Pupdate! Finally!

I feel like I've woefully neglected The Pup lately. At least in writing.

Contrary to what it may appear recently, The Pup has not dropped off into training oblivion.


I will admit though, I stopped going to class with her. Yes, it was supposed to be a goal. But I think I can breach the written contract with myself on account of how annoyed I was getting. It turned out to be completely unproductive. For starters, she either screamed when it wasn't her turn (annnnooooooying!) or sat and resource-guarded the daylights out of her treats and Marvin. That's annoying AND a really bad behavior. Also there happened to be a dog the she Had It In For. He went for her the first night they were in class together and targeted her as a Dog Of Interest. She doesn't take kindly to that sort of stalking and turn southie on him really quickly, constantly on the offense surveying for him. Again, I really don't want to give her opportunities for bad behaviors- plus the last thing she needs is another reason to check out what's running in other rings.

Which has been our biggest issue to date. Hola, Senor Prey Drive. I don't think it's pure herding instinct. You can see her licking her chops and feel the urge to kill rising. Well...not really. She just goes to say hi...And maybe chest bump a little... And steal a toy if they have one. But that is it!

That's plenty to be a problem though. When we train alone, she is a magical swirl of lovely brainpower. The process of introducing other dogs has been a slow one. Issue one is that she is a determined little sucker. If she wants to get through a barrier, she will. Issue two is that she has super OOO SHINY right now. Channeling the magic swirls is much harder with distraction.

But coming full circle, we HAVE been working on it. It being Focus. FOCUS. She gets two training nights basically dedicated to her now. And in just four weeks she went from being able to do only attention work next to a class being run (ON LEASH!) to actually running at the same time!!! Off leash! Sequences! AND (I'm super proud of this) I can leave her in an off-leash down while I WALK A COURSE and SET BARS! As the other dogs RUN!! Hallelujah.

When we do get to run in these situations, it's a blast. Since we went to the Sklenar seminar, I've really put a lot into teaching her extension and not worrying over collection. She can collect on a dime. (Funny- while she almost never responds to her name in life, in agility she actually attends to me when I call her! Excellent power of call-off. Yet powerless to redirect her from eating my plants or raiding the socks.) The extension has required some coaxing though- but now she loves to RUN! She is even starting to get confidence to run ahead. I was so pleased when she went off course on a straight line for the first time.nWe have something to try and handle now! Woo!

Her obstacle work is pretty solid. We need more work on the dogwalk and getting more extension from her without Marvin. She still hasn't thought of leaping yet, but I know she can run it in five strides consistently. She wavers between five and six on a given day. Other than that, more confidence building on the weaves. They are 100% faster than a month ago, but she still has to think- not yet able to rely on muscle memory.

She loves tunnels now. Mission accomplished. And then some. Yay?
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In life, she continues to mature.

I swear.

Just because spent last night playing Monster Under the Bed, batting at me and The Dog when we go by (yes, like a cat would play) doesn't mean she isn't maturing. She just has a lot of fun in her. I doubt that will ever go away. I sure would miss it if she grew out of inventing the cute little games she plays to pass the time.

Plus, she is pretty fun to mess with. She has this... Thing... For wind up toys. They make her insane. And I enjoy watching this for my own amusement. (Reason #1,637,737 I don't have kids- this would get reported to Social Services but dog people understand that BS offspring are already mentally unstable- not my fault!)

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I do love the little weirdo. Can't imagine life without the tiny ball that somehow hogs the entire bed every night, and puts her feet gently on my face when she stretches in the morning. Just making sure I know she is there.

Pupdate 10.0!

My baby is ten months old. 

It’s not as bad as nine months.

Ten months sort of seems more like a ‘fun age.’  The age I’ve been waiting for.

You see, for a small-medium puppy, ten months means that the fun can REALLY start. I think it’s safe to say she’s done growing so now we can get to work on the last few elements of training.

Like…

Weave poles!!!

So I know I initially said I wanted to train channels, no wires.  But I hit a wall where I wasn’t able to crank them any tighter because of her age. And now that she’s old enough, its basically winter and there is no place to work channels every day.  And believe me, I don’t want to wait until spring to start the long process of teaching channels.  Magic solution?

2x2s!!!

I was very… thbbbbtttt about the thought of teaching this method.  But knowing what I know now about The Pup’s food-drive, and that she prefers challenges and shaping to repetitive muscle memory tasks it seems that 2x2s are the best method for her. 

I decided to go with MEB’s method of 2x2s, a slight derivation of Susan Garrett’s.  You can see MEB’s method here.   The main differences that I see are that the poles are always in line (not opened up for an easier approach) and that it’s less um… particular. There are some dos and don’ts but it made more sense to me and less like a ticking time bomb of failure if you didn’t do EVERYTHING exactly as prescribed.

So we started last night and boy, do I like being right. The Pup was much more into it than she ever was with the channels.  She caught on right away and after we raised the bar from ‘any offered pole passing behavior gets the cookie’ to ‘correct entry only’ she never offered anything but criteria.  She was even an angel about running back without back weaving.  But the best part was how fun it was for both of us.

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So that’s it, that’s the last element to her obstacle training. 

However, now we go back and start filling in the outlines.  For the progress record (that was the basic point to the blog, so sorry if lists are not the most gripping text I could share):

Tunnels:  Good drive to and from (better from).  Needs some work on committing; she will turn back in an ‘are you sure’ manner if there is a cross before. 

Chute:  If Marvin awaits her at the exits, awesome. No Marvin…eh…  sometimes she forgets that she must burrow through.  Work in progress.  Probably the weakest obstacle now.

Tire: Awesome!  Really good about going through the circle, hasn’t discovered going under or around (jinx?).  Will seek the tire from any angle.

Table: Also awesome! Very nice auto drop and will stay for a 5 count.  I can move around, run past and send, but I can’t circle her yet.  She likes to follow me around (though at least tries to remain down then?).

Jumps:  Nice at 12”, working on 14”.  Not ready for anything more yet.  Solid on lines, angles and pinwheels, pretty good sends and commitment, NICE wraps and post turns. Backside annoys her.  I plan on doing a lot more one jump work this winter to start putting commands to the maneuvers and keep her motivation up for jumping in general (though it’s been really building on its own funnily enough. Hmm.)

Teeter: Love her performance now.  Drives through the tip and has a true understanding of the 4 on.  She will stick it if I run past or cross or drop all the treats everywhere (oops).  Sends to it very well.  Might be her favorite thing, close call between teeter and table.

Aframe:  She’s still working out how she’s doing this.  I have Marvin out for most reps still; when he is there she thinks less about what she’s doing, in a good way. She doesn’t do scary boingings over the apex anymore with him there either so, phew!  Without him she has the tendency to rock back much more and take more small steps. Not bad, but not running like she can. 

Dogwalk:  PERFECT with Marvin.  Fast and good extension.  She needs more exposure to different dogwalks at this point, finding entry from angles, and continual work on fading Marvin.  When it’s dogwalk into a tunnel I get a pretty close performance to Marvin, but to nothing I can beat her. She has still yet to leap though.  That makes me happpeeeee.

Hmmm, if I forgot anything, someone had better tell me!

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As for what it’s like to run now… mmmm… better than cupcakes.  She figured out quite recently that there is no “I” in “Team” and it feels like we are working together now.  Her agility switch is officially on. 

Like I mentioned, I started her this week in classes. She was a star!! Quite loud and obnoxious, as promised, while waiting to go but focused and brilliant for her turns.   I admit, when we first started doing obstacle work and handling groundwork I really didn’t see how she was going to end up with the running speed and style I wanted.  But now… my baby is fast! AND smart!  

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And in life…well, she’s grown up there too.  I’d never thought I’d say this, but she can sleep out now!!  All of a sudden, she turned into bedtime snuggle pusher.  As soon as I am in bed, she’s there squishing up in a little Pup ball next to me.  And there she sleeps, the whole night. 

Still a holy terror during waking hours though.  Some things never change. Why o why did I teach a dog to be so explorative?  No cupboard is safe. 

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That’s it! Ten months, in a nutshell (though it’s a big huge hazelnut shell I guess). 

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Because you can’t post without mentioning The Dog, here is The Dog in her new PINK Thundershirt. No, not scared of thunder, just anxious about life.  What can I say? The Dog needs a big pink hug. 

Pupdate!

In two weeks, The Pup will be 9 months old!  9 MONTHS!

¾ of a year!

(Right? Can someone please proof the math for me?)

Anyways, the poor little mutt has been lurking in the shadows as an outlier in Blog Land recently, so I thought I’d give her some focal print time.  

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The BIG news (and you’re going to soon see that not much has been going on here recently) is that she has finally given herself over to her desires. (No, she’s NOT knocked up… but there are a few handsome BC boys out there she’d be HAPPY to propagate the species with…) 

You see, whenever a hose comes out, she tries to behave like a proper dog and run away, or act all affronted if she should get sprayed.  She’s been known to scream bloody murder at the slightest trickle touching her delicate toes (although that might just be because she enjoys screaming bloody murder and does it 100 times a day for funsies).   But I’ve noticed that while she acts annoyed and bothered by the hose, she always gives it these sly, curious looks when she thinks I’m not watching. Lately they’ve turned downright beseeching.   It was SO obvious to me that it was all a front, but she just wouldn’t admit to herself that the one thing she REALLY wanted was to

Get

Wit

That

Hose

Spray

BABY.

Ye-ah.

The other day it finally happened. I was trying to spray the outdoory gunk off the equipment and the dogs were out in the yard with me playing with a toy.  They’d already both made a great appearance of being highly annoyed by the hose’s presence and had gone to ridiculous lengths to avoid the path of the spray. 

Until.

All of a sudden, this little white flash enters my periphery; it slashes in front of me, cutting through the spray mid-air.  I see it stop and spin back and realize that it’s The Pup.  Joy and Rapture are registered on her face. 

It’s a pretty special moment for her, I can tell.  Self-actualization, catharsis, destiny… all rolled into the coils of that hose. 

And. She. Didn’t. Stop. 

I don’t know how much water actually hit the equipment after her moment of weakness because it had to go through her face first.   Oh well.  Clearly it was the highlight of her little life so far. Who am I to deny her? 

And it was adorable.  Video:

 

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On the training front- well, we’ve done little training.   She’s still managed to learn how to scale a fence and how to do a vertical leap onto a table from a stand still.  Good dog?

We did a little practice the other day though- she was pretty awesome and drivey.  I say ‘pretty awesome’ because she had one giant ADHD moment where I ended up punting her five feet. Why? Because the wind kicked up a big leaf and she had to run across my path to chase it.  Sigh.

Other than THAT she was a good girl.  It was the first time working without a fence and she did great with being loose.  We did a bit of contact/tunnel discrimination and I determined that she has none.  She seems to use slats to distinguish the teeter from the dogwalk which was really good information for me (slatless dogwalk equaled perfect ‘4 on’ at the top of the on ramp… then one big look on confusion when she figured out she was still in the air).   We practiced on a ‘new’ teeter and she was phenomenal.  She slid it for the first time in awhile (the last time she did it, it freaked her out a tad) and this time she seemed to think that idea ROCKED because she kept doing it with her ‘yeehaw’ face.

I figured out as well what I need to do to get drive out of turns; despite the cik/cap work we’ve done since she was a fetus she still thinks turns are lame EXCEPT, I now know, when she is rewarded after with a contact. So now we practice our wraps with incentive to drive out to a contact  It’s also helping her with commitment to the jump- no jump, no contact.  HA! Outsmarted you for once, you little minx!

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Oh, hah, one more thing. Since she’s been such a nice girl recently, I decided to see if she would be able to sleep out last night.  I removed everything she could get into and The Dog and I set a good example by getting into bed and not moving. 

Yeah, after ten minutes of her sniffing everything and alternating jumping on my face and barking at The Dog to play we decided she was not QUITE ready.  Maybe in another 9 months we will try that again.