Christmas in California

Blue sky and green leaves. 60 degrees Fahrenheit.



Roses cut fresh from the yard.

Dragon was very well behaved at my parents' house for the weekend. I took him out every 1-2 hours and there were no house-training accidents indoors. The only mischief was chewing up a piece from a brand new 4,000 piece (now 3,999 piece) puzzle.

Merry Christmas!

Agility Foundation, week 2 recap

Another week, another fun agility lesson! Only three students showed up today, so our dogs did a lot of work.

We started of course with circle work. We incorporated a tunnel into our circle work again, and added 180 and 360 pulls/outside turns, a front cross, and I also added a lead out once. I had to remember to accelerate toward the tunnel so that Dragon would drive into it. My tendency is to decelerate in preparation for turning a bit to run around the tunnel, but that gives conflicing information to the dog.

We did a number of sit-stay exercises (and I also did a lot of stand-stays). We had the dog run to us and get rewarded in the reinforcement zone. (Dragon is great at this.) We ran with our dogs and encouraged them to race past us for a thrown toy. (Dragon is reluctant to pull ahead of me without a target or obstacle ahead of us; need to condition him more to expect a toy thrown ahead.) We raced our dogs to a thrown toy. (The instructor told us to pick up the toy if we beat our dogs to it, but that would be demotivating for my guy, so I let him get it every time. He was still pretty fast.)

We proofed our targets. The other students are doing 2o2o, but we're doing a running contact. I'm having him run off the board completely toward a target set about 3-5 feet away from the end (to keep his speed up while on the board). I can now run forward past the target and he will stop to touch the target. I'm having trouble adding lateral distance, so that's my homework this week. Also I tried sending him ahead but he was conflicted between going ahead and turning toward me; another weak point to work on.

We reviewed the rear cross foundation on the flat, which is simple.

Dragon had excellent attention and did not try to sniff around except for one spot where he must have smelled a piece of dropped food among the woodchips. During his downtime he chewed on his bully stick on his mat. The weimaraner kept running away from his owner and trying to get the bully stick. Amazingly, Tiny Dog was completely unconcerned when I or the assistant would jump in front of him and catch the weim racing right for him. I gave him a treat every time anyway to reinforce being calm.

After the end of class Dragon and I practiced on the lowered teeter. The end of the teeter is about ten inches off the ground. The instructor commented that she was surprised that he liked that teeter, since the board is exceptionally floppy and bounces a lot after it hits the ground and when it resets. It's a testament to the careful work I've been doing with Dragon all these months. Although he doesn't like it when it noisily resets after he runs off, so next week I will spend some extra time just having him stand by it and giving him treats after I lower it and let it reset. I also had him run from end to end and after he understood how it would pivot and move, he was happy to run back and forth. I'm quite proud of him!

Agility Foundations recap

We got a new skill to work on this week! Laying the foundation for a rear cross: dog sits and you practice stepping from side to side behind him. Easy peasy.

We also practiced front crosses and circle work, of course. The new instructor, Susanne, emphasized getting the dogs to break out of their trots and really run. I was surprised to see that Dragon actually did this for the entire lesson. Last week I was working on getting him to speed up consistently, and it paid off.

I've also been working on building obstacle focus, since Dragon already has a strong foundation in place for working next to me. When sending him to his mat between exercises I've been restraining him and then cuing him to go to his "place". This week I saw the work pay off again: I held him in front of the tunnel and said, "Ready?" and he tensed up and even pulled forward slightly. Release, run, jackpot!! Some of the handlers worked on leading out and staying ahead of their dogs, but my goal was getting Dragon to drive forward.

Reviewed nose targets, and confirmed with Susanne that for running contacts I can switch between a nose target, a toy target, or a thrown toy while running. He has good drive now running over my mini-plank and the plank at the field. Next I'll set out my mini a-frame, lowered flat onto the ground, and transfer the behavior. Also working on proofing my running around as he drives toward a target/toy on the ground.

The instructor and assistant often make comments to me about switching things up and not doing the same set-up over and over. In one session of the nose target I may do a lead out halfway to the target, and then lead out past the target, and then no lead out and run with the dog, and they'll see me just do one of those and say, "Now make sure that you do it different ways and next time lead out [farther/closer/to the side/whatever]." It's kind of annoying.

Afterwards I asked about drills for teaching the dog to hug the inside of the jump when doing wraps/turns. We were practicing that last night and he goes quite wide. Anne, one of the other instructors, suggested more practice of tight turns during circle work, rewarding tight pivots over the jump right by the stanchion, and lowering the closer end of the jump bar to encourage sticking to that side. I wish I could afford to just buy all of Silvia Trkman's training videos! Her Puppy/Tricks online course covered some of the foundation for cik/cap, too. I need to go back and practice that more.

Latent learning

Dr. Patricia McConnell recently discussed a study discussing latent learning. As you sleep your brain processes the things you learned and experienced that day. If you take a day or two off from a complex problem you'll often solve it more easily than if you tried to tackle it over and over throughout one day. This study found that spacing out training sessions resulted in dogs learning a new skill with a smaller number of total sessions than if they were trained more frequently.

My preference is to utilize latent learning by spacing out working on particular skills. I hate drilling (practicing the same thing over and over) just as much as most dogs do. Dragon and I are training for multiple dog sports (agility, obedience, rally, freestyle, nosework, and plain ol' tricks), so we have LOTS of skills and tricks in development. I use that to my advantage. It's uncommon for us to practice the same skill more than once a day or even on back-to-back days. I try to work in at least one day of rest to process the training session, especially if it's something complex. Avoiding drilling also keeps me more interested in training regularly. Instead of thinking, "We have to practice THIS again," I'm thinking, "Hmm, what would I like to practice right now?"

Bad hair day

Teeter play

We've been playing around with our mini teeter. Moe had told me to teach the teeter by putting a foot target at the end and teaching him to hop from the ground onto the end of the board. I should feed multiple treats on the target, keeping his body low, and then release him straight forward and completely off the teeter. I should slowly raise the height of the end of the teeter. This means that eventually he will have to be jumping from a raised object onto the teeter, such as a couch or chair.

Yesterday was the first day that I used the mini teeter I created. Since we'd already done lots of work with other practice teeters, I was able to quickly raise the end until it was about 10-12 inches off the ground. At that point it was hard for Dragon to hop from the floor onto the end. I tried to get him to jump from a chair onto the teeter, stupidly without any prep work! He got spooked and I ended the session.

This morning I was ready to actually prepare him for that step. I pulled out his mat and a little round bed. I had him move back and forth between the mat/bed. I put the mat onto a box and had him hop onto that and back onto the bed on the floor. I put the bed onto a chair and had him hop onto there and then back to the mat on the box. This was about 1.5-2 feet above the floor. Now we were ready to transfer this behavior to the teeter.

I put one end of the teeter up on my agility table and the other up on a crate, so that it wouldn't move. I put his mat onto one end of the teeter and practiced hopping from the mat onto a chair and back. At this stage I had to put my arm between the two so that he actually hopped instead of placing his front feet and then his back feet on the mat. When he was happily doing this I moved the crate so that the teeter end under the mat would fall about two inches and hit the agility table. At this point I ended the exercise.

I decided to throw in one more exercise to increase his comfort level on the teeter. I placed the bed on the opposite side from the mat and had him run back and forth, with the teeter falling about two inches every time. This time I cued him to lie down on his mat when he reached it. He liked this exercise. Thank you Control Unleashed!

Next session I will have him hopping from the box or chair onto the end of the teeter and resume slowly raising the height. I think that I will keep using the mat for a bit, then redo it with his foot target when he's comfortable with a good height. The mat creates a softer landing spot for him and will lower the difficulty of the exercise. And I'm going to continue with the running back and forth between his mat/bed, at a much lower height.

Having worked through all these baby steps at home should set us up to coast through the steps much more easily when we're eventually working through it with a full-size teeter in class.

I wish I'd gotten all this on video!