Where Did My Perfect, Snowless Winter Go?

Our nearly snowless winter was too good to last.  With nearly a foot of snow accumulation and a windy day, our road out was impassable.  The dogs, of course, were thrilled that mom was home all day to bother.

Maple had a great time tunneling through the snow and wrestling with Alder the poodle boy.  Old lady Camas (in the middle) prefers to be inside with a hot cup of cocoa.

Burka (aka, the basket case) is best equipped for snow, coat-wise, but she’d rather be inside worrying about something.  Worrying is what Burka does best.

Playing is what Maple does best.

Alder’s legs are long enough that he doesn’t have to swim through the snow like the golden shrimp.

And the Chase-the Poodle game is ON!

Golden retrievers are handy for picking up dropped gloves.  Unless you want the glove back…

The grader finally went by about 3 pm.  With the wind blowing, the road drifts shut again in an hour or two, but it is reassuring to know that, if one us has a heart attack shoveling snow, the ambulance will probably arrive before the body reaches ambient temperature.



The Quirks of Dog Memory

The temperatures and the wind have taken a turn for the worse after a lovely stretch of mild weather (as winters go here on the high steppe).  I rented training time today at a building.

I’ve been working on improving both dogs’ jumping skills by following Chris Zink’s program of jumping drills.  In Alder’s case, I want to improve the chance he’ll take the jump both ways on the Retrieve Over High.  Same for Maple, but I am also trying to stick to my resolution to make progress on agility training with her.  I set up a line of 6 jumps, from 4” to 12” in height, at varying distances from one another.  (The idea is  to give the dog practice at adjusting his stride to accommodate different distances between jumps and different jump heights.) 

The building I rented is used primarily for agility training.  The agility equipment was moved against the wall for my obedience training.  I happened to put the line of jumps parallel to the A-frame parked along the wall.  With Alder, I started by sitting him at one end of the line of jumps, going to the opposite end, and calling him to me down the line of jumps.  That went great.  Alder knows this game and loves it.  Then, I led out a couple of jumps and released him so I was running along the line of jumps. Alder took the first jump than veered away to take the A-frame.  He bounded over and did a perfect 2on-2off at the end.  After that, there was no getting him over the line of jumps without doing the A-frame.

I worked with Alder on agility, with no obedience, until he was about 2.5 years old.  My plan was to get his agility titles while he was young. By the time he was 2 years, I was resigning myself to the idea that he would only be able to do Preferred jump heights (20” in his case).  By the time he was 2.5 years old, I realized that Preferred wasn’t in the cards, either.  He could, and would, do a practice course at 20”, but the day after he would often be limping.  Even if he wasn’t limping, he would be unenthused about agility training for days afterward.  So, we switched to obedience without Alder ever being shown in an agility trial.  At the outset of obedience training, I was only aiming for a CD.  I had my doubts that he could jump well enough to get an Open title.  He has exceeded my expectations in obedience, even if he only takes the high jump both ways about half the time in trials.

The point of all this background is that, during those first years of his training, I worked a lot on contacts with him.  He loved the A-frame.  (The dog walk, not so much.  He’s not the most coordinated dog and it was scary for both of us.)  He hasn’t been on an A-frame in close to 3 years, and yet, he remembers exactly how to do it.  I was pretty darned impressed at fuzz-brained poodle boy.

After the jump work, we moved on to a little heeling practice, a couple of dumbbell retrieves, and some beginning Go-Out work.  With all the Utility work lately, it’s been a few weeks since we did a Drop on Recall.  I put him in a sit and called him to come.

He remained in a sit.

I was taken off guard. I called him again, knowing immediately that was not what I should have done.  He took a hesitant step or two and did an uncertain drop.

So, how does a dog remember a perfect contact he hasn’t done in 3 years, but forgets a recall after 3 weeks? 

We spent the rest of the session working on recalls with no drops. I resorted to a flexi. 

I had already had a long training session with Maple, but after I was done with Alder and had loaded everything in the van, I looked at the always eager Maple, who has a beautiful drop, and decided to see if she would do the drop, which I haven’t practiced with her in a while either.  I put her in a sit, walked away about 50 ft, turned, gave her a Come command and…

She didn’t move.  And when she would come, she would be hesitant and either sit or drop after a few steps.

OK, one dog has a problem, it MIGHT be the dog’s fault. Two dogs have a problem, and it’s the trainer’s fault.

For weeks, I’ve been caught up in teaching Utility.  I’ve been doing a lot of signal and directed jumping training.  I’m also working on all the new Rally exercises where the handler leaves the dog, walks a few feet away, and asks for a change of position or a call to heel.  All execises where the handler leaves the dog and does some sort of hand motion at a distance.  Clearly, I’ve been doing so many of these exercises, with no refresher recalls, that both dogs were confused waiting for some hand gesture.

Time to put some balance back into training and mix Open exercises in with Utility training. So many things for a poor dog to learn!

We All Love the Sound of Breaking Glass, er, Ice

We have a kiddie pool in the yard for Maple, aka, Miss Water Fanatic.  Last night, the temperature dropped to 18 F.  The top of the water in the pool is frozen solid.

If there's anything Maple loves more than swimming, it's breaking through ice on water.  This evening, I was out in the yard with the dogs taking in the last smidgen of daylight after I get home from work. 

Maple leaped onto the ice in the pool and walked around until she broke it with a satisfying splash.  Then she hauled a piece of ice as big as a window pane out on the grass where she could break it into smaller pieces to chew.

Ah, yes, nothing like lying on the lawn with wet paws, chewing on ice chunks in the twilight of a breezy, 25 F evening.

It is breeding season for Great Horned Owls.  The pair in the yard have been hooting up a storm.  They took a break from their romancing to stare down at the dogs from the top of the utility pole behind Maple, no doubt wondering what the crazy dog was crunching.

Plans for 2012

I have the standard types of resolutions for the New Year.  Don’t bring any junk food home from the grocery store, vacuum more often, learn a couple new languages, mediate peace in the Middle East, etc. 

What I don’t have are Obedience resolutions.  With the standard (i.e., non-Obedience) resolution, I have some smidgeon of control over the outcome.  Making resolutions about Obedience requires putting one’s self-esteem at the mercy of a creature that gets more excited about finding mud-covered, week-old, coyote-rejected deer vertebrae in the field than straight fronts.

When it comes to Obedience, one can only make plans and hope that diligent execution of those plans might someday lead to a few more 50 cent ribbons.

Plans for Alder, who has 2 Open legs and 1 RAE leg:

·        Spend the winter retraining the out-of-sight sits.  Whisper repeatedly into his ear: Do this right ONE MORE TIME and you will never, ever have to do a 3-minute sit again.

·        Work on lots of jumping drills, ala Chris Zink, to improve his marginal jumping. 

·        Harden my heart to his insistent reminders that he is starving and take a few pounds off the boy.

·        Take a few pounds off myself.

·        Don’t enter him in Open more than one day in a weekend. If he doesn’t Q the first day, he won’t Q the second.  Enter him in Rally only on days he’s not entered in Open.

·        Continue training the new Rally exercises and keep plugging away at teaching Utility.

·        Have faith that he will get that final Open Q one of these days.

Plans for Maple, who has a CD and one RE leg:

·        Relax and smile at her during runs.  Forget the score and work on keeping that connection between me and her in the ring. 

·        Work on jumping skills and get her more relaxed about working on my right side.

·        Work on at least one foundation agility skill each month (flatwork, one-jump stuff, etc.)

·        Somehow, fit in a couple of hunt training sessions each week.

·        Speed up those finishes.

Plans for improving myself.  Guess I can call these resolutions, since they depend on me and not the four-footed fiends.

·        Give clearer signals.  Less flailing, more crispness.

·        Learn to walk a straight line.

·        Don’t step into my dog on the halt.

·        Have the right arm band on when I enter the ring.

·        Don’t enter 7 different events with 2 dogs on the same day.

On to 2012 and whatever it brings.

Obedience Lessons from 2011

By the beginning of 2011, I had put the following titles on dogs: 3 CDs, 3 RNs, 2 RAs, 1 RE, and 1 RAE leg.  You could say that, with respect to obedience, I started 2011 slightly less green than grass, I’d say, maybe a shade of lime green. 

I was more than ready to break through the Novice barrier and get my first Open title on a dog.  Alder, the standard poodle boy, was the dog who was going to get that first CDX leg for me.  During 2010, I had showed Alder the poodle boy in Open 8 times with no Qs, but after much training in the winter of 2010-2011, I was optimistic that my epileptic, mildly dysplastic, fuzz-brained poodle would come through for me in 2011.

Well, we cracked, but didn’t quite break the Open barrier.  By the end of 2011, Alder had 2 Open legs.  Counting the 8 NQs we had in 2010, we’ve shown in Open 22 times.  (With Maple, the orange tornado of a golden retriever, I picked up a BN, RA, and CD in 2011, demonstrating that I can still rack up the low-level titles.)

No doubt, any more experienced dog trainer would knowingly nod their head and say with Yoda-like wisdom, “She showed that dog before he was ready.” 

So true.

And yet…  I could have trained another year or two and most likely would still not have learned the many lessons I learned from actually showing.  For instance, I learned:

1)      That I have less-than-perfect eyesight, especially out of my right eye. Actually, I’ve always known that. What I learned showing is that, standing across the ring from my dog, watching for the drop signal from the judge, it can be very hard to see the judge’s motion, especially against a background of moving spectators or dappled shade or if the judge is standing well to the right of the dog.  In training, my imaginary judge was always easy to see.  During a trial when the tunnel vision of stress was overlaid on my normally poor vision, I would leave my dog, turn around on the opposite end of ring…and enter a state of near panic at realizing the judge’s outline was indistinct. Fearful of missing the Drop signal, I would squint intently at the judge, taking my eyes totally off Alder.  Squinting is always accompanied by frowning. Try to squint and look relaxed and smiling at the same time.  Then try squinting and frowning at your dog when he’s coming in for a Drop on Recall and see how he reacts.

2)      That if Alder went around the high jump on the return on Saturday, he would always go around the high jump on the return on Sunday.

3)      That if Alder missed the Drop signal on Saturday, he would miss the Drop signal on Sunday.

4)      That if Alder went down on the Sit on Saturday, he would go down on the Sit on Sunday

5)      That I am an extremely slow learner because it took me 22 trials to realize that if Alder went around the jump, missed the Drop signal, or went down on the Sit on Saturday, I should have pulled him from the Sunday trial and avoided reinforcing an error I would then have to work doubly hard to fix.

6)      That blowing an Open Q when your dog goes down on the Sit as the judge calls the handlers back into the ring is painful.

7)      That blowing an Open Q for the fourth time because your dog has gone down on the Sit is painful.

8)      That blowing what would have been the 3rd Open Q on the last Saturday show of the year because your dog went down on the Sit is excruciatingly painful, especially because a) you were sure you had fixed that problem and b) although there is still one chance left at a Q on Sunday, by then, you know that, if Alder doesn’t Q on Saturday, he won’t Q on Sunday.  (And he didn’t.)

9)      That if you hold the dumbbell by a bell without curling your fingers over the bell, the dumbbell is more likely to go where you want it.  A fellow competitor gave me that tip after I hit the ceiling with the dumbbell at a trial.

10)  That your first ever Q in Open, after 14 NQs, is sweeter than sweet.

I learned so many other lessons last year, some at trials, some during training. I think the most surprising lesson from Alder is how much he loves to PLAY during training. Train him without mixing in a big dose of play and he turns into a slug.  Maple, my fireball of a golden, taught me a few things, too, but those lessons are for some other post.

Here we are, Maple, me, and Alder the poodle boy, at the end of the day at the last show of the year in October 2011.