Springing into Action After the Winter of Our Discontent

 

It's been 4 1/2 months since my last post. The reason for that? I blame this past miserably cold and snowy winter - the worst in recent memory. All my energy was pretty much focused on picturing the light at the end of the tunnel, as that tunnel seemed to grow longer and longer, and trying to stay warm in the meantime. My ability to train ANYTHING was severely limited. Too cold to be outside. Too cold to go to the agility building. Even too cold in my basement.

Three of my four dogs didn't seem to mind the cold snowy days so much.










Hokey on the other hand...she and I are kindred spirits when it comes to the winter months. I'm convinced she suffers from a form of Canine Seasonal Affective Disorder. She was miserable for months. She didn't want to go outside AT ALL. Every time, I let the dogs out, it was an ordeal just to get her to take a couple of steps off the screen porch to do her business. She would go right there in front of the screen porch door and immediately turn around and ask to come back in. Inside the house, she spent the bulk of her time leaning up against the heat vents shivering or curled up somewhere glaring and grumping at all the other 4-leggeds. Sometime in late March, as spring FINALLY showed the occasional symptom of appearing, she turned into a different dog. Suddenly she was happy again, bringing me toys to play with and chasing Sprout around.

First storm of the season - I'm not going out there

Different storm - same scene playing out all winter. LET ME IN!!!

Spring is here at last! Time to play and celebrate!

The worst thing that happened this winter was that Sprout developed a case of demodex.

Hair growing back after a few treatments

He'd had something going on since late fall, but the way it presented at first was somewhat atypical for demodex and looked like allergies. For the first couple of months, it was confined to his armpit area, but then in mid-December it started to spread. He was finally diagnosed on New Year's Eve day. Then I ended up spending a good part of New Year's Eve night at the emergency clinic; I very nearly lost him after his first treatment. After that, we switched him to a different treatment, but I was still nervous with each successive one. He was never himself for about 24 hours after each one. His last scraping in early March revealed no more mites and his hair has grown back in most places. However, I still worry about it returning; his hair hasn't grown back in his armpits yet. So I continue to give him medicated baths once or twice a week and I apply Goodwinol ointment to his armpits every night. I watch him like a hawk for any evidence that he might be losing hair again. I'm also worried about an underlying immune issue that may have caused the outbreak in the first place. Skin issues aside, he's as active and happy as ever.

Speaking of which, Sprout has made his official trialing debut and is now a titled agility dog!

Loot from his first trial where he went 3 for 3

We just wrapped up a whirlwind debut tour of 4 trials in 5 weeks - 1 USDAA Intro trial and 3 UKI trials. Our first trial was a last minute decision on my part. I had read an article about USDAA intro only trials and decided to check the events calendar on the off chance there might be one coming up in this area - and there was! Soon. Luckily I had already registered him with USDAA. It's not really worth it for me to travel to a regular USDAA trial to run him in the 1 or 2 intro classes that might be offered in a day, but a trial dedicated to just intro classes is a different story. The only thing I wish was a little different is, unlike UKI where at any level you can decide right then and there to take a toy into the ring and announce that you are running "not for competition", in USDAA Intro you have to pre-enter as an FEO (For Exhibition Only). I wanted to enter at least one run, preferably, the 3rd or 4th, as an FEO so I could bring a toy in the ring and keep things lite and fun for him his first time out. Winter being what it was and having an effect on our contact training and maintenance as a consequence, I decided to pre-enter standard, the 3rd class of the day, as our FEO run. He had some really great runs for his first time out, including a smokin' 51 point snooker run, and Q'd and placed first in the 3 non-standard classes. Unfortunately, I don't have any video of any of those runs. But here we are practicing between this first trial and the UKI trial the following weekend.

The following weekend we started Sprout's UKI career. I really like UKI for him because he only has to jump 8" as his regular jump height (as opposed to 12" in USDAA) and the A-Frame is only 5'3" for the little guys. I also find the courses challenging from a handling perspective, which I really enjoy.


He did really awesome once again - Qing and winning all his beginner classes.  


Here is his jumpers run from that trial:

The following week, we did a small UKI trial on a Friday. Once again, he smoked the beginners courses, Qing and winning all 3 AND finishing his very first agility titles - the UKI beginner titles in both the Speedstakes and International programs.

Here are a couple of his runs from that trial:

And, after a week off, this past Saturday we completed our last UKI trial in this cluster. He's now moved up to the novice level. The courses are the same as beginners, but now refusals count. And in UKI runs have to be clean in order to earn a qualifying run. We Q'd and blued in jumpers, gamblers and standard. Sprout has always made some growly, whiny noises while running due to excitement, but at this trial he graduated to throwing in the occasional bark. Silly. Here is his gamblers run. You can hear one of his barks as he is landing off the jump between the 2nd set of weave poles and the dog walk.

In other news, I'd tried to enter Poppy in a nose work trial the first Saturday in April at the same site where Ollie's was held last September. I was particularly interested in trialing her at this site because of her aversion to golf carts; there aren't any in use at this Gettysburg site. I don't remember when the entries opened, it was months ago. After they closed, she was waitlisted. Since she ended up at number 19 on the waitlist, I'd given up hope for her doing any nose work trials anytime soon and hadn't been practicing much over the winter. Then 3 weeks before the trial, just as Sprout was making his agility debut, I got an email saying Poppy had been pulled off the waitlist and had a slot in the trial. YIKES! I had to cram a lot of practice in. Luckily, it was like riding a bike to her; she wasn't even rusty. So my one "free" weekend in the middle of Sprout's agility trial tour, turned into a nose work trial weekend for me (5 weeks of trialing in a row - I've never done that before!). This being my 3rd nose work trial, having already not passed once with Poppy, and having been to this particular site once before with Ollie, I was much more relaxed. Just like at Ollie's trial, the order was interior, container, vehicles, and exterior. She was insane during her interior search, which was in a less creepy area than Ollie's had been, but still involved A LOT of arcade game machines. I let her off leash this time, since I didn't have to worry about antique furniture, and she spent the first 40 seconds or so bouncing up in people's faces, trying to find a way back out of the search area, and generally running around like a nut. Most of her pictures from that search have some blur to them. And we won't mention the crazed look in her eyes. Finally she settled down and started to work. She found that hide in just over a minute. The first comment on her score sheet was "A LOT of energy". HAHAHA! Understatement! Later in the morning, we did our container search. She buzzed right through that and found it in 9 seconds, which earned her a 2nd place. Then came the heartbreak. Yes, it was SUPER windy out, but that wasn't the reason why we didn't pass vehicles. I am 100% responsible for her not passing. I was too quick to call it when she started lingering on an area and for the first time I heard "I'm sorry, no". Oh well. I pulled it together quick. I had to because we immediately had to move on to the exterior search. Well, apparently I DID really pull it together because she smoked that search - 6.46 seconds! Good enough for first place! So, although her title remained elusive, once again, we didn't go home empty handed. Poppy certainly has her moments of brilliance. I think we're trying for a record - the most placement ribbons at NW1 trials without actually finishing a title. We'll keep trying to get that title ribbon to add to the placements she's racking up. Gotta love that crazy gal!

Now What? I taking a little breather and figuring out the next steps for each dog. I have a

couple of demo days coming up. The first I just show up with a couple of dogs, and do agility with one and nose work with the other. At the second, I'm actually running the nose work station at a dog activity day event, so I'll be giving talks, demos and then offering a short intro to nose work session for anyone interested in trying it out with their dog.

I'm figuring out Sprout's agility trial schedule. I'd like to get in some USDAA here and there, so I think I'm going to enter one day of an upcoming trial at the beginning of May, then take the rest of the month off to focus on training. June looks like a very busy month for UKI and some USDAA and I need to figure out what trials/days, I'm going to be able to do. I probably won't do a lot of trialing in July or August due to the heat, but we'll see what comes up.

Hokey heeling along

I'm planning to train Hokey for rally/obedience in the hopes that she'll like it enough for
me to enter her in those classes at this year's JRTCA Nationals. She seems to like heel work and she's 100% food motivated and the rules will allow me to bring food into the ring in my pocket. So we'll see how that comes along. In the meantime, now that it's warm enough again, I'm starting to bring her along to the building with Sprout so she can do a little agility once again.
 
Hokey is loving nose work. I think mainly it's because she gets an instant payoff. I have her working on odor only now and think she'll be ready for an ORT sometime in the near future. Ollie and Poppy will continue to practice nose work. I'll be interested in seeing how the element specialty trials play out. I'm really interested in doing some of those. And, of course, I want Poppy to finally get that NW1 title! I got involved in nose work specifically for her sake and Ollie (AKA Mr. Perfect) swooped in late to the game and got his title first time out. Out of all my dogs, Poppy is the dog I've struggled with the most and I really want this title for her.


The warmth of Spring is finally here.  Time to get BUSY!!

 

Flying Frame Update

Just a quick update from what I posted a few days ago. I worked Hokey on the A-Frame again today and concentrated on getting her to jump the apex, rather than scrambling over it like she was doing on Sunday. I placed a jump bar at the top of the frame to encourage the behavior and it seemed to work the majority of the time. It looks like she's getting 2 strides on the upside rather than the 3 she was getting on Sunday. However, on the decent, she is putting in a short stride between landing over the apex and pouncing into the box. I guess I'll see if that starts to fade as she gets more experience and gains more confidence. I think this is pretty good for only her second time on the frame though.

Laying More Bricks in the Foundation

Sometimes I feel like I'm in training overload. There are so many things I'm working on right now. but so little daylight for me to be able to train outside. I never feel like there are enough hours in the day and that I can't do it all justice. Here are just a few of the things I've been working on as far as Hokey's foundation training goes, in no particular order:

1. Running Contacts. The dogwalk training has kind of been put on the backburner simply because by the time I get home from work, there just isn't enough daylight for me to set up and work on it. In the meantime, I've been questioning if a running dogwalk is going to be the right behavior for Hokey. Being that consistency in striding is key, I'm not so sure if her habit of naturally adding an occasional leaping motion into the middle of her full out run might interfere. However, I will continue to train the foundation for a running until I'm ready to make a decision because, no matter what contact behavior I decide on, I still want her learning to drive with speed to the end of the walk.

With the dogwalk on hold, I have, however, gone back to work harder on the foundation for the Aframe running contact. Hokey is working the box on the ground consistently well. Here is a video showing me setting her up so there is a direct line between her and I, with the box offset from that line. She shows that she understands what she's supposed to do by leaving the line in order to bounce through the box instead of coming directly to me when I release her. Also shown is that she is able to drive ahead of me independently (although I'd still like to see little more forward drive in her behavior) when I'm well behind and several feet lateral from the box.

I've also started to apply the grid to the box. She's working it pretty well although it's not a ingrained behavior yet (we just started, so that's expected). Sometimes when I first set it up, she loses sight of the box behavior and does the 2 jumps and then comes to me instead of driving forward through the entire grid. I've found that if I start off relatively close to the box and then increase my distance, it seems to help remind her that she needs to bounce through the box. I noticed in reviewing the video below that when I added the grid, she is also looking at me a little more instead of driving forward into her reward zone. I may need to be just a little quicker with throwing my reward. Right now I'm only working the first (forward) position on both sides in conjunction with the grid. Once she's moving forward consistently and seems to understand her job, I'll start working the other positions. Here she is doing a nice job with the grid:

2. Line Setting. I started working on some foundational "line" exercises to teach her to stay in her lane/path while I'm in mine. Here we set up on two parallel paths both heading forward. I have a dish set up in the middle of her path that contains one very small treat. I do a restrained release so that she drives ahead of me to the dish, staying in her lane. When I catch up and pass her, I get her attention with a toy so that she breaks from the dish ASAP and chases me while both of us stay in our individual lanes. I do need to be a little more aware of not veering into her lane or pulling her off into mine. It's harder to keep track of in my yard than it is in the training building where we go for lessons. In the building, there are mats to help clearly define our separate lanes. We'll be adding challenges to this exercise as we move forward with our training.

3. One Jump Exercises. I started doing some one jump work with Hokey to teach her to use her body properly when jumping. It is used to teach her proper form when turning tightly over a jump by training her to keep her head down into the turn. I am also teaching her to keep her feet up so that she doesn't tick or knock the bar. Sometimes my timing isn't the best and sometimes my treat placement isn't great, mostly because they bounce, but for the most part, she's doing well with this.

4. J-turn for a change of direction. I'm training a turning cue so that, when she's facing me, Hokey passes my side and turns away from me to change direction so that we are then on parallel paths. Here we are working on the flat, around an obstacle, and over a jump. Note that, because I just started training this, my arm movement is highly exaggerated at this point. As her understanding of the cue increases, I should gradually be able to keep my arm much closer to my body.

5. Pinwheel. Starting with a close-set pinwheel of jumps, I'm am training Hokey to drive into a pinwheel and carry through all 3 jumps independently. My path is to run up the middle on a straight line toward the standard of the center jump. As soon as I see her commit to the 2nd jump, I move back down the center line in the opposite direction (I am not happy with the last example in the follow clip as I paused instead of moving when I should have).

6. Sends. Because deaf dogs have a tendency to be velcro and not easily amenable to working at a distance, I wanted to make sure I was working on sends right from the very start. As mentioned in my "Living Room Agility Training" blog post, I often use the dining room table to practice sends with all my dogs. I just trained Hokey on dining room sends a few days ago. Here we are having a blast with it. This will come in handy when it's 20 degrees outside with a foot of snow on the ground.

We can use patio furniture in the yard to do something similar:

 Since she tends to like to drive into my tunnel, I also put that to use in working sends:

7. Backside Cues. If we end up running in USDAA trials, Hokey is going to have to learn how to read my cues to do a backside approach. We just started this and she's already picking up on it really well. I mix it up with front approaches so that she doesn't get locked into a particular pattern. The key is my foot position - notice the difference in where my sending foot is pointing when I send her to the backside as opposed to the times when I'm sending her for a front approach and asking her to wrap back to me. As for my arm movement - it's too exaggerated and distracting. I need to work on that.

8. Tunnel Rear Cross. This is something I'm really struggling with. I have had some trouble with Hokey pulling off the tunnel, entering and then turning around to come back out, or showing hesitation/drop in drive when I work on this. Putting a toy several feet from the far end of the tunnel for her to drive to usually helps with that aspect of things. However, as shown in the 2nd half of the following clip, she still has a long way to go as far as learning to read the rear cross. It is simply not clicking thus far. Her deafness doesn't help because I can't help her with a verbal clue to let her know where I am once we've lost visual contact. I've been thinking about how I can use the placement of the toy to help her learn to read the cross. I also need to think about my own timing and placement of the cross to, hopefully, make it more clear to her where I'm going. It's hard, because if her head is already in the tunnel and, especially if she's driving to the toy, she might not notice my cross at all. If I cross too soon, it might cause her to pull off or turn around and come back out  of the the same way she went in. I'll have to play with it and try to come up with a solution.

So that's the update. I can't wait for the daylight to lengthen again in order to give me more training time during the week. However, with January and February on the horizon, even with enough daylight, there may be snowy and cold weather ahead. I sure am looking forward to spring!

On the way?

Wake me when winter is over!

Deaf Dogs Do Bark - Part 1

Recently I've had the pleasure of experiencing what it is like to become a foster failure. I had just signed on as a volunteer with Mid-Atlantic Jack Rescue when a urgent cry went out about a deaf jack in a shelter needing a temporary foster home for a few days over the Memorial Day weekend. Without an available place to go, the dog would not be able to be rescued. Her time was up. The shelter was full. With trepidation, due to Ollie's reactivity to other dogs and Poppy being so high-maintenance in general, I decided to answer the call. She had no place else to go and here was a life I could make the difference in saving. A small thing in the big scheme of things, but a huge impact on this little dog - and now on me. 

Her name is Hocus Pocus - I call her Hokey for short. She was found with her owner's body about 2 days after her owner had died and then taken to a shelter. The shelter attempted to contact family members to come get this poor frightened and confused little dog, but no one ever returned any phone calls. Being at the shelter must have been a traumatic situation for her - to be yanked out of her place of warmth and security, away from the one who loved and cared for her and placed in a cage where she got very little attention. Suddenly, she found herself in a strange place full of strange smells, strange vibrations, with unfamiliar sights and routines. A stressful and scary experience to say the least.

Hokey when she was at the shelter

And precarious - in a world where thousands of dogs get put down every day just for no other reason than not having a place to call home, very few people are willing to adopt a dog that is labeled as "special needs" or somehow seen as being more work than the average dog. Not to mention the lingering myths perpetuated even by some professional trainers and vets about deaf dogs - that they are unpredictable time-bombs, they all turn into biters, they can't be trained, etc. You can read more about these myths here:  Deaf Dog Myths. Cute as she is, Hokey's chances of being adopted before her time was up at the shelter were slim to none.

Then MAJR found her and put out the call. I answered. I welcomed this little dog into my home on a temporary basis. Then decided to stay on as her longer-term foster. Then, because I love her personality and because I love new experiences that allow me to stretch myself as a trainer, I decided to become a foster failure and adopt her myself.

My mind has never been weighted down by preconceived notions of what a deaf dog can and can't do. I've never believed the myths. Having trained several dogs with normal hearing, I know the primary means used for us to communicate is not based on what I tell them through use of my voice or other sound, but rather on them picking up cues from my body language. Years and years ago, when I trained my schipperke in obedience work, I often put him through his paces using nothing more than hand signals. Ollie is able to navigate an entire agility course without me ever opening my mouth. Sound is just another tool; it is not a necessary one.

The title of this entry is "Deaf Dogs Do Bark" because one of the most common questions I get from people is "does she bark?". The answer is a resounding yes! She barks when she wants attention from me. She sometimes barks when she's in her crate and wants to be out. She barks at Poppy when they are running around the yard. She barks at certain sights out the window or through the fence. She sometimes barks when she notices the other dogs barking, but, not always understanding what she's supposed to be barking at, she might point herself in the opposite direction from what they are barking at. When she first came to live with me, she would try to solicit food from me by barking at me every time I ate in front of her. I suspect it was bad habit that had been reinforced in her former home. I quickly and easily put an end to the behavior and now she either is in a down/stay or curled up on the sofa while I'm at the table eating. She also quickly learned that the kitchen is forbidden territory during any food prep activity.

The point that I'm trying to make with this entry is not to say "yes, deaf dogs bark". It is to say, a dog is a dog is a dog. Deaf or not. Hokey is a normal dog in every way. I'm able to communicate with her and train her, just as I would any other dog. She barks. She likes to play fetch with balls and other toys.

She likes to play tug. She likes to harass Poppy and/or engage her in a game of chase and wrestle in the yard. She loves food and treats and is eager to work for a reward. She loves nothing more than to curl up in my lap - in fact, that's where she is now as I type this. She is sometimes naughty. And true to her breed, she can be stubborn and sometimes, albeit not often, downright defiant. In other words, she is a normal Jack Russell Terrier. Her deafness is only one component of who she is as an individual, but it does not define her.

In Part 2, I will discuss special considerations that are specific to her training.