House guests/training opportunity

Recalls, recalls, recalls. Thousands of recalls! Sit when greeting. That is what we are obsessing on these days.

My friend Ingrid Manzione was here visiting from Hawaii this week. She and lots of her agility friends attended power paws camp last week, and then she came to stay with us for a few days. Scoop loves guests. HE thinks it is an opportunity to have a  party each time they walk through the house. *I* think it is a training opportunity to work on what I want him to do when he meets new people or sees the ones he loves. Ingrid helped by being a post or turning her back on him when he put his feet on her, I came dashing in with cookies when he sat. Since I didn’t want to wait until she wandered through the door, and be caught without rewards or busy on the phone, we set up the scenarios a bunch of times so I could train it when it was convenient for ME. She would talk to him in a high pitched tone of voice or clap her hands and I was right there to shove treats in his mouth when he sat or kept all four on the floor instead of jumped up. I really don’t like it when dog traininig friends say “it’s ok, I don’t mind your dog jumping on me”. Or worse, they see you struggling to keep your dogs brain attached to his body, and they sabotage you by continuing their excited greeting while you try to reel in your excited pup.

If we all helped our friends by behaving properly around their dogs we would certainly look and act like better dog trainers.

Life in the hood

Scoop and his boys get to spend time together in the yard now where our adults hang out when they are outside, and I don’t monitor every single minute of their interactions. That backfired a few weeks ago when Scoop and Ace were obviously having a mouthy mauling session of play. I heard screaming and went running. It looked like Scoop was killing Ace, or vice versa. Jim ran in from the field where he was teaching. the noise was easily heard 200 feet away. Once I got to the dogs I realized that Ace had his mouth wrapped aruond Scoop’s collar, and then Scoop rolled and thorougly tied Ace’s mouth to his collar. I held the dogs while Jim unsnapped the collar, but not until we were all thoroughly scared to death. Ace was only a little worse for the wear.  Scoop settled after a while and stopped acting frightened from the scary situation. Big mistake on my part. The collar Scoop wore was a bit loose, and really he should not have a collar on at all when he is out hanging in the  hood with his mates. Lesson learned, and thank goodness we were close by to get them untangled.

Scoop had his very first run with my border collie pack in the big field yesterday. Riot-14 years, Wicked-13, Panic-9,  Ace- 5 and Scoop. He has been on lots of field runs on his own, or gone along on leash with all of us, but till now I did not totally trust his recall or his self control. The run went fairly well, he came back every time I called. Yahoo, recall training works! However he does not 100% understand that he is never allowed to run into another dog, or duck in for a play bite while they are all exercising. My dogs hate bullies, and I work hard to make sure that the youngsters do not intimidate the adults on an exercise walk/run, or worse, crash into them and cause injury. I had to use a low growly voice with Scoops nickname a few times when he started to cut off the other dogs while they were running. I will work on this every day, if I do not see daily improvement he will go back on leash with us for a while.  I can’t yell at him, my other dogs get worried if they think someone is in trouble. So my quiet verbal  ”checks” to Scoop are minimal and he needs to figure out that a one time lowered tone of voice is all the chance he is going to get to behave himself, or he is back on leash.

Scoop, Ace and I are headed off to a trial this weekend. I am looking forward to hanging with my boys in the RV, and training away from home.

I hope you have a great  weekend of training planned for your pup too!

NJG

Recalls to side

Figured I would shock everyone and write two days in a row! Scoop, Ace and I are home from the trial. We had fun, but yesterday Ace and I were perfect, and today I pulled him off a weave entry:(   Don’t you just hate it when your dog is obedient?

Scoop was a bit better today, we hung at ring side for at least an hour and he was quiet while dogs were running. I worked a class jump bar setting and was able to leave him in a down while tied to an immovable object while I went in and set jump bars. There was always someone with him, don’t worry….. I did not leave my puppy tied at ringside!   I was happy that he let me get up go in the ring and waited calmly with them while I was gone for a minute. And he didn’t  mob too many folks today, however we went through 4 sticks of string cheese making sure he happily sat when I asked. Scoop seems to love everybody which is good and bad news when I am trying to keep his feet on the ground and his attention on me. We did lots of heelwork and playing and overall had some nice training moments.

Back at home yesterday I practiced doing recalls to side from a sit stay. I trust now that Scoop will sit and stay without scooching around even if I am 30 or 40 feet from him. Granted, this is in home field without lots of distractions. I always used to return to his side to release him, I have not done that many recalls from a sit stay with a lot of distance. I have done lots of sit stay and release to tug with me while I am reasonably close by, maybe  no more than 10 feet. I have been building this slowly so that we don’t have errors, and still let him drive with enthusiasm to me. If ever he moves a foot after I leave him I return to release him, he will not get to move towards me at a distance after an error on the sit stay.

So yesterday I lined him up, dropped the toy at my side, stepped away, called him to my side, rewarded, then spun with him and said get it, to let him have his toy. No problem on multiple attempts from a short distance with treats as a reward, and a Riot stick as the toy. Then I got out the soccer ball and the results were a teensy bit different.  Like this…Scoop lines up nicley, he is staying, I drop soccer ball, I step away, I release him  and he goes direct to the soccer ball. Whoops. So we built this slowly. More recalls to side with cookies, low level toy again, then very casual placement of soccer ball at my side, and we had success.  I am going out to train and see if I can add another level of  progression to the game today. I will let you know how it goes and show you the next step, next time. I hope you have as much fun training this game with your pup as I had with mine!

NJG

The game went like this:

Time Flies

Time flies! Can’t believe it has been 6 weeks since I wrote about Scoop. I was away from home 30 out of the last 50 days. On a handful of those days Scoop was with me at agility trials. The big adventure was the trip to Europe and the World Championships for two weeks, which was immediately followed by a trip to Colorado for a week and then Portland  for three days. I am glad to be home, and have been enjoying every training moment with Scoop.

Luckily even though my blog has been suspended in time, Scoop’s training has not suffered the same fate. He looks and acts sort of grown up! He was 7 months old yesterday. He weighs 35 pounds and is over 20 inches tall. And really, really good news, no more tape and glue on his ears:)

Scoop seems quite mature now until I take him into a way too stimulating environment .  At home he is silly and playful, but will train attentively for a very long time. He has a lot of control… unless I am trying to demonstrate a specific agility move with someone else’s dog during a very serious dog agility lesson. Then he might be naughty enough to warrant being taken back to the house rather than get to hang with me in the field while I teach. At agility trials like one I went to today, as long as he is on his toy or I am actively reinforcing him with food for behaviors he is really great and attentive. His biggest distraction right now is greeting people. He wants to visit with everyone, and truthfully that also means jump on them. Short leashes, lots of rewards helps, but the issue is ongoing. I think I will ask for some help from friends tomorrow, to see if I can get in some reinforcements for sitting before he gets a chance to jump up to greet everyone.

We play and train as often as possible. That means we spend individual time together at minimum a few times a day when we are together. He hangs with me in my office when I am working indoors, and if I have a break that doesn’t include training him, he likes to cuddle on my lap. Well, sort of on my lap; those legs dangle off to the side cuz they are so long. I really like his willingness to settle down and cuddle. Mostly my dogs aren’t that fond of cuddling. Well Jack and Panic would sleep under the covers and crawl under my skin so to speak, but Wicked , Riot and Ace count the dog minutes on their toes, hoping I will let them off the couch, out of my arms, and onto their dog bed on the floor where they can act very non cuddly. Riot at 14 still wants to be right next to me all day, but cuddling is out of the question. She is too cool for that.

New stuff for Scoop

Scoop will drop his head flat to the ground and hold it there on the drop command. Since he also knows feet means to put your front feet in my hand, or up on a table or chair, I can now combine those two cues to make some fun tricks. Feet on the chair from the sit position, and then head down can be say your prayers. Feet in my hand, and head dropped low between his legs is sort of exaggerated praying while stretching. His body looks sort of weird on that one, so we don’t do it too much. He will also walk with me on his hind legs while his front feet are in my hand. That is another trick we do only once in a while since he is standing on his hind legs while doing it. I think the moral of the story is that anything that is much of an athletic feat is trained but practiced minimally while he is still all legs and growing like a weed.

 

Walk backwards.

Scoop now takes some steps backwards on cue. I use the command walk. I shaped it like this. I sat in a chair and waited for him to move one foot, then I clicked and gave him the treat. I watched his feet and waited for the movement again, then clicked. As soon as he started to understand that he was reinforced for taking a step backwards, I upped the ante and only clicked after he moved one foot and then the other, so I went from marking one step back, to marking two steps back. I decided to reinforce the beginning steps of walk by him returning to me for his reinforcement cookie. That way he was already reset to move away from me again. There are different ways to reinforce walking backwards and to pinpoint where the dog should move backwards to, like the dog walkign backwards and placing his rear feet on something like a rolled up carpet, towel, or a board. Sometimes I have used gates to help a dog walk backwards in a straight line, or I have trained while using a wall on one side to help in getting the dog straight while going back. At times I have reinforced all motion away from me and at the point of the last step I wanted to reinforce, I did not let the dog come forward, but moved quickly to the dog to hand him the treat. Anyway, this time I just decided to mark only straight steps back and reinforce from my hand with Scoop coming to me for the cookie. I counted steps before I clicked, continuing to build till I got up to 5 or 6 steps. At that point I switched to throwing my reinforcement toy or cookie to him. I had to be careful on delivering the reward to him or I got a head turn away from me when he caught the reward. Since I would really like him to go straight back and not curl or turn, I want to reward him while he is in straight line directly in front of me.

This is still a work in progress. Sometimes he sort of hops backwards on the first few steps. I want him to go quickly but take steps not jump backwards. I like to teach this behavior as it uses the dog’s rear end rather well and is a good athletic endeavor. I am not trying to strengthen his rear, or build muscle, I won’t do enough of it to do that yet. But as he grows older I will use it for strengthening, and it will probably be part of my warm up drill before I go into the ring.

I have lots more stuff to write about with Scoops’ training, and I hope I will have time to do it in a much more timely fashion rather than waiting 6 weeks to tell you how he’s doing. On my list: toy control games, recalls, using high value toys that put my dog over the top, and lots more.

I have three more days of agility coming up this weekend and Scoop will be with me . I hope my show report on Monday is that his greeting manners have made a remarkable improvement! I hope you have as great a weekend with your puppy as I am planning on having with mine.

Nancy

Workshop report

I try to put Scoop on the table at least a few times a week to get groomed whether he needs it or not. The first picture looks like I am getting the stink eye, but actually he always shows a bit more white on that eye, funny:) Now you can really see how big he is.

Scoop and I survived an all day foundation and groundwork seminar last Sunday. Unbelievably Scoop pretty much worked as a demo dog all day. I kept waiting for him to say he was tired, or to not want to play with me, or forget some of his skills, but he didn’t. He was almost perfect! Well, jumping out of the 18 inch high X-pen a few times wasn’t what I wanted everyone to see, but if that’s the worst he’s got I will take it. Scoop has never really trained indoors before, other than in private homes. We were in a small doggie day care center with matted floors, and 20+ people sitting around, and he never missed a beat responding to cues, total attention and great tug and retrieve. One thing that Scoop could really not cope with was me working Ace with him in his cage. So, I decided it was easier just to use him, rather than listen to him whine in another room while Ace tried to work. Really gotta work on that!

One thing I covered when I discussed retrieving with the group which I think is important, if I send Scoop to a toy from my left side I expect him to turn to the right as he picks up his toy, like this diagram. I really don’t want him to turn away from me every time I toss a toy. Some dogs turn their favorite direction because they are just patterned to do so, others turn in a way that is more physically comfortable. For whatever the reason, I don’t want him to turn away from me. If I throw the toy a really long distance to my dogs I don’t pay attention to this, but on close retrieves or during training I do watch which way they turn. If they turn away I take a little step towards the toy, sort of shaping the pickup for a while until they always turn  back to me.

 

Scoop is a circus dog now. He loves to stand on his little stools, we don’t really train it very much, but he thinks it is fun to use them both.

This is a short post, lots of REAL work to get done tonight. Hope you keep balancing your training skills with your pup, as much as I try to with mine.

NJG

5 Months old

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scoop is 5 months and one week old now. He is all legs and tail. He is 20 inches tall. YIKES! I keep wondering if I stop feeding him if he will stop growing. Doubt it:(   His size has led me to decide absolutely no more jumping on guests. A cute little 5 month old pup can get away with it, but not a bigger than usual one. I have to tell friends and students not to talk to him until all four feet are on the ground, don’t even look at him! He is extremely friendly, (pushy, engaging) and can’t quite figure out yet what all the fuss is about.

I am happy with his training progress and especially pleased he did not go totally feral last week when I had absolutely no extra time to spend with him. The AKC world team was here at my home for team practice and guests started arriving early in the week and stayed the full weekend. We had 10 guests here at the house and of course that meant lots of people in and out and much ado about nothing according to the baby border collie. Morning and night I saved time to go to the field for some training and exercise, but not nearly as much as he is used to getting. I wanted to do restrained recalls with him, not just trot him around the yard, to burn off some of his steam. That was ok for a a couple days but he started to become upset about being held while I ran away so many times, and decided he did not want to be kept from running along side of me as I left him. He wasn’t scared, he just had too much anticipation of the run and didn’t want to be passed off to Jim so I could leave him. I had not really seen a negative side to doing restrained recalls with any of my dogs before, but he certainly showed me there could be. I really felt if I pushed him to comply with being held while I left that I would make being left with someone into a really big negative instead of the fun it usually is for him. The last times I passed him off I didn’t leave, I just fed him for accepting that someone could hold him by the collar politely while I stood next to him. I will pass on these recalls for a while and hope he forgets about it, and I will be sure to reinforce him for liking others to hold onto his collar or leash while I am with him. I do not want to crossover from play to coercion with this dog, I know I will lose the game!

In a couple days I am teaching a foundation workshop for a local agility club. Scoop will have his first real demo job as I expect to use him on and off throughout the workshop to show training skills which are both finished and in progress. I am a little nervous about how he will perform. He has gotten so much better about hanging out quietly while other dogs are working, but usually that is because I am rewarding him or playing with him. I will be busy talking and working with handlers and their dogs, as well as using my border collie Ace for some skills. I hope Scoop will mind his manners and show how good he can be. A few weeks ago I would not have considered being able to have him with a room full of working dogs and handlers, he would have been screaming if I did not give him my full attention. I will let you know how it goes.

Here’s an update on what Scoop knows and what I hope he can show everyone he knows this weekend. Tug, retrieve, leave it, sit, down, stand, break, kennel up and wait with door of crate open to be released, short duration in sit and down and in the crate, left, right, feet (put your feet on anything I point you towards) touch (nose touch a plexi target or target stick with a ball on the end) hop-up (2o2o on a  step) close and side (swing to heel on both my sides) heelwork on both my right and left, go around a chair or post and probably some other stuff I am forgetting.  All of these skills are still rewarded a lot with food and toys. They are not perfect and would probably not stand up to lots of repetitions without food and toy rewards.

Tonight I worked on having Scoop stay quiet in his kennel while I trained my border collie Ace. He whined loudly when the cage door was closed, but was really good when the crate door was open and he had to restrain himself and think about staying in the cage. He did come out a couple times and I silently  walked him back to the cage, then after he stayed for maybe 5 seconds I threw a reinforcement treat to him and started to play with Ace again. I lobbed cookies to Scoop periodically while I  interacted with Ace. I called Scoop out of the cage a few times and rewarded him then sent him back in again and repeated all the steps. I have not done nearly enough of this work. I think I will get Jim to reward him for me while I train Ace next time. I think that will make a big difference. I do have to remember though, he is just 5 months old! I am trying to keep my expectations realistic.

I hope you enjoy the photos of some of our balance training and water play that Marcy shot of us yesterday in my field.

I hope your weekend is as successful with your puppy training as I hope to be with mine.

NJG

body parts

Feet,  nose and teeth.

This morning while I was training Scoop I worked on him standing still while I did a full body examination. I had him stand while I went over him and then decided I should stack him up like a little show dog. (not!) I had a brief stint showing in the breed ring years ago with my German Hovawarts, so I know how to handle a dog into a stack. Run my hands down the shoulder and stop at the elbow to gently position the lower leg by grasping the joint and setting the  leg and foot down square. I do the same for each rear leg. I start by running my hand down the leg from the point of hip and stop at the hock, circling the joint gently with my hand, lifting up the lower leg and squaring the foot on placement to the ground. Scoop stood there nicely so I fed him some treats, released him and started over. I like that he stood square on placement and did not wiggle around or fight my handling.  I liked working on this skill with him, it certainly could help his understanding to stay in one spot without moving a muscle. I looked at his ears, and mouth and handled the privates as well. I lifted each lip with his mouth closed to see his teeth and bite and then opened his full mouth. He is a little tender  from loss of teeth. I keep ripping them out accidentally while playing tug with him, and then if they don’t go flying he swallows them, whoops! He knocked one out during some “mouthy” play with his sister last weekend, and he has lost some chewing on the marrow bones he gets daily.

Today I started working on two different skills. Rolling over and disc targeting. They don’t interfere at all with each other so I can do them in the same practice session if I want. The roll over went ok, not perfect, I will keep playing with shaping that tomorrow. The disc targeting though was incredible. I held out the disc and he immediately touched it with his nose to investigate, and we were off and running. I got great hard nose touches with the target held in both my right and left hand and moving it around the front of me. Clicking and treating each touch of course. I got the target within a few inches of the ground when I thought I better stop as I was getting greedy on the first day of training. Scoop does not know a hand target so I did not know how easy this would be. I sure wish I had thought of this before with my other dogs and students. Duh.  Nice clean disc touches having nothing to do with my hands. Once he knows the touch cue with the target on the ground I will probably teach hand targeting, or maybe not:) I haven’t missed not having a hand target with him.

I also played with one more skill this evening. I was looking for stuff to play with in my storage shed and found some heavy paper plates. I tossed a couple on the ground and went from one to the other using his “feet” command. Scoop places his front feet on anything I point him towards. This was pretty cool, I might be able to put the foot target to use on my contacts. He got it right away and stood on the plates, got rewarded and waited to be released. Basically a great training day I would say. I love staying home and getting to train my puppy as often as I want.  I hope you had a good time with yours this weekend.

NJG

Retrieving

Scoop and I have been busy busy busy. I drove the RV to Los Angeles last weekend to teach a seminar for Wendy Vogelgesang and of course took Scoop and Ace with me. I am not really wild about the driving part of owning an RV, and being away from home for 4 or 5 days to teach a three day seminar, but I love having my dogs with me while I am teaching. I like to have a dog to demonstrate exercises or handling techniques, and always feel a bit handicapped if I don’t. That is a really good part of traveling withyour dogs to teach. And I love the hang out relaxing time before and after the seminar with dogs and friends. It has been great for my dogs. Instead of rushing off to a hotel room after a show or seminar day is done, the dogs can hang out, exercise, get trained, meet new people, and I can really take the time to introduce the new and different environment to my puppy. I just never realized that great aspect of having an RV.

The first morning before the seminar I was up early and walking the dogs at 6 AM. Scoop was on leash and Ace was loose. We walked down the street of a gated community with private drives. No chance of meeting any cars, but apparently lots of chance of meeting coyotes in this beautiful rural setting. As I turned to head back to the RV after a short walk, we came face to face with a huge coyote who essentially blocked the road by sitting in the middle of it staring at us from about 50 feet away. My dogs did not even bark, just looked at him with curiosity. Rather exciting, something intimidating, definitely not on my list of critters that I wanted Scoop to meet on this trip. I called Ace in and made him share the opposite end of the leash with Scoop and then after a few minutes staring contest with Mr. Coyote I decided to just move forward with intent  to see if he would scare off. He let us approach a short distance and then sauntered away in hunt of breakfast. Just glad we were not part of the menu.

Scoops breeder Stephanie Spyr was at the seminar and we let our pups have some fun romps and we did some training together as well. Stephanie suggested testing our retrieves on the pups by sending them for their toys side by side at the same time. This could have been a small disaster but as it turned out it was fun and I am still a bit surprised Scoop could do it. Steph sent her pup for a toy and after Keeper picked up her toy and turned back to Steph, I threw my toy and sent Scoop. Voila! They passed each other like little flyball dogs, what fun. Then we tried back to back retrieves. Steph and I had our back to each other and threw the opposite direction at the same time. They would be running towards each other and us on the return, no colisions, just solid retrieves and they ignored each other totally. Steph and I have both worked hard on our retrieves. We have straight line fast sends to toys, clean pickups withthe pups grabbing a toy and turning immediately back to us and pretty much deliver the toy to our hands. I worked each part of those skills with Scoop, and while I think he has natural ability and desire to retrieve, the shape of the retrieve has been taught and encouraged.

Scoop’s retrieve started with just throwing the toy and letting him run for it at the same time I tossed it. (read about it on my May 20^thblog) I sat on the floor and encouraged him back by patting the floor or my leg to get him to return to me. That changed into me holding onto his collar, throwing the toy, waiting for it to land, and if he was looking forward to the toy, I would send him with the command “get it”. This worked well on short retrieves in the house with me on the floor. Once I went outside and was standing up I wasn’t getting as much speed back to me on the retrieve.   I added a second toy to the game. It all goes like this: I am standing up, I have his collar in hand, I throw the toy at least 25 feet, I say “get it” and release him to the toy. I take a step forward with him as I release him and sometimes I run with him  towards the toy. As he does the pickup, he spins to me, I call his name then take a couple running steps backwards, (facing him) and just as he is getting close to me I dangle a tug toy on the ground in front of me. He drops his toy and grabs the tug and we have a short tug game. Then I put him on my opposite side and started over again. You can see Scoop in action in the photos below. These were from a few weeks ago, he is much bigger now:)

Some of the retrieving basics are:

• Move towards the toy or at least take one step and “bowl” Scoop towards the toy.
• I don’t release and send Scoop unless he is looking forward at the toy.
• I move backwards away from him after the pickup and encourage him to return fast and straight.
• I have faded out the need for a second toy by just holding out my hand and encouraging him to come to it. I would like him to have the attitude that he should push the toy at me and ask me to engage more in retrieving or tugging with him.

                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enough talking about retrieving. Scoop has been patiently waiting all morning for me to finish teaching and writing, it is his turn now to have my attention.

I hope to write more about Scoop this weekend, maybe I will get brave and measure him again. He was19+ inches tall last weekend and not quite 5 months old. I am still praying he will stop growing soon! I hope you have as much fun this weekend with your pup as I am planning on having with mine!

NJG

Running Contacts

I am just home from the European Open Agility competition which was held this past weekend in Arnhem, The Netherlands. It was at the Olympic site called Papendal which is not far from Amsterdam. The competition was incredible and Ace and I earned the bronze medal, yahoo! My team with Elicia Calhoun, Susan Cochran and Ann Zarr  finished in 6^th place out of 84 teams. There were 358 large dogs in the competition. Some of the best handlers in the world were there. Greg Derrett, Silas Boogk (last years Champion) Sylvia Trkman, Dave Munnings from England and the list goes on and on. Ace was only ¾ of a second off of the spectacular winning run. We ran in the middle of the pack and our time held for the rest of the class until the last couple dogs. Silas ran second to last and missed an a-frame, or he would have beat us. Still his time was only a quarter second faster. I am thrilled with Ace and can’t wait to go back next year to the Czech Republic where it will be held to see if we can do it all over again! Ace does not have as much ground speed as a lot of the big dogs we competed against, but he is well trained and has incredibly tight turns. My time on the finals course was fast in great part because of those turns.

Jim took good care of Scoop and he did not go feral in my absence. He didn’t seem to forget any of his training after a week of fun and games without me. His left and right turns are still spot on, and all the other skills we have trained over the last two months are just as strong as ever.

While I was traveling I thought a lot about what I wanted to train when I got home. Being at an international competition is exciting and inspiring. I look forward to the day that Scoop and I get to run agility and I hope we will be good enough to be compete internationally. There were a lot of missed contacts that I saw over the course of the EO competition. Some of the best teams in the world were kept from the finals and from the podium because of missed dog walks, frames and teeter flyoffs. I am committed to training a running frame with Scoop, but not a running DW. I have seen too much inconsistency in running DW performances to make me want to have one. And, I am not getting any younger! The thought of needing to beat Scoop to the bottom of each DW leaves me breathless.

Today I started working on one of the skills which I want in place to train a running frame. I got out my treat’n’train and placed it on the ground. I walked forward with Scoop at my side towards the tnt and activated the remote as he looked forward towards the machine. The machine emits a beep like a clicker. I want Scoop to move towards the machine straight without looking at me. He already is familiar with the tnt so this part of moving to the machine without looking at me was easy. Then I took the machine to the field to do it again.  I put two short boards (36 by 12 inches) together side by side flat on the ground, as I don’t have a flat 36 inch square board to work on yet. I placed the tnt about 6 feet forward from the end of the boards.  I moved forward with Scoop at my side and as he walked on the boards I used the remote to mark him walking over the boards and looking forward not at me. As I clicked the remote he moved towards the machine to eat the couple pieces of kibble which fall into the bowl.  We are just walking not running and I haven’t decided how quickly I want to progress through the next flat work steps. For now I will be teaching him that moving over the boards smoothly and looking forward will earn him clicks and cookies. I won’t click if he jumps, and I don’t want him to look at me, and I do want him to move through the middle of the board. For now that is the only criteria. Using a tnt as part of A-frame training was suggested by Olga Chaiko who has a pretty spectacular running frame on Scoop’s dad Yankee. (Who won the team jumpers class at EO by the way!)                    

Scoop, and Ace and I are headed out on a road trip tomorrow to Southern California to teach for a few days. I am looking forward to being in a new location with Scoop so that I can spend time training away from home as he has not been off the property now for 10 days. I hope that you have as much fun training your pup this week as I know I am going to have with mine.

 NJG

Following Orders

Scoop is 18 weeks old today. It sounds much better to have an 18 week old puppy that is almost 18 inches tall and weighs 23 pounds than a mere 4 ¼ month old with that height and weight! Is he going to be a pony or a dog? I am hoping for a regular sized dog of course and continue to negotiate with the universe about how tall he will be. The negotiations are pretty one sided, like, I am pleading for him to not go over 21 inches. Since his estimated full height may be beyond that, given where we are today, I now have my sights set on him staying below 22. He seems a physically balanced puppy, I am thankful for that! My first border collie Scud was 23 inches tall and 50 pounds. He had no problem getting round the courses rather successfully, so if I have another big one and he ends up as nice as my first, I will be happy. Scoops sisters and brothers are also about the same height and the littermates that were smaller last month have caught up now.

Following Orders

I have been thinking a lot lately about the order in which I am teaching skills to Scoop. I don’t want one behavior to interfere with the ease in teaching another one.  I had thought about working on his walk backwards this week. But since I am just in the process of putting a cue to his right turn, and then I need to proof it with the left turn as well as other cues, I decided to put it on the back burner. If I start shaping walk back before I finish the right turn I am sure I will have some cross over from him taking a step towards the right or a step backwards.

One of the prompts for him to start to turn to the right is me standing in front of him, clicker in hand. Since it is the only behavior I am actively shaping and there is no equipment or other position involved, it is helpful that if I look like I am in training mode, staring at him without moving, that he is expecting that we are working on the right turn.  Where we are at with the right turn:  I have added the verbal cue right, just as he begins the move. The next step is adding the cue word earlier and earlier until I am saying it before he is thinking about moving.  I hope today I can take that behavior on the road, and trust that I have it on cue, meaning he will only turn to the right after hearing the word right. Any other time he offers to turn right I will ignore it and he will only get reinforcement for doing the skill after I have asked for it. It took me a bit longer to shape the turn to the right then it took for me to shape the left turn. I am uncertain if that was because the turn to the left took precedence and because I taught it first, or if he just turns more easily in the left direction. I had no problem with him starting the right turn, I don’t think he ever offered to do a left turn when I was shaping right. Anyway, it just seemed to take longer to get him to move lightly and quickly to the right and get to a point that I could name the skill and finish it up. I wrote some weeks ago that I use the cue back for the right turn with my other dogs. Because I chose the release word break for Scoop, I decided that I would use the word right for him, as break/back are too similar.

 The order I have taught (or am teaching) some of his skills.

• Release taught before positions (sit down stand)
• Tugging before crate games are played
• Recall before retrieve so that I could call him in to me after the pickup
• Line up swing into position before heelwork so that he understands a position relative to my body
• 2 on 2 off competence before targeting
• Disc target before hand target

I have decided not to teach hand targeting until I have great disc targeting. I like hand targeting, I use it with my dogs on their stays to get them to jump up and touch my hand and then drop into position where they will stay. And it is an easy skill to add between exercises to reset the dog for something else.  I think I can get the same drive and reliability to a disc without doing a hand target which can complicate getting the disc target out of my hand. I am not going to really start the disc for a while, so in the meantime no nose targets at all for Scoop.

I won’t teach any tricks yet that involve him waving a front paw or cueing off a hand signal from me until I feel confident in his stays.  I am often holding treats in my “handbowl” (handful of cookies from which I remove one reinforcement treat at a time) very close to him while he is in a position or in his cage. Teaching him to move a foot before I have good sit stays might be counter productive. In each behavior I teach I try to consider if how I am teaching it, or any cue I might give, would interfere with something else he is learning. He is just 4 months old, I have plenty of time to teach any trick or skill I need for agility in due time.

I am headed off to Amsterdam tomorrow, and will compete next week in the European Open.  I hope my puppy won’t go feral while I am gone!  I know Jim will have a great time playing with him this week. Hope you are enjoying training your pup as much as I enjoy training mine!

NJG

On the town

We have had a busy and fun weekend. Friday night I convinced my husband Jim that I had to take Scoop out on the town for some social networking. I suggested that my favorite restaurant where you can sit outdoors in a busy shopping shopping district would be the perfect spot to eat and let Scoop experience the scene. Jim was convinced only because they have his favorite pommes frites at this local eatery. We packed up Scoop and all his accoutrements and hit the streets at Santana Row, doing some window shopping before landing at Left Bank for dinner. Scoop was really good in town, his only fault being that he might have tried to say hi too enthusiastically at times to some of the new people he met on the way. I decided to take along a fresh raw marrow bone to entertain him if necessary while we ate. Maybe this was a bit unorthodox, but he laid under my chair at dinner and quietly chewed on his bone. The restaurant staff was none the wiser, and only a couple of the patrons noticed him and his bone. I luckily got a thumbs up from all of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scoop’s breeder, my friend Stephanie Spyr was here this weekend and we spent hours training and playing with our pups. Since Saturday afternoon was a stinking hot 95 degrees here, we headed off to Starbucks for iced coffees and the pups went along with us. Funny how all my socializing this weekend revolved around coffee and food. Steph walked them around the area while I retrieved coffees, then Scoop and his sister played and hung out with us while we sat on the sidewalk under a shady umbrella sipping our bevs. Families and noisy teenagers wandered by while the dogs hung out watching the goings on. A nice afternoon break for dogs and humans. Since I live and work on a quiet country road, surrounded by fields instead of homes and businesses, I like to find any excuse to take Scoop down the hill to visit. The only thing that has really bothered him a couple weeks ago was a group of kids on state boards. He was not interested in playing tug with me when we were in their vicinity, so I still have some homework to do in acclimating him to those kinds of activities. We will take it slow, one skateboard at a time. I am already thinking that Sunday afternoon at a local park might be just the ticket to find some noisy kid sports to watch with Scoop. Wonder if there will be a Starbucks close…….

I am having a fun weekend with my pup, hope you are having a great one with yours!

NJG