A New UD

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

 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.

Obedience Match @ OTCGL

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.

A Shocker in Ann Arbor

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

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...

Joker & Ty Utility Training Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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