The main reason for this post is to have a bit of a brag about Kenzie's performance in the mock obedience trial today however I thought I would also mention the fact that we trotted off out to the DogsSA show grounds yesterday for a bit more work on socialising Kenzie.
Caught up with Lyndsay and Holly (and Lyndsay's boyfriend James). I thought Kenzie did a great job at the show with not spooking to much. She was entirely happy but she was taking treats from both Lyndsay and her boyfriend without trying to hide behind my legs so we are making slow progress.
Any way off we went to the mock trial today held at Gepps Cross. Kenzie has been to the grounds once before when she was tiny (this time last year when I trialled Ness). I was tossing up between doing CCD and Novice with her but the decision was pretty much made for me when I discovered a huge number of CCD dogs had arrived and not so many Novice dogs. Kenzie was 10th in Novice. As I didn't know I was suppose to take desexing certificates they both had to be vetted and she coped ok with me holding her - again progress. The novice judge today was Neil MacDonald. I wasn't entirely sure how Kenzie would go given her recent freaking episodes out at SAODC training with Keith. She was also a bit spooked and stressy when we first arrived however she met up with with BC buddy Fern and then when she saw Tash her tail started wagging and she seemed to perk up.
Before they started I took Kenzie over to the ring, armed with my clicker, treats and her tuggy lead. I did a lot of C/Ting for having her look at Neil and also look at the stewards. I spent time just playing tug with her outside and chatting to various people. She seemed to be coping really very well. It was good fortune that one of the stewards in our ring was Danielle from SAODC with Holly (and her GSD who's name escapes me right this moment) so at least I didn't have to be too concerned about her spooking at the steward during a figure 8 as it was somebody she knows pretty well.
I then took her back to her crate and crated both her and Ness together for a while. I wasn't too sure about how stressy Kenzie was so I took her off again later and played some 2 toy game with her mini i-squeaks off to one side of the oval. She got pretty heavily involved in that game so I figured I would put her in the ring and see what happened.
Took her over while the dog before was in and we just tugged and played and rough housed. I didn't ask for her to heel into the ring but we tugged our way to the start peg.
I am over the moon with how she performed. It wasn't squeakie technically clean but her errors were genuine "green" dog errors rather than stress related and considering her performance the other Tuesday evening I was soooo happy for her.
Her heelwork was nice. I need to do more work on positions, turns, changes of pace, duration, figure 8s but hey its the longest heel pattern she has done and only the third proper "called" heel pattern we have worked together. I think I was walking a bit to fast and probably could have slowed up a tad with her but I am use to having to walk faster to keep Ness enthused. She did some lovely positions, gave me good attention and if she had crumbled at that point I would have said she had progressed. She was happy to play with her tuggy toy and race after her ball as a reward for her heelwork at the end. I also wasn't having to carry food in my left hand today and was able to have it in my right hand/pocket and reward.
I didn't take my chance by even attempting a stand for exam today so we moved on to a recall. Her halt on the first recall was lovely. She anticipated the command to come but I wasn't to fussed. She had never done one that long before and at least she was keen. I called her to me and rewarded a very nice front. She has a tendency to bounce up at me and throw herself in my lap if she breaks. We went back and tried it again. This time the halt was a bit off and then she went to anticipate coming with me when I left. Took a step back and rewarded the sit before leaving again. This time she waited and came when I called her. Nice present. The judge then said finish your dog and I gave her a command to "heel" with the hand signal. Well duh she hasn't been taught the word heel and I haven't really taught a finish to her yet. She has a flip finish on the command "close" but its not a particularly accurate finish. Reason I haven't taught a around the back finish is because of the GD conflict with agility so I have been undecided about what to do.
Retrieve next. She heeled up and sat nicely. Waited till I threw the DB. Then she got a bit confused. I don't think her brain registered the first time that she was suppose to go and fetch the DB. I gave a second signal she went off after it and returned to a front position with a sit - yee har but then stood up as I took the DB.
The best was yet to come. She did an absolutely gorgeous COP drop. I was worried as Neil left the dog down for what seemed like an enternity before asking the handler to return around behind but Kenzie stayed put. Was a bit distracted but none the less completed the exercise correctly and promptly.
I am so thrilled of my little munchkin's performance. Todays performance gives me hope that I will manage to put an obedience title on her without having her lose the plot in the ring. While we have a long way to go on a stand for exam at least she can hold the rest of the work together, at grounds which she isn't super familiar with and with a strange judge putting us through a pattern. As I said before her errors were just green novice dog errors not stress related errors.
So enough of the chatter - here is the video........
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Busy Busy Busy
Well lets see its been a while since I have had a chance to post. What with agility training, obedience training and now herding training to fit in I just don't know where to start.
Agility first.
Lets see her progress with her weaving has been out of this world. Tonight she was comfortably and with a high degree of reliability nailing 12 club base plated weavers as well as doing 12 stick in the ground weavers with both left and right side entries. I am so pleased with her progress and even Ness trying to get in the way tonight didn't phase her one little bit. She was funny as I was standing around at a fair distance to the weavers and thought I would see what she would do - well she ran under the jump but continued on and nailed the weavers driving hard right through to the end. Very pleased. She did a bit of work on a low scramble and also the end of the dogwalk but I do need to actually do more concentrated effort then just mucking around mostly with Ness at the same time. Her jump grid work when we have done it has been good. She seems to read her jumps well and adjusts her stride a lot better than Ness does.
She will also now go through a chute tunnel and we have been doing some work on the tyre. She will sequence a tunnel and the table together but I would like a down on the table so will need to work on that. Jumping as part of a sequence is still a work in progress as she tends to want to turn and spin back at me or run past the jump.
Obedience.
Hmmm well she can work very nicely. She is quite happy doing the novice exercises and can do them well apart from her issue with people. She is technically very precise and an absolute joy. She has a lovely recall, good retrieve, nice COP drop. Need to do some more work on duration heelwork and also positions and turns.
Now to the lastest activity - Herding!!!!
We trekked down to Meadows to attend a herding clinic run by Cass Robertson as a part of a Dogs SA herding session.
Kenzie (and Ness) had an absolute ball. Any way Kenzie's first shot she wasn't sure what to do. I had to grab the sheep and run backwards with them and play with the sheep. Man I got a good fitness work out running backwards with a sheep uphill. Towards the end of the turn she started switching on though so I figured I would stay around until they did the second turns after lunch.
The video of her first turn in the pen is posted below:
On her second turn, whenever she looked like switching off all I had to do was take a couple of steps towards the sheep and she would circle behind them. So much less having to play with the sheep.
I have no clue what I am suppose to be doing which probably doesn't help anything however she was doing really well at bringing the sheep to me.
The trainer thought if she did that she would quite happily pass an instinct test and thought she definitely had a lot of potential and it was worth putting the time and money into her if I wanted to go down that path.
So now I am trying to make a decision about entering the instinct test Saturday week. Think I will probably enter and see what happens. We would have passed the first time so I would assume she should be ok now but guess time will tell.
Agility first.
Lets see her progress with her weaving has been out of this world. Tonight she was comfortably and with a high degree of reliability nailing 12 club base plated weavers as well as doing 12 stick in the ground weavers with both left and right side entries. I am so pleased with her progress and even Ness trying to get in the way tonight didn't phase her one little bit. She was funny as I was standing around at a fair distance to the weavers and thought I would see what she would do - well she ran under the jump but continued on and nailed the weavers driving hard right through to the end. Very pleased. She did a bit of work on a low scramble and also the end of the dogwalk but I do need to actually do more concentrated effort then just mucking around mostly with Ness at the same time. Her jump grid work when we have done it has been good. She seems to read her jumps well and adjusts her stride a lot better than Ness does.
She will also now go through a chute tunnel and we have been doing some work on the tyre. She will sequence a tunnel and the table together but I would like a down on the table so will need to work on that. Jumping as part of a sequence is still a work in progress as she tends to want to turn and spin back at me or run past the jump.
Obedience.
Hmmm well she can work very nicely. She is quite happy doing the novice exercises and can do them well apart from her issue with people. She is technically very precise and an absolute joy. She has a lovely recall, good retrieve, nice COP drop. Need to do some more work on duration heelwork and also positions and turns.
Now to the lastest activity - Herding!!!!
We trekked down to Meadows to attend a herding clinic run by Cass Robertson as a part of a Dogs SA herding session.
Kenzie (and Ness) had an absolute ball. Any way Kenzie's first shot she wasn't sure what to do. I had to grab the sheep and run backwards with them and play with the sheep. Man I got a good fitness work out running backwards with a sheep uphill. Towards the end of the turn she started switching on though so I figured I would stay around until they did the second turns after lunch.
The video of her first turn in the pen is posted below:
On her second turn, whenever she looked like switching off all I had to do was take a couple of steps towards the sheep and she would circle behind them. So much less having to play with the sheep.
I have no clue what I am suppose to be doing which probably doesn't help anything however she was doing really well at bringing the sheep to me.
The trainer thought if she did that she would quite happily pass an instinct test and thought she definitely had a lot of potential and it was worth putting the time and money into her if I wanted to go down that path.
So now I am trying to make a decision about entering the instinct test Saturday week. Think I will probably enter and see what happens. We would have passed the first time so I would assume she should be ok now but guess time will tell.
Monday, May 11, 2009
2x2 Weaving 11 May 2009
Well I emailed Susan Garrett in response to her blog post asking for 2x2 questions with my issue that Kenzie seemed to not be able to link a jump to the weavers. I got an almost immediate response back saying did I have any video of the problem. No I didn't so I set out today to get some video - er well the problem seems to have gone away. She did some quite lovely weaving with some entries that even a seasoned competition dog might be jealous of. The only hassle I was having is with her deciding to jump flat and pull the bar - so I still might forward my video for comment.
Any way for all you blog readers my latest 2x2 efforts:
Any way for all you blog readers my latest 2x2 efforts:
Sunday, May 10, 2009
2x2 May Update
Well I have been super busy with training since the totally inspirational Sue H weekend. Both girls have been getting worked through duration heelwork programs at least a couple of nights a week. Kenzie's last session wasn't brilliant cos she was way to high.
We have also started working on some of the Susan Garrett's 1 Jump dvd exercises as well as working on a 2o/2o behavior on a contact board.
Her obedience stand is coming along nicely (thanks to the advice from Sue) and I think I just about have a stand at heel.
Any way also been a busy week with agility training. Kenzie got her first go at our club weave poles on Wednesday night. She hadn't done 6 poles that looked like that let alone 12 before. While she wasn't too reliable she did manage a lovely set of 12 driven poles. When she has it she absolutely nails it.
She has hard right hand and left hand side entries down pat with 6 poles in the yard so it was time to take the show on the road.
Here are the videos from today.
The first video is just the successful attempts - pretty chuffed with the entries on a baby green dog.
The second video has the full session:
We have also started working on some of the Susan Garrett's 1 Jump dvd exercises as well as working on a 2o/2o behavior on a contact board.
Her obedience stand is coming along nicely (thanks to the advice from Sue) and I think I just about have a stand at heel.
Any way also been a busy week with agility training. Kenzie got her first go at our club weave poles on Wednesday night. She hadn't done 6 poles that looked like that let alone 12 before. While she wasn't too reliable she did manage a lovely set of 12 driven poles. When she has it she absolutely nails it.
She has hard right hand and left hand side entries down pat with 6 poles in the yard so it was time to take the show on the road.
Here are the videos from today.
The first video is just the successful attempts - pretty chuffed with the entries on a baby green dog.
The second video has the full session:
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sue H Obedience and Agility Seminar Weekend
Well its Monday afternoon and have had a totally action packed dog training seminar weekend. Seems hard to believe its all over as I had quite been looking forward to this weekend for a very long time. This blog post is a summary of the weekends seminar activities (and our lesson this morning with Sue).
Before I get into what was covered if I could summarize the main take home lesson I got from the entire seminar/weekend it would have to be "BE CONSISTENT". Its something I do struggle with and Sue certainly hammered it home yet again. If have a picture of what you consider the "perfect performance" of an exercise don't let your standards slip and reward anything less once the dog understands a particular exercise. Don't let the dog train you into reducing your criteria. Also the importance of positive proofing of the various exercises - which I don't do enough of.
Now to Friday afternoon - drove to the airport to collect Sue and we had a couple of hours to kill before the first Obedience seminar. We came home and had a bit of a chat and she was trying to get Kenzie to approach her. Miss Kenzie started out the weekend barely happy to spend any time in the same room as her. Not good but I knew we could work at it later. Ness was offering sits/drops/stands while we were seated at the table.
Friday nights seminar was an introduction to some of the basic obedience skills. It was great to hear so much of what I had done right with Kenzie in relation to training a pup. Especially making sure the dog was happy to play at different locations, and happy to focus on the handler off-lead because the handler was more rewarding to the dog then what else might be happening. Her suggestion for a new pup was to load the pup into the car drive to a location play for 30 seconds to a minute. Carry dog back to the car. Drive to a new location and repeat. Discussions on the 2 food game, the collar grab game, having the dog work switch from food to tug and vice versa, how to shape attention, how to teach solid stays using food to tempt the dog "steady feet". There was also a section stressing the importance of just playing with the dog minus any additional props such as toys/food etc.
Then there were a few demo dogs. Capturing attention and C/T for having the dog focus on the handler. River demoed the 2 food game. Of importance to my training was the cone game. I had tried it initially with both Ness and Kenzie after Sandi had mentioned it to Tash. Basically you set up two large traffic cones and walk around them in a figure 8, just treating the dog each step. It teaches the dog to walk with its head up as well as how to use its back end around the cone. Also obviously a good exercise for figure 8 work.
The other important demo which Sue did with Ness was teaching the dog to ignore a distraction i.e. food on the ground and instead offer targeting heel position. She would toss bits of food on the ground and work Ness around them and reward her for finding heel with more food in her hand. I was pretty impressed as I never imagined she would be able to heel around with food on the ground. Maybe there is hope for us yet.
Saturday was agility day - Low drive dogs in the morning, high drive dogs in the afternoon. Lots of common elements across the entire weekend. Particularly the importance of the collar-grab game/restrained recalls, lots of flatwork exercises. Discussion on 2o/2o contacts and the backchaining concept. "Steady-feet" game for Start Line Stays. Discussion on the value of proofing stays. Some of the SG One Jump exercises. Recall to heel (similar to the obedience exercise) aka Mary Ray finish but you have your feet apart one foot back and reward the dog in a stand rather than a sit. Do on both LHS and RHS. Table game - ask for a down position on table. Kenzie demoed some 2x2 weaving and I was pretty chuffed considering she wasn't entirely keen on Sue and also the fact that there was a tunnel sort of in the way. She managed to nail 4 poles in a straight line at a new venue :) without shutting down too much. Talked about contact performance and establishing criteria and then ensuring independant obstacle performance. I think at the minute I'll be doing a 2o/2o on all of the contact equipment with her.
Sat evening we spent chatting/having tea and worked on getting Kenzie to approach Sue. We got to the point where Kenzie would put her paws up on Sue and target her target stick or offer a hand touch :).
Sunday morning - Tash and I were fortunate enough to get some training time with Sue. Tash worked with Riv on DOR and Sue introduced the concept of speed trials to improve the rate Riv dropped. Can also work for sits and stands. Basically you settle on the criteria for performance/signal that you wish to put in place. Initially you give the signal and might allow a 2 second time delay in which the dog has to perform the behavior, if the dog fails then you withdraw your attention and start again, if they are successful they get a C/T. After a few trials you then reduce the latency allowed from 2 seconds to 1 second. They did some work on heeling and having another person walk close to the dog while heeling to proof heeling. C/Ting as the second person approached the dog.
Kenzie's session consisted of working on stands (I just haven't been able to fade my shitty lured hand signal to anything decent). Sue had me work alongside a barrier (in this case Tash's bag), but she said to make sure I changed what I was using for the barrier as much as possible. I would give the new verbal command "stand" then a short delay then my shitty lured hand signal and C/T. Need to keep doing that and then attach a new hand signal. Between each repetition I am to break her off and play before starting again. Sue also did some work on having Kenzie sit at heel and then having me click and rewarding when she approached her. She suggested that Kenzie clearly was more tug driven then food driven so instead of using a food reward to release her to play tug. Even if that involved clicking and then running away to a distance where she was happy to tug. I got a slap over the wrist for not having conditioned the tug with a clicker but when I tried it she happily took the tug so Sue said I was extremely lucky to have a dog who didn't then look for the food.
We did some metal article work. There is a definite mental block when the articles is nearly on the ground. Sue gave me a few suggestions to try including placing it on a cushion, blanket etc and seeing if that works. She also suggested I might get to the point where I just had to find somewhere really boring, place article on the ground and wait her out. I need to introduce the collar grab game here and work at it so that hopefully her response when I release her collar is to snatch at the article. I asked about the supersitious paw up response and her standing when she returns with the article and Sue said to keep cueing the sit and eventually I wouldn't need to cue it. She mentioned pairing sight of the object with a favourite toy and I said that I had already attempted that in the past.
We did some collar grab toy retrieves. Think Sue just wanted me to go for a run on the oval at this point. She would have me sprint off in the opposite direction as soon as she had grabbed teh toy. Also did the 2 toy game with her. I need to make sure she doesn't do it quite so formally - so encourage a stand rather than the sit with the collar grab.
Heelwork next. Starting out on a left circle. Kenzie is clearly pushing me and walking into me so I need to go back and work the cone game for a few nights to improve her rear end awareness before coming back to the circle work. We did a version of the cone game using bags. It was interesting as initially when I attempted the exercise when I was focussing on K I was still letting her dictate the circle. K switched off a bit so Sue had me tie her up and get Ness out and play with Ness. I then got K back and Sue just had me walk the line and if K joined in I was to C/T. She eventually did offer going back to heel position and moving in around the bag so I would C/T her.
In terms of duration heelwork Sue suggested I need to build up to 6 minutes of focused attention. She suggested doing this for a period of a month. If you are intending on working on that its all you work for the month. So you would have 3 nights of duration heelwork, 2 nights of doodling heelwork.
Sue also said I need to introduce distractions early. So have lots of different tuggies/toys on me and then when we had finished with one, drop it on the floor and continue working and then pull out another one from somewhere else. I do a bit of this at home already with her 2x2 weaving.
I asked about my weaving hassle wherebut she will stall out and demand bark at me if I push her to do 6 poles. Sue's comment was to call her back and get her to hand touch (Rewarding the hand touches with food, since she is more toy driven) and then asking again and if she gets it right throwing the toy.
Sue also said if both Riv and Kenzie enjoy playing with each other then we could use that as a reward. Both train and then let them play.
Keep the sessions extremely short and go back to 30 second sessions with her. Only working on one exercise then putting her away. She also recommended crating over tying the dog up. Guess we do get a bit slack with that when we are training ourselves.
Sunday afternoon was back to West Beach for the second obedience seminar. Sue first answered any questions people may have had after Friday night.
Covered in detail teaching a stand for exam. The steps included playing the "steady feet" game. Starting in a sit and rewarding for feet still. Making sure the handler was able to straddle the dog and have it remain still. Then progressing to the stand, straddling the dog in a stand. Having the handler do a light examination. Then having the handler do a more thorough examination. Only introducing the actual examination part when the dog was doing a reliable rock solid stand with focus on the handler. I think I'll be able to get one on Kenzie eventually so long as I don't rush things with her.
She then demonstrated shaping the box. Relatively simple and pretty much the way I trained Kenzie although I lured a few times (naughty of me).
The final section was on ring wise dogs/duration heelwork. Sue had me demo this section with Ness. It was basically the questions I had asked her before she came over. First up we did some duration heelwork. I had mentioned in the car on the way to the seminar that I knew I had to attempt it with Ness but I got frustrated as she didn't get to the level I wanted. Sue's advice was never mind the fact she is a UD dog but start at a really simple point where she won't fail so 5 steps (for example). Her advice was also to write down on paper before I went out for a session how many steps I was intending on doing so I didn't cheat. The idea is to divide her meal up into 3 and repeat three times and thats the entire session. I didn't get a chance to ask about Kenzie and considering she is more toy driven and likely to not take food. My guess is that I substitute the toy for the food so after she has completed it we have a game (until her food drive matches her toy drive). I will work at pairing them more but I have found since she was spayed that she has a much better appetite.
Initially I had food in my hand and was rewarding whenever Sue clicked. Sue mentioned the progression of food in hand, to food in right hand to food in left pocket to food in back pocket. I am guilty of mainly having the food in my left pocket. I also thought Ness was going to switch off on me. She sneezed during the heeling and I gave her a NRM because she dropped her head. Matter of habit. Sue and Sandi apparently allow sneezing. We progressed on to having three people standing around holding jackpot containers. Sue wanted to demonstrate how you could move to having the reward off the person. Meanie made me hand over my entire pocket of food. We then continued to heel and Sue would click and have me run to one of the people and reward. I got ribbed for only running to the closest container.
Then she had me so that we basically were introducing a cue to Ness of me showing her my empty hands wasn't a signal that no rewards were available. So I would give her the cue set her up in heel, heel off one or two paces and Sue would click and I would run to a person and reward from the container.
We finished up with working changes of pace in a circle and clicking every couple of steps for the dog maintaining position. Starting at slow pace and gradually picking up speed until I was going at fast pace.
Any way that is the weekends seminar report. Last night we just had tea at home and a bit of a chat about other things not training related.
Deposited Sue safely at the airport first thing this morning. She did mention in the car on the way that I should make myself a board for contact training and get started on teaching a 2o/2o with Kenzie so thats on the list of things to attempt.
After dropping my parents at the airport at lunchtime (busy day for airport transfers LOL) I came home and played the figure 8 cone feeding game with both kids, twice each. I then did some stands with Kenzie using the esky on the front verandah as a barrier. She went from her shitty stand hand signal yesterday to me dropping the signal almost immediately and being 100% reliable with a verbal only and then from that to introducing a new improved hand signal within half a dozen repetitions. Now I need to introduce it on the move. Might try that tonight if I don't head out to CBS or even if I do.
Before I get into what was covered if I could summarize the main take home lesson I got from the entire seminar/weekend it would have to be "BE CONSISTENT". Its something I do struggle with and Sue certainly hammered it home yet again. If have a picture of what you consider the "perfect performance" of an exercise don't let your standards slip and reward anything less once the dog understands a particular exercise. Don't let the dog train you into reducing your criteria. Also the importance of positive proofing of the various exercises - which I don't do enough of.
Now to Friday afternoon - drove to the airport to collect Sue and we had a couple of hours to kill before the first Obedience seminar. We came home and had a bit of a chat and she was trying to get Kenzie to approach her. Miss Kenzie started out the weekend barely happy to spend any time in the same room as her. Not good but I knew we could work at it later. Ness was offering sits/drops/stands while we were seated at the table.
Friday nights seminar was an introduction to some of the basic obedience skills. It was great to hear so much of what I had done right with Kenzie in relation to training a pup. Especially making sure the dog was happy to play at different locations, and happy to focus on the handler off-lead because the handler was more rewarding to the dog then what else might be happening. Her suggestion for a new pup was to load the pup into the car drive to a location play for 30 seconds to a minute. Carry dog back to the car. Drive to a new location and repeat. Discussions on the 2 food game, the collar grab game, having the dog work switch from food to tug and vice versa, how to shape attention, how to teach solid stays using food to tempt the dog "steady feet". There was also a section stressing the importance of just playing with the dog minus any additional props such as toys/food etc.
Then there were a few demo dogs. Capturing attention and C/T for having the dog focus on the handler. River demoed the 2 food game. Of importance to my training was the cone game. I had tried it initially with both Ness and Kenzie after Sandi had mentioned it to Tash. Basically you set up two large traffic cones and walk around them in a figure 8, just treating the dog each step. It teaches the dog to walk with its head up as well as how to use its back end around the cone. Also obviously a good exercise for figure 8 work.
The other important demo which Sue did with Ness was teaching the dog to ignore a distraction i.e. food on the ground and instead offer targeting heel position. She would toss bits of food on the ground and work Ness around them and reward her for finding heel with more food in her hand. I was pretty impressed as I never imagined she would be able to heel around with food on the ground. Maybe there is hope for us yet.
Saturday was agility day - Low drive dogs in the morning, high drive dogs in the afternoon. Lots of common elements across the entire weekend. Particularly the importance of the collar-grab game/restrained recalls, lots of flatwork exercises. Discussion on 2o/2o contacts and the backchaining concept. "Steady-feet" game for Start Line Stays. Discussion on the value of proofing stays. Some of the SG One Jump exercises. Recall to heel (similar to the obedience exercise) aka Mary Ray finish but you have your feet apart one foot back and reward the dog in a stand rather than a sit. Do on both LHS and RHS. Table game - ask for a down position on table. Kenzie demoed some 2x2 weaving and I was pretty chuffed considering she wasn't entirely keen on Sue and also the fact that there was a tunnel sort of in the way. She managed to nail 4 poles in a straight line at a new venue :) without shutting down too much. Talked about contact performance and establishing criteria and then ensuring independant obstacle performance. I think at the minute I'll be doing a 2o/2o on all of the contact equipment with her.
Sat evening we spent chatting/having tea and worked on getting Kenzie to approach Sue. We got to the point where Kenzie would put her paws up on Sue and target her target stick or offer a hand touch :).
Sunday morning - Tash and I were fortunate enough to get some training time with Sue. Tash worked with Riv on DOR and Sue introduced the concept of speed trials to improve the rate Riv dropped. Can also work for sits and stands. Basically you settle on the criteria for performance/signal that you wish to put in place. Initially you give the signal and might allow a 2 second time delay in which the dog has to perform the behavior, if the dog fails then you withdraw your attention and start again, if they are successful they get a C/T. After a few trials you then reduce the latency allowed from 2 seconds to 1 second. They did some work on heeling and having another person walk close to the dog while heeling to proof heeling. C/Ting as the second person approached the dog.
Kenzie's session consisted of working on stands (I just haven't been able to fade my shitty lured hand signal to anything decent). Sue had me work alongside a barrier (in this case Tash's bag), but she said to make sure I changed what I was using for the barrier as much as possible. I would give the new verbal command "stand" then a short delay then my shitty lured hand signal and C/T. Need to keep doing that and then attach a new hand signal. Between each repetition I am to break her off and play before starting again. Sue also did some work on having Kenzie sit at heel and then having me click and rewarding when she approached her. She suggested that Kenzie clearly was more tug driven then food driven so instead of using a food reward to release her to play tug. Even if that involved clicking and then running away to a distance where she was happy to tug. I got a slap over the wrist for not having conditioned the tug with a clicker but when I tried it she happily took the tug so Sue said I was extremely lucky to have a dog who didn't then look for the food.
We did some metal article work. There is a definite mental block when the articles is nearly on the ground. Sue gave me a few suggestions to try including placing it on a cushion, blanket etc and seeing if that works. She also suggested I might get to the point where I just had to find somewhere really boring, place article on the ground and wait her out. I need to introduce the collar grab game here and work at it so that hopefully her response when I release her collar is to snatch at the article. I asked about the supersitious paw up response and her standing when she returns with the article and Sue said to keep cueing the sit and eventually I wouldn't need to cue it. She mentioned pairing sight of the object with a favourite toy and I said that I had already attempted that in the past.
We did some collar grab toy retrieves. Think Sue just wanted me to go for a run on the oval at this point. She would have me sprint off in the opposite direction as soon as she had grabbed teh toy. Also did the 2 toy game with her. I need to make sure she doesn't do it quite so formally - so encourage a stand rather than the sit with the collar grab.
Heelwork next. Starting out on a left circle. Kenzie is clearly pushing me and walking into me so I need to go back and work the cone game for a few nights to improve her rear end awareness before coming back to the circle work. We did a version of the cone game using bags. It was interesting as initially when I attempted the exercise when I was focussing on K I was still letting her dictate the circle. K switched off a bit so Sue had me tie her up and get Ness out and play with Ness. I then got K back and Sue just had me walk the line and if K joined in I was to C/T. She eventually did offer going back to heel position and moving in around the bag so I would C/T her.
In terms of duration heelwork Sue suggested I need to build up to 6 minutes of focused attention. She suggested doing this for a period of a month. If you are intending on working on that its all you work for the month. So you would have 3 nights of duration heelwork, 2 nights of doodling heelwork.
Sue also said I need to introduce distractions early. So have lots of different tuggies/toys on me and then when we had finished with one, drop it on the floor and continue working and then pull out another one from somewhere else. I do a bit of this at home already with her 2x2 weaving.
I asked about my weaving hassle wherebut she will stall out and demand bark at me if I push her to do 6 poles. Sue's comment was to call her back and get her to hand touch (Rewarding the hand touches with food, since she is more toy driven) and then asking again and if she gets it right throwing the toy.
Sue also said if both Riv and Kenzie enjoy playing with each other then we could use that as a reward. Both train and then let them play.
Keep the sessions extremely short and go back to 30 second sessions with her. Only working on one exercise then putting her away. She also recommended crating over tying the dog up. Guess we do get a bit slack with that when we are training ourselves.
Sunday afternoon was back to West Beach for the second obedience seminar. Sue first answered any questions people may have had after Friday night.
Covered in detail teaching a stand for exam. The steps included playing the "steady feet" game. Starting in a sit and rewarding for feet still. Making sure the handler was able to straddle the dog and have it remain still. Then progressing to the stand, straddling the dog in a stand. Having the handler do a light examination. Then having the handler do a more thorough examination. Only introducing the actual examination part when the dog was doing a reliable rock solid stand with focus on the handler. I think I'll be able to get one on Kenzie eventually so long as I don't rush things with her.
She then demonstrated shaping the box. Relatively simple and pretty much the way I trained Kenzie although I lured a few times (naughty of me).
The final section was on ring wise dogs/duration heelwork. Sue had me demo this section with Ness. It was basically the questions I had asked her before she came over. First up we did some duration heelwork. I had mentioned in the car on the way to the seminar that I knew I had to attempt it with Ness but I got frustrated as she didn't get to the level I wanted. Sue's advice was never mind the fact she is a UD dog but start at a really simple point where she won't fail so 5 steps (for example). Her advice was also to write down on paper before I went out for a session how many steps I was intending on doing so I didn't cheat. The idea is to divide her meal up into 3 and repeat three times and thats the entire session. I didn't get a chance to ask about Kenzie and considering she is more toy driven and likely to not take food. My guess is that I substitute the toy for the food so after she has completed it we have a game (until her food drive matches her toy drive). I will work at pairing them more but I have found since she was spayed that she has a much better appetite.
Initially I had food in my hand and was rewarding whenever Sue clicked. Sue mentioned the progression of food in hand, to food in right hand to food in left pocket to food in back pocket. I am guilty of mainly having the food in my left pocket. I also thought Ness was going to switch off on me. She sneezed during the heeling and I gave her a NRM because she dropped her head. Matter of habit. Sue and Sandi apparently allow sneezing. We progressed on to having three people standing around holding jackpot containers. Sue wanted to demonstrate how you could move to having the reward off the person. Meanie made me hand over my entire pocket of food. We then continued to heel and Sue would click and have me run to one of the people and reward. I got ribbed for only running to the closest container.
Then she had me so that we basically were introducing a cue to Ness of me showing her my empty hands wasn't a signal that no rewards were available. So I would give her the cue set her up in heel, heel off one or two paces and Sue would click and I would run to a person and reward from the container.
We finished up with working changes of pace in a circle and clicking every couple of steps for the dog maintaining position. Starting at slow pace and gradually picking up speed until I was going at fast pace.
Any way that is the weekends seminar report. Last night we just had tea at home and a bit of a chat about other things not training related.
Deposited Sue safely at the airport first thing this morning. She did mention in the car on the way that I should make myself a board for contact training and get started on teaching a 2o/2o with Kenzie so thats on the list of things to attempt.
After dropping my parents at the airport at lunchtime (busy day for airport transfers LOL) I came home and played the figure 8 cone feeding game with both kids, twice each. I then did some stands with Kenzie using the esky on the front verandah as a barrier. She went from her shitty stand hand signal yesterday to me dropping the signal almost immediately and being 100% reliable with a verbal only and then from that to introducing a new improved hand signal within half a dozen repetitions. Now I need to introduce it on the move. Might try that tonight if I don't head out to CBS or even if I do.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Have Faith in Ones Self
Sometimes you have to have a bit of faith in your own ability. 2 days out from Sue trip over for the seminars and maybe I need to cut myself a bit of slack and have a bit of belief that I know what I am doing when it comes to training the kids. I am not to let anybody get to me this coming weekend (Sandi's orders LOL)
Any way I am on cloud nine with Kenzie's work ethic at the moment. She put in some lovely obedience last night - recalls, heelwork, COP drop. So much so somebody came over to ask how old she was and couldn't believe she wasn't older.
Tonight we went to agility training. Kenzie did some very lovely work and I am so chuffed with her. Her circle work is falling in to place and she is just a joy to train. She gives 110% to the task at hand. We have been doing some weave pole work and today I was able to get her doing 4 poles with very little rotation and nailing entries that were out of this world and pretty impressive for a green baby dog. She has lovely driven weavers and I am hoping its a sign of things to come.
I introduced her to the lowered scramble tonight. She very quickly was offering a 2o/2o and staying in position until given her release command. She did better then I expected since we have lots of target work still to do before I can make progress with her contacts.
She has no problems driving ahead through flexi tunnels. Her start line stays are looking great. She let me do a 1 bar lead out and quite happily drove hard when given her release command and came straight over the jump. She seems very responsive to body language and I am thrilled to bits with her.
Lots to be grateful for tonight and my little shinning star has so much potential. Sometimes I think we haven't trained an aweful lot or as much as I had planned but what she does she does very well. I hope there is lots of good things to come from my little munchkin and at the moment I am enjoying her antics.
Any way I am on cloud nine with Kenzie's work ethic at the moment. She put in some lovely obedience last night - recalls, heelwork, COP drop. So much so somebody came over to ask how old she was and couldn't believe she wasn't older.
Tonight we went to agility training. Kenzie did some very lovely work and I am so chuffed with her. Her circle work is falling in to place and she is just a joy to train. She gives 110% to the task at hand. We have been doing some weave pole work and today I was able to get her doing 4 poles with very little rotation and nailing entries that were out of this world and pretty impressive for a green baby dog. She has lovely driven weavers and I am hoping its a sign of things to come.
I introduced her to the lowered scramble tonight. She very quickly was offering a 2o/2o and staying in position until given her release command. She did better then I expected since we have lots of target work still to do before I can make progress with her contacts.
She has no problems driving ahead through flexi tunnels. Her start line stays are looking great. She let me do a 1 bar lead out and quite happily drove hard when given her release command and came straight over the jump. She seems very responsive to body language and I am thrilled to bits with her.
Lots to be grateful for tonight and my little shinning star has so much potential. Sometimes I think we haven't trained an aweful lot or as much as I had planned but what she does she does very well. I hope there is lots of good things to come from my little munchkin and at the moment I am enjoying her antics.
Monday, April 20, 2009
CBS Training - Some Good and Some Bad
Well I took both Ness and Kenzie out tonight instead of just Kenzie. I was interested to see if that helped her behavior. She seemed okish about approaching people before class and taking treats so things are improving there. She is still throwing a lot of stress signals/displacement type behavior in particular collar scratching in a big way. Had a chat to Deb before class started and she asked how she had been and how she had got on at the vets. Said she has been pretty good and was happily approaching Keith again yesterday at the trial.
Get to class time at at least we managed to avoid any major flipping out episodes. She was more distracted then normal though so I don't think she was particularly happy.
While we were waiting for Deb to show I practiced and was getting some lovely confident long distance sends to her mat and fast releases back to me to a tug - yee har. I think she really has a good understanding of her release command which means accelerate forward and drive hard and chase the reinforcement zone.
First exercise we did was close walking through a bunch of objects - buckets, baskets, chairs, some of which had treats on them. Kenzie's work wasn't as good as it has been. She was very distracted by the environment but also did think she was suppose to target the baskets. I cheated a bit and had food in the hand closest to her so a big slap on the wrist. Second time we repeated the exercise we had to get them to target certain objects that Deb told us to. Her heelwork this time was much better but her touching wasn't the behavior I was asking for. She would tentively nose touch the items rather than put her paws on them (even the items she was comfortably offering paw targets on last time). Kenzie was sitting next to a lab and she wasnt overly keen on having the lab watch back past and was a bit spooked by the shadows. I made sure I rewarded her while we were waiting out turn for sitting on her mat so she didn't have time to flip.
We did some target stick work. Having the dog touch the target stick and then putting the target stick in the ground and sending the dog. I only had the grey one that I had made and it wasn't particularly visible but she was still doing some very lovely sendaways to the stick from nice distance - 5-6m range and possibly further.
We did some recall work. Interesting her stays are really not to bad now but I am still going back and rewarding the wait just as heavily as I do the recall. I tried using her formal recall command of "front" and she came and presented but it wasn't overly enthusiastic. Send time I tried one using her release command of "break". Not only was it three times as fast but it was just as accurate.
Following on from the recall we did some work on our distance tricks. Kenzie has a lovely COP drop happening from a reasonable distance. Her sit I still need to be close with though but she is 100% at close range. Her spins and twists are still a work in progress at any sort of real distance as they still need rather large signals.
Retrieve work - I had her do 1 DB retrieve and she did a nice one minus a formal front but she waited while I threw it and then sent her and she went out got it and bought it back to hand. Yee Har - first one she has managed out there. Then we had to move to a toy because we were suppose to be getting the dog to place the object in a basket and Deb didn't want me getting her to place her DB in a basket - fair enough. Well the lab next to us was using a duck toy that made a duck noise and that was enough to flip Kenzie. I could see she wasn't happy so I didn't persist with the retrieve exercise and just took her away and fed her and then returned when we had completed that particular task.
Final exercise we worked on tonight was having them place there paws on a chair and start to move around it. The small chairs are a bit hard for Kenzie to move around as she isn't big enough to get over the back of it so I used one of the baskets. She did some lovely perch work but I need to work to make sure she will move in both directions equally. She definitely favours one over the other at the moment (just not sure which off the top of my head). She was giving me lovely full circles in one direction but no movement in the other direction.
So we had a mixed night of training tonight - not sure I'll get out there next week as we have a busy 3 days of the Sue H seminar but Deb said if I do get out there I better be prepared to demonstrate my unique and novel behavior next week - hmmmm still not to sure what I am doing but I am thinking I'll go with the fetching the mail or newspaper. I did have one idea of her fetching the mail and their being 2 letters and me taking the one letter and giving it back to her and then telling her to take it to Tash but will have to see if I can get Tash on side for that trick to occur. Maybe I could use Ness and she could take it to Ness hehehehe.
Get to class time at at least we managed to avoid any major flipping out episodes. She was more distracted then normal though so I don't think she was particularly happy.
While we were waiting for Deb to show I practiced and was getting some lovely confident long distance sends to her mat and fast releases back to me to a tug - yee har. I think she really has a good understanding of her release command which means accelerate forward and drive hard and chase the reinforcement zone.
First exercise we did was close walking through a bunch of objects - buckets, baskets, chairs, some of which had treats on them. Kenzie's work wasn't as good as it has been. She was very distracted by the environment but also did think she was suppose to target the baskets. I cheated a bit and had food in the hand closest to her so a big slap on the wrist. Second time we repeated the exercise we had to get them to target certain objects that Deb told us to. Her heelwork this time was much better but her touching wasn't the behavior I was asking for. She would tentively nose touch the items rather than put her paws on them (even the items she was comfortably offering paw targets on last time). Kenzie was sitting next to a lab and she wasnt overly keen on having the lab watch back past and was a bit spooked by the shadows. I made sure I rewarded her while we were waiting out turn for sitting on her mat so she didn't have time to flip.
We did some target stick work. Having the dog touch the target stick and then putting the target stick in the ground and sending the dog. I only had the grey one that I had made and it wasn't particularly visible but she was still doing some very lovely sendaways to the stick from nice distance - 5-6m range and possibly further.
We did some recall work. Interesting her stays are really not to bad now but I am still going back and rewarding the wait just as heavily as I do the recall. I tried using her formal recall command of "front" and she came and presented but it wasn't overly enthusiastic. Send time I tried one using her release command of "break". Not only was it three times as fast but it was just as accurate.
Following on from the recall we did some work on our distance tricks. Kenzie has a lovely COP drop happening from a reasonable distance. Her sit I still need to be close with though but she is 100% at close range. Her spins and twists are still a work in progress at any sort of real distance as they still need rather large signals.
Retrieve work - I had her do 1 DB retrieve and she did a nice one minus a formal front but she waited while I threw it and then sent her and she went out got it and bought it back to hand. Yee Har - first one she has managed out there. Then we had to move to a toy because we were suppose to be getting the dog to place the object in a basket and Deb didn't want me getting her to place her DB in a basket - fair enough. Well the lab next to us was using a duck toy that made a duck noise and that was enough to flip Kenzie. I could see she wasn't happy so I didn't persist with the retrieve exercise and just took her away and fed her and then returned when we had completed that particular task.
Final exercise we worked on tonight was having them place there paws on a chair and start to move around it. The small chairs are a bit hard for Kenzie to move around as she isn't big enough to get over the back of it so I used one of the baskets. She did some lovely perch work but I need to work to make sure she will move in both directions equally. She definitely favours one over the other at the moment (just not sure which off the top of my head). She was giving me lovely full circles in one direction but no movement in the other direction.
So we had a mixed night of training tonight - not sure I'll get out there next week as we have a busy 3 days of the Sue H seminar but Deb said if I do get out there I better be prepared to demonstrate my unique and novel behavior next week - hmmmm still not to sure what I am doing but I am thinking I'll go with the fetching the mail or newspaper. I did have one idea of her fetching the mail and their being 2 letters and me taking the one letter and giving it back to her and then telling her to take it to Tash but will have to see if I can get Tash on side for that trick to occur. Maybe I could use Ness and she could take it to Ness hehehehe.
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