Monthly Archives: January 2011

Wandering

  By Leanne | January 16, 2011 - 4:50 pm | Agility, Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie, Training
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I feel like I should be posting something, but I really have very little to blog about at the moment! We are unexpectedly having January off from competitions (flyball and agility), which I’m not too bothered about; I had planned to take a month off somewhere, and January is as good as any! Also, it’s raining, and pretty much hasn’t stopped since last weekend. It’s difficult to muster any motivation in weather like this.

I’m really looking forward to getting back to flyball training, it looks like we’ve found something that is really going to work for Dylan. He finds it hard at the moment as it requires him to power more from his back end, and I think he’s lacking some strength there right now. It showed at agility training this past week too, as he was skipping out on a jump that was minimum distance from the tunnel. He’s an honest boy and he did run it fine the first couple of exercises, but as he tired he found it hard to shift the weight back onto his hind legs and power up for the jumps.

That’s all ok though, we’re working on conditioning, hence why I think having the month off is ok. The girls could certainly do with it too, Mollie seems to be feeling her age a little more this winter. It hasn’t really slowed her down, but her eyesight is getting worse and she’s getting a bit dafter than normal. Time passes, unfortunately.

Review: The Focused Puppy

  By Leanne | January 9, 2011 - 1:53 pm | Reviews
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The Focused Puppy: A Training System for Raising a Great Companion & Performance DogThe Focused Puppy: A Training System for Raising a Great Companion & Performance Dog (Deborah Jones, Ph.D. & Judy Keller (2010, Clean Run Productions)

The book is well written, well edited, and well presented. I’ve included a few thumbnails showing how the pages are laid out. There are plenty of photos and “real-life boxes” scattered throughout discussing real examples. It’s paperback and not so large that it can’t be taken places in a bag or in the car.

As might already be apparent, I really liked this book. It’s a very general, all-purpose guide to choosing a pup, bringing it home, and raising it for the first 12 months, but there is a lot of information in there that can equally be applied to older dogs, especially regarding shaping new tricks and impulse control.

One of the aspects I also liked is the FOCUS (an acronym for Fun, Obedience, Consistency and Unbelievable Success*) training system doesn’t feel over-structured, and there is a lot of scope for using your own experience and personal ideas on training without being bound to a set of strict rules. A lot of ‘training systems’ often seem to say that if one rule isn’t followed, all of the work is pointless/ruined/etc. The FOCUS system is more about simply using games, play, positive reinforcement and clicker training to make a happy and confident pup.

As a result, the authors are obviously very big on positive training methods, especially clicker training, and this is all outlined and explained at the start of the book. This ‘explaining why’ type content is actually prevalent throughout, so this isn’t the book for someone who just wants a how-to guide. That works for me, as I like having an explanation; I want to know why I’m doing something, and equally, why puppy is.

I do have a few criticisms. The Temperament Testing section feels somewhat irrelevant for UK readers. I don’t actually know of any breeders in the UK who run temperament tests in the official exam-situation way outlined in the book (which seems fairly commonplace in the US?). It’s also not something I’m convinced by personally, but it did make for interesting reading. I’m not convinced the authors are fully committed to it either, as the rest of the book does address puppies of all personality types rather than assuming you have chosen the “ideal puppy” they suggest in the Temperament Testing chapter.

It’s also worth noting that it’s not a book which really delves into how to train an agility** dog. It’s about developing a relationship with your pup which will encourage them to be enthusiastic and thoughtful about learning, which will obviously help when it comes to working on agility training in the future.

All in all, a good book and a good read. For people getting their first ever puppy, it’s a very clear, explanatory guidebook. For more experienced owners, it’s going to be a very useful reference guide.

*yes, this seems stretching things to make an acronym to me too!
**I’m saying agility, but it’s equally applicable to any sport. The authors state that this method has been used to raise herding dogs, flyball dogs, obedience dogs, etc etc, and there is very little specific to agility or any of those other sports.

Flyball Training, New Year New Games

  By Leanne | January 8, 2011 - 4:35 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie, Training
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The guys were rocking flyball training today. We’d already arranged to do some Starter/Puppy training this morning, and Kim had long-since being volunteered as Stooge Dog, but our tournament tomorrow has unfortunately been cancelled. So the whole gang got to come and play!

The Starters did very well, we still have a lot of work to do (especially boxwork!) but they all did some excellent recall work, either on their own or against the Stooge Dog Kim.

I like our Stooge Dogs to be focussed on the game, experienced and unflappable, but not overexcited and hyper. Medium height dogs are best, especially for changover work, as large dogs can be intimidating to nervous Starter dogs, and small dogs aren’t “obvious” enough. Ideally, the Stooge Dog shouldn’t be slow either, but there’s no point putting in a super-fast dog initially against a Starter as it’s too tempting to run out of the lane to chase. The Stooge Dog is there to show the Starter that there will be an opponent, but not to be an idiot. Kim is a very good Stooge Dog!

Katie paired the rest of the dogs up and they each did some boxwork, some Chase Recalls, and some handler-chasing full-runs. I felt really happy with how Dylan worked, I think he really benefits from this kind of specific training. I had a feeling Kim would too, and she definitely did, I haven’t seen her run so fast in ages! She loves doing Chase Recalls, she’s a typical lurcher-type in that regard. We timed her last run and she clocked a 4.9 over 12″, which really is pretty good for a 10-yr-old who is way off her normal jump fitness. Very proud of my old lady!

Mollie is a special case, because she is such a lunatic it’s not safe to do “normal” boxwork with her, so we just spent a lot of time chasing her off the box and getting her stretching away. It seemed to be working, but I think it will take Mollie longer to benefit from this kind of training than it will Kim or Dylan.

We aren’t competing at flyball again until the end of February, so we have a good block now where we can really get training and focussed on really improving the dogs for summer.