Category Archives: Training

Busy Days

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Having a quiet day today.

Buzz

Rio had a very busy day yesterday, lots of socialisation boxes ticked. We drove over to Langsett Barn to see lovely Buzz, her fellow Aussie and still a big puppy at 8 months. They got on very well, and would have loved a run around together but Rio just isn’t big enough to go running around the forest with the big dogs yet. She also met several strange people, an adorable Labrador puppy, and a little Jack Russell. She’s very polite meeting other dogs, and getting increasingly good at meeting new people as well (it’s always been her weak point).

We had a quick stroll around the wood before we headed home, she was a little startled by a weird log but we clicker shaped it and she bounced all over it in minutes so I was very pleased with that.

13 weeks

She also visited agility training for the first time! Our agility arena is on a livery yard/smallholding, so lots of new experiences for her. We didn’t see any horses but she met the cows, plus a whole group of people and dogs of all sizes and attitudes. She was polite, took the hints where necessary, and really wanted to play with Diva.

Dylan worked very well at training, we did some weave exercises and then worked on some in/out box sequences. They were hard on me, I had to get my timing exactly right otherwise I’d send him off in the wrong direction. Much harder than it was with Kim!

It’s OK to get things wrong

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Early Morning November
I think Susan Garrett actually covered this better than me, and more eloquently, here. But I wrote this a few weeks ago and forgot to post it, so I win really.

Why do people get so disheartened about their bad training?

Bad training here meaning making a mistake in your training process, not the dog. Rushing a step, or skipping something, or assuming your dog has a skill that they don’t. It seems to be that an awful lot of people are doing those things and immediately writing off everything they’re doing and that they’ve done, giving up entirely instead of fixing or working around the problem.

I have to admit, this is not a problem I’ve really had. Failure to meet your ideal perfect standard is really irritating. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop being frustrated with my inability to ‘fix’ Dylan’s jumping. But I’m not going to stop working with him in competition and in training, we have fun and he’s challenging me to be a better trainer.

Kim is a great jumper, with terrible contacts and moderate weaves; Dylan has great contacts and weaves but isn’t such a great jumper. I didn’t know any better when I was training Kim, and I didn’t know enough about teaching a dog to jump with Dylan because Kim was such a natural athlete. With Rio, I hope she’ll have great contacts, weaves, and have great jumping skills, but if there is something I mess up (I’m sure there will be), I’ll still continue training and competing with her. It’s not her fault I’m incompetent.

I’m sure lots of people will disagree with me, but it feels like all I’ve heard this year is how people have stopped training/competing with their dog because they made a mistake early in training and for whatever reason, think it’s going to prevent them doing anything in the future. Why?!

ETA: This is relevant (Mark Laker’s Blog)

Breathe Easy

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So, doing the list of what Rio is doing at 12 weeks actually made me breathe a little easier. I’ve been worried I’m not doing enough with her, but when seeing it all written out I feel like we’re doing ok. She’s only been here 2.5weeks, we’re fitting everything in. Her 14-days waiting for the vaccinations to clear is going to take us just past Hare’n'Hounds November, so I’m dithering a bit over whether to take her. She’ll be 2 days away from her “official” 2 week mark, I don’t know how much of a difference 2 weeks is going to make. I don’t intend to take her indoors anyway, and she’ll be meeting minimal dogs and people (for a show) as I don’t want to overwhelm her (or for her to meet inappropriate dogs and people!)

Dylan worked really well at training this week, super jumping style and lots of confidence, even on the seesaw. After the flyoff at Hare’n'Hounds I decided to take a slightly different approach, on the idea that Dyl does actually know what he should do, and maybe if I carried on as normal it wouldn’t repeat. So we didn’t train it in between Hare’n'Hounds and Tailwaggers, and then we didn’t train it the week after Tailwaggers either. This week was the first time he’s seen it again, and he was fine.

His aframe is looking really kind of lovely right now, I have no idea why. Not complaining, but it’s nice.

12 Weeks

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Just notes so I remember what stage we were at!

Rio believes in early to bed, early to rise. Current wake up time is 5am, far too early. Bedtime between 7:30-8:30pm.

She can do Sit, Paw, and Down on command. Luring left turns as she’s showing more aptitude for the right side at the moment (she’s going to be a right turner in flyball like the other girls!). Shaping paw targets and the Elephant Trick specifically, and doing random shaping sessions with random objects. Can get one stride away on sit wait (no command yet). Much more inclined to interact with paws when training. Very happy to work with unstable surfaces, will push drawers/doors closed. Working for treats at the moment but is showing lots of toy drive and lots of tug drive (will engage with most toys offered by me, will swap between toys).

Beginning to understand that “Ready?” means time to do something. Understands “watch out” for gates/doors/people coming towards her. “Go” games excellent, now understands that kibble can be thrown away from her/me and will watch for it.

Recovery time to unexpected events is good, will back away on first visual/audio but will approach within 10-20s to investigate. Has only completely freaked out (run away/barking) about the noisy nail sander, but with one clicker shaping session will now glance/look at it and offer sit/paw/down within 6ft.

Leave it is good on low- and moderate-value objects, non-existent on high value objects. Recall similar, will recall away from low- and moderate-value distractions, non-existent on high value. Kim, Dyl, Mol = high value.

Lead walking going well, sit beforehand and “let’s go!” for a trot to heel. Travelling in car for up to 30 mins no problems, is happy to be left in car (always accompanied by Dylan or Mollie), only attempted up to 10-15mins at the moment. Has been to the car garage and sat in car whilst car battery was changed, very loud/lots of strangers in and out of the car, chilled during event.

Surprisingly well co-ordinated, can jump from standing start onto sofa/dining room chairs. Not encouraged, do not want Rio to dinner.

Happy to greet strangers (wigglebum) after second outing to meet and greet. She’s happy with low-traffic roads, not thrilled with moderate- to high-traffic – especially if cars have headlights on? Need to meet more children! (Had first mis-identification as Border Collie today, couldn’t be bothered to correct apparent BC owner.) Enjoys vet visits.

Will request to go out for toilet by going to the back door and glancing around at whoever is in the kitchen. Need to make sure everyone in household is aware of this and acts promptly!

Training & Thoughts

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Fun training session this week. We’ve spent a lot of time this month trying to get everyone to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses so we have things to work on over the winter. So far everyone has something different to work on! This week was our “test week” on big spacey courses, getting the dogs to drive down a long line of jumps. Everyone did well, including Dylan. We’re just having fun at the moment.

Did some contact run throughs as well, I haven’t done any full equipment with him for three weeks, just working on end-position games. We did 2 full dogwalks at the end of the class which were beautiful, I’m excited to see if they hold up in competition!

We also got to chatting about what kind of requirements clubs and training classes should have for new people wanting to join. I think the final agreement was that a solid recall is absolutely necessary, but other than that the dog should have a willingness to work and the handler should have some way of reinforcing the correct behaviour. If you’ve got those three things, you can take any dog to agility or flyball (or whatever) and start work. If you don’t, you need to go away and make sure you have those three things under your belt first!

Also, dogs shouldn’t be fat.