2009 Accomplishments & 2010 Goals

It's been several years since I did an end-of-the-year review of goals accomplished and also wrote down goals for the coming year. Here's what I've come up with:

Accomplished in 2009:
DOGS
Java
has now lived longer than any previous dog we've had :-) (he's 12 3/4 now). Still his jolly/curmudgeonly self.
Gryffin
finished his UDX & OM1, got pretty close to finishing his OTCH.
ran in our first Master Hunter test in July
earned 2 legs (of needed 5) on his MH - a dream come true :-)
Ty
earned her CDX
made a lot of progress on her advanced field work
ran in her first Senior Hunter test in September, completing all but the water blind reasonably well (and I knew we weren't really ready for that part)
getting serious about Utility training

Joker
earned his CDX
getting serious about Utility training

Self
made good progress on updates to Positively Fetching.
learned a ton about field work, but know there's a lot more to learn
had one of the best summers of my life, getting to train field almost daily
chipping away at dejunking house & life
worked out at Curves reasonably consistently
chaired successful obedience/rally trials
served as coordinator at club's Master Hunter stake

Goals for 2010
SELF
House dejunking - keep it up!
FlyLady work
keep using Things and gettin' organized via 'Getting Things Done'
work out consistenly
walk or run a 5K
Finish out MWFCR Presidency smoothly
Keep on top of MB's trial work
Travel trailer?
Apprentice for several weeks with field trainer

NDT/JABBY/WORK
Get Totally Fetching finished and released
Get started on DOR project
BNI membership

GRYFF
Finish his OTCh.
Finish his MH
Submit HOF info
Agility?

TY
Get her SH
Start her UD and beyond journey - Utiility by National in June
Advance her MH work
Agility

JOKER
Earn RE
Earn UD

Cleveland Trials

Gryffin and I got a 3rd place in UB on Saturday December 12 at the big IX-Center trials in Cleveland, winning a runoff, earning a 197+ (1st & 2nd places had a 198). Gryff worked superbly :-). 2 more points, so now we're down to single digits (need 9) to finish his OTCh..

In OB, he sadly failed the DOR again. This time, there was only a slight hesitation. On reflection, I'm really not sure he heard the command. The rest of the class was grand. I did not do stays. I didn't want to waste them and frankly, my left leg was aching so badly (that's another story), I was sure not feeling tippy-top.

I am really, really happy with his attitude and how he's working. His fronts and finishes were excellent that day - only 1/2 off for one bad finish in Utility, and zippo off on fronts.

We didn't get any more OTCh. points on Sunday, but did manage a Q in UB, which gives us 3 UB Q's in a row. Gryff made two dumb errors - he spit the glove out on my foot when the judge said 'Take it' on the Directed Retrieve. That cost us a point. Then, for some unknown reason, he skipped the front on the signal recall and went right around to heel. While AKC recommends 5 points off for an auto finish, not all judges take that much, and fortunately for me, today's judge took off only 3. When I released him after that, I gave him what I thought was a little goose in the ribs, and he barked at me (he tends to talk back when I correct him - guess he maybe thought about his goof?). So I went in to the awards ring hoping we earned at least a 190, and ended up with a 193.5. I was very pleasantly surprised, I have to say.

He worked a very nice Open class, but went down on the sit at 1:55. It was order 5 again (same as the previous Sunday's), which has the down stay first. He lost 2 points on the individuals, so would have been in contention for at least being in a runoff for a placement (a 198.5 won the class). I don't think I was as disappointed as last Sunday, but I may just bag doing Open. It is just getting so frustrating to have him work such a fine class and then to fail the stays. Since he has his UDX and OM1, he really doesn't need to ever show in Open again.

In spite of two OB NQ's, I really, really enjoyed showing Gryffin this weekend. He was his fun, jolly self in all 4 classes, and I felt very confident walking in the ring with him. He was a fine teammate, and I felt like we were really clicking.

Next up will probably be several UB classes at some local trials in mid-January - there will be 4 days of trials, Th-Su, with 2 trials both Sat & Sun. I certainly won't do all of those, but 2-3 days most likely.

Joker & Ty Utility Training Update

As field training has been winding down, I've been managing more obedience work, particularly articles with both Ty and Joker.

I start my dogs off with Janice DeMello's 'Around the Clock Scent Discrimination', because I like the enthusiastic attitude it helps to produce. However, I've had a few of my own dogs and several students who were flummoxed the week the cheese goes from a microscopic dot to none. Joker was one of these confused critters. He would go out, pick up an article at random, and then turn and sit facing me. I finally got around to setting up a tie-down mat and I'm happy to report he seems to be grasping the idea. After 2-3 sessions with the articles tied tightly, he seemed to get over his anxiety about the whole thing, and is dashing out to the pile and back to me with a wagging tail. He's made enough progress that I loosened the ties on about half of them. I do 4 retrieves each time we do it, 2 of each type. I'm using a platform for the front to try to subtly work the front without having to work it. He's only occasionally tugging a tied one. I'm lengthening our distance from the pile, and need to have more and different people scenting them, but I'm hoping we're over the worst of his confusion.

He's got a pretty decent idea of directed jumping, the moving stand, and the directed retrieve. He is showing me what a nuisance it is to train a dog for Utility without a solid foundation of heel position - his pivots have been pretty ghastly, which make getting to the correct glove harder. I do see improvement on the pivots, though. I'm not looking for perfection, but I do want him close enough to heel position that he has a decent chance of following my mark signal. He dashes out and back to the glove, and mostly doesn't drop the glove on my foot anymore .

I now think signals are his least understood exercise. He's had the down and sit concept up close for most of his 8 years, but I only taught him the signal stand about a year ago. Somewhat to my surprise, he seems able to stand at a distance. I started counting steps when I leave him, and he doesn't really get signals, at least not the sit, much beyond 8 steps. Given that it was only 5 steps in mid-November, I'm happy with his progress.

I finally had Ty spayed last month, so her progress has been slowed because of that. I have her articles tied together in 2 sets of 4 articles. After using a tennis ball to reward a good delivery, she started working with a great deal of speed, but still mostly accurately. At home gloves have been mostly a no-brainer. Her biggest training lack is her signal stand stay. I put a small barrier out (same kind we used for drop on recall training) and stood her behind it and was dismayed to see how far across it she stepped as I walked away. We've spent a lot of time this past week working on 'stand still'. I put her on a 6-foot leash to reduce her sometimes wild leaping about that she offers. I do know where this lack of clarity comes from - I've used her for a year or so to demo clicker training the first night of my Fundamentals class, and one of the strongly reinforced behaviors is 'lie down and cross your front paws'. In the process, she also offers 'lie down and roll onto a hip'; 'lie down and put chin on the floor'; 'leap backwards out of the down', and probably others I'm forgetting about. So in trying to get her to simply stand still, she would start going through her repetoire. The use of the leash and clicking her for quite short stand stays has helped her make progress. While she does a decent signal down (a bit too much butt shift to my left, but not overwhelming), she also almost always immediately does her pop-up sit on her own. So I have also been clicking and treating her for holding her down longer, especially with her chin on the floor.

Both dogs do very nice full-length go-outs to a visible target here at home. I've done some work with Joker moving to targetting on a stanchion. Given the generous size of my training building, they've both done go-outs to several different backgrounds. All of Ty's field training blinds have given her a very strong response to my 'look' command (I want her to focus straight out when I say the command, and maintain that look). She just doesn't always wait for me to say 'go' :-). Joker's response isn't as strong, but he's getting there, too. He was showing a LOT of right arcing on go outs earlier in the week at a park, so I think I need to use center guides for him for a while.

Both need reminding via a side step on the first jumps we do each session, but are jumping full height confidently. I haven't started jumping them from off center (for corner go-out disaster recovery, something I'm a strong proponent of).

Both dogs have a reasonably good stop on the moving stand, though I've not done much having other people exam either one. Both can do a decent call to heel.

It's fun to be teaching/solidifying some new stuff that isn't Open :-).

Goals Revisited

When you are first learning a new sport, it is difficult to understand how to get to the end goal that the sport requires, because you haven’t made that journey before. This can be a frustrating aspect of learning a new sport.

I’ve spent the past four months training my two Flat-Coats for AKC hunt tests, pushing to get Gryffin and me to the Master level (we earned our first two Master passes in September) and Ty to the Senior level. Gryffin is my first hunt test dog, so each new level is new for both of us. He’s had to suffer my field-training learning curve. One of my frustrations with learning how to prepare us for hunt tests is figuring out what we should be training on a day-to-day basis. What have I done to ease this frustration? I pull out my many books and saved magazines and read (and read and read). By nature, I am inclined to think that if one book on a topic is good, six is better. I’m like this no matter what I’m trying to learn, whether gardening, parenting, organizing, or dog training. I like to read a lot of similar and different ideas, and sift through and figure out what is likely to make the most sense to me and to my dogs. What issues are they having? What drills can we work on by ourselves or with one training partner to advance my dogs’ understanding of a given concept? I also talk to different trainers who’ve done advanced work AND whose training makes sense to me, as well as spending time training with them if possible.

Before I finished my first OTCh title on my Flat-Coated Retriever Tramp in 1991, I was really unsure about reaching that pinnacle, even though she had the needed 1st places and 40+ points. With the subsequent dogs with which I’ve earned an OTCh., I really never doubted that we’d get there, as long as I was willing to keep plugging away at the training and showing. When I start training a new dog, an OTCh. title is usually one of my lifetime goals for that dog, but I also know that it will take me several years to get there. How do I keep myself training when I know it’s going to take me a long time to get where I’m going? First of all, I want to build a strong foundation for the various sports I plan to do with that dog. I love teaching foundation work. I enjoy the step-wise progression towards the advanced exercises. Because there are lower-level titles that need to be earned before getting to the OTCh. level, I have those as intermediate goals.

Of course, when you are new to a sport, you don’t even know what concepts you need to prepare your dog for. This is when having a mentor to help guide you along the way is immeasurably helpful. Gail Dapogny, who taught the first Puppy K class I took in 1985, took me under her wing about a year into my training endeavors, and helped me catch the fever for both competition obedience and working for excellence with my dogs. In my area of the country (southeast Michigan), there are now numerous trainers, training schools, and clubs offering excellent training for competition obedience and agility. But what if you aren’t in such a lucky locale? Take yourself and a chair to some local obedience trials. Sit outside the rings and watch. Even better, volunteer to steward at a trial or fun match. You will learn a lot about what makes up a good performance, a poor performance, and an excellent performance. See how different exhibitors are with their dog(s). Do you like the way they work together? Find out where and how they train. Chances are that the well-prepared teams are either experienced or are fortunate to train with someone who is experienced. If you don’t have many local trials that you can attend, look for obedience performances on YouTube.

We each have a unique idea of what we like to see in a performance team. By watching numerous performances, you will start to develop an eye for what you are aiming for with your own dog. It might not be the same thing as I’m aiming for with my dogs. That’s one of the great things about obedience - there’s lots of room for different levels of goals.

It’s also not just about the goal, but the journey to that goal. As I wrote about in Setting Training Goals, I spend far more time training than trialing, and I look at trials as a test of our day-to-day training.

If you take your time developing a solid foundation with your dog, even if it takes a while, it pays dividends in the long run. It will make your time competing at trials more productive and successful.

Until next time, happy training!

KRD on Water

What, you ask, is KRD??? It stands for 'Key Relationship Drill', and it's a drill I read about in Evan Graham's book 'Secret of the Pros' while vacationing in early August. I did the drill several times (5 or 6) on land in August. It consists of one mark and several blinds set up in key relationships to that mark, including a blind that is tight behind the gunner (left orange line in upper photo), another that is well outside the arc of the fall (where the mark lands) (right-most orange line in bottom photo), another between the fall and the outside-the-arc blind (left orange line in bottom photo), and finally one under the arc made by the throw of the mark (right orange line in top photo).




The photos show the set up. The white blob was a stick man (white shirt on a hanger on a post) from which I threw the mark, and the mark landed about in the middle of the channel. For explanation purposes, I am numbering the blinds 1-4, left to right (the orange lines). I actually had white stakes at blinds 1 & 3, and my orange-noodled stakes at 2 & 4. After the dog retrieved the mark, I ran the blind behind the gunner 1st (blind 1). Both dogs have done blind 2 before a couple of times, most recently on Tuesday morning, which means they both were thinking about that blind when I wanted them to do both 1 and 3. We did blind 4 (right most one) next. Both of the dogs kept thinking about blind 2. I did blind 3 and then 2 with Gryffin, then repeated them 1, 4, 3. Before I did the drill with Ty, I had her do blind 3 from the left shore first. Though she didn't take an especially great initial line, at least she got in the water and started to swim. I then had her retrieve the mark, and then did the blinds 1, 4, 3, 2. When I reran 1, after first heading towards 2, I think it took only 1 or 2 casts, and then she was on the right line. Interestingly, Gryff wasn't quite so easy on his reruns. Ty had more trouble rerunning 4, but 3 was quite good. I really wanted to redo 2, but ran out of time and had to leave.

I will probably go back and do a similar set up tomorrow, but with the mark thrown from the other shore, right to left.

Ohio Valley Retriever Club Master test

I went to Coshocton, Ohio this weekend for the Ohio Valley Retriever Club's Master test, judged by Clarence Klaus and Bob Meyer. I could have run a test in Michigan again this weekend, but I wanted to see how we would fare away from Omega Farms, where we trained all summer.

The 1st series was in a field with lots of interesting features: hills, cover strips and clumps, small bushes, large shrubs, and some trees. We had two land blinds to start. The right blind was to the left of the middle flier station, which was mostly hidden behind a very large and tall hedge of shrubs that hid both the flier and left gun stations, and about 2/3 of the way toward the left mark. The left blind was quite a bit to the left of the left mark.

As I expected, our first blind was a bit shaky. I expected it because he's often a bit independent when we first have to handle in a test. He left on a reasonable initial line, but between the cover strips and the hill that he wanted to square, he kept getting further to the right. His first whistle sit was more of a squat, accompanied by a "Huh?" look on his face. He eventually got a nose full of the blind since there was a light breeze from left to right, and I then got a fine response to my left over to the blind. The 2nd blind was better in the team work department, though he was showing a preference for fading right on that one, too.

The marks were thrown right, left, middle (flier). The right one was thrown coming in right to left, landing in front of a large/tall bush. The left and longest mark was thrown coming in right to left, landing to the left of the huge hedge and giving a little bounce as it landed. The middle flier was thrown straight left to right. Our flier landed nicely right in front of a bush, making marking it very easy for me :-).

Head swinging has been something of an issue with Gryffin this year as we've been running more multiples. I'm very happy to say that he stayed completely focused on the right mark until the duck call sounded for the left mark. However, as soon as that duck landed/bounced, he swung his eyes back to that exciting flier station in the middle. He left on my release to the flier with hard-charging enthusiasm, flew up the hill to the bush, screeched to a stop and returned with it.

Partly because he didn't give a strong indication of preference on his return, I opted to pick up the longer left mark next, perhaps because I knew he'd gotten such a long look at the right mark. I can't quite say why I made the decision - it was one of those quick choices you make in the heat of a test. A lot of handlers had their dogs do the right mark next, followed by the left mark, and several dogs ended up getting sucked to the right blind and needing to be handled to the left mark. In any case, he rocketed away on an excellent line to the left mark, but passed the bird just a bit up wind, went past, and disappeared behind the hedge. I was concerned that he'd circle around behind the hedge and reappear at the flier station at the other end of the hedge, so kept scanning for him over that way. Fortunately, he reappeared, and after a bit more of a hunt, found the bird. His pick up was veeeeery slow - was he out there trying to give mouth to mouth??? - but he finally picked it up and delivered it. His long hunt on that showed in his heaving breathing as he delivered the bird. I gave him an extra couple of moments to catch his breath, cued him up ("Where's your mark? That's right. Good.") and sent him off. That long look paid off, and he had only the briefest of hunts before finding it. He picked that bird up much faster and delivered.

One of the judges commented that I was the first handler to handle the gun like I was out hunting. I responded that, to me, that is a high compliment, since I don't hunt, and I'm just faking it in what I hope is a safe enough manner when handling the gun :-).

The first series didn't finish until 4 pm. The 2nd series was set up in the only spot at Woodbury that I've trained at. It was a simple land/water double. We had to sit on a cooler in front of a bush. There was some fairly tall cover 6 feet in front of the line which kind of blocked Gryff's view of the land bird's fall, though he leaned in towards me to see the fall through the flattened path through the cover. It was thrown in left to right from behind a large bush, landing in some cover on a spit of land with some shallow water behind it and a big rock and trees on the right end of it. The right mark was thrown right to left off the dike that edges the pond, landing with a splash. The entry was a bit vague, and several dogs chose to run to the right of the true line to the bird closer to the shore, some even on the shore. Gryff did fade a bit that way, but not too badly. When I lined him up for the memory bird, he locked in, and when released, arrowed straight to it. Here's a picture of the memory bird in the 2nd series:


There were still just over half the dogs left (34 of 45 starters) to run the 2nd series Sunday morning, which meant we had a leisurely morning. I got mostly packed up, then went across the street to the field and set up a split casting drill. The field that appeared relatively flat in the dark actually had a nice slope to it, which meant a chance to practice angling up a hill, which neither of my dogs is particularly strong at (dogs like to square a hill, as Gryffin had done on his first blind on Saturday). I got some nice work from bored Ty, then ran Gryff on the drill. As often happens when we do drills, he started out a bit on the slow and tentative side, and then got stronger and ran harder and harder. We ended on a beautiful straight line angling across the hill to the right pile of bumpers. Good boy!

I was hoping that the concentration on water work we'd done since our last test would pay off in the 3rd series, which I knew would have to contain at least a water double, a walk-up, and an honor. Considering a week ago I wasn't sure Gryff would be recovered enough from his mystery illness to even start the test (he was ill when I got back from a judging trip to Wisconsin Labor Day weekend), I was very happy to be even getting to attempt the 3rd series.

Since I was conveniently driving by, I stopped to take a look at the set up for the Senior land series, because Ty and I are entered in our first Senior test next weekend. While what gets set up is dependent on the land or water available and what the judges decide, it's always educational to take a look. The grounds are outstanding in what they offer for testing (not to mention training). I'd love to go and spend a week camping and training there!

The 2nd Master series had finished and all but one dog advanced to the 3rd series, including us. I found where the water was going to be, and heard mutterings about what the judges were setting up, including possibly a pair of in-line marks on the left side of the pond. Having trained on in-lines on land the previous Thursday, I felt at least somewhat prepared. Turns out the mutterings were wrong :-). The swampy pond was below the road level by 20-30 feet, so there was quite a steep hill to navigate getting to the last holding blind. The test consisted of a short walk-up, with the marks thrown left, middle, right. There was plenty of separation between the middle and right mark. Here's some fuzzy pictures taken on my cell phone camera (better than nothing!):

This smaller pool is just to the left of the chopped-off cattail path visible in the next picture.

The 2nd mark fell in open water beyond the last strip of cover that was beyond the cat tail path.

The double trees on the left in this picture are on the right in the blind picture:

The test was taking 8-10 minutes per dog, so by the time the series got under way, it was after 11 AM. As expected, we got to the line shortly after noon. We did the walk up, the birds went off (rather more rapidly than in the 1st two series), and after hearing our number from one of the judges, launched Gryff for the right mark. His duck landed just in the front of a cat tail clump, and he went swimming past it without apparent recognition. He got to the next clump, then circled back behind, clambered through and got his duck. He picked up the left bird without any particular problem, and when I lined him for the middle bird, he looked out well, and charged into the cat tail path. He did a brief check when he got to the grassy strip before the open water, but then off he went for the 3rd bird. It was probably his best water triple with ducks he's ever done! Nice time to turn it up a notch, Gryff-man!

There was a dry shot to indicate the blind shot from the same station as the go-bird, and it really got Gryff up and ready. There was a decent little channel just to the left of the line to the blind to aim him at. I got Gryffin to the back of the cover fairly quickly, but had several stops and casts to get him through it and not going into the channel to the right. We also had some horsing around on the shore on the opposite side. I suspect that I would have lost control at the end of that blind 2 months ago (i.e., get the dog almost there and then have him disappear into cover high enough to not be able to handle him). After delivery of the blind duck, we went to the honor spot, and he was, blessedly, rock solid on that, watching the next dog's marks fall with interest but apparent understanding that he was done.

As we climbed up the hill to go back to the car, I didn't know if the effort was good enough to pass and earn our first Master leg, but I felt it was our best 3rd series of the 3 tests we'd run.

The 'water' was so icky (can you say smelly swamp?) that it was turning the goldens and yellow labs black. Someone mentioned a cleaner pond a short walk down the road, so I grabbed a bumper and Gryff and I went down there to rinse the worst of the muck off him. He thought fun bumpers and some more swimming were a fine reward for his efforts in the test.

The test didn't finish until just after 5 pm (!), so in the meantime, I went and found a secluded place and trained Ty a bit, teaching her a nice Master level blind via backchaining. It was nice to give her a chance to do something more than just the casting drill in the morning.


After an interminable wait while the judges decided who passed, the awards were passed out. Yes, we passed!!! That little scrap of orange ribbon with 'Master Hunter' on it (the club ran out of rosettes, so will be mailing them) shows me that it isn't a dream. It made the four hour drive home zip on by.

Next up: no resting on our laurels, we've got Hamden next weekend!

Ramblings on Ty's Progress in the Field

Ty has made such progress on her field work this summer. She's in the phase of training typically referred to as "Transition." This is the phase when a dog moves from a basically trained dog to one who you can handle on blinds, both land and water. The dog can also do more complicated marking set ups.

She ran her first cold land blinds on July 5, and has progressed to water blinds in the past month. I got some sage advice from Bunny Milliken after Gryff's and my 2nd Master test, which was to concentrate on water work until the weather gets too cold. Her biggest problem has been understanding that she should get in the water and swim, not get in and then turn around with confusion to look at me. While we still have a long way to go, the consistent work on simple water blinds is paying off.

Her ability to tread water was lacking, as was her ability to turn in a tight spot to face me. What really helped was taking Mitch White's advice, which was to hold a bumper in front of me, talking to her, shifting my weight from foot to foot, and swapping the bumper from hand to hand. I finally saw the look I wanted from her - staying in place, head lifted up out of the water with her ears up and her attention on me (well, probably the bumper, but that's okay!). Initially, she always turned clockwise when she would hear my sit whistle in the water (also her typical turning direction on land). Convincing her to take a right back after the too-large clockwise circles took a while. It still isn't easy to change her mind about where she's going once she's convinced she knows her destination, either on land or in the water. I would imagine that will be one of our long-term projects.

This spring, I realized that we needed to backtrack to help her to better understand the desired response to an e-collar correction. I had been tip-toeing around using the e-collar with her because her response to the corrections has always been different than Gryff's, and even a low-level correction could cause a too-dramatic reaction. In the past, I wouldn't usually see progress after a correction until the next day. It was almost as though she needed some time to think about it. With her increased understanding of what the corrections mean, I usually see improved effort within a couple of repetitions. This has also contributed to her progress.

I am finding it very interesting learning to handle her on blinds vs. handling Gryffin (he's my first handling dog). Timewise, he's about 3 years ahead of her in training, but because of my increased knowledge, she's had more exposure to advanced concepts than he did at a similar stage. My membership at Omega has also made a huge difference, simply because of the many varied training opportunities that the property presents.

Last year, I stopped field work in late August because of the need to gear up for the fall obedience trials. This year, I'm thinking about how to continue fitting at least some work so we don't lose too much of what we've all learned this summer.