Boy Beasties in the Yard

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday plus workin’ on the dig

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Training and Agility Thoughts

SUMMARY: What to do, what to do.

Periodically I get these wild ideas, like, “I should actually train Chip some useful things,” or “I’d like to start teaching Chip to do agility,” or “How about if I get me and Boost back into shape to actually do agility ourselves,” or “I think I’ll sell everything I own including the house, retire, buy a camper van, and drive around the country for 20 years,” or “I think I’ll take a nap.”

[Oh crud–as I’m typing this, hearing some fireworks outside somewhere in the distance. Poor Chip is working hard on stressing out again.]

Anyway, I somehow found a reserve of enthusiasm and energy on New Year’s Day and worked on tugging with Chip. I want him to latch on and not let go until told to. I introduced him to the Milker Toy in the yard and he seemed to like it. (The rubber milking attachment from a milking machine. Softer rubber, flexible, easy to grip for them and me.) I’ve worked with him all along for what *I* want, which is that if I touch his face or body, he should just keep going. He’s having to overcome either a natural let-go reaction to that or else good training for his first 3 years of life in a family with a young boy.

I also dinked around a bit with getting him to go between two weave poles, but all that training (tugging and weave poles) made him stress out quickly.

So far to go–and then I was pooped and had to sit for a while, plus hard on my damaged back.

Still, for a good 15 minutes or so, we trained and played, trained and played.

But still not sure whether I’m going to do agility. This last week at the park, I thought I’d try jogging a bit to see what running felt like, and it scares me about putting that jarring and up-down compression on my spine. So dunno.

However, have committed to attend one agility trial in January and one in February, just to work and probably take photos. Not entering Boost. But one is out of town, so will take the dogs anyway.

We’ll see where this all leads in the new year.

Chip Trial Day 5 – morning

SUMMARY: Things are going well

Letter to Owner who’s asking about him (I love it when my emails can turn into blog posts: Double duty!)

Everything’s going very well. He’s really a very good dog. He and Boost have played/wrestled together at least once every day, and Tika tolerates him. In my experience, it actually takes a few weeks before all the dogs in the household have settled into their normal personalities and routines, and things look like they’re going very nicely in the right direction.

He’s paying more and more attention to me, accepting that I’m here and in charge :-). He’s not done any marking in the house (that I’ve seen, anyway, but I think the other dogs would point it out); he’s eating happily; I’ve seen no recurrence of that one time when you were here and he put his paws up on the stove to check it out.

You’ve done a very nice job with him, really. He’s sweet and is doing his best to be friends with all the other dogs. Personality and attitude are the most important things, followed by basic good behavior; training details are so easy to add when the other things are in place.

I’ve arranged for a crate for him to travel in with me this weekend. We’ll probably be sleeping in a hotel unless it gets a lot warmer, in which case we might sleep in my van at the trial site (agility competition); this is how I’ve always done it with all my dogs, and I see that he’s often taking his cues from my dogs, which is very helpful, so I expect that he’ll settle down well at night and hopefully get a chance to run around with some other dogs this weekend.

I thank you for letting me have the chance to have him here, and I’d be glad to keep him. Let me know what you’re thinking long-term. If he does stay here, you know of course that you and your son are welcome to come see him or take him out for a run or a weekend visit any time; he would love that.

-ellen

Back to training notes. What we worked on this morning:

Fetch

Well, not yet making a concerted effort on bringing toys back. Taking it easy and trying the coaxing thing. Sometimes it works, but not from most of the way across the yard. He’ll come to me but leave the toy behind.

Toy Play

We continue to play tug, practice “Give,” give it back to him, play tug, etc. He likes tug but is still a little timid with me, I think. He has no problem with me pressing my thumb into his mouth to get him to let go when he doesn’t do it immediately.

“Down”

I’m starting over with this command. First is to get him to go directly to down from a standing position. I’m doing this as Rachel Sanders taught. Hold some really good treats in my fist, fingers down, on the ground between his front feet. Eventually the dog drops to same position as a play bow, and then because that’s not completely comfortable, the butt goes down.

I’ve modified that a bit, after almost 5 minutes where he continually licked my fist (hot dogs, yum!) but didn’t go down. Added my short braided leather training leash to his collar and stepped on it so that his head was held partway down to put a little pressure on him. That got him to lower his front end even though it still took a couple of minutes–at least he didn’t give up trying to get the hot dogs, so I think those are a winner; I gave a big jackpot and praise and let him up. Repeated, and he was a bit faster going down in the front. But his butt stayed in the air, so the 3rd time I just pressed lightly on his lower back after a minute or so, and down he went. The next time, pretty fast front end down but after a bit I touched his butt lightly again. The next time, he went down fairly quickly on his own, first front, then back. Final jackpot and crazy praise and that was enough of that for this morning!

I suppose if I’d had more patience that eventually he’d have gone down completely on his own, but I think that he’s still essentially making the decision himself, which is what I want: “Oh, this is a good thing for me to do, how clever of me to have figured out how to get hot dogs!”

We’ll do that until he’s doing it reliably and much faster (I hope–I’d like him to just drop like Boost does rather than settle into it like Tika does), then I’ll add the command as he’s doing it. [It’s important to have a plan in any training, yeh? I don’t always do that. I’m happier when I know where I’m going, makes it easier to get there]

Dog door/crate

The dog door is the key to *my* freedom. He obviously has a lot of experience being in his crate for long hours, but i’d rather not do that if I don’t have to. Yesterday I was gone for a bit under 4 hours. Tossed some treats into his crate before I left, and he hadn’t eaten them when I got him; I’m not sure exactly what that means, but would be better if I could leave him loose like the other dogs.

Owner had said that Chip had gotten out of their yard a couple of times when he was left alone and loose when he was younger, so he didn’t give Chip the chance again. Ideally I’d leave for 15 minutes, then half an hour, etc., to see how things go. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that he’s liking being part of the dog family here and that that will keep him here. He is also microchipped (I hope to Owner’s current phone number), plus I bought a tag for his collar that has my home and cell numbers.

So I started working on training how to use the dog door, rather than waiting for him to figure it out. He has seemed completely disinclined to put his nose on or near the actual flap and seems intimidated by the flap flapping back as the dogs go through. I started by going to the other side of the door, the other dogs came thru the dog door, and I held the flap wide open. It took a lot of coaxing for him to even come near, and if my hand moved at all, he jumped back. We did that about 6 times over the morning before he wouldn’t jump back, but still very cautious approaching the door and going through it. Then I was able to lower it gently onto his backside as he went through so that he’d get used to that feeling.

In total, we’ve done about 14 trips through the dog door and he’s still not showing an inclination to approach it on his own. So it’ll be the crate again today; inconvenient because I want to go north to do an evening hike with Sierra Club after work, but I should come back south to let him out again for a bit.

Hmm.

I wonder whether I can work a deal with my contractor friend (Boost’s breeder, actually) who’s here painting the kitchen and stuff.
Hmmm hmmmm.

Agility Olio

SUMMARY: Friends and families and foods and fun.

Yessss, agility trials are about the agility–

Like switching out of one’s mild-mannered, everyday persona shoes into your secret identity as Super Duper Fleet-Footed Agility Handler Extraordinare shoes.

Like basking in the glory from previous agility incarnations, such as our 2000 USDAA Nationals Grand Prix semifinalist shirt from Jake and I ran in Del Mar.

Like seeing both dogs looking eagerly out at you–can we run NOW, huh can we?

Like seeing both dogs actually really there in the final round of Steeplechase.

And seeing that Tika is guaranteed some Steeplechase actual cash moolah if we don’t go off course. Thanks to everyone else who Ed in the first round or scratched from the second round! Bonus! Boost was seeded 10th going into this round, but ended up placing 6th mostly because we didn’t go off course.

And like taking home some cash when both dogs did well enough in that Steeplechase round.

But it’s also about toys! Tika really loves to tug on these. So do lots of other dogs. There is a lot of tugging in agility. And so there are billions of these lying around everywhere you go with agility people now, and people always seem to pick them up thinking that they’re theirs, so about once a year I need to buy another five Udder Tuggers.

And it’s about food!

And of course it’s all about friends AND all about clothing!

This is Arlene who, when she’s not Super Duper Agility Corgi and Sparkle Handler wearing agility Corgi tie dye, goes to movies with me most nonagility weekends.

This is Kathy and little Millie. Millie wasn’t too sure whether she liked agility for a long time, but she has apparently decided that she does, because she had some really nice fast runs this weekend. Millie is five. Most people in agility except me wear shorts when the weather is nice.

This is Mike and Trane. Trane, like many agility dogs, loves to tug, and the leash makes a convenient toy. Mike has many pieces of clothing and baseball caps that say “Trane” or “Nothing Stops A Trane.” Mike and his wife raise sheep. His wife spins and dyes yarn (and sells it), weaves and knits and all kinds of clever things like that (and sells the results). Mike is a good spouse and demonstrates the very entertaining hat that his wife made, even though it is quite sweaty under there on a warm day. He thinks maybe November would be a better time to demonstrate it. Maybe his wife should knit one that says “Trane”.

And then, of course, agility is all about family!

This is Boost’s littermate Bette and “Auntie Mary,” who calls Boost “Boostie.” Bette is very fast and very accurate. Mary also teaches agility classes and is fast and accurate, too. Bette is her third agility dog–her first was a Golden Retriever who was not too fast but did good anyway. Her second was the super-reliable Skeeter, an Australian Cattle Dog, who was one of Tika’s teammates the year that we made it to the USDAA Nationals Team Finals. We were all very excited.

This is Boost’s littermate Beck. She is not blue merle like so many of their relatives are. But she loves to do agility and to get up close to see that silly human who is making silly noises at her.

This is Donna with Boost’s younger half sister Quas. Quas is the sweetest, gentlest, most loving dog you could imagine. And unlike most border collies, she actually brings any toy that you throw ALL the way back to you instead of dropping it ten feet out and assuming that since you’ve got two legs, you’re capable of walking to it. Donna is a score table wonk like me and also show secretary extraordinaire. There’s a lot of extraordinaireness in agility. There is also a lot of tugging on leashes.

This is Boost’s half brother and Quas’ littermate, Rowdy. Rowdy jumps 26″, while Boost and most of Boost’s relatives jump 22″. Rowdy had an amazing weekend this weekend–he won 9 out of the 11 classes and, alas, placed only 2nd in another one. His person, Cheri, was understandably pretty happy.

There is also leash tugging among dogs who place first in 9 out of 11 classes.

This is Roulette, who is sister/littermate to Quas and Rowdy. She’s also a fabulous little agility girl, and blue merle, and has that half blue, half brown eye similar to Boost’s. She certainly has Boost’s ears, AND she wears exactly the same style of blue-leopard-print slip lead that Boost does when going to the start line to run agility. Because it’s just perfect for a spotty blue merle dog.

I somehow never got a photo of Quas’ and Rowdy’s and Roulette’s littermate Quik, who is Boost’s half brother and who was also there and who is also pretty darned fast and talented. His handler is the one who was Mary’s and my third teammate, with Brenn, when we were in the Team Finals.

This is Kiwi, who is Boost’s older half sister. Kiwi is one of those blazingly fast dogs whose run you’ll miss if you glance away for even a second. Kiwi’s handler is the wife of Beck’s handler. Lots of family there. Kiwi is also black and white and has those special pointy ears. And she has a red tug toy that if stupid human would pay more attention would understand that toy want tugging NOW! Because agility is all about tugging! (And Carol in the background has amusement.)

This is Ruthie, who is the daughter of Smarty Joanz who is, OK, older half-sister to Boost and littermate to Kiwi. So I guess she’s a half-niece? Ruthie is very young, just starting agility, but like so many of Boost’s relatives, is a blue merle with heterochromic eyes. She wishes that stupid camera would get out of her way so she can see where her Human Dad is out there on the agility course. She runs with the same man who runs Beck and who is married to the woman who runs Kiwi. Yes, LOTS of family here this weekend.

There were also some other people there with dogs who were not related to Boost in some way. At least, I think so.