Sniffing Out Success

Ollie has a brand new title! We went to our first nose work trial on Sept 28th and were successful. Now, in addition to his plethora of agility titles, he has NW1 listed after his name. I'm nearly as proud of this title as I am of his ADCHs and LAA.

I've been trialing in the USDAA masters ring for the past several years, but I have to say, I found the experience of this nose work trial to be vastly more stressful than any agility competition. Why? I don't know. Maybe because EVERYTHING counts and if you miss one of the 4 elements there goes your chance at your title. Maybe the cost; compared to a day at an agility trial, a nose work trial is pretty expensive ($95 for NW1), so if you blow one element, there goes the entry fee, which for me is a good chunk of change I'd rather not lose without something to show for it. Maybe it's the fact that, in this area anyway, nose work trials are few and far between and when they do occur there is a long waitlist of teams who didn't manage to be selected through the random draw process, so, if you aren't successful, it could be a long time before you get the chance to try again. What didn't help my stress any was the fact that Ollie was dead last (#38) in the running order in both the morning and afternoon. Some trials will split the entries into two groups and while one group does 2 elements, the other group does the other 2 and then they switch in the afternoon. This particular trial didn't work that way. All dogs ran through the interior and container searches in the morning, then the vehicle and exterior searches in the afternoon. That meant the hides, especially the afternoon ones which were put out first thing in the morning, had been sitting there for hours before Ollie got a shot at them. Luckily I'd been putting out hides at home before I left for work in the morning and then letting him search for them when I arrived home, so he had been prepped for this. Still, waiting around for hours for my turn didn't do my anxiety any favors.


The trial was held at a sports/amusement complex near Gettysburg. The good news about
this location was that it didn't involve a lot of walking over long distances like some nose work trial sites do. The bad news was, because the locations of the search areas were so concentrated, I believe that is what contributed to the decision not to split the competitors into two working groups. Also, the site was a bit odd, even a little creepy, in places.

When I arrived, I parked in the "reactive dog" section. True, Ollie is a veteran when it comes to trialing and is used to being crated in my vehicle in close proximity to others with dogs, but with nose work being more sensitive to the needs of reactive dogs, I figured why not keep my reactive dog as calm as possible while waiting our turn by catering to his personal space issues. As with his ORT, he wore a red bandana to alert others that he is a reactive dog and to please keep their dogs at a distance.  There was a check-in and then a walk-through where we got a look at all 4 search areas and had the chance to ask questions. Then, after a period of time, the trial got underway.

When our turn came close, I took him over to the warm up/recovery area where there were 4 boxes set out, one of which contained birch odor. This let him know what we were about to do. Each search area had 3 or 4 stations that you move through where dogs are kept at a safe distance from each other while waiting their turn. We moved through those on our way to the interior search area. The interior search area was pretty creepy in my opinion, but the final staging area was even worse. It was in a room with black walls and glow-in-the-dark graffiti painted on them. The only lighting was from a single overhead black light. Needless to say, the atmosphere didn't alleviate my growing sense of dread. Pictures of the actual search area can be found here. Yes, with the dim lighting, black graffiti covered walls, weird panels and old banquet chairs and arcade games randomly strewn about, it was a like a creepy graveyard for amusements of the early 1990s.

Happy Sniffing - hope you make it out alive!

Like this, only about 20 years older

To fit the atmosphere, it turned out to be our most nail-biting search of the day. First, I opted to do the search on leash, which in hindsight may have been a mistake. The hide was up inside an old banquet chair in the middle of the room between one of those weird panels and an arcade game. We had 3 minutes to find it. Ollie opted to check the perimeter of the room first. Then he actually got near the hide. I suspected that it was the general location of the hide because it looked like he started to clean up some dropped food (! - why weren't those crumbs cleaned up??!!!!). It's hard to recall, but I *think* I may have pulled him away a bit to get him back on task. That's when he veered from the area of hide and started to focus on an arcade game, Sonic the Hedgehog, right across from the chair. He spent a lot of time and energy on that game. As a consequence, I now hate that game.

Most hated arcade game EVER!!

After spending a lot of time on the arcade game without alerting, I pulled him away for a sweep of other areas. Nothing. Then came the dreaded 30 second alert that no one wants to hear. I felt my stomach sink and panic rising. I took Ollie back to the area he was interested in and again he looked at the Sonic game, but then, thankfully, turned toward the chair, sniffed his way up the leg and alerted at the hide with just under 20 seconds to spare. PHEW!

Then it was immediately on to the container search. The containers were on the floor in part of a large gymnasium and had been arranged in the shape of a jack-o-lantern, i.e. a circle of boxes surrounding other boxes forming eyes, nose, and a mouth. I was surprised when I walked Ollie into the room to find many spectators seated in chairs watching. Very different from the ORT. I walked to the startline, took a deep breath and started the search. I let him go straight up the middle and then choose which half of the outer part of the circle to work first. He chose to go right, which turned out to be an excellent choice. About halfway down the arc he alerted on the correct box. The search lasted 11 seconds in all - the 5th fastest out of the 38 dogs - and it earned us a "pronounced" score and a round of applause from the spectators. It brought much relief after our less than steller interior search. Pictures of Ollie searching containers at the trial can be found starting here - go to the last two pages of the container search photos to see him.

After a very long wait for lunch break and the 37 dogs in front of us to search, it was our turn for vehicles and exterior. The vehicle search was set up like this, with the hide in the front of the driver's side wheel-well of the 3rd vehicle from the startline (starred):




We paused at the startline and then forged ahead toward the line of vehicles. Ollie bypassed vehicle 1 altogether. Then something in the miniature golf area behind the vehicles briefly caught his attention between vehicles 1 and 2. I got his focus back and he went to vehicle 3 and started searching. He found the hide in less than 14 seconds - the 4th fastest vehicle search of the 38 dogs! Since I don't get a chance to practice vehicles as much as the other elements, I was thrilled with how fast he found it, especially since he bypassed the other 2 vehicles to start his search on the correct one.

Three down, one to go! I felt pretty good about the exterior search, since that tends to be his strongest element. Even though we'd been practicing elevated hides, I was hoping it would be closer to ground level since his beagle nose is best at those. The final waiting area involved standing next to a weird life size giraffe statue that towered over us. Kind of like the picture on the right, only more weather-beaten and with more demonic eyes.

The exterior search area was only slightly less creepy than the interior one. At least there weren't any black walls and glow in the dark graffiti involved. But there was a lot of cement and some playground equipment that looked like it was designed to give children a sure case of tetanus. But, actually, the lack of plant life in the search area was a huge bonus for us because Ollie can be a quick and sneaky marker if he smells that another dog has peed  anywhere in the vicinity during previous century. Elimination equals elimination, so it was a relief to me to know that he would be much less likely to do that in this particular exterior search area.

As I approached the search area, the judge made some kind remarks about Ollie and his happy smile and wagging tail, which made me smile and helped to put me at ease. We crossed the start and Ollie started to work the left side of the perimeter of the search area. As he worked his way forward he came to the start of a wooden fence. He immediately honed in on a crack in the railing then followed it down to a crack in the cement and alerted. Afterward the judge jokingly commented that his head whipped up to look at me standing behind him so fast that he nearly gave himself whiplash. He completed the exterior search in 11 1/2 seconds - the 5th fastest exterior search of the day - and earned another "pronounced" score. You can see pictures of Ollie doing the exterior search starting here - go to the last two pages of the exterior search photos to see him.

WE HAD OUR TITLE! I was ecstatic and relieved. And so proud of Ollie. What a great little dog he is!

 

And now I get to put myself through all that terror and stress again next weekend with Poppy. At least the upcoming trial site looks very pretty and not intimidatingly creepy. Poppy CAN be a lightning fast searcher, but she is more erratic in her search patterns and not always as exact in her alert behavior, whereas Ollie is methodical and his alerts are very easy to read. So stay tuned for another nose work trial report. In the meantime, I've been prepping hard this past week. I'll leave you with a video of Poppy and Ollie working some interior searches.

 

 

The New and the Deja Vu

My goodness. Between keeping Hokey's agility skills up and prepping her for a few trials, getting Ollie and Poppy prepared for their upcoming nose work trials, and working on Sprout's foundation training, I feel like I do nothing but dog stuff whenever I'm not at work. Not that I'm complaining!

Hokey's running dw has become pretty consistent

The New 

On Labor Day, Hokey and I went back into the ring for the 2nd time after a few months break since her successful first trial at the end of May. I decided to give UKI a try. I like their jump height cut-offs and A-Frame heights for my little dogs. Also, since Hokey has some issues with the table (the down seems uncomfortable for her, probably because she is deep chested and has no hair or body fat for padding), I like that the table is only an optional obstacle in Agility (aka Standard) and, when it is used, it's a no-count down and go. Seems like a fair compromise. UKI courses are international in flavor and somewhat technical, except for the Speed Stakes class, which, as the name indicates, is supposed to be more about speed. I like challenging courses, so really like what UKI has to offer as a possible alternative to USDAA. I also like that you can go into the ring with a toy and, at the startline, declare your run to be "Not For Competition" and then just use your time in the ring to train and have fun with your dog. I have a feeling I'll be taking advantage of that with Sprout in the future.

Sprout - proud serial decapitator of Kongs

Like I mentioned in my previous post, Hokey has some distraction issues to work through. Her first class was Speed Stakes and that went pretty well. Just one small distracted bobble at the 4th jump, but I was able to bring her around easily and continue on. Definitely not her fastest run, but it was pretty good considering how green she is and that she hasn't worked in distracting environments very much. It was good enough for a Q and 1st place. 

Next was beginner Jumpers (with weaves). It had moments brilliance and moments of not-brilliant-at-all due to her getting distracted. It didn't feel good at the time, but when I went back and watched it, it wasn't as bad as I thought. 

Her last run was Agility (standard). It was a pretty nice run. Much better than I thought it would turn out looking at the course on paper. She stayed with me the entire time right up until the last jump, where she left me for a second. I got her back quickly, but in UKI running past the last jump is 5 faults (refusals don't count at the beginners level at any other obstacle except the last) and you need a clear round to qualify. She was a little tentative on the contact equipment, but again, that's just a matter of getting her out and experience.

Overall, I was pretty happy with how she did her 2nd time out. 

Here is a clip of Hokey and I practicing this past week. The hard rear cross and table performance weren't her best of the night, but at least she hit her A-Frame contact, which is something she'd been very naughty about during her previous runs and her teeter performance looked pretty great too.

 

The Deja Vu

It seems like I just went through all this foundation training stuff with Hokey. In fact there are many posts from over the past year that chronicle her progress. Now I'm doing it all over again with Sprout. The difference is that Sprout is on the accelerated plan. I can't stress enough how important taking the time to build a solid foundation is in agility training. This dog is exceptional. He has lots of drive and learns everything so quickly. 

Sprout demonstrating that he has *a little bit* of drive

This is a demonstration of what an eager worker he is. Here he is before I got into position for some one-jump work and then after I finished the exercise. He is far too eager to begin and certainly isn't ready to quit. Every time I let him out in the yard these days, he's out there taking jumps of his own accord. It's hard to believe that when he came to me just 2 1/2 short months ago, he wasn't even interested in passing between a set of jump standards with no bar set. 

I decided I might as well teach Sprout to weave. 
He went from this first introduction to a single set of 2x2s:

To 6 poles:

To 12 poles:

All in exactly 2 weeks. (See my back-to-back posts on weave training for a step-by-step account of the training method used to accomplish this).
And here he is working serpentines for the first time and then incorporating them with his newly learned weave skills in a layering exercise:

I'll be starting Sprout's contact training soon. I've already begun working his end behavior on the teeter. (For a more detailed explanation of "The Bang Game", refer to my post on Hokey's teeter training). Soon he'll be ready to start working the teeter as an obstacle.

So that's the report from here. I have Hokey entered in 3 runs at a CPE trial this weekend and then the following Saturday is Ollie's big day - our first nose work trial! I just received the information on the location (they don't send the actual location to you until a week or two before the trial) and the run order. I'm not entirely happy with our position in the run order - last in our group. In order to prep for this, I've been putting a few hides out in the morning and letting them sit all day. Then, when I get home from work, I immediately put Ollie in his harness and have him search. So far, so good. He's a little slower at the elevated hides that have been out all day, so we'll continue to work at building his speed. I've had a couple of odor swabs cooking in a box for the past 2 days. He's lightning fast at finding that, so I'm encouraged for the container search part of the trial. I think his weakest element is interior searching, so we'll be working hard on that one for the next week. Poppy's  nose work trial is at the end of October. Wish us luck! I'll be writing about our experience soon. 

The nose work dogs resting up for their big trial debuts

 

"What I did this summer..."

If you've been beggin' for a new blog post, here it is! I feel like I'm sitting down to write one of those back-to-school essays on What I Did This Summer. Did you know that having 4 dogs and training 2 each in different sports keeps you pretty busy? So busy that it can be hard to find the time to sit down and write a blog entry?

Summer - time to relax

Although summer has been "slow" in the sense that I haven't entered any events, I sure have been keeping busy. I'm gearing up for a busy fall season starting this coming Monday when Hokey makes her return to the agility ring for the first time since her debut in May. I expect we'll have some "stuff" to work through. Namely, her distractability when it comes to ring crew. I mostly train on my own and one of the downsides to that is that Hokey only rarely gets exposure to working in an environment where there are other people and dogs. She is a social butterfly with people and, because of her deafness, if she locks onto someone and wants to visit, I can't call her off if she's not looking at me. I dropped into group class with her last week to see where we are with her visiting issue so I can be prepared when we do some

trialing this fall. I asked people to sit in the ring while she ran in order to simulate a trial environment with ring crew. She did do some visiting, but it was very brief and she came right back and worked. In fact, she was pretty much on fire and focused *most* of the time. So, we have a little something to work through, but the only way to do that is to get out there among the people and try to run our hearts out.


These are a couple of months old - we're doing a full height frame now and generally not using "crutches" on the contact equipment - but here we are doing some training back in June. The first video shows Hokey doing a frame-flip-tunnel for the first time and then running some sequences:

And here we are working on her running dogwalk into the weaves:

Ollie and Poppy have been busy gearing up for their first nose work trials. Yes, that's plural; trial with an "s". Since at a nosework trial, the hides remain in the same location for all the dogs entered, a handler can only work one dog per trial. I've been waiting around for a trial to come along since they both passed their ORT in early March. Nothing cropped up around here until recently - two nose work trials, one at the end of September and one at the end of October. It was the luck of the draw, literally, that I was fortunate enough to get both dogs into those 2 trials. The entry for both trials was random draw. Ollie was selected for the one in September and I know the

waitlist (those who were picked in the random draw AFTER the ~35 spots available were filled) was at least 27 dogs long since that's where a friend of mine ended up. I'm not sure how long the waitlist was for the trial that Poppy got into in October other than a vague email statement saying "there is a long waitlist". So luck was definitely with me. I still have no explanation as to why my numbers didn't come up in the big PowerBall lottery at that time. I mean, I was on a roll!

I've been working on a TON of foundation training with Sprout. He's like working with Hokey x10. Months of the kind of foundation training I did with her have been compressed into weeks. Not because I'm trying to rush him, but because he learns crazy quick!

Playing the Mountain Climbing Game on the Frame

An example - I've brought him along to the building where I train Hokey twice now. By the 2nd time, he'd already mastered an automatic down on the table through pure shaping. I don't even have that with Hokey yet! (To be fair, being that she is deep-chested, has no fur, and not an ounce of fat on her body, so can be a somewhat reluctant about going into the down position on a hard surface because it is a bit uncomfortable for her). I'm thinking of starting his weave training soon just to give him something new and exciting to learn while we continue to work on building his foundation. I won't be doing a lot of separate posts on foundation training topics as Sprout progresses because I feel like I've just recently "been there, done that" with Hokey. Here are a few videos taken at different points during the last few weeks though. I can't believe this dog has been with me for less than two months!

Learning "back"/rear end awareness:

Playing with the tunnel:

Some Basic 2 jump/tunnel Handling:

Front-cross box work:

Pinwheel foundation training:

More pinwheels - only the 2nd time working them, 2 weeks after the pinwheel foundation session:

We'll be checking in with reports from our agility and nose work road adventures, as well as Sprout's training progress. Hoping I won't feel pulled in too many different directions!

Look What Sprouted...

Who is this???

I feel terrible for neglecting this blog for the past month and a half, but life has really gotten busy. I've been working overtime hours at my job and the dogs, including a foster and now a new guy (more about that in a minute), have been keeping me very preoccupied.

Catching up with the gang:

Hokey's training is going well. Her contact training is now in the polishing stages and we're running full courses using all obstacles at full height. I've taken her to a couple of workshops just to get her out and working in some new places. I really love running her! I've not entered her in any more trials since sticking our toes in the water Memorial Day weekend and probably won't bring her out again until fall. Summertime is just too hot. I haven't given trialing too much thought. I'm disappointed that we still don't have an answer on jump height changes from USDAA as was expected the first week of July. I'm reluctant to enter her in any USDAA trials until I know what's going to happen. I may just stick with CPE or perhaps give UKI a try, until there is an answer. I did join the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America and sent in paperwork to have Hokey "recorded". I am planning to do agility with her at their Nationals in October.

I found a way to be able to keep doing a little bit of agility with Poppy! A friend of mine has her own little home-grown agility venue called Super Sport Agility. She holds tiny trials that are run very differently than trials in other venues; nested courses are set up once for the entire day; they account for for 3 different classes and several different levels. Up to 4 dogs per hour can come and run the courses and then the results are tallied up at the end of the day. The teeter is not really used, the other contacts are lower and you can choose to jump your dog at whatever height you want to jump them at; classes are only placed according to level and jump height is not factored into it.  It's PERFECT for Poppy because it is low stress on her both mentally and physically. Everyone has to start at the beginner level. I gave it a whirl in June with no expectations considering we don't really practice and she hasn't done any "real" agility for more than 6 months. Not only did she Q in all 6 runs for a "perfect weekend", placing 1st in 4 of them, she finished the two beginner titles AND was High in Trial dog. I'm so glad I've found a way for her to be able to do a little agility and be successful.

Poppy with her loot from the June SSA trial

Poppy and Ollie continue their training in nose work. There have not been any trials in this area, but there are a couple coming up in the fall. The first one will be at the end of September in Gettysburg. The entry period for that one occurred last week. Even though I am only allowed to handle one dog per trial, I threw both dogs into the pool for the draw in the hopes that at least one of them would be picked. Given that there haven't been any trials in the area, but there have been several ORTs, I figured the number of teams vying for the 38 spots would be large. I'm happy to report that Ollie was selected! Poppy ended up #8 on the waitlist, but since Ollie got in, I told them to remove her. Unfortunately my classmates ended up #23 and #25 on the waitlist which was a bummer. I was really looking forward to doing our first trial together. The next trial in the area will be in October and the draw period for that will be next month. I'll only be throwing Poppy into the pool for that one. Crossing my fingers she'll get in.

Adventures in Fostering:

My cutie pie foster, Clark

It's been a little over a year since my "failed" attempt at fostering brought Hokey into my life permanently. I decided I'd give it another go. This time I succeeded! Clark was brought up by MAJR, along with 4 other dogs, from a bad hoarding situation in rural VA. Here is a picture of just some of the hoard. That is Clark in the front leaning up against the fence with another dog's paw on his back.

Really, you wouldn't know he came from such a terrible situation. He fit into my house like he lived here all his life. And, stranger still, my dogs ALL loved him! He and Poppy became BFFs. Hokey picked on him endlessly, but he just let her and they enjoyed chasing each other around the house and yard. Even Ollie liked him!

The Odd Couple

Astounding rare Hokey behavior

Two Bros Bonding

Here are Clark and Poppy acting like complete hooligans until Hokey finally says "enough"!

He was great fun and we all loved having him here, but I knew his permanent place was elsewhere. After 3 1/2 weeks in my home, he found his permanent family via a mutual friend. They love him to pieces and he will be treated like royalty for the rest of his life. The picture on the right was sent to me by his new family about a week after he left. Looks like he's settling in just great. Talk about a Cinderella story complete with storybook happy ending.




The BIG News

So, that brings me to the latest and greatest news - there is a new canine member of the family! After Clark left, I decided I wanted to foster again right away. Meanwhile, I've not-very-seriously-at-all been thinking about adding another male to the household. The week Clark got adopted is actually one of, if not THE, busiest times for intake at animal shelters across the country. ACCT in Philly had 900 (!!!) animals come in through their doors over the period of one week. The influx was so large, it made the TV news. Since the shelter only has space for 600 animals, you can only image the heartbreaking decisions that were having to be made by the shelter staff. MAJR pulled 3 jack russells: two that had been owner turn in from the same person and one that had come in as a stray. The one that came in as a stray had no clue that the shelter was a scary place and that, without rescue, his demise was imminent. To him, life at the shelter was one big party and everyone there was a great friend. He quickly became a staff favorite due to his attitude. After hearing his personality described to me by the MAJR person, Ardis, who evaluated and later pulled him, I requested him as my next foster dog. He was with Ardis for a day and a half. She fell in love with him and nearly kept him herself. I took him knowing ahead of time that I might be interested in adopting him.

It turns out he is 100 kinds of awesome and is here to stay. I named him Sprout. He is 8 1/2 lbs of busy, happy, joy. He LOVES to play with toys! He loves to snuggle. He's smart as a whip, responsive, and so eager to please. I think he may be the easiest dog I've ever worked with. And I had promised myself my next dog would be "easier" for a change. Here he is learning down for the first time; he definitely didn't know it beforehand. This is less than 5 minutes after I trained it by luring and clicking. He got that in probably just over a minute, so I decided to go ahead and just put in on command. It's already 10x faster than Hokey's down.

And here we are playing with my "baby" tunnel. He's learning it's all part of the fun and games. 

So far, two of my 3 dogs like him. Poppy is ecstatic to have another playmate that will endlessly wrestle, play bitey face, and tug with her. And Ollie is always grateful to have a dog in the house that diverts unwanted canine attention from him. Hokey is the sole holdout and was my only hesitation in deciding to adopt him. She loved Clark. I think it was because Clark was a little wus and let her boss him around and bully him endlessly. She would hump him and bark at him to the point that I was nearly being driven mad. This picture shows her groveling after getting in trouble (the shakey no-no finger came out with a vengeance) for ceaselessly humping and barking at him. Although I'm sure she was back at it less than 5 minutes later.

This next picture shows Hokey being a scary crankasaurus because Poppy and Sprout are playing nearby. Unfortunately I've seen this face and the "I'm shooting lasers from my eyes while I act all sullen and sulky" look all too often in the past week since Sprout came to stay here. I'm pretty sure it's because he let her know almost immediately that he wasn't going to put up with her bullying crap the way Clark did. He HAS learned to give her respect and keep his distance, so hopefully that will help to ameliorate things. Every so often the bee in her bonnet will fly away and she'll actually play with him and have a good time despite herself, so I'm hoping she'll get over herself soon.

But I'm such a cute princess

I sure am looking forward to working with this new little guy. He is already such a joy!

The expanded family

Celebration!

One year ago this weekend, I agreed to take in a deaf Jack Russell as a foster. At first it was only supposed to be temporary - through the holiday weekend. Then it turned into something more long term. Finally, it became permanent. The little diva was here to stay.

Hokey - one year ago

Even then, she was a little cheeky

Hokey one year later - isn't she gorgeous?

To tell the truth, at the beginning of this month, I began to have doubts about where her agility training was going. Suddenly, she seemed not to have much interest in working for me. I began to ponder what I'd done to "ruin" her interest and also wondered if she might be hurting somewhere. As time went on, things got worse and she didn't seem to show a lot of interest in doing much of anything at all. I noticed her stomach was upset nearly every day; she had more interest in eating grass than doing her business every time I let her out in the yard and I found myself giving her pepcid on a nearly daily basis to settle her stomach. But she also seemed lethargic. Then I noticed her nose was running a bit and she seemed to be sneezing even more than usual. She's a sneezer to begin with, so I hadn't  paid much attention at first, but when combined with her other symptoms, I started to suspect spring allergies were afoot. There was a suspicion that she may have been exhibiting allergies when she came to live with me last year. My vet gave me a dosage for OTC allergy meds and Hokey seemed to respond, but it was hard to say for sure whether it was a response to the meds or just something running its course. Given that her symptoms were a milder version of last year, I decided to put her back on the allergy meds to see if they had any effect. I am happy to report that they worked their magic and within a few days she was completely back to her normal terrier self. I was so relieved that her behavior wasn't related to agility training.

Hokey modelling her new harness

Now that the weather is warmer, I'm spending a lot more time on cross-training. This involves playing little games in the backyard which may or may not include some agility elements, trick training, doing exercises for strength and flexibility, and going for lots and lots of walks. She LOVES to go for walks!

Here is an example of one of the little games I made up to play with her using a cheap plastic small patio table:

And here is Hokey showing off one of her newest tricks:

But best of all, I decided to enter her in her first agility trial. While I don't feel like she is quite ready for prime time and I'm still working on getting her contacts trained to where I would like them, I figured a couple of CPE runs at level 1 at a location that we had just been for some training the previous weekend would be a good way to dip our toes into the water, see what we need to work on, and celebrate our first year together. I chose to enter Hokey in jumpers and full house because a) they were scheduled back-to-back first thing in the morning b) I don't have to worry about contact obstacles in jumpers and c) full house is a make-your-own-course point accumulation game so I likely wouldn't have to do contact obstacles and even if I did, I feel like I can probably get a passable A-frame or dog walk out of her at this point (I did end up throwing in one of those "passable" frames since it was kind of on the way to the table that, in that game, stops the clock). I am happy to report that she Q'd and blued in both runs AND because those two level 1 classes are paired, she also finished her first agility title - CL1-F! I couldn't be more proud.

Here is the video of her jumpers run; her first run in a trial ever:

Her full house run didn't go quite as smoothly - she discovered the ring crew and decided to pay a visit both between the 2nd and 3rd obstacle and then again at the end as the buzzer went off and when I needed to get her to the table. However, in both cases I was able to get her back on task and was able to run the entire course I'd mapped out for her and then get her to the table, so it worked out fine. Just something to work on with my social butterfly.  

Hokey's first agility ribbons

Considering that one year ago this weekend, she was slated to be euthanized for being "unadoptable" due to her deafness, we have an awful lot to celebrate!

Gimme a "T"

 

T is for tunnel.

Several months ago I wrote about how, due to her deafness, Hokey was really struggling with reading rear crosses when heading into a tunnel. She would lock onto the tunnel entrance and "tunnel vision" would take over; my motion would become irrelevant. Once inside the tunnel, our visual contact would be broken and since she does not have the ability to pick up auditory clues, she would have no idea where I was and would repeatedly end up turning in the incorrect direction when exiting the tunnel. 

Since then, Hokey has become more experienced with the information being given to her through my handling. I've also worked on getting her to look for me as she exits the tunnel. Last weekend I took her to a little group training session/informal class at a place we've never been and one of the compliments I received on her training is that she was looking for me at the exit of the tunnel to tell her where to go next. I was curious to see how far she'd actually come in the past few months, so a couple of days ago I set up an exercise with a jump on either side of a slightly curved tunnel in order to see how well she could predict which way to turn as she exited the tunnel. I kept it simple at first.

Then I mixed it up just a little bit in order to see if she could still follow the information I was giving her regarding which direction to turn when exiting the tunnel.

 

  

I was still curious if Hokey's ability to read a rear cross on a straight tunnel (i.e. "puppy cannon") had improved, so I set that up today. It still needs some work. We did have a few instances of "missed communication". I noticed these were more apt to happen during a more straight on approach to the tunnel then if we had a more angled approach.

But overall, she is making progress. Months ago, she almost never turned the correct way out of a straight tunnel when I executed a rear cross. Even repeating it several times didn't seem to clue her in. Now her "hits" definitely exceed her misses. Here she is turning the correct way several times.

I finished off with the big exam - an exercise that mixed things up between rear crosses and non-rear crosses. She did excellent!

T is for Teeter
In my last blog post, I explained the process I was using to train the teeter, but didn't have any video clips to demonstrate. I've rectified that.

We play two different teeter games. The first is the "bang game" where I line Hokey up parallel with the slightly elevated end of the teeter and have her hop on. This teaches her how to use her body to push the end down and stay balanced. It also teaches her the 4-on end behavior I'll be looking for. We work on her staying in position until I release her. In most dogs, the "bang game" also helps to acclimate them to the noise the teeter makes when it hits the ground, but since Hokey is deaf, maybe calling it the "push it down" game would be more appropriate.

Next, I work on getting her to run across a low teeter, encouraging speed, but also getting her to stick her 4-on end behavior no matter what my motion is until I release her. In previous weeks, I had someone else restrain and release her. This past week I restrained her then raced her to the end where she would stop, but I would keep going. Here she is on a very low set teeter.

And then one set a little higher:

It appears she has a pretty good grasp of the end behavior criteria because the one time she overshot and came off the end, she tried to fix herself without any prompting on my part.

And here is Hokey running a little mini-course that incorporates all of the contact obstacles. Her A-Frame and teeter are coming along nicely. I haven't spent much time training the dog walk yet, so we still need to tackle that more seriously.

T is for Table that needs to be Trained
I also need to spend some time training the "down on the table" behavior in the hopes of getting a faster down and better duration. The table is often considered a bit of a no-brainer obstacle that doesn't need much training time compared to other obstacles, but when you have a dog that doesn't like to go into the down position in the first place, it's something that requires some dedicated training time. Out of all the many things I've trained this dog to do over the past several months, I would have to say that "down" was the thing I struggled with the most. Even now, she displays some resistance to going into the down position and has a tendency to slightly rise back up with her elbows hovering just above the ground - you can see both of these habits on display in the above video. She loves jumping on the table itself. But going and staying down? That's another matter. I've tried to find ways of making "down" into a fun and highly rewarding game for her, but so far I've struck out.

So that's my Terrific Testimony on Training Three T obsTacles.