Basic Obedience Week 5

Jackie is continuing to open up in a classroom setting.  This week we learned to spin in a circle right and left, where I lured Jackie with a treat in a small circle, then faded the treat to just a hand lure, and once she learns the behavior I'll name the dog spinning to the dog's right "Gee!" and the dog spinning to the dog's left "Haw!" "Gee" is right for a driving mule and "Haw" is left for a driving mule.

In thinking ahead to Jackie's agility career, the handler cues with the handler's right hand when the dog is turning to the dog's left, and the handler cues with the handler's left hand when the dog is turning to the dog's right.

This week's homework will include continuing to reinforce recall, loose leash walking, sit stay with distraction, down stay with distraction, and hers whats.

Pearls:

• Homework includes: continuing to reinforce sit/down stay with distractions
• Loose leash walking
• Recall
• As a new behavior this week we learned spin
• Next week will be our last basic obedience class in this series!

Jackie practicing her obedience games while out for a hike:

Agility Foundations Week 5

Jackie was excellent today in agility foundations! I'm so pleased with how much confidence she is gaining. Today when we got to class she actually climbed up into our coach's lap for a quick cuddle, which makes me so happy that Jackie loves her coach.  We started foundation games to learn contacts, as well as starting front paws on a perch today.

For contacts, I will need a 1' x 4' plank about 4" off the ground.  Jackie walks across the plank that will eventually become the behavior for the dog walk, and pauses with her back feet still on the plank while her front feet are on the floor. With my clicker and treat, I reinforce the behavior of first walking across the plank and then landing with her hind feet still on the plank with her front feet on the floor. Be sure to work in a circle and approach from both directions/sides and with the handler on both the left and right of the dog. We also want to reinforce body awareness by luring Jackie to turn in a small circle while keeping all four feet on the plank (rather than stepping onto the floor) while she turns around on the plank.

In order to begin learning sending to a perch, first we had to introduce Jackie to the perch; we are using an upside down rubber feed tub about eight inches in diameter as our perch.  I will continue to build value for the perch by teaching Jackie to place her front paws up on the perch and reinforcing that behavior.  Once she understands "Perch!" then I can begin to send Jackie ahead of me to the perch with "Go perch!" Be sure to use the arm and hand closest to the dog to cue the behavior.  We will continue to build value for nose touching a target.

In continuing Jackie's agility foundation education, I think a good question for myself as a handler is "Where is the value?" It has been challenging finding a food treat that Jackie loves, and as well as homemade treats and cat treats, I've been using training while out walking with success, since Jackie stays more excited and engaged while out exploring and running. My goal is to be sure that the value lies in the cue and carrying out the behavior, and not from where the treat is being dispensed such as my hand or the physical target.  I've learned to reinforce Jackie after saying her release work "Break!" so that she knows driving rapidly forward is the key to getting the reinforcer, not just following my hand or a target that has a cookie in it.

Pearls:

• Reinforce contact behavior by having Jackie walk over a 1' x 4' elevated plank and stopping with her hind feet on the contact and her front feet on the floor
• Increase body awareness by reinforcing turning around on the plank with keeping all four feet on the dog walk plank to prevent falling later when she actually goes on the higher dog walk
• We will learn paws up on a perch, followed by send ahead to the perch "Go perch!" by using the arm and hand closest to the dog
• Where is the value? I want the value for Jackie to be in the cue and carrying out the behavior; clicker training has been my ally in transferring value to a specific cue; remember the behavior is learned first, then a cue is added
• Jackie using her own muscles and her own mind to generate the behavior, then being reinforced, then adding value to a specific cue is key; the value is in the cue, and carrying out the behavior is reinforced
• Especially grateful for an excellent coach that Jackie loves too

Jackie staying motivated while learning during hiking along the river:

Agility foundation props this week include a small rubber bucket used as a perch and a 1' x 4' board used to begin learning contacts:

Accessories

In acquiring Jackie, and beginning to learn the sport of Rally with Gunner, I’ve needed to shop for collars and leads.  

Rally rules state that the lead must be made of fabric or leather, and for Novice, the initial level in which Gunner and I will be starting, the lead must be six feet long. Collars must be properly fitted, with nothing dangling from the collar nor any decorations, titles, or other adornments.  From a long list of possibilities, the following suppliers made the short list: 

Dog IDs was recommended by our friend and dog nanny Jenevi of Jenevi’s Pet Services.

Hogan Custom Leather I found in an online Rally discussion group. 

Our coach Robin at Cowtown Dog Sports makes her own bespoke collars and leads, though she mentioned they tend to be a bit bulkier than the typical Rally obedience leads and collars.  We did purchase a tug toy from Robin, and custom is always appreciated. 

For Gunner’s Rally lead and collar, I am going for a minimalist look, to give the impression that he could complete the course without the lead and collar and he is only wearing them because of the rules. Which indeed is the case with Gunner! Ultimately I ordered a bespoke padded leather buckle collar in black and orange padding with a matching black bridle leather with twist braid accent 1/4 inch by six foot lead from Hogan Custom Leather.

For Jackie’s Rally buckle collar, I ordered the custom artisan padded collar in purple with pink leather padding and an engraved stainless nameplate from designer Kaydi at Dog IDs.

For Jackie’s everyday house id collar, I ordered a safety breakaway canvas satin lined collar from Dogs By The Bay.

That will go with this silicone heart shaped name tag from SiliDog.

For Jackie's agility schooling collar, I ordered a custom slip collar and matching lead in purple, rainbow, and pink made by our agility coach Robin Barber of Cowtown Dog Sports.

I am very excited to use Jackie’s bespoke agility slip lead, custom made by Brie Frances at Snuffles and Tugs.  Jackie’s purple and pink agility slip lead has her name embroidered in pink on the purple collar with the Latin phrase Non nobis solum embroidered on my end of the leash.  If  a dog, and especially a Border collie, isn’t the perfect embodiment of the philosopher Cicero’s ideas about our duty to live for the greater good of others, and not for ourselves alone, then I don’t know who is. Jackie’s agility slip lead:

Pearls:

• The more I learn from dogs, the more they teach me we truly were not born for ourselves alone: Non nobis solum

Rally Week 2

Gunner is excelling in Rally class.  This week’s homework is to continue to reinforce four-feet-planted-square sit, down, and stand stays in heel position while the handler walks around the dog, pivot around a platform with introducing reinforcing pivoting in toward the handler and sitting in heel position as the handler moves around the platform, heel-walk-sit, heel-walk-sit-down, and heel-walk-sit-stand maintaining heel position, and continuing to reinforce front tuck-sits.

We used Gunner’s new custom padded buckle collar and 1/4 inch six foot lead tonight.  I love how easy it is to hold in one hand, and I love that it gives the impression of the dog doing all of the behaviors on a piece of floss, which it very nearly is.

Gunner modeling his gossamer-like six foot lead in 1/4 inch black leather and matching orange-padded collar from Hogan custom leather:

Pearls:

• Rally homework this week includes reinforcing sit, down, and stand stays, front tuck-sits, and adding the stand cue while Gunner maintains heel position
• Gunner is using his leash because it’s an AKC rule, but can do all the behaviors with or without the lead and collar; if you have to wear it, it’s always preferable to look stylish!

Basic Obedience Week 4

Our homework this week includes continuing to practice sit stay and down stay with distractions, loose leash walking, laying on a mat, hers whats, recalls, and continuing to find ways to keep education from being monotonous by keeping it fun and interesting for the learner.

Jackie is a fast learner, and for that I’m grateful.  She is more like the kind of person who loves to stay at home, watch a foreign film, cook a complicated gourmet meal and dessert, then read a really good JRR Tolkien book.  Versus the kind of person that wants to run a marathon obstacle course after going white water rafting, hiking up a mountain, and then getting together with a dozen friends and going to a rave, experimentng with substances and seeing if you wake up the next day to do it all again. 

In other words, Jackie is the good kind of Border collie!

Jackie has enthusiasm, it’s just expressed differently

Much for which to be Grateful

There are many, many, many circumstances for which I am grateful when it comes to Jackie, Gunner, and Rosco, and our relationships.  Rosco is a baller, very biddable and loves everyone and is almost always happy.  Gunner is perfect. In Jackie we hit the lottery, she is the sweetest girl and such a good dog in the house and loves just hanging out and going for walks, and being together with her family.

But y’all I really wanted to learn agility. Like right now, time’s a wastin’, and the clock is ticking so don’t dilly dally. It’s likely we’ll get there, and I am learning to be patient.  Gunner has a real aptitude for agility, and indeed we had signed up to compete in our first AKC agility trial when we (again, gratefully) learned at his routine veterinary visit that Gunner has a heart condition.  After his initial cardiology work up it was suggested by our veterinary cardiologist that Gunner not run agility, in order to protect his heart.

So that is a many-layered disappointment. The discovery that Gunner’s heart was enlarged and pressing into his trachea came hard on the heels of several other life-changing traumas, including a forced relocation away from a city that we love, the retirement of my competition horse Jazzy due to navicular disease followed by his death from colic, and the euthanasia decision that had to be made on behalf of my retired FEI horse Rijkens. Both my parents had recently finally succumbed to age related dementia after a heartbreaking decline. Layer all of this into the collective suffering of living through a very scary global pandemic. 

Enter Jackie, into a loving home to be sure, but there’s a lot going on here from a mental and emotional standpoint.  I really just want to get on with learning agility.  There I said it.  And I was, and still am, under the impression that playing agility can be a really good thing for a Border collie. But heart disease, and really just the unavoidable passage of time, has stepped in my way.  I applied to BC Save to adopt our next Border collie while still living in Houston, before I ever even knew about Gunner’s enlarged heart, because I was very aware that at nine years old Gunner, as awesome as he is, would likely last at best another eight years.  

A good friend of mine is going through the research phase of acquiring her next puppy.  She said something that really struck a chord. “It’s not so much that I want another puppy, as that I want my current dog to live for another 20 years.” There is a reckoning I am struggling with between genuine gratitude for the animals in my life, versus the tremendous regret that they only live such a short time.  I want to “hurry up” and develop a great relationship with Jackie and begin to play agility.  Yet I want time to stand still so Gunner and I have more healthy, comfortable moments together.

There’s nothing for it.  Save gratitude.  I’m so grateful for the time and opportunities that I have had and continue to have with the animals in my life. Yet I admit there is part of me that somehow wants to beat the system, win over the house, cheat at life.  In adopting Jackie I thought I was being so clever in circumventing heart disease, death, loss….I thought I would jump right in to the deep end of beginning to learn agility.  Border collies love to learn, right? They are extremely active and focused on their owner, right? They have the mental and physical stamina to continue for hours at a time, right?  Well, no, of course not.  It’s ridiculous to expect any relationship to bloom in a moment.  It’s going to take time.

Because the house always wins.  So we all have to play by the rules.  Who was it, Thomas Hobbes, that said life is brutish and short? The best I can do is focus on how moments in life can often be the opposite of brutish, and that while short, it just makes me all the more grateful for the grand times.

Pearls:

• Gratitude.  When in doubt, look to the very many things in life for which to be grateful 
• We all wish the animals and other loved ones in our lives could live on, happily and healthily, ad infinitum 
• Since they can’t, I’m trying to be mindful of the good in the moment, and to be grateful 

Many moments, like this one, for which to be grateful:

Relationship

In considering Jackie’s and my own educational odyssey, and comparing that to Gunner’s background, it occurs to me that the reason I thought agility was so easy when I first started with Gunner several months ago was due to our strong relationship.  Gunner was nine years old and had been in my life four years before we ever took our first agility lesson.  Gunner’s natural personality is a velcro dog; he was dialed in to me from the very beginning because of this trait. Our relationship allowed us to jump right in to agility, making it seem easy.

Jackie and I are still in the very early stages of developing our relationship.  Jackie’s personality is friendly and easy with everyone she’s met, but it will take time for us to develop the deep bond that Gunner and I enjoy and that makes training feel seamless. Jackie’s personality is definitely more independent and patient; she is happy to quietly entertain herself with a chew bone or a good nap, or even just gazing interestedly at her environment, for long periods of time.  Gunner is much more demanding of one-on-one interaction, and wants to be engaged with my full attention as much and as often as possible.

Gunner stays focused on me and my cues, yet is able to work independently using objects in the environment as cues (such as agility equipment, for example), and easily moves between focusing on me to independently focusing on his surroundings (like jumping up on a wall or walking up a narrow ramp), and back again. 

Pacing, exposing her belly, remaining in one spot, walking away to lay down, staying inside her crate, are all signals Jackie is using to tell me our relationship needs more time to develop.  It is interesting that in seemingly more distracting environments, such as while walking along the trafficked river trails, Jackie seems to enjoy training more. There is less direct pressure while traveling together along a trail versus when working alone in a fixed environment. 

This week we are experimenting with playing in a variety of different places, including indoors at home, outdoors at home, and outdoors in different places.  So far Jackie’s favorite place is along the trails while we are going for a stroll with her brothers. It is a very relaxed feeling we all share, and has the added bonus of being able to keep moving, sniffing and exploring between each behavior that we’re practicing.

Pearls:

• My endpoint of interest is a great relationship with my dog; education games, while fun, are secondary
• Gunner and I have a great relationship that has been forged over many years and countless interactions from spending a very great amount of time together 
• Zero pressure games and education environments where Jackie volunteers to engage is my goal with Jackie as we continue to develop an august relationship 

Jackie, we’re getting there slowly but surely

Foundations for Agility Week 4

Jackie is continuing to gain experience in the classroom setting.  Our homework this week includes touch a hand target in the the 3, 4, 5, and 6 clock positions while standing.  This is to reinforce looking down to the ground surface while standing. We will continue to work on 123 go, and add send to a target.  

Send to a target is to reinforce distance and working out in front of the handler. With Jackie in a sit stay, I walk out to a ceramic target and place a treat, then return to Jackie and send her to the target with “Break! Go, go, go!” while pointing at the target with my hand closest to the dog. Jackie runs past me to the target and is reinforced by eating the treat off the target.

Our coach suggested we work on 123 go and send to a target with slightly increasing distractions. In other words, start indoors, then move to the back yard, then maybe the park, then the flat surface of the river trail, to begin to get Jackie used to playing in different settings and locations. 

Jackie with her brothers

Jackie on the river trail:

Pearls:

• Homework this week includes nose touch a hand target in the 3, 4, 5, and 6 clock positions while standing, 123 go, and send to a target from sit stay with “Break! Go go go!”
• Jackie can begin to play foundation games in different environments such as indoors, the back yard, the park, and the river trail in order to gain confidence to play in various locations

Old Stories

It has come to my attention that less chatter during training sessions can be beneficial.  When our coach suggested I try not saying quite as much to Jackie “Oh what a goood girl!  WHAT a very good doggy! Oh yes she’s a very CLEVER girl” during a training session, I was able to intentionally be more quiet and less chatty.  

Which leads me to examine, where is the good spot between plain “noise” that has to be filtered by the dog, and “enthusiasm” and cheerfulness that dogs love and respond to well. It seems to me that enthusiasm should be shown after the primary reinforcement is given, in a celebratory manner.  

My mom, god rest her, successfully trained several cocker spaniels, a black lab, a boxer, and a Great Dane, (and even had a pet fox when she was a child in the 1940s) during the 60s, 70s and 80s. In her defense, Mom, like most dog trainers of that era, did not know about R+ training, and so she used the best that she knew.  

The best that Mom knew was a choke chain and giving corrections, I’m sorry to say.  The thing that Mom did get right at the time, and much to her own intuition, was the Barbara Woodhouse style of training that used lots of praise in a high pitched sing-songy voice to encourage the dog. “WHAT a gooooood dog!” was used by Mom with much enthusiasm to praise all good efforts and “WAAALKIES” to encourage energetic heeling.

It’s kind of astonishing, when I think about it now, that Mom was so very successful in teaching dogs using almost zero treats or toys, but with her voice (and yikes a choke chain) alone.  Mom taught our dogs many clever “circus dog” tricks. Mom even taught our Cocker spaniel Buffy to open and close the back door of our house using a specialized doggy-level door handle my mom designed and my dad, an engineer, built for her. One time our Cocker spaniel jumped through the screened window, breaking the screen and frustrating my mom. So she went about solving the problem by teaching the dog to open the door by itself. 

Mom even taught the neighbor’s dog to “go lie down on your porch” from our own yard, in response to the neighbor’s Great Dane barking loudly and running up and down the fence line.  Instead, Mom taught the dog (completely unbeknownst to it’s owner) that on the cue of hearing the back door of our porch slam shut, the neighbor’s Dane trotted from wherever he was in his own yard and lay down on his own porch as long as Mom was out there.  She did it using aversive methods, but in the 70s and 80s that was still how almost all dog training was taught, unfortunately. 

Mom used what she knew with great results.  I’m convinced if she had had R+ in her repertoire, Mom would have been an even better dog trainer, and she was pretty darn good even with just the enthusiastic sound of her voice and lots of verbal praise.

Flash forward to my basic obedience class this week, where gratefully I have positive reinforcement as my ally, and no longer have to rely exclusively on the excitement level of my enthusiastic tone of voice. Rather, I am being intentional about celebrating enthusiastically but keeping my cues calm and clear.

A pastel pencil drawing of Mom while she was studying English literature at Colorado State University, where she graduated from in 1958:

Pearls:

• When educating a dog, reserve high pitched “chatter” for praise and celebration after the cue has been carried out and after the primary reinforcer has been given
• Having positive reinforcement as an ally has been life changing for so many, and I’m grateful that when we know better, we can do better 
• I am being intentionally more quiet while working with Jackie, while still maintaining energy and enthusiasm 

Heartbreaking footage of Barbara Woodhouse using a choke chain on a 4 month old tiny dog. Note the ongoing “chatter” that Fifi has to tune out, but that Ms. Woodhouse is using to encourage the dog as best she could. This was typical of exactly the same way my own mom used to train her dogs. 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=psOMiAkDu0k&feature=share

Now we know better, and I’m grateful for science based modern training.

Rally O

Gunner and I started our first Rally Obedience class this week.  Gunner did extremely well, considering his handicap of a handler!  In class we reviewed sit stay while the handler walks around, down stay while the handler walks around, sit in front position with front tuck-sits to the handler, and moving the hindquarters around a pivot point to improve precision heeling.

Our homework this week will be to polish our sit stay. Gunner has learned so many tricks involving waving or raising his front paws that he tends to hover his paws over the ground in anticipation.  For a proper AKC stay, all four paws must stay firmly planted on the ground. So we will be working on reinforcing true stays this week.

The pivot around a platform was one of Gunner’s advanced trick title tricks, but of course I taught him to move away from the handler. For Rally, the dog learns to pivot into or toward the handler in heel position.  So that took a few minutes to unscramble in class but I have some good ideas now on how to reinforce the hindquarters pivoting toward the handler for heeling pivots around a platform.

It felt good being in a classroom with Gunner again! He did so well with stamina and was keen and eager to go to work, and never got tired.  Unfortunately a big thunderstorm followed by lots of rain and lightening happened in the middle of class. Gunner, like many Border collies, shuts down during thunderstorms, so that was unfortunate.  But we persevered the best we could, and have lots of ideas for homework this week.

Gunner ready to play

Pearls:

• Gunner started Rally O class, and we’re loving it
• Homework includes reviewing sit, down, stand, sit stay and down stay while the handler walks around the dog, reinforcing for sitting in front position and reinforcing front tuck-sits, reinforcing being in heel position, and pivoting the hindquarters around a platform
• Paws firmly planted for stays will be reinforced, and pivots around a platform will be based on my hands being directly in front of Gunner’s nose
• Bait pouches are good hooked to the handler’s backside, this way the dog never knows where the treat is coming from and the dog doesn’t get involved in staring at the bait pouch rather than looking at the handler
• When reinforcing heel position, use your left hand slightly to the left of the dog’s nose to avoid the dog’s hindquarters splaying out away from the handler and to be sure the dog’s hindquarters are balanced in toward the handler