How we did not go to an APDT trial.

Last month: "I'll go two days! I'll do two runs Saturday and one on Sunday with Griffin, and Blaze once each day."

Two weeks ago: "I missed pre entries. That's okay, we can still do day of trial entries. I'll go just one day. One run each dog."

Last week: "I'll take just dog. Blaze? Or Griffin? Maybe I'll take them both and decide when we get there and do a few test warm up minutes."

Last Wednesday after off-leash class: "Okay. Griffin isn't really ready for the environment. That's okay. Blaze has had enough training he should do well."

Last night before practice: "Great, I can't wait! He's had enough training it should go smoothly."

Last night after practice: "Wow, it's good I can count, otherwise I would think I'm missing a finger. Or two. Okay. I'm not going to take Blaze. Maybe I'll stay home."

Megan last night: "If I have to go to the trial, you have to go to a trial."
Me: "Okay. We'll see."

Me half-asleep last night: "I'll take Griffin. If we can get from the car to the ring, we should be good. Yeah. That's what I'll do."

Me this morning: "Uh no. Too cold. Not ready. Sleep in."

And so I did not go. I wish I would have. I probably should have. But maybe not. We're not quite ready in some ways. But we're over ready in others.

My compromise was to do an obedience run through tonight between lessons


Hours later I realized I didn't do heeling pace changes. And I did the stays but no video as that's completly boring. We should be ready. Eventually. We had great parts (duration of heeling) and not so great (the stays and SFE foot twitches) and smaller not so great parts (a few bumps on heeling and the completely lost piece during heeling. And my twitching.

Horray for Griffin's brother who got his OTCH today. It only took a year from CD to OTCH! We're very proud.

Dogwalk Training: Running Contacts

It's probably been at least two months since we've done a training session on dogwalks. Griffin had a few reps at agility class (and missed every time). And during a private last month (was good, one was a jump). But no 'real' training.

Monday night we did one session and yesterday we did two. I took my camera but it was a little deceptive. I had it on the HD setting, thinking that was the best, but it's not handling the motion so well. I'll try a different setting today.

Last night we had help, and someone else was clicking for me. And I admit that most of the time I was watching his feet instead of running forward 100%. And I usually saw a good touch. But our clicker-er did not.

Who was right? I'm not so sure. And we didn't even have the camera to reliably back us up. Once we saw that I was plainly wrong, I was sure of a touch but the camera said no.


So... please take your camera to training. And remember to charge the batteries first. I've been trying to prompt my students, esp in advanced agility, to bring a camera to class. One of them is reliably doing so, the others not so much.

Griffin fell off the dogwalk, he didn't take a jump before it and then had a bad entry, he caught himself on the up ramp but then across the top he just couldn't balance and he jumped. But the landing was good and he was right back to work. I hesitated between putting him right back up and waiting a few weeks before trying it again, but did go right back to it. On future reps he was a bit more cautious, but still running. Until he got tired. We'll do less of it today.

The day after Christmas we saw a pair of coyotes in the field where I play with Griffin. They were probably bigger than him! Now I'm going to be worried about him going off to explore the scents.



I really need to learn to use my camera!

Secondary Reinforcers, Toys, OFA's, Walks Without Food. Agility

Yesterday was a Good Day. And we got a lot more done than I expected.

Play: With a few inches of snow, I safely let the dogs play in the yard for half an hour while I cleaned out the van and even vacuumed it. They had fun digging and running and getting snowballs on their feet. Dog cars are hard to keep clean.

Tracking: We met our new training friend to do some tracking. It was about 15*. Wind chill made it about 0*. We didn't last very long, we both ran one dog on three tracks. Blaze's first: he stopped to go to the bathroom. And couldn't seem to find the track, but kept working. But when he was going through a 6" drift and stopped holding up his feet...I carried him to the car. We did his next two on the snowy gravel and he did much better but was still working WAY slower than usual. I was smart and used more food on the later ones... but I was still surprised at how much it slowed him and how well he kept trying!

Toy Play: Griffin was going to have his OFA xrays done in a few hours and couldn't eat food. So after tracking, in my many layers of clothing, I got out a longline and we played frisbee fetch-tug. And it went really well even with no food! I was able to reinforce recalls, and it was just a lot of fun to be at the park with absolutely no one else there at that point. He was adorable and we REALLY need to do more of this. Our play reinforcement value is greatly growing!

Walks in Town Without Food: We had twenty minutes until our vet appt, so we parked and walked around town. Without food. With two golden retrievers. And it went really well. Even with the cold, we saw quite a few people and walked past them. I wanted to reinforce, but had to go with "great dogs! Let's GO!".

OFA sedation and Secondary Reinforcers: The sedation part is what I was worried about. Once sedated, all is fine, but before then, he could be a flailing scared dog. I tried pinning him to the wall (which he thinks is great, do I want a leg lift with that?). And then using his conditioned secondary of head scratching. We repeated several times, and it definitely was a reinforcer. Then it was time for the real thing...and the vet touching was not okay. Griffin reared up and put his front paws on me. So we did the injection like that. And it worked. Much easier than I thought.

Waiting and walking: Blaze and I had twenty minutes and took some treats and went around town again. I took food and reinforced attention and good walking. And once we were to well-shoveled areas, I took off his Gentle Leader for about ten minutes. He was adorable, prancing along and staring at me. And it was somewhat sad to think that even almost-ten-years-ago as a puppy we spent time walking in the exact same places. In some ways a lot has changed, and in other ways, not so much. still, just walking along, wanting his treats. We went back and picked up Griffin and went home. Griffin wasn't up for agility training that night, so I took Luna.

Luna's agility: She was great! Attentive and focus and never wandered off. She wasn't her fastest, but she seemed happy, what do you think?

Sometimes she's super scared there and sometimes happy. I wasn't sure if tail-up was happy dog or if she needed to poop. But I think she was happy. I have to find a way to get her in class and trialing again.

Front Leg Lift: Duration and Cue: Video

Session 5, we added more duration and started to add a cue.

Adorable! I switched to just feeding throughout leg lifts and to stop the feeding after his leg hit the ground.

It was interesting to see a few times where Griffin would pick up his right foot (never in the other sessions!)

After we had several long points of duration, we started adding a cue.

I kept his "foot" cue for lifting the foot and "Sit" for foot back on the ground. Skip to about 1 min to see that.

I'm not sure if that's the best choice, maybe foot on the ground needs a more specific cue, but at the same time, I want Sit to mean "both front feet on the ground" in addition to the rest of the position.

Yes...I was a bad trainer and repeated cues. Ahem.

Finishes

I probably spend too much time on these behaviors. And so while waiting for the car to warm up before leaving classes last night...I 'tested' our finishes.

Verbal or visual cues for both the left and right finishes.



I need to move less. But I'm getting better! I think the left visual is our best one.

A close look at the Drop on Recall

A few weeks ago I was really wondering about how exactly the dogs move for the drop on recall. And then I thought about all the other parts. Unsurprisingly, the answer I got was, "It depends." Different dogs have different ways of dropping and there is more than one way to correctly drop. I haven't gotten any feedback as to whether there is a more efficient, effective, or preferred way.

I was unable to find any drop on recall videos in slow motion to look at how the dogs move. Thanks to the technology I didn't know my computer had and my new camera, here are some Downs with my dogs. Some of the Downs were from a standstill, others were in motion.

There are about 4-6 drops for each dog, the clip is about two minutes long. What parts do you see drop first? Do you see movement indicating the dog is about to halt? Watch the heads. Watch the placement of the legs. Watch how the dog stops. Watch how the body (and not the legs) moves as the dogs drop. I've watched this about twenty times already and I still don't know everything I'm seeing.



I would love to see slow motion videos of other dogs lying down, and especially any drop on recalls.