Northfield Natter

Reflections on a lot of NQs

2012-01-29T21:45:00.000-05:00

I showed Ty last weekend at the Really Big all-breed dog show/obedience & rally trials in Novi. Actually, we showed Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. There were 2 trials Friday-Sunday. On Thursday, we did Open B first, and she NQed right off the bat on the Drop on Recall. She stood up, took one step and froze. A second verbal command had no impact. She responded to my signals to complete the exercise. She also didn't start nicely with me on the heeling, and didn't do her finish on the broad jump. All pretty weird for her. The good news, though, is she did her stays. In Utility that day, we passed and got 4th place. It would be our only Q for the weekend.

On Friday, we did Open B in the morning trial and Utility in both trials. She had a respectable showing in Open B, did her sit stay, and then sat up, stood up, and walked forward on the down stay. She did that 3 times in the spring, but I thought we had it licked. Apparently not :-(. In the morning Utility, we had order IV, which starts with the Moving Stand, followed by Directed Jumping. She walked in on the MS finish, something that hasn't happened before, and had an attention blip right before I cued the left jump, so it took two commands for her to jump. Phooey. The rest of the class was decent. In the afternoon trial, I decided to purposefully try something I had done at the Saturday trial in Dayton 2 weeks before. At Dayton, it was accidental - I fed Sonic right before I took Ty into Utility, and Ty was a wild thing, but passed everything. At the recent trial, she was again a wild child, but this time couldn't hold it together. She did have a perfect score on Signals (we did order I) for the first time. She bounded out to the article pile, started to grab one, thought about maybe checking others, gave up and dashed in with a wrong one. Then on the Moving Stand, she forgot to stop. The DJ was very good, especially considering there were two spectators standing just beyond the gate near where she had to get her glove and sit on the go-outs.

I stayed well into the evening to participate in a conformation puppy match with Sonic. A friend stayed with me and videoed Sonic and me. I looked like a dork gaiting her and Sonic looked a bit like a spider on a leash - she's kind of long everywhere right now. It was snowing on the drive home, but my wonderful Burb got me home safe and sound.

I was grateful to stay home on Saturday and didn't do a bit of work with the dogs!

I was entered in the afternoon trial Sunday with Ty and Sonic was entered in the 4-6 month Beginner Puppy class. We did Utility first, order IV again, and darned if she didn't walk in on the Moving Stand finish again. Her first go-out was shaky, followed by the high jump on our right. On her 2nd go-out, she started down the center, got almost even with the jumps, then veered to jump the high jump. Huh??? This has simply not been an issue for her. The 2nd article was in the center. She searched and searched and searched, and searched some more, never one smelling the right one. She finally gave up and brought a wrong one. I put her away and dashed off to show Sonic. I was surprised how much bigger and more mature Sonic looked than the other Sporting group puppies. She was the only Flat-Coat, so we got to go into the baby puppy group. Sonic was pretty well behaved, except for sniffing the carpet we were showing on quite a bit the first time we gaited. We were also-rans in the group, dashed back, and showed Ty in Open B. She got through her individuals fine, did her sit stay again (yeah!), but scratched and sat up on the down stay as we were leaving the ring to fail it again.

There we were, ending up 1 for 7, garnering 9 more OM (Obedience Master) points. I think that brings her total to 186, so we are two more solid Qs away from finishing her OM1. I had really hoped to do that this month, but it wasn't meant to be.

So I explain all of this as a backdrop to my ruminating on all of those NQs. Because I've been keeping a training log, I was able to look back on my training to see why things fell apart.

The first reason is that I've never shown Ty in obedience at that busy of a trial. It was a pretty tough site, and there were a lot of NQs for a lot of people. I was in good company.

The second reason was we had only 10 days between the Dayton weekend and when we were back in the ring at the Thursday trial at Novi. I've been fighting a sinus infection for weeks now, so my energy is lacking. I trained on 6 of those 10 days, plus did a sit stay on one of the other days. I did almost NO directed jumping, and that really showed. I only trained articles once, because she's been pretty darned solid on them. Oops. We only worked the drop on recall a couple of times.

The bright spots from the weekend: the things we worked on most - sit stays and signals - she passed each time. That is huge for her. Her attitude in the Friday afternoon trial was great, which makes me want to work on the whole jack potting thing more in training to see if we can improve her attitude, which usually improves her effort.

Because of my training log, I am far less discouraged by all those NQs, because there were several contributing factors. We'll get that OM1. It just won't be in January.

Training Logs

2012-01-29T21:15:00.001-05:00

I have long been an on-again-off-again record keeper when it comes to training my dogs. I do endeavor to write down our score breakdowns after every trial, including talking to the judges to get details of exactly where we lost points in their ring. I also get every run videoed that I can. Now that I have an iPad 2, that is what I'm using for 'taping' my runs. It means I don't have to take along the video camera, make sure it is charged up, nor make sure I have a useable tape. All of that is a huge win in my opinion. And the big screen is much nicer to watch my runs on than the little video camera screen.

When I got an app called 'Noteshelf' for the iPad last August, I started creating training log pages to use to keep track of our training and exercise endeavors. Here is the blank one I'm using for Ty's training. Ty is competing in Open B and Utility B, and we're mostly doing maintenance.

Here is the most recent page from the log book filled out in Noteshelf. I use the thumbs down icon to indicate that Ty went down on a sit stay. The highlighted circles are what I plan to do before I start. Sometimes I do all of them, sometimes I don't. There is no significance to the blue checks vs the red Xs. Just which icon I chose to use on that day.

Something I can note from this log is that I didn't do any special work on fronts in the week leading up to the recent trials, and that showed up in our ring performances. If I want our scores to nudge up enough to be in the placements, I need to spend time on them.

I had Ty checked in early January by my local rehab vet. In part because of my training log, I was able to tell the vet that Ty had gone down on sit stays 4 times in 2 days. In the past, when I haven't been training stays much, I've attributed the sit stay failures to that lack of practice. But I was doing them regularly and got thinking maybe it wasn't just a training issue. Sure enough, Ty had a sore triceps muscle. As my vet said, the tricep is an anti-gravity muscle, so it could certainly contribute to her lying down on her sit stays. I was so proud of her qualifying in Open both days at the Dayton trials.

With Sonic, I've got an obedience log and an 'other' log - for field related drills, conformation, and grooming. This helps me remember that it's time to trim her nails again (something I put off as long as possible with the big dogs).

Of course, I AM a computer geek, so I love using the iPad for note taking. How do you plan and keep track of your training?

2011 Goals review/2012 Goals

2011-12-31T18:34:00.000-05:00

Joker (10), Sonic (4 months), Ty (7), Gryff (8)

One of the things I love about the week between Christmas and New Year's is the time to reflect on what I accomplished in the year that is ending, and writing up what I want to achieve in the upcoming new year.

I found my Dog Goals post from late 2010 yesterday. In it, I listed my 4 dogs, and 4 separate goals for most of them: Lifetime, this year, this month, this week. I forgot all about this document :-).

Java: Lifetime: OTCH UDX RE... already there

Quite unexpectedly, Java was suddenly sick, and we had him euthanized on January 30. I'm glad for him that it was such a quick ending. I have a lot of fond memories from that last month or two, when I was exercising the dogs a lot in the building, and he was right out there zipping around.

Joker

Lifetime: UD RE

Annual/2011

Finish UD. Finished in May. He earned his 3 UD legs in 8 trials, failing articles the most, and remarkably, failing every exercise except the Directed Retrieve. Remarkable because it was where he made the most mistakes in training.
Finish RE-- April

Coolest thing was getting that 3rd place for his 2nd UD leg, and earning a phantom OTCh point. I'm very glad that I ended up pursuing a UD with Joker. I think he really enjoyed the learning process, not to mention the chance to earn cookies, and it was fun being more concerned with qualifying than winning. It is helpful to be able to tell people that he didn't learn to retrieve until he was 5 years old. He needed to learn some exercises differently than my other dogs, further expanding my tool box of training options.

Gryffin

Get him sound! These next two depend on the 1st. Certainly better, but after a hard month of fall field training, he wasn't very sound.
Qualify for and attend 2011 NOI - he needs some # of OTCh points by end of June. Didn't happen, since we didn't show in any regular classes.
Qualify for 2011 Master National - he needs 4 more passes by July 31. Also didn't happen, but we DID run in 2 fall tests and pass one.

Lifetime: CH OTCH UDX OM2 MH (VERY tall order)

Annual/2011

Finish UD -- March 2011. She earned her 3 legs in 4 trials.
Double her lifetime Open Q's to 6 :-)-- Hey, we tripled her lifetime Open total - she's got 9!
Earn some UDX legs (I'm thinking 3-5 might be attainable)-- We got 2 UDX legs
Advance her field work: specifically, her understanding of water blinds and multiple marking set ups, both on land and water.-- I still can't imagine her passing a single Master test let alone 5 for the title, but she did show some marked improvements over the year before.

Ty also amassed 140+ OM points, and got an unexpected HIT and Open B 1st in November.

I think the best thing from this year is I feel like we have turned the corner in our training relationship. As Helen said, she's never before been my priority. She's always been in Gryff's shadow. With him retired from obedience, she's who I have to show, and she has stepped up and I think is enjoying the limelight.

My 2012 goals for my dogs

Joker - 10 years old

Having accomplished my LIfetime goals for him in 2011, he is now the resident retired dog in the family. Playing with Sonic helps keep him young.

Gryffin - 8 years old

Keep exercising him through the winter, with the hope of running several Master tests in 2012.

Ty - 7 years old

Finish her OM1.
Earn her OTCh. There, I said it! We'll see how it goes.
Earn her UDX. I actually think this will be the toughest one of the 3.
Earn her OM2. Haven't had one before.
Qualify in a regular class at the FCRSA National. Haven't managed that with her since her HIT Novice B debut.
Qualify for and attend the AKC NOI (National Obedience Invitational) next December in Orlando.
Field goals are vague. My pursuit of Master with her will depend on Gryff's soundness. I like having 2 dogs to train in field, but 3 is unwieldy.

Sonic - 4.5 months as I write this

She is such a dream to train! I haven't started a puppy so young for field, since I knew next to nothing about it when I started Gryff, so I have no sense of how good she's likely to be
in the field. She shows great promise for obedience.

Show her in conformation.
Have her ready to match in Novice by the end of the year.
Lay foundation for scent discrimination so she understands how to use her nose before completing her field basics.
Get her through field basics.
WC
JH
RN

Whistle sits

2011-12-17T21:42:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I worked on whistle sits with Sonic, which is something she'll need for handling on blind retrieves. I did it very much like I do cookie-toss downs, but using a platform that she has to come back to and stop and sit on. I was probably 6-8 feet away from the platform. I also did some calling her over it, like I do when working the CT down. What was interesting was that she was very good at getting to the platform from one direction, even from off center, but wanted to run by going the other way.

Here's a short video showing her doing the drill. I don't remember that I saw exactly this drill on Pat Nolan's website, but I was certainly inspired by his retriever training for puppies website.

Today, I put out a 2nd platform about 15 feet from the first one, similar to how I add a 2nd barrier to my Drop on Recall work. It increases the options from stop or don't stop to:

stop at the 1st one
stop at the 2nd one
stop at both
stop at neither.

It was fun and I think Sonic enjoyed it and was learning a useful skill.

I believe, I believe, I believe!

2011-11-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

Ty worked wonderfully again today at the Sunday Toledo KC trial. We did Utility B V first with judge Rich Strong. All was fine until the Signals. She did a lovely drop. When Rich signaled for the sit, I had this feeling Ty might pop up (which she has never done with a real judge, but several times in training) into her sit prematurely, and I didn't take my time and refocus on her before giving my signal. And, as many times before, she just lay there. One difference was that when I paused and then gave it again, she did it nicely. In the past, she has continued to lie there or stood up again. So I think it was progress :-). I told Rich that I felt I owned that goof. She certainly might have done exactly the same thing if I had waited, I'll never know. Rich seemed more disappointed than I (it's not like this was a surprising thing for her to NQ on, after all), and said something about us working a really nice class. And we did only lose 1.5 on the other exercises, so yes, it was a really nice class. For a change, though, I was more disappointed in myself than my dog, and very, very happy with the improvements she'd made since yesterday. Today's go-outs were rock solid, without the head checks we'd had on both yesterday. In fact, everything except the sit signal was mighty fine.

So no UDX leg was possible, but maybe we could get another Open B Q? She worked another nice class. I was especially pleased with her solid holds on her dumbbell fronts (Ty had THE worst fronts and holds with a dumbbell when we started that I've EVER had with a dog). I had an 'oh dear' moment on the broad jump when I noticed the middle board was closer to the last board than the first one, but she jumped it just fine. I tried not to get my hopes up too high before stays were over, since there just isn't a use in that! Yes, she did her sit stay and down stay! At the end of the class, there were about a zillion runoffs, but I wasn't called for one. Much to my stunned surprise, we WON the class with another 198.5! It netted us 6 OTCh points, the all-important-nearly-impossible-to-come-by-in-this-area Open B 1st, and High in Trial!

I grabbed judge Del Lund as he was heading home and begged for a picture.

Shaking Rich Strong's hand.

Ty's 1st All-breed High in Trial!

I am still so surprised because Ty's highest Open score before this weekend was a 197, and that happened in July, beating her previous best of 196. She hasn't ever worked as consistently as she did this weekend. To earn TWO scores of 198.5 was beyond anything I thought our team capable of.

So, my hat is off to you, Ty-Ty. Thanks for coming through so well this weekend, and convincing me that I just gotta believe...

Goals for Ty and Me, and TKC Today

2011-11-26T22:23:00.000-05:00

I showed Ty at the Toledo KC trial today in Open B and Utility B. We were just 1 for 4 at the October Marshbanks trials held at my building - so much for home court advantage! - but we hadn't done a huge amount of obedience after training field from July through early October. The Marshbanks trials did give me a read on the work we had undertaken on all the band-aided exercises from July (let's see, we were having issues with Signals, articles, broad jump, drop on recall, and stays... yeah, we were a mess), and we've been working pretty consistently on those weaker exercises in the past month. Ty is closing in on 7 years old (next month), and my goals have been rather vague with her. Sure, an OTCh. would be a lovely accomplishment with her, but I know what it takes, and I'm not sure I'm willing to work hard enough with her to get there, plus she can be such a worrier, great one day and lousy the next. We've also NQ'ed rather a lot this year. I've just spent time catching up Ty's career totals workbook. With our Q rate at 50% for 2011 - we've Q'ed in Utility 9 times in 16 tries and 4 times in Open in 10 tries - there is a lot of room for improvement. My most concrete goal has been to finish her OM this winter. Given all the weak exercises, a UDX has seemed a bit far fetched. Before today, Ty had 1 UDX leg, and 81 OM points, and 3 OTCh points, all earned 1 point at a time for 3rds or 4ths.

Ty's Signal Exercise has been an incredibly difficult one for her to master. I did what in retrospect was too much free shaping with Ty related to lying down when she was younger, and she tends to revert to throwing various behaviors at me when we work Signals - rolling on a hip, crossing her front paws, popping into a sit or a stand, putting her chin on the floor, dropping... My long-time student and friend, Raissa Hinman, gave me some excellent advice a few days ago when we were training. She suggested I do a lot of random treating for Ty doing nothing. Well, not quite nothing. But for holding her focus on me and waiting patiently after responding to a signal, instead of guessing what might earn her the next treat. I've tended to focus on the fact that she has failed the sit signal so many times in the ring as her NOT doing something. I think all the guessing has been terribly stressful for her. Ty is very devoted to me, but I tend to lose my patience with her fast. Training in field this past summer without the pressure of soon-in-the-future competitions helped my patience a lot, and was something of an "Ah-HA!" moment for me.

At the Marshbanks trials, Ty went down on the sit stay day 1 before I was completely out of sight, and at about 1 1/2 minutes on day 2. She showed me that weekend that doing stays a couple of times a week in class was not adequate. One would think, given my lousy history with stays, I would devote more time to them. Since Sonic the new puppy has joined the family (that's another post or three), she gets one more meal a day than the other dogs, so Gryff and Ty have to do stays while Sonic eats first thing in the morning. This has led to a few going down on the sit stay, since Ty is usually rather sleepy at that time.

We have been working much harder on the Open exercises in the past month than perhaps ever in her life, and I was actually feeling pretty optimistic about our changes for a Q.

I guess my biggest goal for the coming months is to qualify more often, since we can't get anywhere towards any of the on-beyond-UD titles without that. Reducing my nit picking and working more on attitude and 'do it right the first try' is a bit of a switch for me, but today showed me that I seem to be on a better track. Ty earned a 4th place in Utility B with a 192.5, good for 9 OM points and 1 OTCh. point. To me, she had an unremarkable indivual portion in Open B. I was just trying to concentrate on passing and keeping her attitude up. And of course there were stays to be gotten through. We did order V, which meant the down stay first. By golly, she qualified! When the class was over, I did a bit of warm up, just in case. We were indeed called in for a run off, 1st of 3 teams. I'm not crazy about Ty's heeling, because her position is quite different than my previous Flat-Coats. Parts of the runoff were good, but parts were not. I watched only part of the 2nd teams runoff, but know they are a great team. The 3rd team called in had won Utility today with a very high score, so I didn't even watch hers at all, figuring it would be nice. When the judge was getting ready to announce the scores, he said there were a lot of high scores that didn't place. Then said the 3-way runoff was for 3rd. I thought to myself, "Well, dang, we are 5th." I was ecstatic to earn 4th place with our hightest EVER obedience score with a 198.5. We were the only non-Tanbark Golden Retriever in the placements :-). So we picked up 15 more OM points, bringing her total to 105, just over half way to the 200 points needed.

I almost don't want to go back tomorrow. Almost. My big goal for tomorrow? Don't let today's successes mess with my plan. First, we must qualify.

Where I've been and what I've been doing

2011-11-26T22:10:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted much lately because of several factors:

I borrowed Flat-Coated Retriever Little from her co-owner Helen back in June when she was 9 months old (I wrote a brief paragraph about her in the post about the Maiden Voyage of T3) and trained her for several months, mostly for field, doing e-collar conditioning with her and force fetch. It was a win-win-win: good for me to practice my basics skills, as well as to have an unpolished dog with whom to demo in classes, good for Little because she got lots of training and learned to swim, and good for Helen, because she got a much more trained dog when I returned her in early October.
Gryffin bloated not once but twice on July 27, requiring emergency gastroplexy to have his stomach tacked. A silver lining to that terrifying episode is that his internal organs looked to be in good shape - no signs of any tumors, stomach showed no signs of damage from the torsion. I'd never seen a dog bloat before, but had little doubt once it started what it was. I have since seen this difficult to watch video of a dog bloating on YouTube. The dog survives, so please watch it so you can recognize the signs. Time is critical - many, many dogs die because their owners don't know to get them to a vet in time.
I went on a 9-day field training trip to Ohio in the travel trailer in late September/early October. Gryff was entered in two back-to-back weekends of Master tests, and Little was entered in her 1st Junior test. Gryff failed the 1st series in the 1st test, but got his 7th MH pass the next weekend in completely miserable conditions, and Little earned her 1st JH pass. My friend Corinne came and stayed with me in the trailer and we had an excellent time training during the in-between week.

I have a new puppy!!! Coastalight Prime Time, AKA Sonic, was born August 14, bred by Wendy Tisdall, who is from Nanaimo, BC in Canada. Training Little right up until I left to pick up Sonic helped me keep my excitement to a dull roar. I haven't had a baby puppy since Gryffin 8 years ago in 2003, nor an 8 week old puppy since Treasure in 1993. Sonic is a complete gem of a puppy, loving training and mostly not too naughty. She's 15 weeks old tomorrow. Sonic and I flew home on the day she turned 8 weeks, and we haven't missed any days of training except when I was away in Lakeland, Florida to do a seminar when she was 10 weeks old. Fortunately, I discovered Pat Nolan's Retriever Training for Puppies website before getting Sonic, and I've done a bunch of little exercises from his videos. This also got me started videoing Sonic's training, and there are now a couple dozen short training videos on YouTube. Look for them on my channel AdeleYunck or search for 'Sonic the FCR'. You can subscribe to the channel, which means you get a notification via email any time I post a new video. I have quite a bit of footage not yet edited and released. I'm trying hard to video her when we start something new, to show the rough edges that usually exist at the beginning. I also just started reading Denise Fenzi's blog about training her new Tervuren puppy Lyra, who looks to be about 2 weeks older than Sonic. It is interesting to see what she is focusing on vs. what I'm focusing on with Sonic.

So that's where I've been and what I've been doing. Training a LOT and loving it like crazy. I really do love puppies and training them.

Another fine training day in the field

2011-09-05T18:55:00.000-04:00

Marshbanks GRC is having our annual WC/WCX field test next Saturday @ Spencerfield near Concord, so we had a pond clean-up work day this morning and training after. About 8 of us met up with weed-whips and clippers and spent a couple of hours clearing out giant burr bushes, goldenrod, wild roses and blackberry bushes (ouch!). We really improved accessability. Then we moved up to one of the rolling hay fields that has a dozen or so big round bales and did some marking drills. The cover wasn't too high, so the young dogs got some great experience with running down and up hills to a reasonably visible target (big white bumpers), plus past the bales. The Big Dogs did two sets of converging in-line doubles. Then we did a WC double set up and then a triple for those who wanted to do it (I didn't. Little ran the 3 marks as singles VERY nicely, plus had her first exposure to gun fire out in the field). Then the Big Dogs did 4 slot blinds - using hay bales to define the path. Gryff lined 3 of the 4 - it is SUCH a thrill to be back working him so much and we are both in heaven. The next 2 dogs lined the 1st one, and had a fair bit of handling for the other 3 blinds. Ty had a very poor initial line on the first one and I could tell she was weanying out some, but I did get some nice casts from her and kept my patience with her. On water, I let Ty watch a blind get planted (several bumpers thrown out into a big patch of water lilies), then put her away. The path to the blind was about 20 yds of land diagonally across a swim-by pond corner of the pond, angling across a point with about 40 yds to the water lilies. Gryff took a good line to the point, but when I stopped him and gave him a left back, he jumped in and headed for the right shore. I recalled him to the point, got him back to the same spot, repeated the cast, and this time got the correct response. With Ty, I walked her out to the point and ran her from there first. Her initial line wasn't super, but she got into the water lilies without too much horsing around. I left her sitting with her bumper on the point, walked back to the other side and recalled her to there, then ran from there. As she likes to do, she squared her entry into the pond. Because I'm trying to avoid too much nit-picking, especially early, I let her swim across. She arrived about 10 yds to the right of where I'd sent her from. She got up on the point, turned left, moved down to that spot, turned, jumped in and swam right to the lilly pads without any intervention from me. We quit on that happy note. I had Jan throw a couple of marks for Little just in the water near the 2nd point and ran the mark 1st from the 1st point, then walked her back around and had Little repeat the mark, getting out and back in. She did a very fine job on it, reentering with no problem at all.

The solid week of training every day sure does pay off! I think Gryff is back in pretty fine form, Ty is getting braver, and Little has made some really nice strides.

Training Update

2011-09-03T12:33:00.000-04:00

I've had a really satisfying training week, mostly field, but with some obedience with Ty tossed into the mix. It is probably the most training days I've been able to string together since July. We were up north on vacation in early August, then the following weekend (Aug 20) we went to Wisconson for my nephew's wedding (probably the coolest and most joyful wedding I've ever attended, not to mention dancing up a storm with my extended family - fun, fun, fun!), and last weekend was my club's hunt test weekend. I coordinated one of the 2 Master flights, so was there from Friday early afternoon until Sunday afternoon. I got a chance to use my travel trailer again, and Gryff unexpectedly ran test dog. I had considered entering him in the test back in July, then when he bloated**, that idea went right out of my head. The person who had said she'd run test dog wasn't there on time (note to self: don't ask a pro who has a jillion entries to run test dog - just not gonna happen), so I pulled Gryff out. He hadn't seen a triple since last September, and needed to be handled to the long bird, but we managed it. His afternoon work wasn't much better, but Ty got to run bye dog (there was an honor in the 2nd series, which means an extra dog is needed to run the test while the last entered dog does the honor), and did a lovely job on the water double, much better than Gryff, actually. Sunday's series was a land/water triple with a double blind, both under the arc of the falls, one on land, one thru the end of the pond (middle mark had landed out in the pond). It was an extremely well designed test (Mitch White and Joe Smithberger were the judges), and my friend Corinne who was marshalling said she'd never heard so much discussion of how to run a test. There was a lot of variation in how people did it, some successfully, some not so much. It was so much fun to run, and I could tell Gryff had shaken off some of the rust from Saturday.

Best of all, he was sound after running the test, and has been doing well with the work thrown at him this week. So I'm looking to enter tests the last two weekends of September, with the hope of camping in the area (the tests are both in Ohio) and training all week.

Little, the young Flat-Coat I borrowed from my friend Helen back in June when she was 9 months old, came back last Monday for another month of training. But she came in season yesterday, so we'll see how that goes. I am really enjoying having the green dog to demo with in classes, I gotta say.

My Suburban customization is working out wonderfully. I love training out of it with the 3 dogs. And it is still organized, even after several weeks!

And I have my name on a litter of FCRs that will be 3 weeks old tomorrow. They are all the way out in BC, so, oh, no, I have to make another trip to Vancouver Island :-) (I was there in Feb). I don't have firm desire for boy/girl/black/liver (there are 3 brown puppies), which will hopefully make the choice broader.

** Gryff bloated on the morning of July 27, just after coming out of a pond from his 3rd water retrieve of the morning. I've never seen a dog bloat before, but it was pretty clear to me - staggering around trying to vomit (but failing to do so), looking shocky, abdomen swelling up). Ironically, given that two of my frequent training partners are vets, he bloated on a day when neither was there. With the help of Maria and her cell phone's GPS, we got to a vet within about 20 minutes and they got him back on his feet. His stomach had started twisting, so they had to do a needle aspiration to get enough air out to get a stomach tube into him. He ejected a lot of pond water and air, and reappeared looking tired but back to normal size. I took him home and kept an eye on him locked in an x-pen in my kitchen all afternoon, allowing him only small amounts of water at a time. That evening at about 7 PM, he started bloating again. Apparently he didn't want to wait for the stomach tacking surgery I'd scheduled for the next day; he wanted it on an emergency basis that night. I heard from the vet at midnight that he'd come through the surgery just fine, with no involvement of his spleen or pancreas (apparently, if the stomach twists in a certain way, it can wrap around other organs). His stomach lining looked good and the silver-lining to the whole thing, no sign of any cancer. I picked him up the next evening and took him home for recovery. He had about 20 staples running from breastbone to near his penis, but was being a good boy and mostly left them alone. Helen kept him when we went on vacation, and took the staples out the day we got back. I've been gradually ramping up his exercise and he doing great. Since he loves field more than anything in the world, that is what we are doing as much of as we possibly can.

Are You Ready?

2011-07-17T16:21:00.000-04:00

A recent theme in my classes has been the topic of how to know if you are ready to show, so I thought it worth exploring the topic here.

   When I was first starting out in obedience in the '80's, a common recommendation was that when you could go to three novel places (ideally fun matches) and do a run through just like you would in a trial - no food on you, no special training collars, no toys, no extra use of your voice - AND your dog would qualify on each exercise and you would be satisfied with the results, then you were ready to enter a real trial. I think this is still excellent advice.
   In the AKC Novice obedience class, your 200 points are broken down into 2 heeling exercises, worth 80 points, 3 stay exercises worth 90 points, and one recall exercise (which also contains a stay) worth 30 points. Of that 30 points, the sit in front is worth 3 and the finish is worth 3. Heeling is more important to your final score in Novice than in any other class, as are stays. It usually takes longer to teach a dog to heel well than most other obedience exercises.
    There is a large chasm between a perfect 200 and a just passing 170. To me, that is one of the wonderful things about obedience. You don't have to be perfect, or even all that close to it, in order to earn legs towards a title. There are a lot of factors that go into qualifying. First, there is the amount of training that a trainer puts into her dog. Most people who excel with a dog do so because they do their homework. Lots of homework. Yes, there are dogs who are easier to train and ones who are harder. Some dogs can handle a lot of repetition, some can't. Dogs usually learn and perfect obedience exercises via repetition, and lots of it, so it stands to reason that the dog who can handle a lot of repetition is going to reach the end goal a lot faster than the one who doesn't do well with repetition. But it isn't a race, so what's the rush? Sometimes students tell me, "Oh, we should be farther along with exercise XYZ." Since life has a way of interfering with our dog training at times, the reality is you are where you are with your dog, and you should just do your best to move forward.
     My most recently completed Utility Dog title (May 28, 2011) was with Joker the Border Terrier, who turned 10 in early May this year. We purchased him for my son when Chris was 12. They did agility training for a couple of years, but Chris wasn't interested in trailing, so they stopped. In 2006, I asked Chris if I could take Joker to a Border Terrier National, where he earned his first RN leg. Joker didn't learn to retrieve formally until he was at least 5 years old. He learned scent discrimination when he was 7. As long as you keep your older dog in good physical shape, there's no need to be in a big hurry. (Yes, I realize some breeds don't live a long time. Yes, you need to be in more of a hurry with them.)
    Are you practicing being silent when you heel with your dog? This is one of the biggest sources of stress for dogs transitioning into the obedience trial ring, especially if you have first shown in rally where non-stop chatter is acceptable. Their handlers help them too much in training, chattering, encouraging, fixing. No wonder dogs are confused! You have got to practice heeling for longer periods of time with your mouth shut and no extra help or encouragement from you. One of the exercises I do occasionally in my Novice Practice class - the holding point for students who have gone through my four 6-week Novice teaching classes - is the 30-second test. We do group heeling for 30 seconds or so, which is roughly the length of a typical Novice or Open heeling pattern. I call for halts, about turns, pace changes, etc. Before we start, I tell everyone to keep track of anything extra that they do that they couldn't do in the ring, whether praising, encouraging with their voice or body, correcting, or treating, and to just add it all together into one number. When the 30 seconds is over, I ask everyone for their number. Most people start out with at least 3-4. The goal is to get that down to zero on a consistent basis before trailing, or to at least have the errors you are fixing be small ones as opposed to ones that would cause a substantial deduction (3 or more points off). If your dog is frequently not sitting automatically when you halt, for example, this will blossom into a lot of points off and possibly even an NQ (non-qualifying score) under some judges in the ring.

Are you practicing without any treats or toys for even a few minutes at a time? How about for 5 minutes? Ten minutes? How about with no external motivators on you at all for that length of time? Your long-term goals will determine how important this stage is. The farther you hope to go (UDX, OMx, OTCh), the more critical it is. If you are only going to trial occasionally, and will stop after earning titles such as a UD, this weaning process is less crucial. But it is still important. Because I knew our path was "UD = U Done" with Joker, I didn't concern myself with perfection. At a match shortly before he finished his UD, he went 10 feet off center on a go-out. I didn't fix it. I sent him to the opposite jump, proving to myself that he would still jump from his incorrect destination. Yes, it is several points off when they end up off center. But it is not an NQ.

   When I'm preparing a new dog for Novice, I do a lot of heeling. I don't fix every little error. I know my dog will make some errors in the ring. If, during training, I always fix every little error, what will happen in the ring when I don't? I do make a mental note of any errors that are consistent, such as going wide on about turns when we are turning away from a wall or gate. If I'm seeing any consistent errors, I pull that part out of general heeling (or whatever the exercise) and do some drills in order to strengthen my dog's understanding and commitment to being correct. I also check on my handling. Am I doing something badly myself that is causing the dog to make his error? A common problem with dogs who go wide on about turns is that their handler steps to her left as she is doing the turn, causing the dog to go wide.
    I look at trials as a test of my training. Going into my most recent set of trials, I knew I hadn't been training as regularly as Ty needed. We had several shaky exercises. We showed in 6 classes, and NQed in 4 of them. But in the two in which we qualified, we earned 3rd places, and even 1 OTCh point. And much of the work she did that was qualifying showed some promising effort. I don't plan to enter any more obedience trials until October, since I want to take a break and work on field training for a few months. We also clearly have some homework to do on several obedience exercises. With time to train and effort on my part, we'll be more ready the next time.
     Nancy Gyes wrote an article called Train like you compete, compete like you train way back in 1997. It is specifically about agility, but there is plenty of help for anyone competing with a dog in any venue.
      Connie Cleveland has several excellent articles on her website. Here's one related to this month's topic, What Motivates a Dog to Perform?
      I hope this has given you some useful food for thought. Until next time, happy training.

Maiden Voyage of T3

2011-07-10T20:34:00.000-04:00

As I wrote about on June 21, I was planning on my first travel trailer trip to be to the Ann Arbor KC trial this weekend in Monroe. All DID go as planned. I seem to have given The Travel Trailer the nickname of 'T3'. Much easier to say. I brought it home on Friday June 24, after taking an hour of video of the guided tour of the trailer itself and of the hitching process. This has already turned out to be an excellent thing, since I've referred back to it to figure out several different things.
   I spent quite a bit of time last weekend shopping and outfitting it, and Fritz and the 4 dogs (our 3 plus visiting FCR puppy Little) spent Sunday night (July 3) sleeping in it, parked in the driveway a short walk from the house. I think I got this excellent suggestion from a Facebook friend. It only took 3 extra trips to the house for stuff I forgot. It was hot and stuffy in there but we couldn't get the AC to work. It had worked fine at the dealer the week before, but I couldn't get the breaker panel cover open, so we muddled through. It did cool off over night just fine.
   Fritz was up and out early the next morning to run in a 4th of July 5K. I made myself tea, had breakfast, and took a shower, which meant figuring out the water heater (it can be either electric or propane) and the water pump. Step 1 of the new adventure completed. I also figured out how to open the circuit breaker panel with the help of the video tour, and sure enough the AC circuit breaker was off. My 1st trouble shooting success.
   That afternoon, after reviewing the hitching video footage and improving my list of hitching instructions, Fritz and I got it hitched up, and I took it for a short drive around our country block, then parked it behind the training building, which will be its storage spot when not in use. I am very glad it is such a wide area, since my backing skills are on the poor end of the scale right now. But the wide parking area is plenty wide enough for me to get it turned around in, which is a relief.
   Gina Czapiwski, her husband Rob, and their daughter Tracy were also going to camp at the AAKC trial, so Gina very kindly went to the Monroe Fairgrounds and reserved us adjoining camping spots.
   We were finally packed and ready to leave home a bit after 2 on Friday. The drive was thankfully uneventful. When I arrived at the fairgrounds, I pulled off to the side and walked in to find my camping spot. I didn't want to end up with the Burb and T3 trapped in a maze of twisty little passages, unable to extricate myself. Luckily, the spot was such that I was able to make a loop and pull in, no backing up required. Yeah! A 25' x 50' spot sounds really large until you pull into it with a 23' trailer attached to a Suburban. The show building was close enough that I could walk there in about 3 minutes, so I was able to leave T3 hitched all weekend.
   Next step was to get hitched up to water and electric. I'd plugged into 110 power at the house and behind the training building, so I had appropriate extension cords for that. I dragged my cord over to the pole, popped open one of the covers and... uh, oh, it was a 30 amp receptacle, not a 110. Ack! Deep breath. There was a 110 plug on the other side of the pole. I plugged in, but when I checked in T3, there did not seem to be power. Then I made the dismaying discovery that without being plugged in, the 110 outlets don't function. Uh, oh, what would I do to charge my various electronic gadgets to which I'm addicted?
   Next, I pulled out the brand new water hose to hook up to the water supply, uncoiled it, and... it reached about 1/3 of the way to the water supply. It looked like I'd be unhooking the trailer and driving somewhere to buy more hose. When my neighbors noticed my predicament, they kindly offered me a new 50 foot length of hose, which they didn't need since they were close enough to the supply on the other side to not need it. I got both ends hooked up, turned on the water and it dripped like crazy at the source. So I turned the faucet back off and PHSSSST, the water sprayed liberally out the top of the hose, getting me rather wet in the process. Fortunately, it was a hot afternoon. I switched so that my neighbor's hose was hooked to the faucet instead of mine, but it still leaked. I gave up and finished doing other set up stuff, putting out the awning, pulling out the big straw mat underneath it, and putting up the hardly-been-used X-pen. I put the dogs in it, made myself a cup of tea, and sat under the awning to enjoy it. My neighbors continued their much lengthier set up process - they had MANY more dogs than I did. I posted on Facebook about the fact that my attempts to get the water and electric hooked up had failed. Not 15 minutes latter, a white mini van pulled up and there were Charlotte and Jim Lovelace, who just happen to live 3 miles away from the fairgrounds. I've known Charlotte since my teen years in 4-H, and she's trained several dogs at NDT. They offered much welcomed assistance. The power wasn't working because the GFCI button needed to be reset. Once done, my power was on. The water issue was solved by filling up the tank and then just running off that via the trailer's water pump.

I moved the X-pen to the shady side of T3 late in the afternoon.

Here are all the Czapiewski's Boston Terriers. We figured out their 8 dogs probably weigh about what my 3 FCRs weigh.

T3 has an outside shower with hot and cold water. Within 10 minutes of turning on the water heater, the water was warm enough to give Ty a bath on the adjacent grooming table. That was nifty! The water pressure wasn't great, but it was easy on my back.

   I had a reasonably good night's sleep. All was quiet at 3:15 when I got up to turn off the fan. A lot of dogs erupted in barking at 5:15 - I later found out that some bozo had driven by on M50 honking like crazy, which I didn't hear - but I went back to sleep until 6. I wheeled my equipment-laden cart over to the Expo building about 7 AM and got my crates set up. Many friends were arriving at about the same time. I returned to the trailer, had breakfast, then walked back with the dogs.
   I showed Ty in Utility B first, and alas, she once again did not do her sit signal after a lovely drop. But she did both articles, which have somewhat mysteriously been a problem lately, and everything else very nicely. Her go-outs were better than most of the dogs I saw. There was a lot to be very happy about in that performance.
   Next, we were in Open B. She had failed the down stay in her past 3 trials, and also had some problems with other exercises, but we'd been to several matches and I was reasonably optimistic about our chances. Her heeling ended on a sour note, with a big wide on the last about turn that lasted almost to the halt. Her broad jump front was also very poor, but the rest of her work seemed quite good. And she did her stays just fine, hurray! This meant we accomplished another of our goals for the year, which was to double her lifetime Open Q's to 6 :-). Much to my delight and surprise, she earned a 197 and 3rd place in the class. That is the highest Open score she's earned. 2.5 of the points lost were on heeling, the other 1/2 on the BJ front.
  In the afternoon trial, she once again stuck in the down and didn't do the sit signal, and in spite of a lot of searching, finally gave in and got a wrong 1st article. On her 1st go-out, she pulled up just a bit short, just as I gave my sit command. What flashed through my head was that if I have to do DJ in either of the Versatility classes in which we are entered, I'd better do something about this. On the 2nd one, she again turned a bit early, so I reminded her to go, and she did.
   Because of the stay issues in the past 3 trials, I only entered Open B the one time, and entered Versatility in the other two trials. When I looked at what exercises we'd have to do, my heart sank. SIGNALS. Also the Novice SFE, the Utility Moving Stand, the Retrieve on Flat, the Broad Jump, and the Novice recall. Unlike other times I've done Versatility, the exercises were quite mixed up (vs. 2 Novice, 2 Open, 2 Utility). She once again (ick, 3 times in one day, now that was discouraging) failed the sit signal. Then she trotted through the broad jump. Then when I really looked at it, they boards looked spread too far apart. I mentioned that to the judge, so he had the steward check it, and sure enough, she'd made an error and set it at 52 instead of 44 (she measured to the 1st edge of the last board, not the last). It was reset, and Ty jumped it fine. Without much thought, I threw up my hands and praised her when she landed and just released her. Heck, we'd already blown it and she'd had the too-large jump to contend with, so why not? She did do a very nice front fix on the dumbbell retrieve, which was nice to see.
   I had a lovely dinner Saturday night with the Czapiewskis, then did a bit of bumper training with Little, Gryff and Ty. I did run T3's AC for a bit, proving to myself that it worked, but later in the evening, just running the fan was fine. As I cleaned up my dishes from dinner, I found it very satisfying to be settling into my new home away from home.
   This morning, I had a text message from Brenda Riemer saying she was outside the rig, was I up? So she came in for a visit while we finished our morning beverages.
   We had Utility 1st, and lo and behold, Ty managed to pass everything! She made several stress-related errors - her heeling was sloppy and she slowed up and then stood about 18" away on the signal recall - close enough to Q, but a substantial deduction. Her Moving Stand return was also lacking in confidence - she slowed up about 2 feet out, and walked around to her finish. She was really over thinking things. On her first go-out, she hooked to the left somewhat, but sat fine and jumped the left jump fine. I think it was in response to the pressure of the stay line up on the right side of the Open ring, on beyond the end of the Utility ring. Her 2nd go-out was to about the same place, but she jumped the right jump fine, too. When all was said and done, there were only 4 qualifiers out of 13, and we earned 3rd place with our 188, good for 1 OTCh. point. She now has 3 :-).
   I apprentice judged Open B under judge Michelle Armitage, who is from Ottawa, Ontario, with a break to go do Versatility again. This time, we had to do the Novice Heel Free, SFE, the Open Drop on Recall and Broad Jump, and the Utility Moving Stand and Directed Retrieve. She heeled better than she had all weekend - I wish I knew why! - but didn't come on the DOR. She started to, but froze in a stand after only a couple of steps. I called her right away again, and she completed the rest of it fine. Her Moving Stand was much better than it had been in the morning, and she really had some zip on the Directed Retrieve, so it was a nice way to complete the weekend.
   I had a lazy afternoon, with a late lunch at T3 and packing up to come home.

Here's Ty, enjoying the cool AC blast:

Gryff doing the same.

And finally, Little looking like she has no bones, lying up on the bed.

A kindly gentleman helped me with the thrilling chore of my first fairgrounds dump station visit, showing me the ropes and giving me some suggestions about other items to purchase to make the task a bit less onerous. The trip home went just fine. I got the trailer unloaded and unhitched successfully.
What a blast!

In case you are wondering who Little is, she belongs to Helen Szostak and her breeder, Cheryl Kistner. After Joker finished his UD in May, I asked Helen if she had a young dog I could borrow to do some basic field training with. I transported Little to and from the Maryland National, and she's been with me for training since. But that is another post. She'll probably be here until the end of July, when we'll be going on vacation. She's now 10 months old and a wonderful sponge for training.

New Adventures

2011-06-21T22:24:00.000-04:00

Just recently, I discovered a message I wrote to someone in late 2009 about needing a bigger tow vehicle than my mini van, so I obviously started thinking about travel trailers/RVs 2 years ago. I do often say I move at the speed of a glacier.

Five days before leaving for the 2011 Flat-Coated Retriever Society of America's National Specialty in Frederick, Maryland, I finally took delivery of a new vehicle, a 2011 Suburban LT. I've had 3 Chrysler mini vans, starting in 1989, and I have loved loved loved my mini vans. I had my 2005 double-sliding door van fitted out very nicely, thank you, for either obedience or field training. Although it was fine for light-duty field training, the frequency of trips over rutted farm lanes and fields were really taking a toll on the van. And I got stuck twice in the mud last year, making me long for a vehicle with 4 wheel drive. I have test driven numerous vehicles with an eye towards towing a trailer, including a Chevy Traverse, a Hybrid Chevy Tahoe, a Silverado pickup truck, an Express cargo van, and a Suburban. Last winter, when I restarted my vehicle contemplation, I thought, "What would I get if my mini van had to be replaced immediately?" Suburban was the answer.

Having already put > 1500 miles on the new 'Burb, thanks to the MD trip, I can certainly say that I love it. I even got nearly 21 MPG on the drive to MD. Not quite as good coming back, and around town... not so great. That was the hardest part of the decision for me, quite frankly. I have always been conscious of energy conservation - there is a ton of insulation in both of our dog training buildings, for example - and making the choice to get a big SUV took a long time.

I think I first stopped at an RV dealer 2 years ago on the way back from an Illinois seminar, so I've also been thinking about them for a long time. I went through a long period last summer and fall trying to make a conversion van work, even flying to California to look at a used Sportsmobile that I was 90% sure I would buy. It was an extremely well spent $500 for the airplane ticket - driving the thing was nerve-wracking and the thought of taking it to the grocery store was ridiculous. Scratch that idea off the list.

Before leaving for MD, I told Fritz that I would get serious about getting a travel trailer when I got back. A week ago, we went to a local RV dealer and climbed in and out of about 15 travel trailers. While I have done a lot of in-person and on-line window shopping for RVs, he hadn't. It gave us some good points for discussion. Last Saturday, I went back and discussed my wishes and needs with a salesman, and he showed me some new and used units that he thought would fit the bill. Then I took my top choice for a brief test drive. I haven't hauled anything more than a garden tractor cart since hauling horse trailers in my 20's, so I needed to prove to myself that I could cope. It will take some getting used to, but it was more comfortable and easier to drive than the conversion van. So that hurdle was completed.

Last Sunday, Fritz and I went back and I showed him my top 3 choices, and in the end, he also liked my 1st choice best. If all works out as planned, we will make our maiden voyage to the Monroe Co Fairgrounds the weekend of July 8-10, where I'll be showing Ty in obedience. It is a pretty straight forward drive to get there, I've done it plenty of times, it isn't too far away, and since it is a dog show, there won't be any difficulty about having dogs.

So a new adventure is about to begin. I've tent camped quite a bit in the past 3 years with the dogs, so am at least somewhat familiar with what that's like and the camp ground scene. I'm looking forward to outfitting a trailer and getting familiar with all that will go along with it. Any advice is welcome!

A Different Kind of Journey

2011-06-02T06:34:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday morning @ the Grand Rapids KC trial, I earned my 8th UD. Border Terrier Joker is now Kandu's The Joker is Wild UD RE RL2 and officially our Retired Dog. Joker turned 10 on May 5 this year. We bought him for our son when Chris was 12. Chris trained him in agility for a couple of years, but didn't have any desire to compete with him. Back in 2006, I asked Chris if I could take Joker along to the BT National, which would prevent me from putting all of my eggs in Java's basket (plus it's much more fun to show a couple of dogs at Nationals and in several events). Joker earned his 1st RN leg there and his only agility leg (in Std).

Over the intervening years, I kept plugging away on his training - "Oh, heck, we might as well finish his RN." "Oh, what the heck, let's try Advanced Rally." "Oh, let's try for a CD." And so it kept going. We didn't do rally excellent initially because he didn't know how to stand without physical help. Once I taught him the signal st and for utility, we went back and got his RE. He didn't learn to retrieve until he was 5 years old or so. He almost always got only leftover training time from me. Sometimes, he only practiced exercises at seminars doing demoes. Because of my summer time devotion to hunt test training with my Flat-Coats the past several years, he got essentially NO training during the summer months.

It was never my intention to try to be competitive with him, but instead to see what it was like to title a dog without being concerned with high scores. His first Utility leg was a 178, and I was thrilled when we got that green ribbon. That was in October last year, after 5 weeks of cramming.

All in all, we showed 8 times in Utility B together (B because of my OTCh titles), finishing his title in the 7th trial. He failed Signals only once. He failed articles in 3 of those trials (in all 3, that was all he failed), Directed Jumping twice, and the Moving Stand once (he anticipated the return the trial before his 3rd leg). What is remarkable is that he never failed the Directed Retrieve - remarkable because it was his most frequently failed exercise in training.

Joker taught me that you can judge quite a bit about where your dog is during heeling or pivots via shadow - I often couldn't actually see him, but could see by his shadow that he was close to heel position. I'm much more aware of the frequency of shadows at trial sites than I used to be . Quite often after an about turn, I would glance ahead and to my right - phew, he's not there, I guess he must be reasonably close to where he belongs.

So, thanks for joining me on this different journey, Joker. You made me try some different ways to train an exercise, since my usual way wasn't working for you. Training you has helped remind me of how much I enjoy training my terriers. You helped make a lot of people smile, especially me.

Happy Retirement, Joey!

The Highs and Lows from Kalamazoo

2011-05-29T09:30:00.000-04:00

As I wrote about last week, I showed Joker and Ty at the 1st two days of the Memorial Day weekend cluster at Kalamazoo. First, the high points:

Joker (10 year old Border Terrier) finished his UD with a very respectable 191 in the first trial Saturday morning, making him the 8th dog with whom I've earned a UD. We got a professional photo of that one, so can't share it here yet.
Ty earned her 1st UDX leg on Friday, 21 OM points, a 4th place in Open B (196) and a 3rd place in Utility B (194), which was good for her 1st 2 OTCh points. Wow, only 98 to go! Oh, yes, those pesky 1st places...

We had glove 3 in both of the 1st two trials (something I was dreading going into the weekend, given the problems both dogs had had the previous couple of weeks) and glove 1 in the 3rd trial, and we had 6 Q's on gloves.
Ty qualified on signals 2 out of 3 times, coming back from a sit signal failure in the 2nd trial to do it correctly in the 3rd. After we finished signals in that 3rd trial successfully, I told the judge that I could go home happy now, whatever happened in the rest of the class.
Both dogs did very nice go-outs in all three trials, especially given that the middle stanchion was about 2 feet to the left of center (and yes, I stanchion train their go-outs) and that we had corner gloves that were retrieved before doing go-outs each time. Ty showed no signs of stopping short, which delights me, given that she picked her spot in the previous 3 trials. To top it off, her turn and sits were marvelously snappy, garnering compliments.
Ty lost only 1/2 point on Directed Jumping 2 out of the 3 trials.
We were in two runoffs on Friday.

Now for the low points:

Ty failed the down stay in both trials on Saturday by first sitting up before I got very far away and then walking forward out of line. She told me loud and clear that she's not ready for multiple Open classes in a weekend, let alone one day. Both judges had me go to her and take her to the opposite side of the ring and have her stay there.
Ty trotted through the Broad Jump in trial 2 on Saturday, something I'm not sure she's ever tried in her whole life. In her defense, I put her farther back than usual because her striding was poor in the morning. So I'll take some blame for it. She certainly was brisk and nimble about it, watching where she stepped very carefully!
Joker failed the article at 12 o'clock in the 3rd trial. Otherwise, he would have had another Q. The first article was there in all 3 trials, and the 2nd one was in the middle twice, his other hard spot.
Ty's accuracy on her signal stand position and her article turns dwindled as the weekend wore on.
We lost both of the runoffs we were in. But that means we Q'ed and got to be IN the runoffs!

I was well aware going into the weekend that we could come home with 9 NQs, a discouraging thought! We came away with 4 Q's out of 9, and two near misses in Utility. As I knew I would, I learned a lot about what Ty is and isn't (yet) capable of. We were losing 2-2.5 on heeling in each class, so there's a lot of room for improvement there, and consistently good heeling is crucial for high scores and winning runoffs. I held up reasonably well showing 9 times, though I sure yawned a lot during the 1.5 hour drive home!

I haven't shown in Kalamazoo in a lot of years, and I chatted with many people over the weekend, including some previous unmet in person Facebook friends. On Saturday morning, I was flying high from Friday's successes, and wishing I was showing more than one more day. Now that I'm home, I'm also glad to be home. Ty and I have some serious homework to do before our National trip. We (Ty, Gryff and I) leave a week from today for Maryland. I haven't decided for sure what we'll do this summer in terms of obedience vs. field training. While the occasional nice weather has me yearning to get outside, I'm also really enjoying the obedience work.

What Are We Made Of?

2011-05-25T16:17:00.000-04:00

This weekend - actually, Friday and Saturday - I'll be showing Joker 3 times in Utility B, searching for his 3rd UD leg, and Ty 3 times in Open B and 3 times in Utility B at the Memorial Day cluster in Kalamazoo. My primary goal with Ty is to see what our team is made of. She finished her UD in March, and is 1 for 2 in Open B and 2 for 4 in Utility B since then. I really haven't shown her all that much in obedience, considering that she is 6.5 years old. So this weekend, I want to see how much we are capable of. Can we get a UDX leg or two? Can we make progress on our OM (she’s got about 20 points already)? Can we come anywhere close to some OTCh. points? Note that I didn’t say earn points, but rather come close to doing so.

I feel like we are starting to gel as a team, and so the grand experiment of this weekend. I can’t remember when I last showed a single dog three times in Open in the same weekend. I’m not sure *I* have it in me to go in the ring 9 times in 2 days, let alone the dogs. Again, an experiment.

I don’t honestly know if an OTCh is a reasonable goal with Ty. Am I willing to put in the time, $’s, and effort that it is likely to take? Can she rise to the occasion? Can I? Really, only time will tell. But one of the cool things is that I can pursue the UDX and OM1 without having to beat anyone else, and how difficult that proves to be will give me an excellent read on the OTCh prospects.

Stay tuned...

On Turning 50

2011-05-23T07:51:00.000-04:00

Yes, that's right. Today, I turn 50.

Really? But I don't feel 50. I feel 40. Or is it 35? Or is it 60?

I've spent more brain time pondering this impending milestone than I remember thinking about when turning either 30 or 40. And now, here I am. I've made it.

I think perhaps one of the causes for reflections is that my 40's were a great decade personally. I've made several friends in the past 10 years who I consider some of the best people in my life. My family is doing well. My kids are nearly grown and out of the house. I got started learning a new sport (hunt test training) on which I have spent countless glorious hours over the past several years, enjoying what I consider the best summers of my life in the past two years. My business has continued to thrive. I self-published a new book and got the retrieve video updated and released on DVD. My seminar speaking engagements have grown tremendously, taking me to many new places around the US and now Canada, introducing me to many new and wonderful people and dogs. I finished OTCh titles on two dogs. I started on the road to judging for the AKC. I joined Curves and continue to enjoy working out there, in large part because of the amazing community of women who come together there. I started learning about web programming this past winter and continue to make small strides on the never-ending process of maintaining a website.

As this day has neared, it helps me to remember that so many of my closest friends have already passed this milestone, paving the way for me, acting as role models on aging with energy and grace.

So, 40's, I bid you goodbye with mixed feelings. How can the next decade top the one I've just left? I guess I'll just have to jump in and start paddling and see what comes along.

New Scent Articles for Ty

2011-05-17T22:46:00.000-04:00

A group of friends and I have a running joke that she who dies with the most scent articles (or crates) wins. I decided recently that it was time to add to my total.

The only articles I've had for Ty to use were one of the two sets I had for Tramp, my 1st OTCh. Flat-Coat. Treasure's articles have a very fat bit, and Ty couldn't seem to pick them up straight, especially the metal ones. I decided to order a new set from MAX200, because of all the various sets I've ordered over the years, they've held up the best. I teach and use 'hot scent', so when scenting an article, I not only rub the bar with my palms, but I also hold an end and rotate the bar in my hand. This tends to cause the ends to loosen up over time, something I'm fighting with the articles I use for Joker (Java's old set).

I ordered a single metal article from MAX200 to test the size. I do wonder if Ty has some teeth issues going on, since she'll often chatter on a metal one. I'm glad I did order just one, because it still seemed a bit too thick. Then, because I really wanted to have the new ones before our Memorial Day cluster, I plunged in and ordered a set of 8 of each type one size smaller bit diameter. Fortunately, that seems to have been enough. Aren't they pretty??? The stripes are blue and green and the craftsmanship is impressive.

I had recently read on the Ring-Tested-Obedience list about letting new articles air for 6 weeks before using. Six weeks? I didn't HAVE six weeks! I unpacked them last Tuesday night and let them air out overnight. The next afternoon, I put out 2 unscented leathers and 2 unscented metals and added a scented one. Ty made several mistakes, picking up several of the new leathers incorrectly. Didn't seem interested in picking incorrect metals. We muddled through with small levels of success, and before quitting for the night, I had her take all of the remaining ones that she hadn't yet picked up, to get her spit on them.

We did them again Thursday evening on the eve of my weekend trip to Lakeland, FL. I really wanted to see if day 2 would be better. I started with just 4 unscented out again, and after each successful pair, added a couple more. She was 6 for 6 that night, and 4 for 4 yesterday evening after we got back from the quick trip south. Yeah, Ty! She was working with great enthusiasm and speed last night, and seems to be picking the new ones up really nicely. I love when equipment helps improve my dog's performance!

I like to have 8 of each article type because it allows for enough for several trials in a weekend without having to put used one back in right away. We are showing once on Friday and twice on Saturday at the Memorial Day cluster in Kalamazoo, so my hope is to only have to use the one set, swapping in new articles for the used ones.

An Update on my Training

2011-05-07T16:43:00.000-04:00

April marked the first month I showed on two separate weekends in obedience in a very long time. Ty & Joker were entered at the Greater Toledo OTC. Ty was entered in Utility in both morning and afternoon trials, as well as Open in the afternoon trial. Joker was entered in the morning trial in Rally Excellent B and Utility B.

Joker finished up his RE title with a 97 1st place effort. It was great to go in the rally ring before Utility, since it was our first time showing obedience on the field turf. It was also our first try at Utility somewhere they've never trained. They had both showed in Novice and Open in the facility before, though, so it wasn't brand new for them.

Joker managed to pass everything except the first article. We had glove 1, and he headed that way on both go-outs. One proud moment came during DJ. The bar on the left was the first jump, handy since he was over in that direction. When he sat on the 2nd go-out, he did a small shoulder movement towards the high jump on my right. Although we had worked on jumping from off-center when we were in SC, it hadn't gone particularly brilliantly ("I'm supposed to do WHAT? How about if I just sit here and look confused?"). But that shoulder dip gave me hope. Sure enough, he took the 2nd jump confidently. All in all, I was very pleased with his day.

Last month, I wrote, "Ty's sit signal, which was so poor last month, has been going very well (oops, hope I didn't just jinx myself)...". Yup, you guessed it. I jinxed myself. It went away again. In both trials, Ty did her down signal nicely, and then did not do the sit. She also didn't come on my first signal in the AM trial. She passed everything else, including very straight go-outs in the first trial, BUT she is clearly picking where to stop. Not an NQing shortness, but certainly scoreable. In the 2nd trial, she veered a bit to the right of center, and also got distracted by a flying dumbbell in the adjoining Open ring just as I started to give my jump signal. So that was also an NQ.

The highlight of the weekend for her was her Q in Open B. She took several trials to get her CDX back in 2009, and hadn't managed to pass stays the past two times we'd tried. We had been doing LOTS of stays around the house (note to self: get back to doing that!) and it paid off. She also earned her first OM points.

We showed again at the Saturday Progressive trial, again just on Saturday. I'm thrilled to report that Joker earned his 2nd leg. He did a grand job. We had Order III, with articles first. It was nice to get those out of the way successfully. Ty also managed a Q, doing very fine signals. But I suspect her apparent response to my sit signal was luck. Sometimes, I get lucky. The metal article took flight out of her mouth as she left the articles pile, costing us 2 points, and she again stopped somewhat short on her go-outs. Imagine my surprise and delight when little Mr. Joker placed 3rd in the class with a fabulous score of 195 (I don't think he has ever scored that high in his brief career), with Ty in 4th place with a 194. A very fine day at the dog show. A fun fact: there was 1 OTCh. point available for that 3rd place, so I can now claim Joker has a Phantom OTCh point (phantom because it doesn't count since he doesn't yet have his UD).

Gryff continues to have soreness in his iliopsoas muscles. I resumed laser treatments a couple of weeks ago, and found out that the early treatments probably weren't really getting to the right spot. I think yesterday's treatment finally was, so I'm hopeful that he can get some relief.

I did pull my bike out of storage, pumped up the tires, and have been biking the dogs a couple times a week. Gryff is on a flexi leash while the other two run free. We've been going up and down my looooong driveway (property is 600 feet from road to back) or doing laps in the building when it's been nasty outside. I can much more successfully keep Gryff in a trot on the bike than when I'm walking.

Next up: three trials in two days at the Kalamazoo Memorial Day cluster, then the Flat-Coated Retriever National in Maryland in June. We are going to a Mother's Day obedience match to see if I can catch Ty stopping where she chooses on her go-outs. Or catch her doing it right in a relatively new place so she can get a jackpot.

The Care and Feeding of a Training Partner

2011-05-07T08:40:00.000-04:00

What is a training partner? It is someone with whom you can get together regularly to train your dogs. It is someone with whom you can talk over training issues. It helps if your TP has a similar schedule to you, so it isn't too hard to find time to meet. Having similar long-term goals is helpful, though not critical. It will help you a lot if your TP is more experienced than you are, because you will be able to learn a lot from her. Those of us who have been doing this for a long time enjoy seeing new trainers getting hooked on the sport we have loved for so many years. But it doesn't have to be someone more experienced. I continue to learn from new trainers. Sometimes, because of no preconceived ideas, new trainers come up with fabulous 'think outside the box' solutions that experienced trainers don't.

Having dogs at similar levels is another benefit, because you'll need the same equipment for training, and you can each supply some. It means you can go to trials together and cheer each other on (or commiserate on the days it doesn't go so well). For many of us, the social aspect of dog competitions is a large part of the fun. Of course, even if you aren't at the same level, most trials have classes of many different levels going on, so you can still go to shows together.

Where should you look for a training partner? If you are taking a class somewhere, ask your classmates if they would be interested in meeting outside of class to practice together. It makes you more likely to do your homework and it simply makes it more fun. You can help each other by calling commands if the dogs are advanced enough; doing stand for exams; putting out scent articles; holding a young dog for recalls. Sometimes it is helpful to simply train alongside each other, but it is even better if you can take the time to play judge and provide distractions for each other for at least part of your time together. When I wrote The Art of Proofing, I used different types of bullets to show what you could do by yourself, with one helper, and in a larger group.

Another potential place to look is at a local dog club. Even if there isn't an obedience club, you might find someone interested in obedience training who belongs to an agility club or a conformation club. Attend nearby obedience trials and matches and watch people. Look for someone whose dog works like you wish yours would. If you are already competing with your dog for titles, find out where your fellow exhibitors live. Addresses are usually listed in the back of the trial catalog.

I am blessed to live in a highly active dog training community with many opportunities within a 2 hour radius of Ann Arbor. I once met a friend who lives outside of Chicago (which means we are 5 hours apart) at another friend's training building that is about 1/2 way between us.

In thinking back over the many training partners I've had over the 25+ years I've been training, I think fondly of the friendships, the hours and hours spent training and problem solving, and the thrill of victory, not just for myself but also for them.

If you don't already have one, I encourage you to find someone to train with. I don't think you'll be sorry.

A Really Fun Saturday

2011-05-01T22:05:00.000-04:00

I had a Really Fun Day yesterday at the Progressive obedience trial in Birch Run, MI. Ty & Joker were both entered just in Utility, since the trial closed before my 2-week-ago success in Open B. I showed Joker 1st. He has been in the ring just twice this year, and both times passed everything but articles. I trained them more diligently in the past 2 weeks. His gloves are also weak, but have been improving. Isabella Hutton was a fill-in for Robin Shea, who had to cancel. We had order 3. Joker did very confident articles YEAH, though I got some teasing at his really dreadful set-up for the 2nd one. I gave up and let him sit there crooked! His glove was fine, his heeling was quite good for him. His signal down was slightly delayed, then he collapsed into it, which isn't quite his normal style. The rest of his signals were fine. Moving stand? Zero off. And lovely Directed Jumping with spot-on fabulous go-outs. Leg #2!!! I was just SO happy with the boy. He turns 10 on May 5, though he in no way acts that age.

Ty's sit signal has continued to frequently elude her in training, so I vowed to take my time giving it and to try to be clear with it.

She did both articles, tho the metal one flew out of her mouth as she left the pile (which cost us 2 points, and makes me continue to wonder if there is some tooth issue going on with her - but that's another post!), Glove was fine, Heeling was fine, though loose by my standards. Good drop, and SHE DID HER SIT SIGNAL! We had a major party after her finish and before setting up for the MS. She seemed quite thrilled by all the hugs, petting, praise, and leaping around. Her MS was fine. On her go-outs, she once again stopped before I said to, both times. I think she's stopping about 7-8 feet short of the end, so nowhere near NQably short, but she is clearly picking. But they were both very straight, and she did her sits and jumps great, so she also Q'ed. What a fine day.

But it doesn't stop there.

First and second place were a 198 (1st leg, too!) and an I-don't-remember score between 198 and 195.5. And little Mr. Joker was 3rd with a 195!!!! And Joker earned a phantom OTCh point! (phantom because he doesn't have his UD). Whoda thunk it? Ty was 4th with a 194. She is already 10% along the way to her OM1.

Given that Joker's first Utility leg was a 178 and I was thrilled with that, you can imagine how up on Cloud 9 I still am with a 195. He really is getting this Utility stuff figured out. And gee whiz, he's cute :-).

Raissa Hinman finished her 3rd generation UDX on her wonderful Aura, who also became the first Malamute OM1 yesterday. This just 8 days after finishing her MACh2. And less than a month after her 17 year old son finished the MACh2 on one of Aura's aunts.

This was the first time I'd shown north of Ann Arbor in quite a long time, so I got to see some different people than when I head south, which was fun.

Our next trials will be Memorial Day in Kalamazoo. Time to go fill out entries!

The Ups and Downs of Trialing

2011-04-16T22:48:00.000-04:00

I showed Joker the nearly 10-year-old Border Terrier and Ty the Flat-Coated Retriever at the Greater Toledo Obedience Training Club's spring trials today. Joker needed one Rally Excellent B leg to finish his RE. I happen to love the trial site (the Sylvania Tam-O-Shanter Sports & Exhibition Center), though I've had my ups and downs of success there in the past. It is so spacious and the club simply puts on great trials - fine judges, excellent stewards, etc. This weekend was the first time the obedience trials were held directly on the field turf. Running on it made me feel 10 years younger and 10 lbs. lighter. Given how leaden I've felt lately when running, it was a really fine feeling.

Joker was the 1st Excellent B dog and scored a 97 to finish his RE with a 1st place. It was great to be in the ring on the turf in Rally before going into Utility.
   This was the first time Joker and Ty were In Utility somewhere we haven't ever trained. Given our poor success rate with Directed Jumping in new places on our recent trip, I didn't have much hope, but they both came through and each passed DJ in the 1st trial. The little bit of proofing I've done with Joker for jumping from off-center (again, with mixed results) turned out to have been enough, at least for today. We had glove 1 in the first trial, and he arced that way on his go-outs. I was very happy that he confidently took the jump to the right. Joker's heeling was not stellar (okay, it hasn't ever been), but he did muddle through his Signals. He NQ'ed the first article - it was at 12 o'clock and after a dutiful search, he retrieved the one at 6 o'clock. The 2nd article was at 6 o'clock, which he did get right. His glove #1 retrieve was dynamite - he zipped out with great confidence, and came back promptly, albeit arcing away from scary judge Joe Heidinger. When I reached to take it, I missed, so it hit the floor. When I reached down to pick it up, Joker decided I was pointing out something interesting, so started to sniff, which meant he missed by first finish command. Oops! His Moving Stand was fine. So only the article NQ today. This performance gave me real hope that he can get this title this year. We just have to keep plugging away.
   Ty's signals have been broken for the past several weeks. When I was in SC, her down broke, but her sit was pretty consistent. Since getting back home, she's been variable about doing either, darn it. She DID do her drop signal nicely in each trial (she showed in Utility in both morning and afternoon trials, also in Open in the afternoon), but did not do the sit signal either time. Nor did she come on my signal in the AM trial. She passed everything else, tho pulled up a bit short on both go-outs (1 pt off each). But they were straight, yeah.
   We did our individuals in Open B 1st in the afternoon. There was a lot to be happy about. But could she get through stays? We've been doing a lot of stays around the house for the past several weeks. We went in Utility about 1/2 hour later and had to come right out of Utility and go in for Open stays. I am so happy to report that she held both stays and earned just her 4th ever Q (qualifying score) in Open. She had a 196.5, just out of the placements (tho I heard the judge mention that score to a bunch of other exhibitors).
   It was very satisfying to cross off one annual goal today (Joker's RE) and 1/3 of another (to double Ty's lifetime Open Q's). Although there is another trial tomorrow, I'm staying home. A radical idea.

A Spring Odyssey

2011-03-29T09:33:00.000-04:00

I am in South Carolina this week. I presented my 'Balancing Act' obedience training seminar for the NADOI (National Association of Dog Obedience Instructors, pronounced 'nay' 'doi') annual conference this past weekend. It was held in at the Ramada in Charleston, SC. I wasn't sure if I would know anyone, but my long-time internet friend, Margie English, was there. We've only met in person twice before (once at the only other NADOI conference I attended when it was in Toledo, OH (2003), and once when she came to another seminar I taught in PA several years ago). Margie wrote the preface for Judy Byron and my book Competition Obedience: A Balancing Act, and I have stolen several training ideas from her over the years. Or is it borrowed? It was great fun to see her again. I am leaving with many new acquaintances who I hope will become friends in the years to come.

My original plan when I scheduled this seminar followed by one in Maryland next weekend was to - Ah, bliss! - be somewhere warm, in the south, and spend the time field training with the Flat-Coats. Since Gryff is still not able to, I am instead training obedience. Given Ty and Joker's level of greenness (Green and Really Green), it is good to force myself to train them in places other than my training building. Unfortunately, the 'Ah, bliss!' warm weather seemed to vanish almost as soon as I drove into the state. The rain came along with me, too (they'd been having weather in the 80's), but given the fires they've been having, the rain would appear to be a blessing. I saw evidence of fires driving north along 17 yesterday as I moved from Charleston to Myrtle Beach. I came up here because the weather looked to potentially be a tad less unpleasant (supposed to be 61 today before going back to raining tomorrow) AND through the power of the internet and the dog network, found someone local with a small training building. I met Sue yesterday and did some utility work with both Joker and Ty, and we're going to meet at a local park to train this morning. It isn't exactly warm out yet, but bright and sunny, so it should be fun.

I'm working on updates to my website, something which is hard to find time for when I'm at home. I'm a beginner at it, but liking computers and programming as I do, I'm enjoying learning something new. It helps to have large blocks of time to work on it, which I don't often have during my regular at-home life. I'm staying in a suite because I have too many dogs for a regular room, but having been a bit claustrophobic in a regular room over the weekend, it is probably going to be much more conducive to getting work done. The dogs like the extra space, too.

A New UD

2011-03-19T17:05:00.000-04:00

I showed Ty and Joker in Utility B today at the Fulton Co KC trial held at the Toledo KC's building. Ty earned her 2nd leg there in February. Today, the duct tape holding the sheet covering the mirror in the right back corner of the ring attracted her attention, causing some big point losses, but she got herself back on track enough to earn her 3rd leg and her UD. We started with articles, and she dashed out past the pile to go check out the duct tape (I thought she was trying to do a go out), so went out probably 10-15 feet from the end, off to the right, then dashed back to the pile and got to work. She came out of the pile well to my left, and made zero effort to straighten herself. On the bright side, she DID hold the article very nicely until I took it, something that has been a large challenge for her. The out-of-the-way approach cost us 3 points. Ouch! She went somewhat past again on the 2nd approach, losing another 1/2 point. Funny how those things about which you say "but she's never done that before!"** often happen right away again.
   We had glove #1 (same as last month), which she did a fine job on.
   Earlier this week, I decided to try heeling with my left hand hanging down (and, I HOPE, swinging reasonably evenly with my right one) instead of up at my waist. I do think she forged less than usual, so I will definitely continue to experiment with this hand position. In the past few weeks, her signals have gotten tenuous again. They had come together nicely back in February before and during TKC, when I made a change to my sit signal. It was almost like she finally figured the signals out. But then I was away for 10 days, and she was back to insecurity, especially on her sit signal. Fortunately for me, when I was training at TKC on Wednesday, someone pointed out that I wasn't moving my shoulder at all when giving the sit signal. By making sure I open my shoulder up with the hand signal, she has been responding consistently. It's a subtle difference, and it may not last, but she did it today.
   Her Moving Stand was perfect, yeah Ty!
   On her 1st go out, she veered some to the right, again eyeballing the duct tape. Fortunately, the bar on the right was the first jump. Okay, I admit it, I haven't done all that much proofing of her jumping from the opposite side of the ring. Guess what we'll be working on this week? I made much more of an effort to get her marking the center, and her 2nd go out was right on the money. So she finished out the class with a 190 and a new UD.
   Back in 2002, on the day Java finished his UD, Mike MacDonald was there, and he said "I don't care how many UDs you earn, they are each special." That is very true.
   Joker inexplicably failed both articles, but the rest of his class was really solid. I was especially thrilled with his go-outs after retrieving glove #1. In training on Wednesday, I had him retrieve each corner gloves, then did go-outs. He kept wanting to veer to the left corner. I worked on it at home on Thursday, where he was fine, but I figured we'd be lucky to get anything approaching a straight go-out. He only lost 1 point on the exercise, what a good boy! He also needs to work jumping from the opposite corners.
   Ty and I go back tomorrow to show in both Open B and Utility B. Joker gets to stay home watching basketball with my husband.

**This is a quote from the back of my book, The Art of Proofing. Yup, happens to me, too.

March Training Update

2011-03-19T16:41:00.000-04:00

I showed Ty in Utility once in February. I'm very happy to report that she earned her 2nd leg with a solid 194.5 performance, and even won a runoff for 4th place in Utility B. The only thing that gave me any anxiety was that just as she arrived at her glove #1, she whipped around and looked at me. I had a very brief "Oh, no, don't go to glove #2!" thought dash through my head, but she recovered and turned back around and grabbed the correct one.

Joker was entered, but on Tuesday when we were practicing gloves, he just didn't seem right. Once several years ago, he had similar symptoms - not wanting to jump up - and he had a sore back. Sure enough, a trip to our wonderful local rehab vet showed quite a bit of back soreness. He had an acupuncture treatment, but the next day, I decided to pull him since we wouldn't have the training time needed to make it worthwhile.

I've got a nice rehab & strength training routine worked out with Gryffin that he seems to enjoy. We've been doing the workout 2-3 times a week. I mentioned last month that I'd just gotten the "Building the Canine Athlete" DVD. I've incorporated several exercises from the DVD into our routine. A friend did Gryff's workout with him 4 times while I was out of town, and I could see some nice improvements on several of the exercises as I got back to doing them with him myself. I've been enjoying this so much, and see so much benefit for Gryff that I'm offering a couple of 3 week classes called 'Tricks for Strength', one in March and one in April.

How to Fit a Dog For a Dumbbell

2011-03-19T16:36:00.000-04:00

I'd like to explain how I fit dogs for dumbbells. The following video is extracted from Totally Fetching: Teaching and Proofing a Reliable Retrieve. You will see a variety of dogs holding both properly fitted and improperly fitted dumbbells.

The following information is taken from the booklet that comes with the DVD.

A correctly sized dumbbell is a help to your dog. The obedience regulations state that, "the size of the dumbbell shall be proportionate to the size of the dog." There are three elements to consider when fitting a dumbbell to your dog: the height of the bells, the thickness of the dowel, and the width between the bells.

Many dumbbells are made with tapered bells to allow for a more comfortable fit. An "off-the-shelf" size is fine for many dogs. Some breeds require a custom fit due to their unusual length or width of muzzle.

   The ideal placement of the dumbbell is directly behind the canine teeth. The dog should hold it firmly. If there is too much room between the bells, it is easy for the dog to roll it back onto his molars, which usually leads to mouthing. If there is too little space between the bells, the dog's lips can get pinched, causing discomfort. If the bells are too large, they can interfere with the dog's vision. If they are too small, the dog may have difficulty picking the dumbbell up smoothly without hitting his nose on the ground.
   A thicker dowel often helps prevent the dog from rolling the dumbbell to the back of his mouth. You want the dog to be able to clench the dowel comfortably. It is possible for the dog to roll a thin doweled dumbbell even when the teeth are closed tightly. Also, a thin dowel on a wooden dumbbell tends to break easily.
   I get my custom-made wooden dumbbells from Phillip Klosinski of Toledo, OH. I've measured a lot of dogs all around the country with the spiffy dumbbell measuring kit Phil gave me years ago. The kit has a large variety of end sizes with different dowel thicknesses. One end is fixed and the other one can slide. They've proven themselves to be very useful over the years.
   Are you interested in ordering a copy of TotallyFetching? See the NDT website to do so.

More rehab for Gryffin

2011-03-11T12:16:00.000-05:00

Last Friday night, I had a consultation with Dr. Chris Zink, a well-known vet from Maryland who was in Ann Arbor to teach her weekend Canine Athlete seminar (fabulous, as always). She felt that Gryff's biggest problem was in his iliopsoas muscles (in the groin area). When she tried to do the standing test, he really objected. So Gryff is back on much more restricted activity, and had the first of a series of laser treatments to try to help reduce any inflammation. We've got 4 more scheduled in the next two weeks before we all go out of town again for my east coast trip.

It's disappointing to have to put his workout routine on hold for now, but if several weeks off will help, we just have to do it. He has been learning to wave, which I don't think puts undue stress on the sore areas. His wave is actually more of a whack with his front paw raised up slightly over parallel to the floor. He usually connects with some part of my leg. Or Joker's head, if he happens to be too close by. Poor Joker.

At Chris Zink's seminar, she mentioned a simple way to teach dogs to wave. "Just put a postIt note over their eye, and then click and treat them when they raise their paw to swipe it off." Here's what Gryff thought of that:

All the proofing he's had meant his feet stayed planted firmly on the floor. Oh, well, he's getting the idea in other ways.

2011-02-01T17:46:00.005-05:00

Java
OTCh. U-CDX Riversides Magen’s Starbucks UDX2 RE AX AXJ; Can CD; RL3
March 2, 1997 - January 30, 2011

I realize this is long. It is a vital part of the way I grieve for my dogs, writing up their life in this way. It is something I will go back to at some future date to reflect on Java's life. Java was a wonderful part of my life for nearly 14 years. He lived with great gusto right up to the end. Isn't that what we all wish for ourselves and our loved ones?

I first heard about Java's litter sometime in early 1997. I think the puppies (2 boys) were a couple of weeks old. I was still reeling from the sudden death of my beloved Australian Terrier, Rio, the previous Halloween of acute kidney failure (he was only 8.5 years old). My 1st dog, Australian terrier Casey was slowing dying of kidney disease. I told the breeder that I could not consider a new puppy while Casey was still alive - she required a fair bit of extra care, and I didn't feel it would be fair to either her or a new puppy or my family or me.

I first met Java when he was 6 weeks old. Jim Ham, long-time Border Terrier owner and AKC obedience judge, happened to attend the same AKC Judging seminar as I did at the Ann Arbor DTC, and he was willing to take a look at the puppies on his way home. Java's breeder, Genie Dethloff conveniently lived in east Ann Arbor. One of the two boy puppies wandered off and played by himself under the table, but the other one ended up curled up in my lap near the end of our visit. I think that is the one whose head Jim complimented.

Time passed. Genie kept nudging me. We put Casey down on Good Friday, right before a vacation trip. I continued to resist the thought of a new puppy. I wasn't emotionally ready. More time passed. But my family was ready, and our one remaining dog, Flat-Coated Retriever Treasure, was lonely. She had grown up with 3 older dogs, and she really didn't like being an only dog.

Finally in June, I reluctantly relented and went back to see him. His brother had gone to his new home. I figured I would have to ask Genie to leave the kitchen so the puppy would be interested in me. Much to my surprise, he immediately ran to me, jumped into my lap, and started licking my face enthusiastically. So he came home on trial. By the next day, as he lay curled up in my lap snuggling, I realized something very important. If we never stepped into a ring to compete in anything, I wanted him to stay. He was already helping to fill the gaping hole left in my heart when Rio died so suddenly.

So stay he did. He was 12 weeks old when I brought him home. Genie had done a fabulous job raising him to that point. He knew what a crate was for and what grass was for. I think he slept through the night from the beginning. He already had a marvelous fast sit and was quickly attentive to me.

One of the characteristics I had noted in the BTs I had met before getting Java is that as a breed, they tend to be smart. Sometimes, unfortunately, smarter than the owners :-). He was no exception. In fact, he was the smartest dog I've ever owned. He typically learned something very quickly, but would also test my level of commitment to the meaning of a command on a regular basis.

Training Java was pretty easy. He learned things fast and loved the opportunities for cookies. He earned his AKC novice agility titles zippety quick in the fall of 1999, and eventually earned his AX/AXJ. We showed in CKC Novice first in the fall of 1999, and he had a splendid first weekend out, earning his CKC CD, including a 199.5 High in Trial in the 4th trial under judge Chuck Bush. What a thrill! And he also qualified just in time to attend the Classic tournament. He had seven 1st places in seven Novice B classes in AKC, earning two HIT and three more ties for HIT. We attended the Classic and placed 3rd in the Novice division. Another huge thrill. The following summer, he placed 3rd again in the Novice division of the Detroit-Windsor World Series obedience tournament.

He earned his CDX in the fall of 2000, and his UD in just 6 tries, earning the 3rd leg in January 2002. He earned his 1st UDX leg on 2/23/02 @ Sportsmen's and his 10th leg on 2/23/03 also @ Sportsmen's. Along the way, he earned a HIT out of Open B and a couple of High Combined awards. His OTCh point total mostly crept up slowly, a few points at a time. On one memorable weekend at Cleveland All-Breed, he earned a 2nd in Open B the 1st day and then won both Open B & Utility B the next day, netting him 27 OTCh points in one weekend. I am pretty sure that was the only time any of my dogs won both Open B and Utility B at the same trial.

In January 2004, he worked a fantastic Utility B class. I found out later that we had 1st place wrapped up until Bridget Carlson and her NOC Golden Soupy, the last team to show, walked in the ring. We earned a 2nd place with a 198, good for 5 points (on the same day that young Gryffin earned a 5-point major in conformation).

Going into the Toledo KC trials in February 2004, he still needed 24 points, so finishing his OTCh wasn't a huge stressor, because I didn't expect it to happen in the immediate future. On Saturday, he got 2nd in UB for 4 points. The next day, he again had a fabulous performance, earned 1st place, netting him exactly 20 points, which finished his OTCh. None of my other dogs finished that unexpectedly, nor with exactly 100 points. While there have been other OTCH Border terriers before him, it had been 10 years since the one before him.

We continued to show, and he ended up halfway to his UDX3 before he told me he was ready for retirement. He had more qualifying scores in AKC obedience than any of my other dogs (60 in Open B, 44 in Utility B. I love AKC reports!), and is my only UDX2 and AX/AXJ title earner to date.

We attended 2 AKC NOI tournaments in Tampa, FL. The 1st year, 2005, we failed the 2nd Signal Exercise because of an unlucky sneeze that caused him to miss my stand signal. The 2nd year, he missed an article, but was fabulous on everything else, and earned a placement in the Terrier group, which got us into the Sunday rounds. We won our 1st round, but a failed glove in the 2nd round dropped us. During our final heeling in that ring, I remember thinking that I didn't want it to end - his heeling was brilliant that weekend, and his scores reflected it. He lost fewer points on the heeling exercises than all but the highest placing dogs (just call me a statistics geek).

Java loved to demo obedience exercises with me - cookies were usually on offer - and he was very willing to heel with anyone who tried. It was a great way for someone new to obedience to experience first hand what it felt like to heel with a well trained and very responsive dog.

I often said that Java taught me several things that I wished I hadn't had to learn. I had to be very careful in how I used food with him. Getting him to put forth effort at the start of a class was one of our biggest challenges. He was the first dog I campaigned under the 6 possible orders in Open B & Utility B, so it wasn't a particular exercise that challenged him, but where it fell in a particular order. Directed Jumping was probably his most-often failed exercise, especially when it was early in the class. He would often heel nearly perfectly when it fell near or at the end of a class.

Java was a great swimmer and did not want to be left behind if we went out in a canoe when at our Canadian cabin on a lake. He pursued me one last time last summer at 13+ when I tried to paddle off without him. I had to circle back to pull him on board. He loved to wait at the water's edge, poised to steal whatever the swimming Flat-Coat was returning with, whether Treasure, Gryffin, or Ty. He also loved to chase and retrieve tennis balls when he was younger. As he aged, he much preferred going out to the big fenced yard to sniff the good smells, every now and then stealing a tennis ball for a while from the big black dogs. He frequently chased them with a ball in his mouth, barking more quietly through that muffler. He also loved to go out to the parking area by the training building, hunting for snacks, and would often squeeze his way out under one of the gates to do so. He got quite deaf in the past year, but could still outrun me easily, so I finally got smart and kept him on leash when outside of the dog yard.

Java loved running with Fritz more than anything in the world, and would fuss ecstatically (and annoyingly) whenever Fritz appeared in what Java saw as The Running Uniform. Java would get all of the other dogs wound up tight, dashing about, carrying on, clamoring to go run with Dad. I learned after only a couple of attempts that trying to do any obedience with him when he thought a run was imminent was futile. They took their final run together just a week before Java's sudden death.

Java was easy as pie to teach tricks to, and he knew more than any other dog I've trained. It was hard to be uptight when he would do his oh-so-cute wave, so it was something I used before stepping in the obedience ring to help calm my nerves.

When he was a young dog, before Joker the BT joined our family in 2001, our boys nicknamed Java 'Funny' because he did so many funny things. His nickname as he got older was The Curmudgeon because he his expression was so serious much of the time.

He was a very healthy boy, except for having some never-resolved issue that caused him to drink a lot and pee a lot, and not concentrate his urine. This went on well over half his life. About 6-8 weeks ago, he suddenly started drinking a lot more than usual again, and having to go outside much more frequently, with several frustrating accidents. While I consulted his vet, I didn't pursue a solution, since it just seemed to be the old problem returned.

We've been doing a lot of trips out the building to walk and exercise Gryff, and Java was loving the chance to dash about the building, chasing the other dogs and hunting for treats. I took a lot of pleasure in watching the old boy zooming about, obviously enjoying himself.

When I returned with the other 3 dogs from a recent trip to Pennsylvania where I taught a seminar, when I walked in the door, he snatched up a nylabone and proceeded to gleefully play his favorite game of keep away for several minutes. On this past Saturday night, he went out to the building with the rest of the dogs and ran and played while I finished setting up for the fun match scheduled for the next day. Sunday morning, he was doing his whine/moan fussing because he wanted to go out with me. He was fine when I fed them at noon. When I finally came in at 5 PM, I knew immediately that something wasn't right. I checked his gums. I've never seen such pale gums. I took his temp. 95.6. Never seen such a low temp. We trotted off to the emergency clinic. After some consultation, he was admitted for diagnostics. When I heard back from them a couple hours later, the news was not good. He had an orange-sized mass in his abdomen - this in a 19 lb dog - along with fluid. One option was exploratory surgery to see if the mass could be removed, but he was so unstable because of the abdominal bleeding, chances were low that he would survive the surgery. The other choice was euthanasia. And I had to decide fast. After a brief and tearful consultation with my dear friend Helen Szostak I made that awful choice. Fritz, Ryan, and I drove back to the clinic and hugged and petted him for a short time, saying goodbye. He went very peacefully in my arms.

I've never had a dog live past 12.5 years, so every day Java lived was a new record for us. As wrenching as such a sudden death can be, I am grateful that he lived life to the fullest to the very end. Isn't that what we all want to be able to do? Java filled a gaping hole when he came home in 1997, and he leaves one behind with his departure.

When my friend Jan's dog Sadie died, someone sent her this, which I just love:

"It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them. And every new dog who comes into my life, gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are" (Author unknown)

Rest well, Java Man. You were a blessing in our lives, and I'm so much richer for having known and loved you.

Obedience Match @ OTCGL

2011-01-09T14:52:00.006-05:00

I took the dogs to an obedience match today, which is the first one away from home in ages. I did Utility with both Ty and Joker, and Open with Ty. I did use a fair # of treats with both dogs, so not exactly ring ready, but some nice success. I went all but the last 5 ft with both on Signals. Treated Ty after drop, then did all from stand. Joker did all with just a CR after the down. Both did articles right. Ty did glove 3 fine. Just had glove 3 out for J, but he did it very nicely. MS good with both. Had white target out for DJ. Ty looked out and leaned forward. BUT she found the judge being 3 feet to our left saying READY? very distracting - looked at her instead of staying locked on her go spot. After praising for her first go-out and saying sit, she got distracted and didn't - but it was quite loud at that point. Her sits were excellent after that. But she was staring at the judge instead of me after the 2nd go-out, so would have missed the bj (I walked it out and talked extra to her). It was weird. Joker left me on the go out with some veering toward glove 3, but then spotted the strategically placed target and got there fine. I have to say, I love love love his go-out sits. Zippy quick and right in place. He failed to go to the bar, too, but this didn't surprise me with him, as he's not been right yet this week. Ty did good Open stays, tho flipped hips. Her run through in Open was fine in the small ring. Glad I made the trip. It gives me some concrete objectives to be training on this week.

Some of my training friends and I have started checking in with each other regularly about what we are training. It is really helping to keep me motivated. I've also made a list of all of the exercises I want to train each week, plus how many times. When I train, I jot down the day of the week in the chart. I only missed on a couple of exercises last week (Fig 8 & BJ). Granted, it's only been 1 week of keeping track. For now, I'm motivated to do it. Check in with me in a couple of months. I wish I had time to learn how to write an app for either my iPod touch or my Palm Pre Plus that is more customized than the rather clumsy spreadsheet app I'm using.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

2010-12-31T19:30:00.000-05:00

Last year in December, I wrote a blog post about my 2009 accomplishments and 2010 goals. I made the list of 2010 goals rather rapidly and without a huge amount of thought. Almost as soon as I posted it, I thought, "Why did I put down 'agility?' and 'walk or run a 5k'?

Goals for 2010

GRYFF
Finish his OTCh.
Accomplished in January 2010. Did only a few other obedience trials the rest of the year, possibly the fewest I've done since I started competing in the 1980's.
Finish his MH
YES! Finished Labor Day weekend, 2010. Gryffin is only the 6th retriever in AKC history to be a CH OTCH MH. I am still beyond proud of accomplishing all of these titles with me handling & training him for everything. He is such a great dog and I feel so blessed to have him at my side, whatever the adventure.
Submit HOF info
Got it in the mail with a week to spare.
Agility?
Nope. Another one of those spur-of-the-moment additions that I'm not in the least upset about not accomplishing.

TY
Get her SH
YES! Finished the same weekend Gryff finished his MH. A lot of ups and downs. Some days, she can be brilliant, others, I really wondered how she had ANY legs at all. Getting to the Master level may well be beyond her/our capabilities, but we'll learn a lot together.
Start her UD and beyond journey - Utiility by National in June
Didn't show in Utility until two times in October, and did miraculously earn one leg. I made the very wise decision to do Graduate Open at the National in June. Signals were just too fuzzy for her at full distance, and we were spending too much time training for the hunt tests. She did get 1st place in GO at the National.
Advance her MH work
She has probably had more exposure to MH level work at this stage than Gryffin did simply because I am working on it with Gryffin. We still have a LONG way to go on water blinds. Her memory on water for marks is also pretty erratic. I doubt she could do a triple on water with any complexity. But with time, it may come.
Agility?
Nope. Another one of those spur-of-the-moment additions.

JOKER
Earn RE
He got one leg in February, a 2nd one in October, and actually did pass a 3rd time, but I was sure we'd missed a station, so asked the judge to NQ us.
Earn UD
He also only showed 2 times in October, and also miraculously earned a leg, with my first ever score in the 170's.

NDT/JABBY/WORK
Get Totally Fetching finished and released
Mission accomplished! Well, at least the finished part. Release should be sometime in early January 2011. I'm currently in that limbo period of "What if no one likes it?" that hits just before release of a new product.
Get started on Drop on Recall project
Mostly just thought about it, but I did write an outline just recently, mainly to get it out of my head.
BNI membership
Still on the membership committee. Still debating whether the effort of membership produces enough benefit.

SELF
House dejunking - keep it up!
Did a lot early in the year. Later on, not so much, partly because other projects took priority.
FlyLady work
Same as above
Keep using Things and gettin' organized via 'Getting Things Done'
Doing well with this one. I still love my 'Things' software, and use it daily.
work out consistenly
My December 2009 surgery curtailed working out early in the year, then a shoulder injury caused a multiple month layoff from Curves. Thought about giving up my membership, but I'm glad to say I went back late in the fall and have definitely noticed a difference. I'm also walking regularly while doing rehab work with Gryffin. Not long periods of time, but it's better than nothing.
walk or run a 5K
This was one of those spur of the moment, toss it in goals. Didn't do it.
Finish out MWFCR Presidency smoothly
Sigh. Because we never had an annual meeting (mainly because many of us were involved in helping with this year's National in June), the election never took place. Then our secretary resigned. We're basically in limbo and I can't stir myself to really care.
Keep on top of Marshbank's trial work
The 2010 trials saw our biggest entries ever. I hope to add a few additional classes and nice title rosettes next year.
Travel trailer
I spent a huge amount of time researching and test driving various possible tow vehicles. Test drove a fully loaded Suburban and a bare-bones cargo van in late July, then discovered the Sportsmobile website. Poured over van designs during vacation, visited the factory in August, flew to California in early October to look at a used one, 95% sure I was going to buy it. TOO BIG! Rethinking the whole thing. With Gryffin injured, the whole thing is on hold.
Apprentice for several weeks with field trainer
The timing simply didn't work out to work with Mitch White in the spring. Darn. Still hope to do this someday.

GOALS FOR 2011

DOGS
Java
o Keep on trucking! He'll turn 14 on March 3.

Joker
o Finish his UD & RE

Gryffin
o Get him sound and keep him that way.
o Qualify and attend the 2011 NOI in Orlando, FL. He has been invited 3 years in a row, but we've never gone. We will obviously need to show a lot more than in 2010 to accomplish this, since about 1/2 the qualifying period is already past. This seems much more attainable than qualifying for the Master National.
o Qualify for the Master National. He has 2 of the needed 6 passes. We'd hoped to run two more tests that counted in September and October, but his mid-September sliced hock made that impossible. This goal is probably out of our reach because of his injury, but I still want to shoot for it. Aim high, I like to say. Even if I can't go with Gryffin, I hope to make the trip to at least watch some of it.

Ty
o Finish her UD, see if she can get some UDX legs. An OTCh seems pretty far fetched right now. I'll just have to see what develops.
o Keep working on her Master level training in the field. Entering a Master by the fall of 2011 looks out of reach right now. I think 2012 is going to be MUCH more realistic.

NDT/JABBY
o Sell 400 copies of Totally Fetching
o Update website - maybe learn how to do some of it myself?
o Keep developing social media usage for my businesses
o Host a training camp
o Write the script for the someday Drop on Recall video
o Get back to using Constant Contact consistently - maybe a monthly newsletter?

SELF
o Work out at least 110 times @ Curves. I made it to 390 total workouts since joining in January 2007, and I'd like to be at 500 by end of 2011.
o Keep honing my use of 'Getting Things Done'.
o Complete AKC Open apprenticeship requirements.

How to order 'Totally Fetching'

2010-12-24T07:31:00.010-05:00

Totally Fetching: Teaching & Proofing a Reliable Retrieve is Adele Yunck’s update to the long-popular 1995 VHS video, Positively Fetching: Teaching the Obedience Retrieves Using Food. She kept the best of the original video and redid the rest, adding a section on building your dog’s hold, and greatly enhancing the proofing section. This 73-minute DVD takes you through the whole process of teaching your dog how to retrieve for the AKC obedience ring, from choosing the right equipment through proofing and problem solving. See a large variety of dogs from all of the AKC breed groups learning how to retrieve. You will see successes as well as errors. The companion booklet includes some photos and is a great supplemental reference when you are away from a DVD player.

See a fun trailer for the DVD here.

Update 1/9/11: I picked up the DVDs on 1/7/11 and have shipped all advance orders. To order your copy of the DVD and booklet, send your payment (write your check to “NDT”) to:

NDT • 3676 W Ellsworth Rd • Ann Arbor, MI 48103

Include your shipping address and your e-mail address if available. I won’t cash your check until I ship your DVD.
The cost for early-bird orders postmarked by January 31, 2011 is $45 including shipping/handling.
The DVD/booklet package will sell for $50 + $4 shipping/handling starting February 1, 2011.

Do you have an old VHS copy of Positively Fetching still on your shelf? Return it with your order for the new DVD and take $15 off the prices listed above. That means you can get your copy of the new one before January 31, 2011 for only $30! I plan to recycle any old VHS tapes collected.

While I will eventually have the DVD available via Amazon and other resellers, for the first couple of months of 2011, this is how to get it.

Please share this link with anyone you might thing is interested.

Hall of Fame

2010-12-20T21:24:00.005-05:00

I've been working on a Photoshop collage of photos of Gryffin for his FCRSA Hall of Fame page, and this inspired me to create the new collage of photos of all of my dogs for the top of the blog. What do you think?

Gryffin has actually been eligible for the Hall of Fame since he completed his UD and SH in 2007, but I wanted to see how far we could go in our title pursuit. I'm glad I waited :-). Trying to condense our 7.5 years together into a single page isn't easy. I've got a write up done, but need to sit on it for 24 hours. Hopefully, I can get a good print of the collage to send in for the FCRSA HOF album.

This process has once again reminded me of the wonderful ride I've been on with Gryffin. I am so fortunate that Helen picked him for me. It is such fun looking back on the highs and lows of the journey together.

Thank You!

2010-12-15T07:05:00.003-05:00

Now that the dust is starting to settle from finalizing the work, I would like to thank the following people for their help and encouragement to get Totally Fetching done:

• Raissa Hinman and her Alaskan Malamutes, Aura and her son Bootstrap
• Kay Braddock and her German Wirehaired Pointers, Jet, Hank, and Belle
• Belinda Venner and her Labrador Retriever Sparta and her German Shorthaired Pointer Tesla, forever preserved as the cute puppy she was!
• Joanne Silhanek & Shetland Sheepdog Kelly
• Brenda Riemer & Shetland Sheepdog Liza. Brenda has also been a great support and Gentle Nudger when I needed it. I'm not sure if I returned the nudging for her projects as much as she would have liked, but I surely appreciate the pushing she gave me when I needed it.

All five of them participated in several taping sessions over several months time (as I started and stopped working on it), both in front of and behind the video camera. I appreciate them being willing to show both the good and the bad of the process!

I also owe big thanks to the woman whose name I never learned who audited the June 2009 seminar I did at the DTC of Champaign Urbana. She did a really fine job taping the 35 minutes of the retrieve portion of the seminar. I was able to use a lot of the footage in the update, and I really appreciate her efforts! If anyone can help me learn her name, I would be grateful.

Back when I first started contemplating how to begin the update process, I consulted with a couple of guys at Russell Video in Ann Arbor. I had gotten VHS tape duplicates done there for many years. They encouraged me to do a lot of the production work myself, both taping and editing. I've been assuming that I would go back to them at the end of the process, but because they are a PC shop and all my work has been done on a Mac, I ended up opting to finish up with World Class Tapes, also in Ann Arbor. My son Ryan had his One Year CD mastered and reproduced at WCT last year. It also didn't hurt that owner Sue had trained one of her dogs at Northfield in the past.

A few weeks ago, I met with Mike at WCT, and he walked me through the process of how to get my iMovie projects into a final duplicatable DVD. Another learning curve followed, and I am grateful to him for his patient guidance. Being the computer geek that I am, I've really enjoyed the process.

Now to get busy with marketing and preparing for shipping loads and loads of DVDs...

Happy Dance of the Done DVD

2010-12-13T18:48:00.003-05:00

Some of you may know about this from Facebook... I've been making a big push since early November to *finally* wrap up my DVD update to 'Positively Fetching: Teaching the Obedience Retrieves Using Food'. The update is called 'Totally Fetching: Teaching & Proofing a Reliable Retrieve'.

I did a premature happy dance last Weds morning, when I successfully burned a DVD and thought I had a good master. Since there were problems with the menu selection order, it wasn't good. Darn.

Sunday afternoon, I started wrestling with iDVD, trying to customize the menus as I wanted them. I'm reasonably confident that today's DVD burn produced the final master for duplication. I dropped it off at the shop that will be doing the final packaging late this afternoon.

The original was a 60-minute VHS tape. The update is a 73-minute DVD. Today I watched it all on my TV for the first time (as opposed to my laptop screen), and I'm just so darned happy with it. Also quite tired of looking at it :-).

When Judy Byron and I did the original video, we hired a local (to Ann Arbor) production company, and so I sat in on most of the editing sessions, to supervise how it was put together. When I first started contemplating this update (oh, sometime in early 2009, I think), I decided to invest in the latest iMovie software and do as much of it myself as I could - I could certainly learn how to use the software myself. As it turns out, I did pretty much all of it, with some excellent guidance for the final production process from Mike at World Class Tapes, the company that will be duplicating and packaging the DVDs. I also had to learn how to use iDVD. Having been a computer programmer in my Life Before Dogs, this is actually something I enjoy doing. I'm even looking forward to whatever the next video project will be, since it will be much easier since I know the software so much better.

I don't know what the ETA of the salable DVDs will be, but I'm pretty confident it will be by mid-January. I'll have ordering info available in several places when the time is right. Among others, I'll put in on my JABBY Productions Facebook fan page.

A Shocker in Ann Arbor

2010-10-23T19:45:00.005-04:00

About 10 minutes before going in the ring with Ty today in our first attempt at Utility, I suddenly thought, "Oh drat... Every one of my dogs has gotten a Q their 1st time in the Utility ring. My streak is bound to end today." (Joker was also going in Utility for the 1st time.) Then I remembered that Tramp (my 2nd dog, 1st OTCh.) did NQ her 1st try at Utility, earning her 1st leg the next day. Okay, just never mind. And besides, who else REALLY CARES???

Ty did show in Grad Open in June at the Specialty, which meant we were training regularly leading up to it, just not quite ready distance-wise on Signals and Go-outs. Joker hadn't had regular training since... March? April? Before? Both had done some Util matches last winter/spring, but VERY crudely. Then I spent all summer doing field work with Ty & Gryffin, with nearly zero obedience practice.

When Gryff cut his hock in September 19, it slammed our field season to a halt. I immediately jumped into obedience training, concentrating on Utility with Joker and Ty. We did two consecutive Friday matches @ NDT, with a productive week of training in between. I made a quick 3-day trip to California two weeks ago, so no training Thu-Sat, and was in Florida last weekend and missed 4 days of training.

On Wednesday this past week, Ty could NOT do her signals - and it wasn't just one of them. She was failing them every which way - on my drop signal, she might down, or sit, or stand and wag. On her sit signal, she might lie there, or sit, or stand up. I was SO frustrated. I'm very glad my friend Belinda was there, because I think her presence helped keep me from completely losing my cool. After that session, I was sure we couldn't pass signals. Okay, so we'd see if she could do the rest of the class. I was pretty confident with the other exercises. Then she decided that immediately after the Moving Stand exam, she needed to just return on her own. EEK! I practiced with a toy behind her to which I'd release her after an exam. Yesterday, on the last try, she started breaking to the toy instead of to me. Progress!

How to solve the signal problem??? I thought back to our meltdown on Signals in March, when she wasn't staying on the stand and was having drop problems. I pulled out a clicker and worked on those two things (stay put and don't anticipate, but DO drop when signaled). On Thursday when I went out to train, I had my temper well under control, and got out a clicker and worked on back chaining - I did several signal recalls from a sit for a click and treat. Then left her in a down, sit, click, toss a treat. We worked our way back to the drop. Her training ended on a definite up note from Wednesday.

Joker has been getting steadily better at the overall class exercises but he is just SO green. I thought he could probably do the signal exercise - he's been MUCH more reliable than Ty, and articles have been solid. The corner gloves are dicey, his moving stand is poorly understood (stop is good, return usually okay, but the exam... OH the exam... "Oh, you are coming to pet me? Let me come closer so you can do it sooner!"). My biggest concern, though, has been Directed Jumping. Three weeks ago, he was failing the exercise in multiple ways - not leaving me on my send command; not waiting long enough after the sit; and taking the same jump twice. My husband Fritz even came out one evening and called commands for me, which caused both dogs to make mistakes.

I finished up feeling SO good about everyone's training that day. Gryff had his first really full training session - during my California trip, he'd injured himself and was on three legs again. I hired my son Ryan to leash walk him while I was gone in Florida. Gryff was absolutely fabulous training Thursday. He was entered in both Open and Utility both days. I decided to give all the dogs a brief run in the agility yard. And Gryff ended up on 3 legs again :-(. Can we say dumb owner? We ended up at our local rehab vet Friday morning. She feels the injury is in his lower back, and suggests we see a chiropractor. Given that that couldn't happen until next week, I opted to have her do an acupuncture session. I've never seen one before, and it was fascinating. The needles that were in the muscle on the right side of his spine (the sore side) were twitching and dancing and bobbing. Once done, he did trot out (vs. the hopping he was doing on the way in). It wasn't a totally sound trot, but definite improvement. I was instructed to apply heat, massage, and ice a couple times a day. He is totally acting like his regular crazy self, which is a bit frustrating, but it does make me think that he can't be hurting TOO much.

We had order I in Utility today, which meant Signals first. I was in with Ty first (I did not show Gryff today), so figured we'd be able to relax after a prompt NQ. She had a significant lag on the fast and then didn't sit on the halt, but the rest of her heeling was fine. And she DID HER SIGNALS! I told the judge, "Well, that was unexpected!" Her articles and glove (#2) were all fine. Okay, would my bandaid hold for the Moving Stand? Her stop was quite good, and OMG, she stayed still when the judge stepped back! Decent finish for another passed exercise. Her 1st go-out and jump were fabulous. As the judge passed in front of us to switch sides for the 2nd half, she asked if my heart was pounding. Oh, yeah :-). Great 2nd half, and our first leg!

Joker was in Exc. B rally, and earned his 2nd leg with a 1st place 99. We went into the Utility ring about a 1/2 hour later. When we were ready to start Signals, oh, drat, he was looking forward, and when I started, he didn't. I immediately gave him a verbal command to heel. It's an expensive error, but not an NQ (it cost us 5 points). The rest of his heeling was quite nice (well, for Joker :-)), and he also did his signals. Good boy! He plugged away through articles, the glove retrieve (dangling it by a finger, but holding without dropping), and the Moving Stand. OMG, could we have another Q? He looked out well, and dashed off on my go-out cues. Oops, he pulled up shorter than I like, and I gave him a fast sit command. Jump was fine. Second go-out, same pulling up short. Not 10 feet past the jump short, but still far from where I'd like to see him. He waited for my command, I took my time, and then... he took the correct jump, came in and ... another Q for my team!

Ty ended up with a 190, 4 off the Signals, and then crooked turns, fronts, finishes on most everything else. Joker had my first ever score in the 170's :-) - a 178. He lost 9 on the Signal Exercise (ouch!), which would have been -4 had he started with me as he usually does. He lost 8 on DJ (another ouch) - I didn't ask the judge how she deducted, but I'm betting 3 points per go-out, plus fronts and finishes.

I am still in shock... even though we have been cramming for this for the past month, there are just so many things that could go wrong. I wasn't that convinced when I sent in my entries that either was likely to pass, but how can I pass up this once-a-year opportunity to show in my building? And yes, we have a HUGE home-court advantage. They aren't ready to go elsewhere yet, but this gives me a good read on where they are.

And oh my gosh, they each have a Utility leg!

A Utility Training Update

2010-10-01T16:05:00.001-04:00

I've lost track if I mentioned it here, but Gryffin sliced his left hock a couple of weekends ago. Not, thank god, a career ending slice, but it had him on 3 legs for a couple of days, thus ending our wonderful season of hunt tests. The silver lining is that I've leapt back into obedience training, particularly with Joker and Ty in Utility. Neither of them has shown in Utility yet, nor even done that many matches with any sort of thought of being even vaguely close to ready to trial. Joker hasn't really been trained regularly since sometime in the spring - maybe March? April? Ty Q'ed in Graduate Open at the National back in June, but since then, we focused on field work, with next to no obedience work.

I had matches here at home today and a week ago. I ran them both through last week. Ty had pretty disastrous signals and various other issues. Joker stood there on the down signal, but did the rest of his signals nicely. I don't think he actually did too much else right.

We have trained a whole bunch since then - almost daily, in fact - mostly at home, but we did take one road trip Wednesday to the Toledo KC, where we'll probably trial in late November. Gryffin just LOVES to show there.

Ty passed everything except for anticipating the MS return. In her defense, because she kept turning her head during the exam, the 'judge' kept pushing her head back. She probably pushed Ty's head about 5 times. When she finished the exam and stepped back, Ty started in. I think the alarm had gone off in her head... "Times up!" Other than that, she did a lot of excellent work. I'm not overly concerned about fronts and finishes right now, but even they were pretty good. Certainly, she did all of them without more than a 1/2 point off. I waited a little extra long to cue the 2nd jump. She was twitching towards the high jump, which she'd already done, but she waited and stayed attentive. She also started slightly in the wrong direction on a couple of finishes, but then went the right way. One was to my right, one to my left. I am VERY pleased with her progress in just a week.

Joker also did a lot more correctly today. Most of the problems he had were familiar. We started with Directed Jumping, and doing go-outs cold? No goes on both of them. But I've gotten that when I've done some glove/go-out proofing and he's made mistakes, so I wasn't that surprising. I still need to work out the best position for him when I send him, what the best signal is for me to use, etc. He also wanted to repeat the HJ on the right. He doesn't quite seem to get that after doing THIS jump, we do THAT jump. His moving stand was good, though I asked the judge to do a simpler exam. He went to glove 2 instead of 1. I already knew I had a problem with glove 3, so that's why I picked 1. It is probably his weakest exercise. Guess what we'll be doing frequently this week? He missed his first article, which was in the center. He had circled and sniffed all of the outer articles twice, and I think simply timed out. This is unusual, so I'm not particularly worried. He's actually been showing me a very nice and deliberate work on them. He got back on track, and his 2nd one was fine. AND... drum roll, not only did he do his signals fine, he actually heeled NICELY with me. And notice, I didn't say "Joker heeled nicely, for him." No, it wasn't perfect. But he was with me. We've been starting each of our training sessions with a dozen or so set ups. His understanding of heel position is so poor, that it makes training the Utility exercises cumbersome, because it takes so many tries to get him in decent enough position to get started. This set-up work is paying off - our last two training days have resulted in much less effort from me to get him there. Again, he isn't perfect, but he's improved.

Gryffin did Open after not doing much work on it at all. He was brilliant :-). I caught him in some attention lapses in Utility which caused him to bark at me when I corrected him. Mr. Sassypants. Overall, some really fine work from him. He is my 'comfortable slippers' dog now. Who would have thunk it about my goofball?

It's amazing what a week of consistent training can produce. I guess it is time to get off my duff and fill out those Marshbanks entries...

Town & Country Camp Ground pond blinds

2010-09-19T21:32:00.012-04:00

I attended AKC obedience and rally judges seminar this weekend in West Salem, Ohio, hosted by Linda & Mike MacDonald, long time obedience competitors. I had another enjoyable camping experience at the Town & Country Camp Ground that's all of about 1/4 mile down the road from their property. Lo and behold, there was a great big flat and closely mowed field right across from the camp site I selected that worked great for the Walking Baseball field drill I did Saturday morning. There were also several ponds on the grounds. I asked at the check-in office if it was okay to swim the dogs, and was told it was okay. So, when the seminar finished Saturday afternoon, I headed back to the campgrounds and did some training. When I got home, I looked the campgrounds up on Google maps and grabbed the pond photo to make my diagrams. I love the internet!

On Saturday, I did these blinds with Gryff:

Blinds 1 & 2 had a similar theme of cross open water and then parallel the shore. As expected, he kept wanting to cut in to the shore on Blind 1. Pretty ugly, in fact. Blind 2 was better, but it was also further off shore. On Blind 3, he tried for the point instead of going past it. There was a tree about a yard to the left of the blind, and once past the point, he swam straight for a long time, seemingly marking off the tree.

And these with Ty:

I put a pile of bumpers at spot X for her, and did it multiple times from different spots along the shoreline from which the shorter line originates. We finished up with the long blind. The blue zig-zag is an approximation of her path to the blind. LOTS of trying to go to the right shore. It was quite a struggle. Once she got beyond the point on the right, it smoothed out.

Today, I did these two technical blinds with Gryff:

I taught him the blinds via back-chaining, starting at position 1, then moving back to position 2, then ended by running the whole thing 2-3 times from position 3. His cheating tendency, especially when there is a shoreline to his right, showed up on blind 1 when starting from position 2. He wanted to veer right to take a bit more land instead of the desired entry near 1. Then when we'd backed up to position 3, he kept trying to land early and enter water late. The photo doesn't show the Gazebo that was between pos 1 & 2, to his right as he ran the blind.

He had a lot of trouble on blind 2 exiting the water near position 2 and taking a straight line across the land to reenter the water. We've done a fair bit of decheating lately, and I think he was being overly honest. But once out, he'd take a line like he was going to run around the left end of the 2nd portion of water.

Today, I did this series of blinds with Ty:

I was really pleased with her effort today. She does continue to want to enter the water in the same place, which means if we move down the shore, she veers. I stopped her and called her back to try again. I did some moving up. Once, I had her stay and walked forward and showed her the entry point. On her last blind, which was essentially a repeat from Saturday, she leapt in with enthusiasm, and did a very nice job. The photo doesn't show the fountain that was spouting, nor the 3 geese swimming off to the shore at the top of the photo :-). Whereas she kept heading for the right shore on Saturday, today she seemed to be heading for the fountain, then the geese, but then corrected and did most of the 85 yd blind without intervention. Bravo, Ty!

The biggest downside? They smell like a swamp. But what valuable training it was!

The rare combination of Ch OTCh MH

2010-09-12T08:49:00.002-04:00

Earlier this year, when Gryffin earned Master pass #3, an email friend told me that his Toller was only the 5th retriever in AKC history to have earned the special combination of Ch OTCh MH. That has been in the back of my head ever since, but I didn't want to jinx myself and do any research myself before Gryffin finished.

In the past week, I've corresponded with John about this rare achievement. He said the AKC was unable to verify without spending a boatload of money for reports. Not the way to go. It would seem that Gryffin has joined these dogs:

Two Golden Retrievers:
CH OTCH MACH BONACRES THE LUCKY PENNY UDX4 MH WC OS DDHF 12/20/1996 Male
(someone sent me who the other dog is, but I can't find it)

Two previous Flat-Coats, both owned by Paulette Schwartzendrubber:
CH OTCH Hob-B's Knite Ryder, MH , WCX
CH OTCH MACH Clisocha Big Tyme Hob-B, UDX, MH, MX, MXJ, WCX

One Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, owned by John and Marie Simon:
Ch OTCh Westerlea's Sir Edumnd UDX3 OM1 MH WCX

So with Gryffin joining Paulette's two Flat-Coats, that puts Flat-Coats in the lead for the most in this elite club.

I think it makes him a one-in-a-million dog :-). And I'm especially proud that I have done all of the training and exhibiting to all of these titles.

Master pass #6 for Gryffin

2010-09-12T08:39:00.002-04:00

I'm writing this from the Chain O' Lakes campground, where the dogs and I camped the past two nights. We're having a leisurely morning before heading home.

I got up way early on Friday morning (had to teach until 9 pm Thursday), hit the road at 5:30 AM, and was at the test site by a bit after 8 AM, for the Friday Master test at the Backwater Retriever Club. We were running under Dan & Peggy Ramsey. I've run Dan's tests numerous times, to Peggy for the 1st time back in July (pass #4). They seem to put on very reasonable tests, and are really pulling for the dogs. And they both really like Gryffin :-).

Most of the tests for the weekend were near Albion, Indiana, where our field events were held for the National this year. Because of the big entry, the Master flight (division) I was in was held in Topeka, IN, which based on the large number of horse and buggies, is a large Amish community. If my info is right, the test site is owned by Amish people, which means it can't be used on Sundays. The site was an old gravel pit, and frankly, a bit of a junk yard, but it was nice to be in one place - with a porta potti - and not have to drive around at all.

The test started with a land triple, double blind, and an honor. We were in a flat field that had clearly been carved out of the land in the past. It had fairly steep sides on the left and back. The first mark came from a gun station up on top of the cliff to the left - kinda cool, I've never had a mark come from way up high like that. It landed conveniently next to a small mound, which gave me a good land mark to remember (I'm a terrible marker - it's why I appreciate my dogs' abilities). The 2nd one came from the middle of the field and landed behind the large patch of taller cover in the center of the field. The 3rd was a shot flier from the right side of the field. Gryff was his usual Steady Eddie self, grabbed up the flier, having to hunt a bit on the center bird, and going right to the bird by the mound. The shorter blind was to the left of the tall cliff, cleverly tucked into a little pocket with trees and bushes and a hill behind it. He went almost al the way to it on my initial send (yeah, Gryff) and had just a couple little handles at the end. He essentially lined the longer blind, which was between the left and middle stations. His honor was rock solid, as usual.

The 2nd series was a walk-up (walking to the line, the first bird goes off while you are still in motion) water double with a blind. What was unusual was that we had a 2nd flier - never had that before. The flier came out of a station on the left shore, and instead of landing about in the middle of the pond, it was hit late, and landed where the 2nd bird was supposed to land. So we had a 'no bird'. I put him back in his crate and waited for 3 dogs to run (as is typically a good idea). One of the skills that I realize I don't ever practice is coming out of a holding blind and having to stop to pick up the handler gun. I frequently carry one out of the holding blind, but the stopping to pick it up while maintaining control needs some work. I need to come up with a gun stand in order to do so. I got some ideas from some friends at the test.

So on our rerun, the flier was shot correctly, and the other bird came out and landed farther to the left than where the no bird one had landed. This meant the two birds were pretty close together. As he swam out for the right bird, he looked longingly over at the high-floating flier. He ducked in behind the bush where the no bird one had landed, but fairly promptly came up with the bird. No problem on the 2nd one.

The blind was set up so that it was under the arc of the flier. This is one of the scenarios I drilled with him quite a bit in August, and wow, did the work pay off... I lined him up, gave him his cues, and he locked on and swam right to it. Very proud training moment! This time, there was no doubt in my mind that we would go on to the 3rd series.

My training partner Corinne was running her Toller Neon in just their 2nd Master test (1st pass back in July), but in the other flight. At the end of the day, she really didn't think she'd get called back, but between me and one other person, we convinced her that staying when you haven't passed is much better than leaving if you have. Turns out to have been a good choice, since they nailed the last series and got their 2nd pass.

I got to the test site earlier than planned, which turns out to have been good, since they called for test dog almost as soon as I arrived. It was a land/water triple, really fun little test. We ran from back in the woods, looking out across two ponds separated by a narrow dike. The first bird came out left to right across the ponds, landing in the back corner. The 2nd one came out of the woods to the left across the right side of the closer pond, landing cleverly in a patch of leaves, which very effectively camouflaged the duck. The final bird came out of the first gun station, but came straight at us.

We had to sit on a bucket as the birds went down, and during the handler briefing, Dan had shown where he would put it if he was running a dog, but said we could put it anywhere we wanted. After how inattentive Gryff had been on the walkup the day before, I was very pleased when he came out of the blind with me and lo and behold, did a very fine sit stay while I moved the bucket and picked up the gun. The apprentice judge even made a note about his fine line manners for that one! When I sent him on the go bird, he leapt into the water with a big squeal of delight, something I don't remember him doing in a test since he was 16 months old in his first WC test. He got right out to the first bird. I sent him for the shorter right one next. He got out and veered left, almost as though he wanted to peek over the hill to see if that middle one was still there. He had to hunt a bit for the bird that was hidden in the leaves, but his nose won. When I sent him for the middle bird, he took a nice line to the dike, but then hunted to the left. He then ran back along the dike and around the right side of the pond, cheating black heart that he is. He quickly found his bird, ran back around the edge, but when he got to the dike, he ran back along it until he was straight in front of me, jumped in and returned. A small spurt of consciousness?

I got hugs from both judges before leaving the line, since they weren't going to be at the awards that evening. it was great to know before the ribbon ceremony that we'd passed :-).

So that is our 2nd of the needed 6 passes to qualify for the 2011 Master National. It sure was a fun test, and though I was somewhat nervous, nothing like when going for the title. Kind of like after you get your final OTCh points, suddenly, you are hard to beat :-).

Ty ran her last Senior test and was fairly awful. Makes me doubly glad she titled last weekend! I ended up calling her in on the land blind because she was totally ignoring my whistle sits and casts. In fact, I ended up walking out to her to put her leash on her, since she wouldn't come. I think that got her attention!

A Dream Realized

2010-09-05T22:20:00.003-04:00

Today, I accomplished a goal that seemed like an impossible dream early in Gryffin's life. I think it was my dear departed friend Leslie Reichard who first planted the seed... CH OTCH MH. I poo-pooed the idea. I think she even suggested that before Gryff had his JH. I had done the first two titles with 3 other dogs. But an MH? Naw, too far fetched. Leslie was nuts! I couldn't possibly. I'd never even earned a JH on a dog, let alone anything higher.

Back in January this year, we reached the pinnacle of obedience, and my jolly boy completed the requirements to become my 5th OTCh dog. So, I set my sights on reaching that impossible dream. We had earned 2 of the 5 passes required for the title in 2009. Could we get three more? It became my #1 goal for 2010. We earned leg #3 at the FCRSA Specialty. We failed our next test, but I learned a critical lesson. At $70-75 an entry for a Master test, believe me, you remember the lesson when you do something dumb! We earned leg #4 in July. Last weekend, we failed again. Granted, it was on the toughest test we'd been in, but still... Add to that Ty's failure in Senior, and we had our 1st double flunko weekend. I was SO disappointed Sunday. I thought a lot about an essay I wrote early in 2009 about dealing with disappointment. Although we still had several more tests we could enter this fall, I wasn't sure I could maintain the training schedule. I pushed myself to train this past week,
and we had a lot of up and down sessions, especially for Ty. Friday, I tried to remind myself to concentrate on Gryff's successes instead of dwelling on Ty's poor work.

Gryff got through the first series yesterday without having to handle on one of the marks that many people DID have to handle on. While his blind wasn't 1st class, it was okay. The 2nd series had me nervous. He again did the two marks (a double with the very close 2nd bird a 'wiper bird', i.e., one thrown across the line to the 1st one to wipe out the dog's memory) without any handling from me (the generally preferred method), but the 2nd half of the 1st water blind was not very good. Okay, it stunk! The 2nd one was very nice, though.

So we went home exhausted late last night with no real idea of whether or not we'd passed. I arrived back at Omega about as the 2nd series was wrapping up, hoping we hadn't made the trip in vain. And we made it through to the 3rd series!!! Yippee, another chance!
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
The final series was a water triple on a pond on which we had failed two 3rd series last year. We've trained on it a lot this year, which has it's good points and bad. He got the left go bird promptly, but had a looooong hunt for the right bird that was thrown on the right end of an island. To his credit, he stayed tight in the area of the fall, but geeze, did it give me a racing heart, trying to make sure I was ready to help him if he got too far off! I had my whistle in my mouth, but having seen several handlers need to handle on the long middle mark, I didn't want to use it up on the right bird. When I took delivery of that right bird, he looked out up the middle, and locked on the spot where the middle bird had landed. I gave him a loud GRYFFIN to send him and he rocketed out and almost immediately snatched up that bird. Oh how sweet it was!

So my dear, wonderful, jolly, goofy boy is now:

Ch OTCh Grousemoor Gryffindor UDX RE MH WCX

Thanks, Leslie, for planting that seed so many years ago. I sure wish you could have been here to see it realized, but somehow, I think you know.

Adele & Gryffin CH OTCH MH

Ty's 4th SH pass

2010-09-05T22:17:00.002-04:00

I'm very happy to report that Ty earned her 4th Senior Hunter pass at yesterday's Michigan Flyways test @ Omega Farms, and is now:

Ch Grousemoor Timeless CDX *SH* RE WCX

Her land series work was simply superb, probably the best overall she's had in a test. We had to do a walk up to the flier as a single, then run the blind behind the flier station, then do a double to the right of the flier station. While I didn't watch close to all the dogs in Senior, of those I watched, her marking was the best. I actually saw a lot of handlers having to handle on their marks. Her initial line to her blind was fabulous, carrying her 3/4 of the way to the blind before the slope of the hillside, the mound of dirt, and the flier station all sucked her down the hill. That was so exciting! And then she went and 'stepped on' both birds in the double.

After the week we've had training water (mostly really, really frustratingly poor), I figured the only way we could possibly do a passing water blind was if the destination was one she had been to in the past. We got very lucky :-). We were on the heart-shaped pond. The line was on the north hill. The memory bird was just on the shoreline on the east side of the pond, and the go-bird into the north east corner of the pond. She got the go bird very nicely. After taking delivery, she didn't quite wait for me to send her, but headed off enthusiastically. She got into the water, but then turned back to check. I kept my mouth closed, and she figured it out. She started hunting to the left of the gun station (fairly common), and suddenly headed back along the shore towards the go bird location. Shades of last week when I stood and watched her run all the way back to the go bird location! I blew a whistle tardily just as she got behind the very high grass on the shoreline and she disappeared. I was sure she would pop out near the go bird, when suddenly she appeared out of the corn up the hill from the duck. I'm not sure how well she was really responding to my come-in whistles, but she did get there pretty quickly once she appeared out of the corn.

The water blind was to a point on the opposite shore. When we did this blind 2 weeks ago, there was also a gun station on shore to the right which had sucked her in badly. The start was shaky at best, which didn't surprise me in the least, but a light bulb went on and she got going in the generally right direction. The end wasn't beautiful, but it was successful. We had to honor to complete the test, and she watched the next dog's birds go off with great interest, but remained steady.

I was thrilled to complete her title under two Flat-Coat owners, Clint Catledge and Ed Zawodny.

Next step for her? Attempt to build her water confidence on blinds! Oh, and that pesky UD title yet to be earned...

2010 June Buckeye Retriever Club Hunt Test

2010-06-21T17:06:00.005-04:00

This past weekend was the Buckeye Retriever Club's spring hunt test, at Hambden Nursery south of Cleveland. Gryff finished his JH there, earned his 1st SH leg there, and his 2nd MH leg, so I'm quite familiar with the grounds. The Ohio hunt test crowd is simply great. Great people, fine judges, excellent workers, and super grounds.

I'm bummed to say Gryff and I went out in the 2nd series of thes Master test, the 1st time we haven't gone on to the 3rd series (this was our 6th test). His morning land series was great - a walk-up triple with a double blind. He picked up his go bird on the right and the left bird with almost no hunt, and got the middle bird efficiently. He lined the left blind (which was between the left and middle marks, just outside where the left mark landed and only took 2-3 whistles on the 2nd one.

The 2nd series was deceptively simple - a water double with a diversion bird. The diversion bird was thrown when the dog was just reentering the water on the return from the 1st retrieve, AND it was thrown in-line with the memory bird. Gryff got the go bird and the diversion bird just fine, but instead of getting in and swimming past where the diversion bird had splashed, he chose to run down the bank on the left and then all around the pond to the bird. And then he didn't get wet on the return. The judges said if I'd handled him into the water (successfully, of course), it would have been okay. The pond was small enough that it simply didn't occur to me to handle. I kept thinking he'd get in, and then he was beyond where that was possible. One other dog did essentially the same thing and he was also dropped. I think the failure was a combination of zero work on in-lines since last summer and his cheaty nature that hasn't been addressed lately. He did some pretty significant cheating during the Steady Singles at the National as well as in training during the past week. Bad me for not addressing it better during training.

I do know what I'll be working on in the coming months with Gryff. WATER! Lots and lots of water. Since Ty's water is weaker, this will be good for her, too.

Ty had super land marks in the Senior test on Sunday. It was a walk-up double, with the memory bird thrown from the right hedgerow, angled back, and the go bird thrown from behind a bush, landing just to the left of a big pine tree. She walked out with nice focus out into the field, and sat promptly on my whistle. She turned well to mark the 2nd bird, and dashed off right to the bird on my cue. She lined up and delivered it well, and got the memory bird with only a short hunt. The blind was about 180 degrees from the left bird, toward the corner of the field. We had to send directly into the corner of high cover, with tempting mowed paths to both left and right. There was another mowed path in the middle. Her blind was decent, though I have some homework ideas from the experience. She wasn't sitting at all crisply, and in fact, didn't sit a couple of times. She stopped and gave me her focus, but not completely. She was standing with her body facing down one of the paths, her head turned toward me. I waited a LONG time for her to sit, and to her credit, she didn't 'auto cast' and take off on her own. I finally gave a come-in whistle and another sit, and finally got a sit from her. On my next cast, she did go into the next strip of cover and made it back pretty close to the duck. We had some horsing around in the trees, but she finally came up with it.

Here's a short video showing the land marks as they were thrown for the first dog.

Both judges complimented me when we finished the land series. I haven't watched Senior much lately, so I've forgotten the leniency of expectations compared to Master .

Water was in the dumbbell shaped pond relatively near the entrance to Hambden. She took a great line to the go bird - I was really proud of her effort there. I wasn't sure how hard she'd work on it, but I needn't have worried. She drove out to the bird through some cover and over logs and plucked the bird out of the water promptly. She did a bunch of hunting into the woods on the memory bird, but she came up with it (it was on the shore in the little pocket on the north side).

Here's a short video showing the water double. I was a bit late in starting the camera, so you have to look fast as the memory bird lands just as the video starts.

The blind was a swim across the right end of the dumbbell, with a bit of an angle entry. The duck was 10-15 yds from shore, under the left side of a bush. The start was rocky. She got in and went along the right shore line some. She took a cast that I let her carry for a while even though it wasn't superbly on line because I didn't want to totally tear down her momentum. She finally took a brilliant over back to the center of the pond (she swam like she spotted something on the far shore that she headed for), and then a great straight back almost to the end of the pond. We had some horsing around at the end, but I was relatively pleased with the ending. Her training water blinds last week weren't super confidence inducing for me, so I was happy with the results.

In the end, we did indeed pass, so now Ty has 2 Senior legs. We won't run another test until late July (Ft. Detroit @ Omega), so we have lots of time to work on the problems this weekend showed me. That's what these tests are for: showing me where our strengths and weaknesses are.

FCRSA 2010 - Obedience Day 2

2010-06-21T16:37:00.005-04:00

For Day 2 of obedience at this year's FCRSA National, I had Gryff entered in Versatility, Ty entered in Grad Open (1st try) and the pair entered in Brace. Gryff earned his one VER leg at last year's National, and this would be our 1st time doing it since then.

Versatility has 2 exercises from Novice, 2 from Open, and 2 from Utility. When it was a non-regular class, it was up to the judge to pick the exercises. Now, there are 12 different combinations from which the judge picks. We had V4- Novice Heel Free, Recall, Retrieve on Flat, Retrieve Over High Jump, Moving Stand and Exam, Directed Jumping. What was interesting and a bit worrisome was the judge had us heel to the outside of the high jump that was on the left. We did a fast with the dog between handler and jump and I wondered if some rally or agility dogs would take it on the fast. We also did the Novice recall there. I did see one dog take the jump on the recall.

While Gryff had been decently "up" on Tuesday, he was at his jolliest in Versatility. He warmed up a bit more crisply and he worked the same way in the ring. It tends to make a nice spiral upwards, in that when he's like that, when I release him between exercises, I'm happier, which in turn makes him happier. It is something I need to keep in mind when I get back to obedience with him in the future! It all added up to a 197.5 and 1st place in the class.

Back last fall, after Ty finished her CDX, I have been aiming to show her in Utility for the 1st time at this National. But about three months ago, her signals were a mess, and her articles were still tied together, and, and, and... About two months ago, I made what turned out to be a superb decision, which was to aim her for Grad Open instead of Utility. What it meant was that I continued to train her in Utility, but without the pressure I might have felt (okay, would have felt) had we been going into Utility. Because of the field work we've been focused on, there wasn't that much time for obedience training, but it was enough to feel ready. When we entered the ring Wednesday, I felt ready for the simplified exercises required in Grad Open. She did have a no-sit on heeling, and walked back with the correct article (I haven't had a walk back since Tramp did several 20 or so years ago when showing outdoors in 90+ degree weather, so it was a bit of a shock!), but her signals were great. I used a verbal on the stand stay and on the down, but more as insurance than necessarily needing them. Her sit and come were great. Her glove was zippy, especially when compared to the slow article return. Her moving stand? Zero off! This from a girl who hasn't been quite sure about the call to heel. Her go-out wasn't quite where I wanted it to be, but we haven't proofed for go-outs towards an in-use rally ring. She ended up with a 192.5 and 1st place in the class.

The morning of the day we left on the trip, I trained some obedience, particularly some brace work. For the brace class, you do a Novice routine, but with two dogs. You are allowed to 'couple' them together with a coupler, i.e., 2 clips connected to a ring for your leash. The clips attach to each dogs' collar. I didn't use one last year because Ty kept ending up in the wrong place, and I couldn't sort her out without either physically moving her or uncoupling them. I decided that Friday morning to try Gryff on the inside, since when he is on the outside (which is how I did it last year), they were both heeling badly - Gryff forging and side-winding, and Ty lagging because Gryff was crowding her a lot. I found with him on the inside, at least he would heel well. Warming up at the trial, I tried holding my left arm straight down during the on-leash heeling, and I think it worked pretty well. All in all, the routine went MUCH better than last year, with one no sit from Ty. The only funny part was the recall - Gryff was looking over his shoulder when I called (I DID wait for him to look back, but then gave up). Ty came promptly, Gryff shortly after her. When she was almost to me, she turned around to see why Gryff was chasing her, and he ended up in a nice front with her more or less already finished.

Gryff decided to show me just how briefly he thinks he needs to do a sit stay, and was down before I crossed the ring. This cost us 15 points, and we ended up with a 180 and 2nd place. Interestingly enough, the other 3 braces were all handled by men. I don't think I've ever been in an obedience class with 75% men before :-).

So, Gryff earned 2 1sts and 2 2nds in obedience, and Ty a 1st and a 2nd. Pretty fine results, all in all.

That evening was a banquet along with the annual meeting. Ann G, who is going to be co-chairing obedience at next year's national, picked my brain about what her duties will be. I felt like I was doing a brain dump :-).

The next morning, I packed up to head home to work on final preparation for my son Ryan's graduation party, scheduled for Saturday. Friday afternoon, my husband Fritz and I headed back for the Awards banquet and final goodbyes to my many old and new FCR friends. This was my 7th National in a row, and I'm looking forward to next year's already!

FCRSA 2010 - Obedience Day 1

2010-06-20T14:20:00.004-04:00

Tuesday morning, the obedience was scheduled to start at 8:00 AM. Since I was co-chair with my friend Chris Van Byssum, we needed to be there by 7:00 AM. Chris and I got various trial details attended to, and all the B classes got underway on time.

On tap for today: Gryffin in Open B, Utility B and Team, and Ty in Open B. I showed Gryff in Utility B first. We did pattern III, with articles, gloves, signals, moving stand, and directed jumping. While he wasn't superbly accurate, he was doing his job. After a very nice first go-out, he looked toward the Novice ring on my right as he sat, then focused on me. Judge Sharon Redmer told me "bar jump". As I signaled and said "jump!", he started on his way, but looking toward the Novice ring. He looked like he was going to come to the inside of the jump, but he looked back at me in time, caught my still in the air signal, and veered and took the jump. The crowd went wild :-). The 2nd half of the exercise was fine. After the last finish, Sharon said "You have a guardian angel!" The end result was a -1 for a held signal, 196 and 2nd place in the class.

Next up was Ty in Open B. We've been concentrating on training for Utility, so had not done that much Open work. It showed! She did Q on the individuals, and was still sitting up on her sit stay. Then the Flat-Coat sillies over came her, and she rolled around on her back during the down stay. Here are three pictures that Cathi Winkles took of her during the Grand Roll. She is the one with her feet in the air. The 3rd one is my favorite. Her butt was actually facing her neighbor dog. I was told later that she then stood up, and that's when she was pulled out of line.

Next up was Gryff in Open B. He had a decent run, and only lost 3 points on the individuals, but went down on his sit stay. Darn. I was disappointed but not that surprised. I simply didn't put in the training time on it that he now needs.

Barb Farrah and Vegas, Gryffin's nephew, had a beautiful run in Open A. I simply couldn't get myself to watch the Open A stays, but I needn't have worried. They won the class with a grand 198.5, which put them in a tie for High in Trial. They won the runoff, which means the 3rd year of the last 4 that a different Grousemoor Flat-Coat has won HIT at the National (Gryff did it from Utility in 2007, Ty from Novice B in 2008).

To finish up the day, we did Team obedience. I put together a team of Deanna German, with whom I did Team in 2006, Barb Farrah, Linda Smithberger, and me about two months before the National. We met in Toledo about a month before the trial to practice. Neither Barb nor Linda had done Team before, but both are experienced exhibitors. We had a great time and because of our Drop on Recall success (all of my team mates dogs did it right. Gryff did the drop right, but came on the next person's call. I gave him a 2nd signal, so he did get to do the ending part with his teammates), we earned 1st place. What a fun way to end the day!

I was SO tired by this point, I wasn't sure if I'd make it back for the Ring of Honor, but after a good dinner and a rest, I made it back, and paraded around the ring with each dog and enjoyed receiving the lovely personalized medallions and big rosettes.

Bed felt VERY good that night!

Agility and Veterans Sweeps Day

2010-06-17T22:33:00.005-04:00

Monday was my 'easy' day at the National, with only Veterans Sweepstakes to prepare for. Gryffin had turned 7 on Sunday - what better way to spend his birthday then getting to retrieve ducks and swim? - so he was eligible by one day to compete in Veterans. I ended up going over to the agility trial in order to meet Ty's MACH sister Friday and her owner Kathy. In spite of living barely an hour apart, we'd never met. I even got to watch them earn a placement in Exc B JWW. Friday is bigger than Ty but I could see some resemblance. It was great finally meeting each other and our dogs!

Another important event was taking place the next day: Kim & Sandra Hitt's brown girl, Aurora, was getting bred via AI to Gryffin. Yes, he's neutered, but I had him 'collected' before the surgery, and so we are all hopeful there will be Gryff and Aurora puppies sometime in August. Time will tell! Kim & Sandra had left Aurora in Okemos, MI at Schulz Vet Clinic for the AI and zipped to Indiana to show Aurora's mother in agility. I introduced Kathy (Friday's owner) to the Hitt's on the chance she might be ready for a puppy. I also introduced her to Valerie Bernhardt, who owned Ty & Friday's dad Woody way back when.

I eventually went back to the show site and gave Gryff a much needed bath and blow dry, so he would look beautiful for our Sweeps appearance. Ty looked reasonably clean, so I just wet her down and blew her dry so her coat would be flat.

Gryff and I had not stepped foot in the conformation ring since 2007 in St. Louis, but he hadn't forgotten. How can this dog who is lazy on his obedience fasts go so fast on the go round, 3 feet out in front of me???? I moved him too fast on the down and back, but we did make the cut, though no placement. It was really fun to see him strut his stuff. I did practice some signals and fronts and finishes while we were near the back of the line. I had to do SOMEthing constructive to pass the time, right?

Given my need to be up really early Tuesday, I did not stick around for the end of Sweeps. I wanted us all to be well rested (ha!) for obedience.

Day 2 of Field at the 2010 FCRSA National

2010-06-17T17:36:00.004-04:00

After a too-short night of sleep, I arrived at the field HQ at 7:00 AM to pick up the supplies for marshaling. I had the honor and pleasure to share the marshaling duties with two of our most experienced field trainers, Bunny Milliken and Karen Peterson. The marshall is responsible for getting dogs and handlers to the line to run in a prompt fashion. I decided years ago that I was good at it because I have two important skills for marshaling: I have a loud voice and I'm bossy :-).

There were 27 dogs in our division (C) of the Steady Singles competition. This is an event held at most FCRSA Nationals, and the goal is to pick a winner, vs. the pass/fail judging for hunt tests. The rules more closely resemble the Field Trial rules, but I don't think I've personally read them (shame on me). The first series consisted of two single marks (all the marks are singles). The 1st mark, on the left, was thrown left to right and landed in front of a tree. It was about 80 yds from the line, through one of those crazily mowed fields. The 2nd mark was thrown right to left, down a slight hill, and was at about 125 yds.

After Karen's nearly-12 year old Sardou ran as honorary test dog, the competition got underway. Dog after dog completed the two marks with very little problem. I went to the line with Ty 1st of my two dogs, and I confess I kept thinking, "Please don't let her be the 1st dog incapable of getting both marks!" I shouldn't have worried. While her line to the long mark wasn't super straight (there were lots of cover patches she was veering around, as did several others), she got both birds just fine. Gryff did as well, as did all 27 competitors, so everyone was invited back to run the 2nd series.

The 1st series gun stations were removed, and one station was set up waaaaaaay our on the hillside (not way out by current field trial craziness, but far by hunt test standards), with 3 gunners in their white coats. The throw was an angled-in one, left to right towards the woods, at 245 yds. This mark definitely separated the experienced dogs from the inexperienced. There were the ones who ran a lovely straight line out to it, the ones that took a far less straight line, maybe hunted the old fall at the right gun station, but eventually got to the bird (Gryff was in this category), and the ones that either didn't go at all or who ran off into the weeds to the right of the correct line (Ty was in this category). Eighteen dogs were called back for the 3rd series, Gryff being one of them.

After taking a break for lunch, we moved to the Backwater club's big stick pond (a stick pond means there are dead stumps and logs in the pond, some sticking up out of the water, some submerged). The judges set up a single mark, thrown from the left shore in a big arc. Most of the throws landed just in front of a patch of reeds in the water at 145 yds. From the shore we ran from, it looked like there was a series of pockets in the reeds, but friends who went and looked at it after we were all done said it was just a big patch of reeds with many submerged logs - very hard going for the dogs. There were also a couple of visible logs near the shore where the dogs had to enter the water. The ideal line was right over those logs. Again, some of the dogs didn't go at all or quit soon after, but many were making the long swim. Almost all of the dogs appeared to see an invisible left turn sign about 20-30 yds short of where the ducks were landing, and headed in to shore. Many dogs had long hunts, most coming up with their duck eventually.

Gryff was one of the final dogs to run, and as is his habit, he got in and went 'fat' to the right - he almost always swims in an arc to his right, especially when he has to go a long way. He was doing some connect the dot swimming, checking out some of the logs along the way. I thought he might avoid that invisible left turn sign given his angle of approach, but he took it afterall. He did some hunting on the shore, but disappeared into the reeds and found his duck. He looked like he might be trying to run back to me via the shore, but I guess his conscious got the best of him and he decided he'd better swim at least part way back. His success with this mark meant he joined the large group of dogs who earned a JAM (judges' award of merit) in the Steady Singles.

Once each division was finished, the judges named a winner of that division, and an exciting runoff was held at the HQ grounds. The test dog, Karen Peterson's Po, performed the mark brilliantly. It was a long, downhill mark, with an angled entry across the corner of a pond. The three division winners then each ran the mark. This resulted in another tie between the two younger competitors, so one more mark was planned and executed. It was an exciting finish to a great day of competition.

FCRSA 2010 - Let the games begin!

2010-06-16T17:55:00.006-04:00

Note: this is the first installment of what I plan to be a thorough write up of my week at the 2010 Flat-Coated Retriever National, held in Auburn and Albion, Indiana, a mere 2 hours from home. It is lengthy and detailed because I want to be able to look back and remember what happened.

This year, I missed day one of the FCRSA (Flat-Coated Retriever Society of America) National because my younger son graduated from high school the night before it started (yeah, Ryan!) and my husband and I both worked the 12:30-3:00 AM shift at the All Seniors All Night party.

Gryff was entered in 9 events over the course of 5 days, and Ty in 5. At least the dogs were in good shape. Me? Time would tell! First up was the hunt test on Saturday, June 5. Gryff was in the Master test (going for leg 3 of 5) and Ty in the Senior test (going for leg 1 of 4).

The 1st series of the Master test was a land-water triple with a blind between the two land marks. We were running from a hillside that was mowed in what is becoming a familiar and crazy fashion - with generous patches of cover left all over the place. The marks were thrown left (left to right, angled back), middle (right to left, angled back) and right (right to left, angled back into the pond). The test started with a walk-up, meaning the dog and handler are in motion when the first duck is launched. Gryff picked up the right and middle marks promptly, but had a bit of a hunt on the left one. He took the path most of the way to it, but then bounced a patch of cover and hunted to the right, as did several other dogs. The hill sloped down left to right, which I think was also an influence. He headed back to the left and his nose led him to the duck. The blind went fairly smoothly, with a nice initial line carrying him quite a ways before I needed to whistle sit him. When he was about 1/2 way to the blind, I realized I was holding my breath, which wasn't going to help when I needed to blow the whistle. After the blind, we moved to the honor box. (For the honor, the dog has to stay while the next dog's marks are thrown and that dog is sent.) Gryff was solid on his honor.

I watched a few more dogs run at Master, then headed to the Senior land test. It was a walk-up double, with the left bird thrown into/near a patch of cover, right to left, and the go bird on the right thrown right to left. Earlier in the week, I had worked walk-up drills with Ty, because she was having a bad time with them, and not seeing the mark fall. She had a very good long look at the walk-up memory bird, and when she returned from picking up the go bird, she refocused intently on the area of the memory bird. She had a bit of a hunt, but came up with it reasonably prompty. Interestingly, the lines to the marks in Senior were through cover patches (which many of the dogs bounced around), whereas the Master marks all had a pretty definitive path. The blind was almost 90 degrees to the left of the left mark, and Ty took a very decent initial line - something we've struggled with in the past. It was great to see her improvement. As I had in Master, I realized I was again holding my breath and had to huff and puff to be ready to blow my whistle. I was very happy as we left the line, and thought I heard one of the judges say that it was one of the better jobs they'd seen that day.

The right mark:

Close-up of the right mark:

The left mark:

The blind stake was somewhere in this picture :-):

I went back to Master to await the completion of the 1st Master series. The 2nd series finally got underway about 1 PM. Of the 32 starters, 27 were called back for the 2nd series. It was on a big pond with lots of tullies/reeds around the perimeter. It was a water double and a double blind, one on land and one across the water. The memory bird was a huge arc from the left side of the pond and the go bird was a huge arcing throw from the same side of the pond we ran from, far to our right. The water blind was under the arc of the go bird, and the land blind was to the right of the right gun station. I was the lucky 1st exhibitor to run. Gryff's go bird was fine. When I sent him for the memory bird, I rushed it a bit, and instead of heading straight for the water, he veered left into the tall cover and proceeded to hunt quite a bit on land. The shoreline tullies were several feet thick, creating a wall the dogs had to drive through. At some point, I started to handle. I honestly don't think he was responding very well to my casts, but suddenly, he got in the water and headed for the bird. I was smart and shut up :-). We did the land blind first and he even jumped over a patch of cover at some point. One of the judges said "That will earn you extra points!" I was pleased with his handling on the land blind. The water blind required us to drive the dog through the very wide and tall wall of tullies on the far shore. While we've been working on improving this skill in the past month, we hadn't worked through any that wide (I think they were at least 10 feet wide, if not more). I was prepared and stopped him before he disappeared into the tullies, but he didn't respond correctly to my next cast. I was trying to get him to drive straight back through, but he went into the tullies and started hunting. Because they were also tall, it was hard to see what he was doing. I wasn't surprised, since we've been battling this issue. I hung in with him. When he finally got to the duck, one of the judges said something about that being what he liked to see ... hanging in there with my dog and getting the job done. I wasn't feeling great about our chances of going on to the 3rd series, but I crossed my fingers and left to run Ty's Senior water.

When I arrived at the location for the Senior water, I walked down to watch some dogs run. Problem was, there was only me and one other handler left to run. Eek! I had heard a few people say it was a breaking test, which usually means the marks are short and exciting. One of the judges described the test, which looked pretty straight forward: a water double on a small pond. The memory bird was thrown from the right shore and the go bird from the dike we were running from. Once that was completed, we'd walk down the shore to the right for the water blind and then honor right there. I arrived at the line with Ty and the first bird was thrown. Drat, it landed in the heavy cover, which isn't where I was expecting it to land. The 2nd gunner started duck-calling, but Ty was intent on where the 1st one had landed and she wasn't turning to see the go bird. Then I heard another splash (I was watching my dog) across the pond... the bird boys, having thrown the 1st one poorly, decided to throw another out into the open water. Oops! Ty jumped in, I recalled her, the judge called a 'No bird'. We left the line and waited for a bit, and returned. This time, since Ty had seen two birds thrown from the right side, I lined her up to face where the go bird would land, which also let me block her some with my legs. The strategy served me well. This time, it all came off smoothly and she retrieved both birds promptly. We moved down the shore for the blind. It was the shortest water blind I've ever seen in a test (30 yds?). She looked out with confidence (no bugging this time either) and went right in when I sent her. She again took an excellent initial line. When she started veering away from the line near the end, I blew my whistle. I think she spotted the bird as she started to turn, so started to swim at the bird. I whistled again, and she stopped, but didn't look back at me but stared at the duck. I waited and waited and waited. She finally looked at me and then took my quick cast. Yeah! The honor was a bit scary - she was ready to go and moved forward just a bit, but a quick SIT command stopped her. I didn't know for sure until later, but I was pretty sure she'd passed and earned our 1st Senior pass (she did and we did).

Ty and Adele with their first Senior Hunter ribbon.

I went back to Master, and the water test dragged on and on. It didn't wrap up until about 6:30 PM. Blessedly, we were called back to run the 3rd series. I figured Gryff had to have top marks to pass. It was a land double with a diversion bird, and he did an excellent job on it. One of the judges said "Congratulations!" as I left the line. Our 3rd Master leg!

The awards were handed out at head quarters, and it was so sweet to drive back to the motel with two orange ribbons. Earning a Master pass with Gryff was my #1 goal for the week, so we were off to a super start to our Specialty.

Tennis ball time

2010-04-30T18:58:00.008-04:00

I am admittedly inconsistent about keeping my dogs fit. I haven't taken them for walks or runs down our rural road in quite a long time. I've been really sick for over a week, which means I haven't had the energy to train. But I have had enough to run them with our trusty Chuck-It tennis ball thrower. I didn't have the Chuck-it recently, and I was embarrassed at how short my throws were without it.

As we headed out to the large fenced field (we still call it the agility yard in my family) on the front of our 4 acres to give them a run this morning, I started musing about the rules of The Game. First of all, I'd better have at least 3 balls along, or it just won't work. Ty is a tennis ball hog - if possible, she gets two of them and plays keep away with them. Then Gryffin stands there and barks loudly and uselessly. She does not take pity on him. Often, as Gryff races off in pursuit of a ball, Ty pursues him while still carrying her two. Sometimes, she drops them both and wants me to chuck them. She's remarkably adept at grabbing one ball in her mouth and then capturing a second with her front paws, and then gathering it into her mouth somehow. She's often just as happy racing big circles as persuing a Chucked ball.

My goal is to get out the agility yard to start The Game with as little barking and fussing as possible. Gryffin and Java are the noisy ones, and they wind each other to ever higher levels of noise. Not something I cope with gracefully. It helps if I can get the black dogs out the door before the terriers catch on.

Gryff and Ty returning...

Bologna Tongue is what we call this look.

Ty with her pair of balls.

The terriers mostly just run around, sniffing good smells, eating grass, and peeing on stuff. Sometimes, Java will steal a ball or chase and bark, but mostly, these days, he sniffs. Joker sometimes stalks the Flat-Coats - stares and I supposed points them. He jumps at them as the sprint past after a ball. It never appears that they notice his subtle attacks. He often gets sent flying. Why does he keep doing it? It's just part of The Game.

Wisconsin Seminar

2010-04-19T22:05:00.006-04:00

You can ignore this: QGT45ZZTXWQ7 It's there to let Technorati know I am the author of this blog.

I spent this past weekend in Menomenee Falls, Wisconsin, presenting my Balancing Act seminar for the K9 Obedience Training Club of Menomenee Falls. There were a record number of terriers in attendance - nine counting Joker, who went along with me and the Flat-Coats to demonstrate. There were Borders, a Cairn, a Scottie, an Australian, and a terrier mix. I do love the terriers :-).

We started Saturday with a brief overview of my training philosophy, then jumped into playing Karen Pryor's Training Game to get trainers to practice their shaping skills.

The rest of the morning was spent reviewing attention and position changes, which led to an explanation of how I advance the beginning down work into the open drop on recall exercise, with floor time for all of the different exercises.

After lunch, we jumped into heel position maneuvers, a few of my other foundation exercises, beginning heeling (Find Heel and Rhythm Heeling), then closed out the afternoon with retrieving work, including how to get started with shaping the dumbbell and some problem solving.

Something I've done for years is to have participants vote on what we should work on on Sunday. As we are finishing up Saturday, I pass around a list of possible Sunday exercises. Working spot people get 5 votes and auditors get 3. The exercises are ranked, from the most votes to the least, and we work our way through as many as we can on Sunday. This makes every seminar I do a bit different, and helps to customize the work to the audience. I don't attempt to cover everything. I would rather spend in-depth time on what the group considers important. Interestingly enough, I rarely talk about the broad jump or directed retrieve.

Sunday morning started with work on dumbbell holds, including proofing for more advanced dogs. Next, I demoed the many different exercises I used to progressively teach fronts, with floor time for everyone.

Go-outs are typically high on the list of popular topics for Sunday. I asked the group to say how they have taught go-outs and there were about 10 different methods mentioned, which just goes to show you: there is no one perfect way. I described and demoed the 3 components I use to teach go-outs - the mark, target touch for the go-out portion, and a cookie-toss sit for the sit at the end. Then participants came out to practice.

After lunch, we had a discussion on ring stress, with some group exercises I like to do to help alleviate some ring stress. One is my Numbers Set-up game and the second is an Enter the Ring game. Then we talked about Scent Discrimination and finished up the afternoon with work on the Signal Exercise.

The weekend was a lot of fun and I received many appreciative comments. I continue to be grateful that I get to spend my weekends teaching something I love. What could be better than that?

Toledo KC Trials

2010-02-14T22:29:00.002-05:00

I enjoyed a really fine obedience weekend with Gryffin, passing all 3 classes we showed in and getting placements in all 3. Yesterday, we earned 4th place in Utility B with a a 196. The only disappointment in Utility yesterday was a sloppy metal article retrieve. His fronts were almost all good, he stayed completely still on both stand stays, his article and glove holds were great, all details we've been focusing on. His Open B performance was solid, but lacking some of his usual fire. It might be he was mentally tired, or that I forgot to bring along string cheese, which I usually use only at trials and matches. I was totally thrilled to reappear after the sit stay to see him still sitting - it has been a lengthy dry spell since we last Q'ed in Open B (I think since last October at AADTC). There were several run-offs, but we didn't get called in for one. I was very happy to be all by myself in 3rd place with a 197.5. We picked up 1 OTCh point from each class.

Today we only showed in Utility B, not wanting to tempt the obedience gods too much about stays :-). We showed early in the class (9:15 ish) and he had a really fine performance. It was the cleanest round we'd had since the Saturday IX trial when he earned a 197 and 3rd place. We were also the first team to Q in the class. It took until lunch time for the class of 27 to finish, and no runoffs (yeah!). I'm very pleased to say we won the class with a 197.5, and 27 OTCh. points. This is the most points he's earned in one class, and it was a really great ending to our weekend efforts.

I also got a couple of Shelties taking a dumbbell over the course of the weekend. Their owners hate the early teaching stage, and I love it. Hopefully the video footage will be something I can use to fill in a few gaps in my retrieve video update.

TKC provides lunch for everyone, toys of exhibitors choice for placements, great stewards and judges. It was a really enjoyable weekend spent with a lot of fun people.

Delicious

2010-01-25T07:34:00.005-05:00

One of the best parts of accomplishing a long-sought goal is that delicious feeling when it pops into your consciousness that IT'S DONE! I DID IT! I have found that the bigger the goal, the longer this popping occurs.

Last Sunday, January 24, 2010 morning, my Flat-Coated Retriever boy Gryffin and I won the Utility B class at Oakland County Kennel Club. This first place netted us 14 OTCh. points. We needed just 9 to go over the magic 100 needed to finish his OTCh. title. So he is now:

Ch. OTCh. Grousemoor Gryffindor UDX OM1 RE SH WCX; RL3 (AND 2 MH legs, lest anyone forget :-)).

The completion of Gryff's OTCh. means that I have now earned that elusive title on five dogs (Tramp, Rio, Treasure, Java, Gryffin), alternating Flat-Coated Retriever and terriers. The dogs have ranged from 5.5 years old (Treasure) to almost 7 (Java). Gryff is right in the middle at 6.5+. With both terrier boys, it was mastering either fronts or finishes that got us over the top finally. All except Treasure finished their title from a Utility B class. The first 3 all earned a High in Trial that magical day. Rio also earned High Combined.

I am not one of those elite trainers who brings a dog out in Utility, earns the UD and a mere countable-on-one-hand weeks later, have finished my OTCh. The journeys, while having their differences, have shared certain similarities. Each journey has been laced with our share of ups and downs, victories, times when we were also-rans, and NQs. Things go right for a while, then something breaks. We fix that, and things go right again for a while.

Of the 6 dogs with whom I've earned a UD, Gryffin was actually the youngest, finishing at 4 years 4 months. He earned the largest chunk of OTCh. points the first weekend after he finished his UD, winning a big Utility B class with a 198, which was worth 24 points. This was in October 2007. We mostly showed just in Utility over the next 6 months, in part due to Open stay issues, in part to solidify Utility for him. His OTCh and UDX took the time they did because we've taken off the last several summers from obedience to pursue advanced field training. When we recommitted to obedience in October 2008, he started qualifying consistently in both classes, and cranked out UDX legs 2-9 with very few NQ's, also garnering points for the new Obedience Master title at a regular rate. At the end of that streak, he earned 3 Open B 2nd places in a row. Although we suddenly started NQing in Utility, he finally earned that elusive Open B 1st place, plus a High in Trial. Frustratingly, the following weekend, he started failing the Open stays, blowing several placements in Open B. He finally completed both his UDX and OM1 on the same day in early May.

We showed one more time in the early summer, at the Flat-Coated Retriever National, where Gryff won the Utility B class for the 3rd year in a row, then went back to the fields for a glorious summer and fall of field work. We ran in four Master Hunter tests, and earned our 1st two passes of the needed five in glorious back-to-back weekends in September.

I didn't really get my head back into the obedience game until late November. We amassed mostly NQ's in the fall obedience trials, but by our last weekend at the Cleveland IX trials, I felt like we were back in the game, working as a team and enjoying our time in the ring. We even won a runoff for 3rd place in UB, netting us 2 more points.

I had some surgery the Tuesday after the IX trials, which meant a big slow down in our training. We didn't even attempt a fast until the Monday before the Livonia and Oakland trials. As I slowly recovered, several friends helped me out, between coming over to train and provide distractions, putting out articles and jumps, and driving me and Gryffin to some matches and trials.

I really appreciate all the cyberspace hurrahs we've received. The friendships made along these journeys are what make it all worthwhile.

Gryff is my first boy FCR, but he probably won't be my last. I decided a while ago that if you don't have a sense of humor, you shouldn't attempt to train, let alone trial, a boy FCR. He is a clown, and lives up to the "Peter Pan of the dog world" nickname. Some of his craziest NQ's have also been some of my most enjoyable memories of trialing him. His constantly wagging tail, quick sits, and leaping finishes are so much fun. Thanks Gryff, for a wonderful journey. Now, how about some ducks?

Note: The first photo is by Cathi Winkles, the second by Karen Taylor.

2009 Accomplishments & 2010 Goals

2009-12-30T15:21:00.005-05:00

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 & WCX
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

2009-12-30T15:08:00.004-05:00

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

2009-12-04T17:21:00.007-05:00

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

2009-10-18T22:13:00.001-04:00

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

2009-09-24T18:01:00.007-04:00

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

2009-09-20T07:11:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-18T06:55:00.004-04:00

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.

Reflections on our 2nd Master Hunter test

2009-08-23T18:45:00.002-04:00

Gryff and I are in our 2nd Master Hunter test this weekend, put on a local club to which I belong, the Marshbanks Golden Retriever CLub. He did a fine job on the first series, which was a land triple with a blind under the arc of the left mark. His marks were superb - hardly any hunt on any of them, and compared to many teams, our blind was good.

The 2nd series was a water double, with the memory bird across the pond (ideally through some brush in the water), through cover on the far side, up a hill, across a road, and through another cover strip. Only a few dogs swam across and drove straight up the hill. Most swam across and hunted back and forth, gradually working their way up the hill, over the road and throw the last cover strip. Gryff took a somewhat unique approach by swimming more to the left than he should have, which meant going through MUCH more brush/bushes in the water and on the far side. I'm reasonably sure he drove up the hill. He had a very long hunt on the other side, but did come up with it. All 24 dogs who made it to the 2nd series will run tomorrow. Since I helped to set up for all 3 series, I knew ahead of time what Sunday would bring... and it wasn't easy! I'm very happy that we got to try.

Last summer, I learned a couple of phrases, "Zero to hero" and "Hero to zero". Unfortunately, we earned the "hero to zero" title today. We once again did not pass the 3rd series of the test. The series started with a land blind. The one the had planned on wouldn't work today because of the way the wind was blowing, so instead of going northwest, it went southwest, and was much more of a Senior level blind than a Master one (Senior blinds don't tend to have too many "factors", or things that would draw the dog off the line to the blind or cause the dog to want to avoid the line to the blind. Master blinds tend to have factors along the way, such as clumps or strips of taller cover, be closer to gun stations, have more variance in terrain, etc.). I think it was only about 40-50 yds, and there really wasn't much between the line and the bird. The bird was placed in front of what looked like a bush, but was really a very large thistle plant. I lined Gryff up for it, sent him off, and he made a bee-line for it and picked up the duck. That is called "lining the blind" and we've never done it in a test, and I'm pretty sure no other dog had done it before him (and he ran after at least 15 other dogs). So that was the hero part.

The next part of the test was a delayed triple in water. The center mark was thrown, than the left-hand one. I sent him to retrieve that one, which he did smartly with very little searching. On his return, we lined up for the right-hand bird, which was thrown. He retrieved that one smartly, too. Then it was time for the memory bird. The line to that one was across a 6-8 foot peninsula (which got weed-whacked yesterday so that we could see the dog from the line), with a large island to the right that has tall cover (3-4 ft high, I'd say). I did a poor job of being patient while lining him up for the memory bird (I did MUCH better being patient on the land triple yesterday that he did so well), and when I sent him, he was looking to the right. Sure enough, he went where he was looking. He crossed the peninsula and headed for the island. I decided to handle him at that point (something that is sometimes necessary, but not desirable on a mark). It didn't go well. I think he eventually winded the bird, because he suddenly jumped back in the water and swam right to it. We had to finish up with a water blind. The line to the blind was between where the middle mark had landed and the island. Danged if he didn't essentially repeat what he'd done on the mark - cross the peninsula too far to the right and go to the island. This in spite of quicker attempts to handle him back onto the line.

Given that the last weather report I looked at for the weekend was for 74 and partly cloudy, the misty rain that fell all morning was a huge annoyance. It was at least vastly better than the 90 or so degrees we had last weekend!

I was the Master test coordinator, which meant that I was there on Friday with the judges so that I would know what equipment they would need in order to put on the tests they wanted to run. It also meant I was in charge of training workers and keeping the test and equipment use moving along. I am so pleased to be able to say we didn't have a single goof up today from our group of workers - no equipment goofs, no missed cues. That is pretty unusual, and something to be proud of.

While I am of course somewhat disappointed, there was still a lot of parts that were very, very good. We now return to the training grounds for another 3-4 weeks before our next attempt.

Ty's 1st Cold Blinds

2009-07-05T20:54:00.009-04:00

We finished up field training early at Omega Farms today because of bad weather rolling in, so I stopped at the Firestation (there are some fabulous fields behind it) to check on how high the cover has gotten (high!) and to run a couple of blinds. Ty has run marks on this hillside several times, and has done several taught blinds, which is what I figured I would do. I hiked out and planted the blinds, then got her out. We got to the top of the hill, and I thought "What the heck, let's see what happens if I cue her up." Lo and behold, off she went (it didn't hurt that I broke the initial path down to the bottom of the hill between the bushes, but I was a good blind planter and wandered my way up the hill after that). She got hung up on the big wide bush halfway up the hill on the left, so after several bouncings around the bush, I hiked down the hill to get closer, but got her the rest of the way from there. She did the 2nd one with me staying at the top of the hill. Considering how high the cover is out there now, I'm even more happy.

If you look carefully (and imagine the path at the bottom of the left picture continuing up the hill), you can see an orange stake in both pictures near the center and top.

Yeah, Ty! All the homework is really paying off.

Adele

** A "cold blind" means that the dog doesn't see what they have to retrieve thrown, so you have to handle them to it.

Saturday Field Drills

2009-07-04T21:40:00.003-04:00

I went to the fields near the local airport to do drills with my Flat-Coats this morning. Lining drills became the theme. I started out with one pile for Ty, to work on a stable response to a sit correction. Even a 1 medium creates a bit of a hot spot, but I can see improvement and much less panic in her response. She's also confident enough on her handling on land now that I can stop her quite a bit to handle her through those hot spots.

Next I did wagon wheel with both of them, building distance for Gryff and seeing a lot of improvement over last weekend when I did it; closer in for Ty, who hasn't done too much WW. Interestingly enough, both seem to have more trouble going to the closer-to-us white bumpers than to the farther away orange ones.

Then I put out two back piles, and three stick men on a diagonal, with 25 yds between them (so a lopsided M). As an extension of both the Split Casting drill we have been working on the past several weeks, and the wagon wheel drill, I worked on sending and casting to the back piles from various locations, with the stick men in between me and the back piles to create suction.

We packed up and went to a pond, and I set up something similar there for Gryff to work on, with 3 stick men along the shore and orange stakes farther up the shore (maybe 10-15 yds) with a pile of bumpers at each. I worked on lining and angle back casts as we had on land. Another benefit was the tall cover along the shores, with a few obvious and tempting gaps. It gave me a chance to work Gryff on driving straight through the cover coming out of the water. Since Ty's water work is on hold until her e-collar response is stabilized, I just did fun marks with her, but required her to go in and come out through the cover along the shore.

It was a fun and productive morning.

Friday Drill Work

2009-06-12T13:14:00.005-04:00

I went back to the Ann Arbor airport today for drill work. I ran the middle and left pattern blinds with Ty, which went quite nicely. Then we tried the right one. She was convinced that she needed to go to the middle one again. I eventually got her to the right one, but it was really ugly. I sent her back to the left one, then tried the right one again. Ugly again. Somewhere during one of those ugly blinds, I used a small e-collar correction, which seemed to get her going again.

I put her away and set up my two launchers, aiming for in-line marks, with the launchers to either side of the line to the right blind. Since I still don't estimate the length of launch (ridiculously long for a bumper) very well, the farther away one ended up under the arc of the closer one. I decided to start with poison bird blinds with Gryffin. I launched the closer mark, called him off that and sent him to the left blind. He needed just one whistle to get the blind correctly (it helps a lot that he's run these blinds several times in the past week - a LOT). He picked up the mark eagerly. Then I launched the farther away launcher, called him off and ran him to the middle blind (behind the closer launcher). He did veer to the right after passing the launcher, but handled reasonably quickly to the blind, then picked up the mark. He finished up running the right blind.

I got Ty back out and ran the two marks and then reran all 3 blinds. I moved up quite a bit for the right one, given her problems earlier, and it went much better. I had Gryff run the marks as a double and do the right blind.

I moved to another area and set up the Split-Y drill that I did with Gryff on Thursday. This was Ty's first try. I used our white trash cans to mark the piles, and started to teach her about angle back casts. I had to stop her several times the first try at each direction, and call her back in a few times because she was getting too close to the middle pile, but subsequent tries were better. She's running some nice, straight lines. I had Gryff do just a bit of this drill (to finish picking up the bumpers) and called it a day.

Sure was nice to have sunshine today instead of a steady downpour!

Thursday Water Work

2009-06-12T12:28:00.002-04:00

We headed over to the Pardee's pond in Concord yesterday for some water work. It was starting to sprinkle when we got there and we had a steady downpour towards the end of our session.

We started out with 3 blinds. The first was across two points with another between to go past, with the bumpers on another bump out from the right side of the pond. The points were high enough that we lost the dogs behind, and both dogs who ran it sucked to the right shore while out of sight. The second blind was across the right corner of the swim-by area of the bond and a nice run up the hill to a round hay bale. I was picky about the line across the corner of the pond and handled a couple of times to good results. Couple more whistles to the hay bale. The final one was a blind placed in a spot we'd run to the previous visit, but from the north side of the pond instead of the east side. The line to the blind was alongside one of the points (point on dog's left) and past an island. Gryff got in but veered right away from the land, I think getting sucked in by the 1st blind's location. The point was not the distraction I thought it would be.

I did some swim-by work with Ty, and she was timid about it. It occurs to me that working her in chilly water may not be enhancing our work :-/. She did gain some confidence, but it was nowhere near as good as the last session at Jane's pond.

Next we did a few marks. I did one across an island with both dogs. Ty had a no go :-(.

I ran a land blind with both dogs that we'd run the previous visit, now much easier to get to since the hay had been cut on much of the field around the pond.

My friends left at that point. I set up a couple of white cans to do some sight blinds with Ty. One was angling up hill, the other was a somewhat rolling one. She is showing signs of understanding the idea of going to a different place than she just went.

I finished up with an Split Y drill with Gryffin - center pile in front of a tree with two white cans beyond, one on each side of the tree. Lots of fun casting variations to play around with, especially angle backs. Gryff really seems to love doing pile drills - he drives harder and harder as we go along.

My new rainsuit mostly worked... considering how hard it was raining, I came through reasonably dry.

Pattern Blinds

2009-06-10T16:37:00.003-04:00

Pattern blinds are a set of blinds, usually in sets of 3, that you teach your dog one at a time over the course of several days to help them learn to run long, straight lines.

While I have taught Ty several blinds this spring, and she's done some blind drills last year and this spring, I haven't really done a set of 3 blinds consistently. With the progress I saw during our trip out east, I was eager to get serious about some pattern blinds with her.

I decided going to the Ann Arbor Airport property was a good bet. It's only about 3 miles from home, and there are actually 3 different areas I can potentially use for pattern blinds. I taught her the first one (the left of the 3) on Sunday. It went pretty well. Then I set up a launcher and ran a mark and then all 3 blinds with Gryffin. He had a TERRIBLE time :-\. He was convinced he had to go back to the mark. Now, this is NOT a new concept for him. Clearly, he needs more work on it!

I got Ty back out, let her run the mark and then redid the blind. It was a pretty messy affair, too, but she did eventually get to the blind bumper.

We squeezed in a short session yesterday morning (had to be short because of horsing around getting the flat tire fixed...). Ty did fine on the blind she'd learned Sunday, and then I taught her the loooong right one (I think it's 180-200 yds). We finished up running the left and then the right again. She's still fuzzy about switching between different blinds, but is improving. I ran the blinds with Gryff (no time for the launcher) with somewhat better results than Sunday.

Today I taught Ty the 3rd of 3 pattern blinds. I'm really happy with her progress.I ran the left and right ones with her first, then taught her the center one, then reran the outside ones again. I'm pleased with how well she's stopping on my whistle and mostly taking good casts. She seems to be getting the idea to change direction when I stop her. Then I put out a launcher for Gryff, ran the center blind, did the mark, then ran the outside blinds, then the center one (under the arc). He did much better than on Sunday, though still interested in going back to the mark's location. Then I finished up rerunning the center blind with Ty past the launcher, then did the mark and the two outside blinds. It's cool seeing the many weeks/months of basic work starting to gel for her. I plan to go back on Friday for another session, maybe even with both of my launchers out.

Finding training places

2009-06-07T20:23:00.004-04:00

Yesterday morning, before leaving the Super 8 motel for home, I did some drill work with the dogs behind the motel. There was a nice hillside on which I did some T work, to give them some work driving up a hill, as well as doing overs across the face of the hill. Then I did a longish but otherwise uninteresting sight blind (one with a white trash can marking the end of it) with Ty, which went well.

I finished up with a connect-the-dots blind with Gryff. The pictures show the blind. There is a corner of a gravel parking lot (complete with a school bus), followed by a dried up pond bed that was about a foot lower than the surrounding grass, with some weeds in it (the higher cover you can see beyond the gravel), followed by having to go by the large bush on the right. I had the white trash can out for Ty.

With a connect-the-dot blind, you leave the dog at the line and go to a point along the blind where the dog is likely to veer, and call them to that point and then resit them. Then you go to the next likely point of confusion and call the dog to that spot, and continue to do this until you are close enough to the end of the blind to send the dog to retrieve. Then you sit the dog at the end and teach them the return path in a similar way. I left Gryff and called him to the first edge of the pond bed, then left him there and went to the other side and called him there. Then I sent him to the blind from there. When I resent him from the baseline, he went nicely into the pond bed, but started veering right (away from the weeds), so I stopped him and cast him. It was a fun little blind to run with some interesting factors.

I tried something similar with Ty, but it was too much for her - she kept wanting to veer to the right of the weeds in the pond bed and she was having confidence issues when I was trying to cast her, so I moved the white can and bumpers closer, to the far edge of the pond bed. That worked much better for her.

This workout was great to get in with them before starting the long drive home.

WCX test

2009-06-06T20:58:00.003-04:00

I spent Friday at the National's WCX test in Eastern Connecticut, running and successfully completing the test with Gryffin. Ty couldn't run because of coming in season, which is too bad because she's the one who hasn't ever run one before. Gryff passed a couple of WCX's at least 3 years ago (1 pass is all it takes to earn the title), but failed the two we have run since then.

Normally, our WCX test consists of a triple on land with distances of 60 & 80 yds for the outside marks and 100 yds for the center mark, and if I'm remembering right, normally all 3 marks are thrown in the same direction, either left to right or right to left. Yesterday's set up didn't look like that at all :-). The flier station was the long one and was on the left, going right to left. The middle station was the short one, going left to right, and the right station was the middle distance, also left to right, with a road to cross. I was actually happy to see that set up for Gryff, because I think it was more like what I will likely see in a Master test, which is what we're really aiming for.

I had a nice compliment from one of the judges - when I stepped out of the last holding blind to go to the line, I had Gryff sit before proceeding to the line, which helps with control and also gives him a chance to have a brief look at what's out in the field. She said that is a good idea to do that.

In spite of my heart going like a trip hammer (this was our first test in a year), I took my time and did my best to make sure Gryff was looking where he needed to be before sending him for each duck. He was nice and steady at the line, always a pleasure to see. He did have to hunt for a while on each bird, but stayed in the appropriate area well. One of the judges said something about an intelligent hunt on the last bird, using what little wind there was to help himself come up with the duck.

We finished the land triple at 9:30 AM (we were about 1/4 way through the group of 36 dogs) but didn't run water until 3:30 :-(. The judges had to wait to finish the land series for several exhibitors who were running in other stakes, and then they changed the water test twice before settling on the one we ran. We had a no bird on our first trip to the line. This means that something happens to make the test not fair - sometimes a gun doesn't fire right, or a launcher doesn't release, which is what happened for us.

The test consisted of a water double, with the memory bird landing with a splash in some reeds just in front of a large flat rock to our left. The go bird was tossed off a point of land on our right in open water. Gryff had a nice straight swim and return with that bird. I got him facing the rock for the memory bird, and sent him off. He was on a great line until about half way out, did a head check towards the go-bird station, then veered towards the island that was to the right of where the memory bird had landed. He swam between a couple of big rocks near the island, then hooked in to the left and came up with the bird pretty promptly. We finished up with an honor sitting on the road above where we'd run from closer to the water.

I hung around to watch a few more friends run and to visit just a bit more, then left to head west about 5:30, though the test was far from over. I wanted to get some miles under my belt before needing to stop. We ended up spending the night in Amsterdam, NY at the Super 8 there.

Day 2 of obedience at the 2009 FCRSA National

2009-06-03T17:55:00.004-04:00

On Tuesday, I showed Gryffin in Versatility, where he earned a leg towards that new title. We had to do the Novice Heel on Leash & Figure 8, the Novice Recall, the Retrieve on Flat, the Broad Jump, the Moving Stand, and the Directed Retrieve. He got 2nd place in the class, 1/2 point behind Chris Van Byssum and Eagle.

Next up was Brace. Gryffin was kind of blah in both classes, and didn't start on the Figure 8 for some reason. I got all the way to the end of his leash before I really realized he was stuck, so had to give another command. On the start of the 2nd 8, I got smart and said, "Gryff heel" since Ty was chugging right along. The 2nd one was much better. The off-leash heeling went very nicely, garnering nice comments from judge Tibby Chase. On the recall, on my "Dogs come!" command, Ty rocketed in and Gryff sat like a lump. When I realized he wasn't moving, I gave a come signal to Gryffin, at which point Ty dropped :-). This video doesn't show all that. Ty had come into a nice front by the time Gryff arrived. He fortunately came to the correct side of Ty. Their finish was not so great, but at least they were both there to do it . We were 2nd of the two braces thanks to the recall. Here's a link to the YouTube video of our performance.

Team was a hoot, as it usually is. We had really good heeling & Figure 8s, but Ty sat during the SFE, and only two of our dogs did the recall correctly. All 4 dogs on the first place team did the drop exercise correctly. For those who haven't seen the exercise, all handlers leave together, and then one at a time, call and drop their dog about half way. Then all call their dogs to front at the same time, and then finish on the judge's command. It is the make-or-break exercise, typically. One of the teams first handler called and got all four dogs at once :-). Anyhow, we ended up with 2nd place and had a lot of fun.

2009 FCRSA Obedience Day #1

2009-06-02T07:39:00.000-04:00

Day 1 of the FCRSA National for me included Utility B with Gryffin and Open B with both dogs. The day dawned chilly and breezy but bright and sunny. Gryff was scheduled to go 4th in Utility, with the class starting at 9:00 AM. The first 3 dogs all Q'ed, which can be a good omen or a bad one :-).

Gryff had a nice solid performance - very much how he performs inside - and won the class with a 195.5, good for 6 more OTCh points (his total is 88 now). The UB ring was pretty decent, with ruts only in one corner. Of course, we had to heel into and out of that corner, and that's where glove 3 was placed, fortunately not in the rut, but on the grass above it. We did have to do the fast up hill, and that was also the go-out direction.

Open B was scheduled to start at 10:45, but didn't actually start until 11:30. Ty had very nice individuals EXCEPT for the Retrieve over the High Jump. I accept 75% of the blame for that, because my throw was not very long, and it bounced a bit to the left. She jumped out, picked it up, turned left, and 2.5 strides later, was past the jump. It didn't look like it even occurred to her that she was wrong. I was far more disappointed with myself than with her. But she was in good company - all 7 dogs in the first group NQ'ed the individuals! Ack. We petitioned the judge to skip the stays altogether, but he wouldn't go along with it :-). Ty held her sit stay (hurray!), but when the boy dog next to her came over and invited her to dance, she accepted the invitation. Oh, well. The judge said he would be willing to rejudge her, but since Gryff was in the one and only later group, I declined.

Gryffin was as poor in Open B as he'd been solid in Utility. He did a sit on recall, had a hideously long sniff instead of retrieving over the high jump (this in spite of me hollering FETCH... NO! FETCH... GRYFFIN GET IN HERE! etc. to absolutely no response). I was admittedly really PO'ed at the boy. I actually had enough time to wonder if he was going to pee :-(. Thanks god he didn't! And to cap it off, he went down on his sit stay. However, a very bright spot for the stays was that he was next to my friend Chris's neutered male Eagle and never looked twice at him. Two years ago, Gryffin was next to Eagle, fell in love with him, and broke the down stay to visit him. Ten months later, when we got together to train, Gryffin had not forgotten his unrequited love. Neutering is a wonderful thing :-).

HIT went to Chris McCluer and her OTCh Remington Twelve Gauge Shot Gun OA NAJ, with a 198.5 from Open B, and HC went to my friend Chris Van Byssum with her boy Eagle.

Last night was the annual Ring of Honor, in which special dogs are honored. Past winners of BISS, BOSS, HIT, and our Steady Singles competition are invited, as are new and former inductees into our Hall of Fame. Since both of my dogs have won a Specialty HIT, they were both included.

Today is for fun - Versatility with Gryffin to start us off, then Brace with the pair of them, and then Team this afternoon with Ty. Unfortunately, it's shaping up to be a much warmer day, darn it, but at least all stays will be in sight and shorter!

Let the odyssey begin!

2009-05-30T07:45:00.005-04:00

I left Ann Arbor Friday morning to head east for this year's Flat-Coated Retriever National Specialty - all Flat-Coats for 8 days of Agility, Rally, obedience, conformation, and field events! We are currently in upstate NY, staying with a friend for a couple of nights, and days of field and obedience training and visiting.

I stopped at Cabela's Friday to buy 6 more small orange bumpers (a certain black boy dog managed to eat the ends off several over the winter >:-() AND a gortex rain suit (training in the rain last Wednesday confirmed the need for one).

I needed two stops for naps yesterday, which was frustrating but necessary. Also had a bit of a detour in Cleveland when I exited too soon, stopped for gas, then couldn't get back on the highway easily because of a closed entrance ramp. Yuck.

I got to Jane's at 6:00 PM, and after some visiting, I did some water work with both dogs. Afterwards, we had a lovely and social evening, with several local dog friends coming over for dinner.

Saturday morning, the dogs woke me at 5:15, oh joy. Finally really got up at 6:00 to let them out.

We went to a local park so Jane could walk her nearly 15 year old Gemma while I did some T work with Ty and Gryffin. After a quick trip to Jane's to drop off Gemma, we headed off to join a couple of other trainers, Todd & Beth, for a day of field work. We did a land series first. We used ducks for the marks, which really helped both of my dogs. I ran a single and then a double with both dogs, and we were far more successful than earlier this week. Gryff also did a decent job on the two blinds. The first blind was between the right and middle marks. The second was to the left of the left mark, which had been thrown right to left, angling back. As expected on the second blind, Gryff wanted to go back to that left mark, but was at least making an effort to change direction away from it, not just immediately sucking to it. I did see a problem developing today in that he's popping when he's really close to the bumper at the end of the blind. I guess I've been insisting on a sit because of poor casts near the end of the blind, and I'm creating a habit.

We moved over to water, which was a lovely technical pond owned by a local field-trialer. So many options! The left mark was a fairly straight-forward "across the pond and out onto land" mark. The other two used the two points that stuck out from the right side of the pond. The closer mark was off the end of the closer point and the farther was launched from the back of the farther away right end of the cove, with the duck landing beyond the second point. With Ty, I had her do the right mark first, and she did a lovely line across the two points to the duck and returned nice and straight across. Then we ran the left mark followed by the middle one, and she did very well on both.

I had her honor for Jane's Nellie, and because of Nellie's noise issues coming out of the holding blind, Ty had a VERY, very long honor, and started to break on the go-bird of the double. This is very unusual for her, although we haven't done a ton of honoring on the water, so it was an excellent training opportunity.

With Gryff I ran the two right marks as a double (they were in a so-called hip pocket configuration, which means the long mark is thrown sort of towards the short mark so the dog has to run somewhat close behind the short gun station to get to the long bird). Well, "bad boy arc to the right" Gryff made a way-too-big arc to the right and got out on the first point way to the right of the gunner (when he should have simply gone past with the point and gunner on his right), so I corrected him for that (a nick on the e-collar). He was then understandably reluctant to cross that very spot to get to the memory bird, so had a terrible line going out to it, but returned correctly. He did the left mark decently, and then we reran the right mark to give him a chance at success (and he did fine) after the correction and over reaction.

We finished up with a couple of blinds. The water one had a very sharp angle entry, which he did well, then out across the first point and back into another section of water and then out onto land another 30 or so yards. The land blind was about 150 yds, through a couple of trees with a mound of dirt between about 40 yds from where I started from, which he got over pretty well, but then veered around the left tree. Dang trees :-). There was a lot of open uphill field between the two trees and the bumpers, with another big tree to the left near the end.

After an afternoon nap, I did some more swim-by with Ty, where she is showing excellent progress, and a related drill with Gryff. Jane has the perfect little rectangular pond for this.

While the day started out pretty chilly, it ended beautifully.

Saturday Water Work

2009-05-23T17:44:00.001-04:00

My training partner Corinne (she has Tollers) and I spent about 4 blissful hours training water at a mutual friend's technical pond (abt an hour from home for me). We started with working on swim-by in the corner of the pond designed for it. Ty had several days of swim-by last summer, but then I stopped field work abruptly to return to obedience. I never had the sense last year that she "got" the how and why of treading water, but I saw some nice effort today, the best I've seen from her. I've done 2 sessions this spring of sending to a pile across 20-30 yds of water with a small amount of stopping and casting back. Seeing how well she did today (not brilliant, but she has something of a clue), I hope to get out to a local pond tomorrow and do some more work on this. Gryff's responses showed me that I've been casting him too quickly (he was doing auto-casts and just generally not keeping his focus on me for very long), so I worked on that a fair bit, with verbal reminders and praise when he showed good effort. I plan to do more of this as a warm-up with him before running water blinds the next couple of weeks, to remind him that this is a TEAM effort :-).

Next we did a marking drill designed to work angle entries and re-entries. The gunner stood on a long spit of land to throw into the bay behind the spit, so the dogs had to cross the spit at an angle, but once they did that, there was the bumper pretty obvious to them. Ty had a no go on the first one, but a verbal correction got her going. Gryffin's prior experience was obvious on his first mark, because he drove hard to get out there. The last one I did required an angle across the corner of another little bay, and he started to run around. I called him back and resent, and he was excessively honest and entered more to the left than I really wanted, but I let that go, since I think it was an honest effort to be right.

Next we set up a couple of water blinds, one that started through the swim-by area and exited out the opening, and also had another "slot" created by an island and a huge patch of water-lilies. I was pretty happy with his effort on that blind. I moved down the shore to the left and sent him to the same destination but this time presenting more of a channel blind picture. We had run a blind to that general area several years ago hideously badly, so it was nice to see he's learned a few things since then :-). Finished up with one that required an angle entry, then a cross over of a small spit of land and the a swim past an island. With Ty, I had her swim the length of the swim-by area as a channel blind. Her entries were poor and lacking effort, which tells me I probably need to revisit the water force with her.

We finished up doing a land blind through ridiculously high grass.

Fun, fun, fun!

Weekend Field Training

2009-05-17T21:32:00.004-04:00

I finally tested my remote launchers yesterday and discovered that both of them work (hurray!). I confess they make me nervous... There's rather great potential for injury with them. In any case, once tested, I loaded them and the black dogs into the full-of-equipment van and headed over to the Ann Arbor Airport, which I found empty of anyone using the fields. Set up the launchers, and ran Gryff on each mark as a single, then ran a couple of blinds. Then I decided to run the marks from the opposite end of the field as a double. Bad idea :-(. Gryff really didn't have any memory of the memory bird. I think it was too close to the two blinds. Ended up handling him to it, badly. Phooey. A good session gone bad. >:-(

When I ran Ty, she made me nervous on the longer mark because she hunted a really, really big area (somewhat near the road), but she did come up with it. Then we went to run them from the other direction. She also had problems with the one Gryff did so poorly on. I taught her the two blinds Gryff had done, and she did pretty well with those. Went home rather discouraged about their marking but happy with their blind work.

Today (Sunday), I met friends at the fire station, where the grass is sadly getting thick. Ralph Chapman threw a series of marks for Ty up on the hill where she's had trouble twice. I moved back after each success, finishing with the 3rd one fairly long. I felt like I finally made a deposit in her confidence bank instead of the big withdrawals. She later ran all three marks in the set up very well. I wish I could understand why she marks well sometimes and is poor at other times. Someday, maybe I will...

I did 3 blinds with Gryffin. The first was ugly, but the 2nd and 3rd were decent. He had a big hunt on the middle mark, but did the long, uphill left mark well. All in all, it was a satisfying weekend of field work.

Dealing with Disappointment

2009-05-17T07:50:00.002-04:00

I have been showing in obedience a lot this year, working towards my boy Flat-Coated Retriever Gryffin's OTCh., UDX, and OM1 titles. At the time of writing this, he has all his 1st places needed for his OTCh., 82 of the required 100 points, and he finished both his UDX and OM1 at Tri-Cities' morning trial on May 2.

I also have two students actively pursuing a UDX on their 1st Utility dogs. Watching and helping them deal with the emotional roller coaster that is typical while pursuing advanced titles, and dealing with my own ups and downs in the ring this year has gotten me pondering ways to encourage both myself and others while in the almost inevitable disappointment phase.

Along with showing Gryffin, I have been training and showing my son's Border Terrier, Joker, for his CDX. Because of my prior OTCh. dogs, I had to title Joker in Open B, poor lad. Last fall, Joker & I were 0 for 4, failing 3 of 4 sit stays. This year, he finished his CDX in April, going 3 for 6 along the way, doing all his stays correctly, but failing the Broad Jump twice and doing his Drop on Recall once without benefit of a command from me. I am not looking for super high scores with him, just to get his title and give him the solo attention that he seems to enjoy so much that training provides. My goal when I show him is to put a smile on the judge's face, and we seem to accomplish this.

I have also been showing Ty, my 4 year old Flat-Coat girl. After having trouble with her stays in several trials, she earned her first CDX leg the same day Gryff finished his UDX.

I tell you all of that to say I have been in the ring a lot this year, and it has not all been good. I've had my ups and downs, as many exhibitors do. I have been dealing with my own disappointment at various times. However, my history in obedience has shown me that with hard work and persistence, I eventually reach my goals, in spite of the bumps along the way. Although it sometimes seems to be so, no one wins all the time!

When I was showing my Australian Terrier Rio for his UDX and OTCh titles, he NQ'ed Utility from May to November one year. Talk about disappointing! I was retraining his go-outs during that time with the help of my friend Judy Byron, but he just kept NQ'ing Directed Jumping. We didn't show often, but I would venture out once or twice a month, only to NQ once again. I remember being really frustrated with a few of those NQ's, but usually for just 5 minutes or so after exiting the ring. Then I'd go back to training and working on the problems. Finally, in late November, he passed everything in Utility. What a relief! Then, to my huge surprise and pleasure, he won the class, earning 33 OTCh. points, still the most I have ever garnered from a single class. All those months of training finally paid off.

I started writing this in the midst of an 0 for 6 streak (he failed at least one exercise in at least one class) with Gryffin while trying to get his 10th UDX leg. After going 8 for 10 for legs 2 through 9, it was frustrating and disappointing to say the least. His issue in the last 4 NQ's was his stays, scratching and sitting up briefly on a down stay, and going down on the sit stay 3 times. We spent the two weeks before our last trials doing a LOT of random stays around the house and training building, taking Linda Koutsky's advice in her Nov/Dec 2008 article in Front and Finish. My dogs responded in a way similar to what Linda wrote about, with both dogs making a lot of errors, not really taking my casual "SIT" commands very seriously at first. The efforts paid off with a 5 for 5 day at Tri-Cities, with Gryffin earning legs 10 & 11 on his UDX, and Ty earning her 1st CDX leg. Are we out of the woods on stays? I seriously doubt it! It was just a huge relief to see Gryffin sitting there when I returned on the first sit stay. It was big thrill when he did it again in the afternoon, and an even bigger thrill when Ty did both stays correctly.

I don't remember where I learned this, but something I like to remind myself about periodically is that if the only way you are going to come home happy from a trial is by qualifying or winning class X or getting a higher score than So and So, you probably better just stay home. We are working with dogs, not robots. I remind myself that I want to put forth the best effort that my dog and I can in that trial under the conditions of the day. If it's good enough to qualify/win etc. that day, great. If not, I need to make adjustments in my training. Trials are a test of my training. When things go a little bit wrong, the adjustments may be small. When things really go badly - and yes, I've had many of those days! - I take a hard look at several factors:

• Training frequency: Too much? Maybe my dog is stale from over-training. Too little? Maybe our teamwork isn't what it should be because we haven't been training enough.
• Training locations: Too many familiar places, too few less familiar or unfamiliar places?
• How much food have I been using lately?
• Have I been formal enough while still keeping my dog happy?
• Have I trained alone too much? While it takes effort to arrange it and more time to train with others, it really does pay off.
• Have I been working heavily on one or two problem exercises and letting others slide?

Obedience trainers often have a strong tendency to focus on what went wrong instead of what went right. Connie Cleveland wrote a wonderful article entitled "Don't You Dare Steal My Joy!" With a little help from Google, I found it here. It's in the "Honey's Corner" column. Take a read. You won't regret it.

In closing, I have certainly found disappointment to be a part of training and showing my dogs. Sometimes, you can put an incredible amount of time and effort into your preparation but still come up short. When this happens, pick yourself up, take a hard look at how you prepared and what your dog did well and not so well, and then go back to training. I have found that those goals reached after difficulties are all the sweeter to achieve.

Until next time, happy training!

Gryffin finishes his UDX at long last!

2009-05-10T22:26:00.003-04:00

(This is a combination of a couple of emails I wrote on Saturday May 2)

I'm sitting at the Tri-Cities trial, happy as a clam... Gryffin
(finally!) finished his UDX today, and for icing on the cake, also
scored well enough to finish his OM1 (the new Obedience Master title).
He scored a 195 in Utility, and 198 for 4th place in Open B. After
going 0 for 6 trying for #10, and going down on his sit stay in his
last 3 trials, I was really thrilled when I came back after the sit
stay and he was sitting. In fact, all 22 dogs in Open B and A passed
their stays today. Not sure I've ever seen that happen.

Later that day...

We ended up 5 for 5 today - Gryffin q'ed in all 4 classes (AM OB -
198, 4th place; UB - 195; PM OB 196.5, UB 194) and Ty (finally) earned
her first CDX leg with a 192.5. She had a no-finish on the BJ, which
was first. She started to go around me, but then stopped and sat at a
45 degree angle. Probably a by-product of working on brace this past
week. The rest of her class was sloppy but passing. Given the state
of her stays (weak at best), I am completely thrilled that she did
both of them. And very proud of my boy for his 4 passes today. We had
OB II this afternoon, which meant down stay first. He was pretty tired
by then, but the promise of his beloved rubber ball before the sit
stay lit up his eyes and he held it, hurray!

I have to credit today's stay success to rereading Linda Koutsky's
article on stays when I was in Lakeland 2 weeks ago. When I got home,
I started doing frequent around the house random sit stays (with the
occasional down stay for confused Ty) and caught both making a LOT of
errors. I'm sure going to keep this up!

Adele and Ch Grousemoor Gryffindor *UDX OM1* RE SH WCX (and 82 OTCh points and all needed 1st places)

Friday field update

2009-05-09T22:03:00.001-04:00

With the UDX behind us (finally), and only the National obedience trial planned (June 1) between now and October, I'm focusing on field work for the most part with Gryff and Ty. My friend Corinne, who breeds and trains Tollers, has a hay field near her house we use. The owners cut down some scrubby bushes and made an impressively long brush pile earlier this week, with some places narrow enough for the dogs to jump over. We took advantage of it and set out a bumper pile 10-12 feet beyond one of the narrow places. I ended up having to call Ty over it because she seemed convinced that she couldn't possibly jump over it (this from a dog who leaps a baby gate with nary a thought). Once she realized she could, she was fine with it.

We've done pattern blinds in that field quite a bit (Corinne far more than me, naturally, living so close) (pattern blinds are blinds that you teach a dog via back chaining, usually in groups of 3, over several days). Gryff ran them some last year, Ty only a bit, since she was just getting to that stage last summer. When I was there 2 weeks ago, I ran Ty on the middle of the trio of blinds, which she did quite well. The right one presented more problems, because she REALLY wanted to go back to the left one. Yesterday, I started by teaching her how to navigate the brush pile blind, then put her up to rest. We came back out and started with the right pattern blind. On the first attempt to send her, she sat there (too much like a cold blind, which she's not ready for). We moved up a short distance. Then she veered to the left toward the middle blind. So we moved up some more. Finally, at about the 1/2 way point (I think it is about 120 yd blind total), it was like she went, "Oh THAT destination!" and headed in the correct direction. We then did the middle one from the top of the hill, then repeated the right one from near the top of the hill with fine success. Then we moved over to run the brush pile one. I think it's 150 yds from the top of the hill. We moved up some, but, if memory serves, I think she got herself all the way there and hopped the brush pile.

When I taught Gryff the brush pile blind, he wanted to go to the right (where the original pattern blind has been in the past), plus wanted to run around the right side of the pile. I used the e-collar on one sit, which seemed to wake him up. We ran the other two blinds as part of a blind drill (a mark in combination with a known blind), then reran the brush pile blind from the top of the hill. It was a two-whistle blind, and he made some excellent line corrections on both casts. It was really satisfying! There are times he responds to my casts by ping-pong-ing back and forth across the correct line (ugly and frustrating), so this on-the-money responses to my casts was fabulous to see.

I stopped at a pond on the way home for some water work (they were in the water for the first time this year last Sunday). Last year, Gryff had a HUGE amount of problems running a blind at a workshop in Ohio where he had to swim across a channel and then exit the water and run another 50 yds on land parallel to another leg of the pond. I got him across the channel reasonably quickly and out of the water, but could not get him to drive back along the shore - he seemed convinced he need to get back in the water. I found a local pond where I could reproduce this soon after that, and again had a lot of trouble. I'm happy to say he did quite a nice job on that concept yesterday. I put 3 bumpers at the end of the land dike, and after a successful first run, we moved to our left so that the line to the blind was gradually angling from left to right in the water this time. As he passed the right channel, he made a fairly obvious cut in to the shore (he often arcs/drifts right in the water, but this was a clear "oh, let's get to the shore" kind of move). We got a lot of practice on left back casts, but he was listening and responding pretty well. We finished with another move to the left so he had to do the initial part of the blind with a shore to his right.

With Ty, I worked on basic pile work across the narrow channel. After I tossed a bumper to ID the pile (so a mark), the next send was poor, but after that, she was doing a nice job. She didn't quite master treading water last year, but she was showing signs of being better at it yesterday.

I went home feeling really good about my dogs :-).

Seminar Musings

2009-04-21T17:00:00.000-04:00

I got home Sunday night from a quick trip to Florida for 3 days of obedience lessons/seminar presenting in Lakeland. I had very little voice left, in spite of a great sound system. I had chorus rehearsal Monday morning. Having a 6 note range that kept changing didn't make for particularly great sounds. (I'm in a local women's chorus, and our concert is only a few weeks away.)

I have honestly enjoyed every seminar I've presented over the past 6 months. How lucky can I be that I'm getting to meet all these new dog friends and their nifty dogs all over the country, and getting to help them with their dogs?

On Saturday afternoon, I showed everyone how I start to shape a retrieve, and got a young (about a year old, recently neutered male) Brittany with no prior experience with the dumbbell taking it in 10 or so minutes. His owner reported Sunday morning that he was taking it every time she presented it. I think that most of the people at the seminar have never seen the db introduced this way, and have started their dogs right out with the ear pinch. The cool thing with this dog was his gnat-like attention span when we started. He was actually standing very still and thinking hard about what he needed to do as we got further along with the process. I asked his owner if he'd ever been that still in his life :-).

After working with several other dogs with hold issues, someone came out with her metal article and her Border terrier. He had learned Scent Discrimination just fine, but then started refusing the metal article a while back, and even with a fair bit of correction, still wouldn't take it. So I had her start with some nose touches, get several of those, then wait for a few, then to use a treat by the bar to start taking it. In probably 5-10 minutes time, he was taking it on his own. She was so thrilled (as was I)! On Friday, during her lesson, I'd suggested that she have her dog work for his meals, with the goal being to build some "want to" into him, since he was lacking a lot in the enthusiasm-for-obedience department. No work? No meal, or at least a significant delay in its arrival. Saturday morning, she greeted me with excitement. On Friday, we had worked on just doing an efficient set up, including head-up attention. The first time she asked for the set-up, I think she said he just sat wherever. So she said, "Oh, too bad, no meal," and walked away. She said the look on his face was hilarious. I think he did a decent set up 10 minutes later and got his meal. The next morning, he set up promptly, did a pivot as asked, and got his meal. For his dinner Saturday night, he had to take the metal article, and for Sunday's breakfast, she had him take it a couple of times, and then retrieve it, which he did. So late Sunday afternoon, as I talked about how I teach Scent Discrimination (Janice DeMello's Around the Clock), I walked her through the process with her dog. I knew it was a gamble - after all, he'd just started retrieving it again that morning, but he did great and was retrieving the right one each time with very little extra help. It was so incredibly satisfying!

Also, she said when she arrived at the building today, he was eager to get out of her vehicle, and he came in and ran and greeted several people enthusiastically, which is unusual for him. He was also awake and watching in his crate much more than usual.

There were several Border terrier owners there this weekend and they loved the fact that I've trained a bunch of terriers. I also got expressions of appreciation because I talk candidly about my failures as well as my successes (heck, I show terriers - it's part of the territory!). Last weekend, with my 3 Open B NQs, was a prime example ;-). I asked my host if any of her other seminar givers ever talk about failures, and she said no, absolutely not!

It was another exhilarating trip, and I am so lucky to get to do this with so many fun people.

Rags to Riches or The Little Dog That Could (From AADTC Newsletter, Nov 1987)

2009-03-27T13:41:00.002-04:00

The following article was written by Deb Schneider, my first obedience training partner. She recently unearthed the newsletter in which it was printed, and put it on Facebook. I have her permission to share it here.

Third Saturday of October, 1986

It was a fine autumn day, crisp and clear, tinged with the red and gold highlights of fall colors near their peak. The drive to Allegan, Michigan would have been a complete pleasure except for Adele's mounting nervousness. There was tension in the car's closed space, tangible to me and Adele's Australian Terrier, Casey, who sat panting on my lap.

We were on our way to their very first Obedience Trial.

We found the fairgrounds after several misguided circuits around the tiny town. Getting lost did nothing for Adele's nerves. She had barely turned off the ignition before grabbing the dog paraphernalia and rushing off to the trial building. Unloaded and signed-in, she started to warm up Casey.

The little dog had a history of "wimping out" when stressed, and Casey was displaying more and more of these traits: flattened ears, panting, even her normally perky whiskers had started to wilt. Adele wasn't in much better shape.

Finally, their number was called. I hid discretely behind a pole where I could watch their performance and not be distracting. They started slow ... Adele was white and trembling and Casey lagged a wimpy half body length behind her. The little dog that ordinarily heeled well had disappeared. Casey had also forgotten how to sit at the halt. Adele managed to remember a sage's advice to go ahead and give and extra command when things looked bad in the ring. She proceeded to squeak "Casey, Heel!". Then she did it again. And again. And... from where I was standing I could almost see the big, black mark the Judge made next to the "Unqualified Heeling" square on his score sheet.

"My knees were Jell-O!" Adele exclaimed on their release from the ring.

And then the question I dreaded... "How did we do?"

I tried to be encouraging, but Adele knew as well as I did what had gone wrong. Adele took her first non-qualification well. After all, Casey was her fun dog... the dog she was going to learn how to train and show in preparation for showing her second dog, Tramp, who had exhibited more competitive potential.

But on her return from Allegan, Adele started looking for ways to improve Casey's performance. And over the next year she found many.

Third Saturday in October, 1987

The drive to London, Ontario was hectic and mostly done in the dark. This time we were both showing in Novice B and if Adele was nervous, I was too nervous to notice. Her husband, Fritz, was along and we were all exhausted by the trip. At least all the humans were, but when we got up to the hotel room, the three dogs started tearing about like overtired children. At last we all settled down to catch what sleep we could before our morning show times.

Next morning we left with plenty of time to spare. We found the show grounds easily and got the dogs settled quickly. A year of experience showing both her dogs had given Adele a new confidence. She left them in their crates, having learned that absence not only made their hearts grow fonder, but also added an edge to their performances. While the dogs waited quietly, Adele attended to the problem of a conflict between Casey's obedience time and Tramp's breed ring time. Casey was moved back a dozen dogs, and we all settled into the hurry-up-and-wait atmosphere of the dog show.

With Tramp finished in breed, Adele rushed off to change. Casey could tell something exciting was up... people kept stopping by her crate and telling her how cute she was. Adele returned and took Casey for her last minute trip outside and a quick warm-up. Then into the ring they went.

I watched from ringside, confident that Casey's attention would be on Adele. From the first "Forward", it was obvious everything was all right. Casey's ears were up, her gait perky, her tiny face poked in the air to meet Adele's confident smile. No Jell-O knees this time, Adele strode out at just the right pace for her little dog.

Casey was glued in heel position. Her sits were fast and straight. The performance gave me chills and I noted smiles of approval from many of the familiar faces in the audience. Casey's recall was not only fast and precise, it was also adorable, and drew coos from the crowd. She did her long sit in a half doze and her down without a twitch.

Adele was met with many congratulations as she wove her way through the crowds back to her crate. As she switched Casey for Tramp, I teased her "Wouldn't it be funny if your dogs tied each other with high scores and were in a run off together?" Adele pooh-poohed the thought, but we hastily planned what to do just in case.

Tramp's performance was also very good that afternoon. Not as good as Casey's, Adele said, but more than acceptable. She was very pleased. Adele was warming up Casey and I, Calix, neither of us expecting to be in a run-off, but wanting to be ready just in case. Fritz had Tramp on a leash nearby. Suddenly, I heard the steward call number 113. It was Casey!

As Adele rushed to ringside, I heard the second number, 141. Oh no, Tramp! At the gate Adele remembered she had only on six foot lead for both dogs and we did some fsast shuffling, putting my leash on Tramp.

The dust settled and Adele and Casey were in the ring with Tramp and me at their side. I managed to get Tramp's attention just long enough for the first step at "Forward", and then she wrapped around my legs looking for Adele. At the halt, the judge said, "Well, I guess it's obvious!". Casey had won the run off, the class, and earned High in Trial with a 199.5!

What to do between exercises in the obedience ring

2009-03-24T21:34:00.005-04:00

I was in Gonzales, Louisiana last weekend to teach a "Balancing Act" seminar. Because I flew there, I didn't have any of my dogs there, so I prepared the following video to take along to show the variety of ways in which I release and interact with my dogs between exercises in the obedience ring. You can tell from the video that all of the dogs enjoy my touch, which makes it easier to reinforce them in the ring. In how many different prop-less ways (i.e., no food and no toy) do you release your dog? There is one particularly looooong stretch - a full minute - between finishing the UKC Open Figure 8 and starting the Drop on Recall. The judge had to wait for the Honor dog's handler to return, and then she had to give instructions to a steward. What would you do for that length of time in the ring? Practice and find out!

Fulton County KC - Day 1

2009-03-14T16:39:00.002-04:00

I showed all 3 dogs (Gryffin, Ty & Joker) in Open B at the Fulton Co KC's trial at TKC today, and Gryff in Utility B as well.

Joker was first up in Open of the 3, and did a decent job, although his broad jump was a bit of a heart stopper - he trotted to it, slowed down, and then popped over it, ticking the last board softly. Cute drop, cute retrieves, not too shabby heeling. And he put a smile on the judge's face (Dan Herald). His stays were just fine, hurray! This earned him his 2nd CDX leg.

Ty was next up. On the Retrieve on Flat, when she was about 6 feet away, she dropped the dumbbell, and it bounced/rolled forward off to my left. She continued to me slowly, looking a bit perplexed, then went and picked it up, and kind of finished. We lost 5 for that. Drop and High Jump were fine. I handed the dumbbell back to the judge, which may have been the undoing of her Broad Jump. She stared hard at him when I left her, and when I said "Jump it," she just sat there staring. When I repeated my command, she came to me instead of jumping, while continuing to stare at him. Guess who hasn't proofed for the judge holding the dumbbell??? Frankly, I haven't proofed her for a lot of things. Her heeling was fine, as was her sit stay, which, given that she'd gone down not once but TWICE yesterday while training, I was relieved and very happy with her. She didn't go down for the the down stay immediately, and I didn't get her over on her hip. Sad to say, she popped up as I left the room, did a sit for a while, then went back down. Phooey.

Gryffin had a fine run in Open B, and then went into Utility. We had Open B III, finally something other than I or II. We had Utility B II again. Geeze we've had it a lot! It was a very nice class, but he walked on both stands, so I wasn't sure how much that would cost us. His sit stay was fine, but (boo hoo!), he scratched and bit at his side during the down stay, sat up briefly, and went back down. It was especially a boo hoo because he blew a 198.5 score.***

Gryffin did get 2nd place in Utility with a 195.5, and picked up 7 more points, bringing him up to 75 OTCh. points. So the day was not a total loss :-).

Kay Braddock and GWH Jet Q'ed in Open B, as did Mercedes True and English Setter Max. Corner go-outs got them both on Directed Jumping.

Belinda Venner and Lab Sparta earned their 8th UDX leg AND was in a runoff for High Combined!! They earned 2nd place in Open B and 3rd place in Utility B. This with the bar first in Utility (which has been causing them a lot of problems this year).

It was a fun day (well, except for those danged down stays with the black dogs...).

*** Linda MacDonald and her Golden Wings won the Open B class with a 197.5, which finished Wing's OTCh. title and netted her High in trial.

Siberian Husky Club Trial, March 6, 2009

2009-03-13T07:36:00.002-04:00

I showed only Gryffin at the Siberian Husky trial in Dexter. We had a not-so-great NQ in Utility B (corner go-outs, moved on the MS exam, dropped an article leaving the pile, loss of focus on the sit signal so didn't do it without excessive waving on my part ), which meant another trial without a UDX leg. I can't be too upset, since he hasn't failed more than one Utility class in a row since last summer.

I'm very happy to say that we got 1st place in Open B. We had Open B II (again - 4th time this year out of 7 Open classes), earned a 198.5, and 1st place. This completes the 1st places he needs for his OTCh. title, and he also got 4 more points, bringing his total up to 68. And to top it off, he got High in Trial! He hasn't had many (this is his 2nd all-breed HIT - he had one from Novice - plus the one he got at the 2007 FCRSA National from Utility). It has been many years since I've won an Open B class, so it was a very fine day.

We really enjoyed getting home and having a nice run in the beautiful spring weather :-).

Detroit KC March 1, 2009

2009-03-13T06:17:00.003-04:00

I can't remember the last time I showed a dog in obedience at the Detroit KC show at Cobo Hall. I have been there with both Gryffin and Ty in conformation, but I'm pretty sure I never showed Java there, and he's now 12. In any case, in my search for the Open B 1st that Gryffin needs for his OTCh., I decided we'd give Cobo a 1-day try. Except for being a dunce and not looking at the directions before leaving home (and thus went well beyond where I should have gotten off I-94...), our trip there was pretty uneventful. Hauled our large pile of stuff in on my crate dolly from several blocks away, found our benching spot, got everything set up and Gryff settled.

As everyone (all 4 of us) did who showed in Utility B, we NQ'ed. We had order I. Gryff's heeling was poor and unfocused, and he sneezed during Signals and didn't drop. Passed everything else, but had "all the way in the right corner to check out the mat rolls" go-outs. He DID jump the jumps properly, which was a bright spot in an otherwise pretty dismal performance. So no UDX title for us today.

In Open B, also order I, he did redeem himself, although it certainly wasn't the wonderful performance from two days before at the Collie trial. We had a runoff for 2nd, which we won. Too few dogs for any OTCh points at all. He earned a 196.5.

With our showing done, it was back to the bench to hang out, socialize, and talk to people about Flat-Coats. I had Gryffin out several times for the "meet and greet the public" and he thought it a splendid way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I put up a table with my display board that is full of pictures of NDT staff members and their dogs, along with info on what we do. I put out some of my brochures and schedules, as well as some for Dr. Smith and Annarita's Mrs. Doolittle's Pet Sitting Service. I also had a business card rack out. It felt great to see people picking up not only my information, but my colleagues' information.

I'm hopeful that a few new people will head out our way for classes because of my efforts. Before BNI, I would have thought about it, but I don't think I would have been organized enough to actually set up the display.

Will I go back next year? It's hard to say, but it was a good marketing opportunity.