling. She had a sense of humor about it and would stop in her tracks and look at them if they were not at all clear – even if she had a pretty good idea of where they wanted her to go. I think she took perverse pleasure in pointing out handling mistakes.
She and I went to NADAC Championships, AKC Nationals and USDAA Nationals. She was always very good with the many puppies I have had here and was firm but tolerant of them. She didn’t like a lot of out of control playing unless she was involved. Her favorite toy was a jolly ball which she would obsessively play with through the woods and the barn.
She also got to see me into the new school and spent some time there with me and she was able to see me through this latest transformation. After a couple of weeks where she was not doing well after a bad seizure we got her meds stabilized and I got a gift of a couple of weeks where she was bright-eyed, running around supervising the youngsters, getting into the toilet paper rolls, and cleaning out pockets of pants. I treasure those two weeks and spent a lot of time with her and appreciating everything about her. They are never with us long enough but I’m grateful for the time I had with her and all that she has shared with me. She and I have been together many times and I am sure that she and I will be together again sometime.
http://www.agilecanines.com/AgilePack/Leysha.html
6/22/96 – 3/18/10
Leysha has brought me full circle and yet she took me to a lot of new places. She was born next door to where we live now before I lived here. She was out of an “oops” breeding from a dog I always really liked. She was an easy dog to train but 13 years ago we were still just figuring out how best to train dogs for agility. She taught me a LOT about motivating dogs and about ring stress. She was the first dog of mine to be great in the backyard but at trials she would either not want to leave the start line or she would run out of the ring part way through the course. She helped me learn about doing short courses/sequences at trials to build confidence. It worked well enough for her to win the 20” Open Division at NADAC Championships when she was just two years old. She was very consistent and fast enough for any agility organization. Our last competitive run together was in the Veterans Grand Prix Finals at the 2003 USDAA Nationals where she placed 2nd. It was a wonderful run that I can still see clearly as if it were yesterday (and I haven’t even watched the run on the DVD yet). Yes she was retired at age 7 because she clearly did agility for me and I had always promised her that we would do herding together. We focused on herding and obedience for the next couple of years before her complete retirement from the competitive world.
She got me started in competitive herding – it was what she loved doing best. She did most of it in spite of me – I learned from her how much natural talent in herding is a good thing but also how important foundation skills are for good teamwork in herding. We didn’t have the foundation skills. But we had fun. She loved herding ducks best , and she loved it when we moved to Stacy and had sheep and ducks that she needed to herd and keep in line.
She also did flyball (not the speediest but VERY consistent). She and I did obedience but the stress of Utility competition was too much for her and I retired her before she was able to earn a leg. She loved her retirement. She loved running around the front yard keeping an ever watchful eye on the sheep and ducks.
Leysha was also very willing to help students learn agility handling. She had a sense of humor about it and would stop in her tracks and look at them if they were not at all clear – even if she had a pretty good idea of where they wanted her to go. I think she took perverse pleasure in pointing out handling mistakes.
She and I went to NADAC Championships, AKC Nationals and USDAA Nationals. She was always very good with the many puppies I have had here and was firm but tolerant of them. She didn’t like a lot of out of control playing unless she was involved. Her favorite toy was a jolly ball which she would obsessively play with through the woods and the barn.
She also got to see me into the new school and spent some time there with me and she was able to see me through this latest transformation. After a couple of weeks where she was not doing well after a bad seizure we got her meds stabilized and I got a gift of a couple of weeks where she was bright-eyed, running around supervising the youngsters, getting into the toilet paper rolls, and cleaning out pockets of pants. I treasure those two weeks and spent a lot of time with her and appreciating everything about her. They are never with us long enough but I’m grateful for the time I had with her and all that she has shared with me. She and I have been together many times and I am sure that she and I will be together again sometime.
http://www.agilecanines.com/AgilePack/Leysha.html
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tables, Tables, Tables
We had a great time at the USDAA trial this past weekend. Sinco earned her PD3 title in very short time. She was in PD3 standard for only two trials!
The biggest personal Q was Feisty's awesome table performance on Sunday's Advanced Standard run. The table was very close to the edge of the ring and very close to where a timer, scribe and bar setter were sitting. The bar setter was a tall man who I've worked with in the past for proofing her tables. She is often stressed out by him when doing agility but not when she sees him away from agility. The table was also near the speaker box which had spooked her during her snooker run. I did a lot of desensitization outside of the ring near this area before our standard run. Feisty ran non-stop to the table and got on and laid down immediately with her back to the people. I praised her the entire time on the table and smiled at her. I was thrilled! I thought for a moment about leaving to a party but I remembered the last time I did that I spooked her by being too loud and excited and then she was afraid to do the table near me! So I opted to just be happy while she was there and continue on the course. I've spent a year and a half working on her stress over the table. I have not run her in an AKC Excellent Std class in maybe 9 months or more.
Some folks have asked what I've done to work on this problem, well I've done a LOT of work on it! I decided to not give up on it. The problem started in July of 2008 when at an AKC trial the judge had a loud booming voice and Feisty noticed for the first time a judge's presence while she was on the table. She was visibly distracted and could not focus the rest of the run. She would not go near him when he was judging the JWW class - she knew he was there. So I thought at first it was just an individual judge thing or maybe a male judge thing. But then it generalized to a table problem at trial after trial. She would stop and sniff the table and not get on, she would run away from the table, she would slam on the breaks and refuse to move, she would jump on and then off immediately - you name it she did it.
So I first started by leaving the ring to a big treat party when she got on the table. In the meantime she discovered that judges sometimes laugh when she does her table refusal antics. She loves to make people laugh. So I started to not be able to get her to go on the table at all. I stopped running her in AKC standard classes at that point. I took her to a group class where I could enlist the help of other students to hover around the table and also be major distractions around the course. This was very stressful for her - she had a hard time working through people crowding her on course. She would be fine with people outside the agility ring but not inside it. I had varying degrees of success with this project. I also had my students hang out after class to act as distractions for her.
I used CPE as a good place to train the table because it is the last obstacle in the games so what better way to have a party for getting on the table. Well she was sometimes reluctant to get on the table in CPE. I lost a few Qs because she took too long to get on the table. One time she did get on the table and it was part of the Jackpot class and I was so excited that I scared her with my excitement! That set us back a bit in CPE last summer.
In USDAA Feisty has been pretty good about getting on the table in most cases. There have been a couple of USDAA trials where she balked at it and it took a few seconds to get her to go on it. But this weekend is a major breakthrough for her to get right on the table when so many people were just a couple of feet away from it and it was a male judge in the ring. It was also in a ring where earlier that day and the previous day she experienced some stress. While it is way too early to tell I am thinking positive thoughts for our next AKC trial which will probably be this summer.
I have advised some of my students to reward their dog's table performance by leaving the ring after the table to a party. Mixing up when those rewards come at trials is so important to keeping ring performance fresh and consistent. We too often take our dog's good performance for granted until it deteriorates to the point of losing Qs. This is hard to do but it is SO important to improving a dog's performance in a trial setting. No amount of run throughs or open ring time will be the same as a trial setting.
So we'll see how things go this summer at our next AKC trials.
Annelise
The biggest personal Q was Feisty's awesome table performance on Sunday's Advanced Standard run. The table was very close to the edge of the ring and very close to where a timer, scribe and bar setter were sitting. The bar setter was a tall man who I've worked with in the past for proofing her tables. She is often stressed out by him when doing agility but not when she sees him away from agility. The table was also near the speaker box which had spooked her during her snooker run. I did a lot of desensitization outside of the ring near this area before our standard run. Feisty ran non-stop to the table and got on and laid down immediately with her back to the people. I praised her the entire time on the table and smiled at her. I was thrilled! I thought for a moment about leaving to a party but I remembered the last time I did that I spooked her by being too loud and excited and then she was afraid to do the table near me! So I opted to just be happy while she was there and continue on the course. I've spent a year and a half working on her stress over the table. I have not run her in an AKC Excellent Std class in maybe 9 months or more.
Some folks have asked what I've done to work on this problem, well I've done a LOT of work on it! I decided to not give up on it. The problem started in July of 2008 when at an AKC trial the judge had a loud booming voice and Feisty noticed for the first time a judge's presence while she was on the table. She was visibly distracted and could not focus the rest of the run. She would not go near him when he was judging the JWW class - she knew he was there. So I thought at first it was just an individual judge thing or maybe a male judge thing. But then it generalized to a table problem at trial after trial. She would stop and sniff the table and not get on, she would run away from the table, she would slam on the breaks and refuse to move, she would jump on and then off immediately - you name it she did it.
So I first started by leaving the ring to a big treat party when she got on the table. In the meantime she discovered that judges sometimes laugh when she does her table refusal antics. She loves to make people laugh. So I started to not be able to get her to go on the table at all. I stopped running her in AKC standard classes at that point. I took her to a group class where I could enlist the help of other students to hover around the table and also be major distractions around the course. This was very stressful for her - she had a hard time working through people crowding her on course. She would be fine with people outside the agility ring but not inside it. I had varying degrees of success with this project. I also had my students hang out after class to act as distractions for her.
I used CPE as a good place to train the table because it is the last obstacle in the games so what better way to have a party for getting on the table. Well she was sometimes reluctant to get on the table in CPE. I lost a few Qs because she took too long to get on the table. One time she did get on the table and it was part of the Jackpot class and I was so excited that I scared her with my excitement! That set us back a bit in CPE last summer.
In USDAA Feisty has been pretty good about getting on the table in most cases. There have been a couple of USDAA trials where she balked at it and it took a few seconds to get her to go on it. But this weekend is a major breakthrough for her to get right on the table when so many people were just a couple of feet away from it and it was a male judge in the ring. It was also in a ring where earlier that day and the previous day she experienced some stress. While it is way too early to tell I am thinking positive thoughts for our next AKC trial which will probably be this summer.
I have advised some of my students to reward their dog's table performance by leaving the ring after the table to a party. Mixing up when those rewards come at trials is so important to keeping ring performance fresh and consistent. We too often take our dog's good performance for granted until it deteriorates to the point of losing Qs. This is hard to do but it is SO important to improving a dog's performance in a trial setting. No amount of run throughs or open ring time will be the same as a trial setting.
So we'll see how things go this summer at our next AKC trials.
Annelise
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