Reflections on a lot of NQs

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

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

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. 

Ty

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

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:

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

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

I believe, I believe, I believe!

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

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

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.