Follow Up: Bitten

OK, sorry for the dual post today.

After the bit on handling in the last post I started thinking about how everything is so complicated with The Dog. 

Really, really complicated.

Even one obstacle takes a nearly insurmountable amount of brain power.

Does anyone else feel this way???

Click Me to Embiggen. 

Bitten

I’ve got a totally well organized theme today, just you wait! (And even mostly regarding dogs!)

Big news first- The Pup is down to just one more Evil Tooth! Joy and rapture. Only one pointy little shark tooth left.   Don’t you worry though, she is still a Velociraptor. The lack of pointy shark teeth doesn’t seem to be cutting down on the amount of chomping and biting she accomplishes in a day (hidden message: that amount is still very large). 

It was quite bizarre though- most of her baby teeth politely excused themselves long before the appearance of her more distinguished grown up teeth.  But not those canines… they just clung on for dear life even though the grown-up teeth started coming in. So for awhile now she has had two rows of teeth…just like a REAL shark.  Very disconcerting to find “Jaws” being reenacted in my living room.    

At any rate, nearly done with the whole irritable, bloody mouth, floppy-tooth thing.  And for the record, I did keep one little tooth. Mostly for science. In case the future is devoid of Border/Staffies and they feel the need to reverse the extinction.  What?? It’s not creepy. Science.

***

In a bizarre twist, The Pup is for once the one that has been bitten.  By a bug. The agility bug!  You can tell when an agility newbie gets bitten (homemade agility equipment in their backyard and forsaking their children’s school events for an agility trial). Likewise, there are little ways to tell when your newbie puppy is bitten too.  For me, I look for pushy! The Pup is officially pushy.  Now instead of random screaming in her crate while The Dog has her turn, I get a mix of screaming and demanding bark.  When I go to get her out for her turn, she explodes out of the crate and runs to the gate to go in the ring.  If I’m too slow to get going on something, she decides to start tromping over, under and through things on her own.

Pushy.

Last night we had much pushiness and so a very fun practice.  As the Aframe was very low and she was running up and down it anyways I decided to introduce her to it properly.  I set the target out and kept her on leash.  (Not sure it was necessary, but better safe than sorry with a broken leg from catapulting off the top.)  She did very well! She is very good about looking for THINGS to do, so she very rarely curls into me inappropriately. Makes this sort of thing easy.   I don’t think we will see the Aframe again until after the DW is done, but it was fun to see how she would do.

Speaking of DW, I set up the plank contraption on the baby version. She doesn’t seem to alter her behavior at all if the boards change which is great. Go Go Gadget Generalization!   (Inspector Gadget anyone? No? Am I dating myself?)  It’s sort of hard to tell in the video where she is hitting with her front feet, but she was rolling through with all her feet most reps.  She was also doing this while the class was arriving so very distracting. I was proud of her for keeping as focused as she did and not flubbing from ADD.

The video below shows her cute Aframes and some DW reps.  Also some tunnel fun.  She really doesn’t love it (yet), but she is starting to actually send to it and head in pretty happily.  This was probably the first tunnel she has done that she couldn’t see the exit from the entry, so not too bad.    I do love how she bursts out and looks for me- she clearly assumes it is a wormhole and doesn’t believe that I will exist on the other end yet.

We also did some low teeter (not videoed) and that’s going well.  Great understanding of ‘four on.’ She will run through the tip point, but she hasn’t decided whether or not it is cool to slide.  I’m letting her figure out how to handle that, my only requirements are movement through the tip and four on. She only obsessively boinged on and off the ‘bang’ part two or three times so… progress on that OCD!

Also not on video, but the best part was the ‘jumping’ (4”, if that even counts as a jump)!  We’ve been working start lines (I probably will not use them, but need to be able to step away a least) and they are adorable! She sits very well and is VERY pushy. No scooching, but the whole leaning false start thing- ‘canwegocanwegocanwegoNOW???’ Good momentum off her start.  So we did some of those and also some walking around from jump to jump and seeing if she would seek the obstacle.  And she did!  Started out nice and slow very close to her, treating every jump and by the end of the night we were up to running between and her going to find the jumps independently. Ok, so the jump was only four feet away but still! Good stuff.

It’s exciting to get some flow going, but it does make me think about my handling for her and what our system will be.  It’s a bit daunting, especially since at this point I can’t boil down The Dog’s ‘system’ into an easy one or two key word description.   I don’t know… can anyone else do that? I’m curious.  At one time I had an easy end goal for how I would handle The Dog and it’s developed into something completely different now.  She has SO MANY RULES that it’s basically an awful, complicated ‘if this than that’ flow chart of possibilities for any scenario.  I think at this point with The Pup I can only do what I’m doing and hope I’m not creating another needy monster. (Too late on the monster part though… Oops!)  I am training her with just one goal in mind at this point- obstacle independence.  My hope is that her job is obstacles and mine will be lines.  It would be lovely if she would take what I put in front of her until I put something else in her line.  

Nice and simple.

It’s good to dream!

***

So we have our 4 star this weekend- The Dog was put through every manner of awful I could think of at practice last night and she was a gem about it.  Her DWs were nice again, after a few runs.  I’m determined not to stress about it.  And to take my mind off of it… True Blood marathon this weekend when we aren’t doing agility!! I don’t care if its vampire bite porn, it makes me happy.  Don’t judge me!

(Ok, so did you get the sense of the theme? Subtle, but cohesive! Yay me for good organization!) 

Not Just a Year Older, But a Year Better. (The Dog Turns FOUR Today!)

FOUR??

Didn't she just look like this??

Can that be right?

No, it can't! Can it??

And I thought three was unbelievable last year!

Two was pretty unbelievable too...

So technically we are like the same age now. I think that’s why we get along so well. It helps that we both like watching TV show marathons and drinking cheap wine (when she can steal it out of my glass!).  

Can we watch Farscape now Pleeeze?

She’s still my little girl though.  While she is pretty mature now, she remains the same- a tiny tot of giant, dramatic spirit. At the risk of getting all mushy, I am so very grateful to have her around.  I can celebrate extra on this day since it’s not only her birthday, but also the anniversary of the day she came to be with us forever.  Here’s to many, MANY more years of fun runs, slobbery toys and couch snuggles.  

Dramatic. See?

The birthday spoiling schedule includes a new gigantic filled bone which The Pup is banned from chewing, trip to class to play agility, ice cream after and unlimited access to Orange Ball, the best special toy ever.  Probably The Boyfriend will sneak her many treats that I won’t be aware of, but what’s new there?  

Oh, no, it's too much I couldn't possibly...

Oh, wait I can! NOM.

I do hope The Dog likes agility, because I sure signed her up for a ton of it this week.   When I entered the three-day AKC show, I wasn’t really thinking that it was just (three) days before our much more demanding three-day 4 star USDAA show this coming weekend.  I’m not sure WHAT I was thinking…either that it would be The Best Present for The Dog ever… or that there was a week off in between…somehow. Probably the second guess. Sometimes I don’t do so well temporally.   

IF I had the gift of forethought or basic planning ability I would probably not have entered yesterday. Or skipped the FAST classes the first two days. All I know (now) is that three days of AKC when one has to be there ALL DAY is incredibly draining (apparently).   It really showed in our Q rate this weekend. Quite low for us. I know, I know, I try not to focus on that, just mentioning it as evidence that things were off and I think it was a lot to do with all the sitting around getting sleepy.  Also a problem was that I was REALLY bored by the courses; they did nothing to wake me up.  Out of 6 classes (FAST doesn’t count), we had the same start three times, and a fourth that was so similar it might as well have been the same.  YAWN.  Honestly- exact same first 8 obstacles.   So also probably not too successful since, in order to entertain myself and get invested in the course, I decided to experiment.  Mixed results.   I guess I will call it a learning weekend.  I learned:

*I must have scary challenges or I will make up my own- eek!

*I must NOT have four hours of downtime TWICE a day (only once is surmountable). Five Hour Energy only last Five Hours. (Go figure.)

*My dog jumps BEAUTIFULLY at 20”. WITH Extension.

*She WILL send to a tunnel and bypass jumps now.  Yay for Snookers, bad elsewhere.

*Rear crosses no longer function for any kind of tight turn. 

*In general her collection cue died. Need to work harder on that and getting the cik/cap turns polished for real use. 

Extension in progress...SEE?

So yeah.  Her weaves were pretty variable.  We aren’t sure if the collection (lack of) and weaves were due to bad surface or what. It was pretty slick. But she was running very fast.  Times all over the place because while fast she was wider (not China wide, just standard wide) and her dogwalk really shut down on Sunday/Monday.  We went off course on Sunday because I was so shocked at her dogwalk I did a stupid and got myself in the wrong place.  So yesterday I tried to just let her go and push from behind but for whatever reason she was very sticky- and it started across the top plank which was new.  Have to think about it. Maybe I am putting too much pressure on her?  I’m sure I was pretty turned into her. I’ll have to experiment a bit tonight.  After this show we have very little on the docket for a few months. Maybe that will be good for her. The training to show ratio is off again, so that could have something to do with our issues in general. 

The Boyfriend came to watch yesterday for the first time- luckily he saw the icky dogwalk and now gets that I REALLY need one at home.  He promised to get started on it next weekend. YAY!!! Also I think he had fun watching people run-literally. He is a track guy so critiquing running kept him pretty entertained.  We could do a business venture- he trains the people and I train the puppies! Or not. We’d probably kill each other.  

Anyways. Not sure what to expect next weekend. Hoping for crazy courses.  Hoping to see my Happy Dog again then too. Hoping that there will be NO FOUL WEATHER.  I know better than to expect THAT though. 

Beautiful Birthday Girl!! 

Do I Even Want to Know?

Its one of those things like... if your significant other was cheating on you, would you want to know?

If you had one year to live, would you want to know?

Well, maybe not THAT serious, but you get what I mean.  Those hard questions that make you chose between blissful ignorance and a reality that requires your attention. 

For me, I always say I'd like to know.  Lay it on me; tell me everything. That way- even if it's not good- I have a chance. I can do or not do, but there is a chance.

Even still, today I'm wondering if I'd rather not know.

Yesterday I had The Dog in for an appointment with a very knowledgeable vet in regards to agility  ability.  I had some general concerns regarding her shoulders (that dang ding again!) and wanted an overall evaluation of her performance ability.  She is becoming a far more solid dog in terms of mood and speed predictability but some things still make me wonder- is everything ok? Knowing the type of learner The Dog is, by now we should have steady weaves. There is very little reason her Aframe should vary in performance. Yet both of these obstacles change weekend to weekend. Hmmm.  Put that together with the ding and our recent discovery that she should basically live at a chiropractor and you get: Questions. So to the doctor we went.

Answers are hard. We found that the shoulder ding was healed, but due to overcompensation she was experience some strain and pain in the other shoulder. OK. Acute. Easy enough to rehab away.  The rear end though had some surprising discoveries. I've always known she was a bit tight in her muscle structure, but without a real point of comparison I didn't realize how tight. And how potentially damaging that is.  It all makes sense, and it explains a lot of quirky things she does, but still was surprising to hear. I've always regarded her as a 'good' jumper- but it seems her form is less than ideal for the long haul. While I won't get into a debate on what does or doesn't make for good, safe jumping, I will admit that there is a need to at least build her ability to extend if for no other reason than to lessen the chance for possible injury (which at this point, sounds pretty high).

I won't say I wasn't upset over the results- there was a lot of initial "MY DOG IS BROKEN!!!" but I'm doing better now after speaking to some people who've been there and then some.  I didn't get the impression I have to stop working her (in fact, my homework insists on a lot of retraining) but still felt so guilty running her at the beginning of the day today.  Then it seemed a bit silly. She is careful with her body in agility. I always do my best to control for extraneous variable. She would rather run than not and I'd rather keep going than stop too.  I have, as I said, homework, so there is a plan of action. I've made a choice to do in this case that I feel good about. 

And it seems really, REALLY silly after our second run in particular. She's running well. She had fun. Her jumping isn't as bad as I thought- she can extend some and she certainly isn't slowing down. So I'll take it as yet another skill to train in the name of The Project.

Evidence that she's probably not broken...

But also, evidence that there IS something that needs some fixing.

As far as how today actually went with all this on my mind, she did qualifying in Standard and was in fourth, and qualified in Novice Fast too. I would HOPE that my Silver Gamblers Dog would make it through a tunnel and a jump but YOU NEVER KNOW! Jumpers, the first class, went poorly. The fact that I was worried she- the"ticking time bomb"- would explode led to some passive handling. Combine that with me thinking it was a nice easy course that I could assume her path equaled DOOM. Oh, yeah, also I had recently been training some distance tunnel sends. That equaled extra DOOM. She took off like a shot on the easy start, and completely missed my passive rear crosses, instead ending up focused on the tunnel pulling her far off course TWICE. It was all bad bad bad so I walked us off.  Not mad at her in the slightest- some times it just can't be salvaged. My mindset was wrong from the get go and she was just playing the wrong game (if that was Snookers I'm sure she woulda ROCKED it).  After that I got some input, hit reset and we were good to go.

***
The Pup (who detests second billing) is anything but broken.  (If you don't count her teeth falling out like MAD.) Here's her most recent ST e-course video. 

Her heeling is spectacular. I will never teach heeling another way (bold statement, but I don't know how anything could have better results?). She is progressing on her side 2o2o and pole grabs too. Also a clip of her skateboarding- she prefers to leap onto it and ride it, so I'm making her go slow and actually push along.  The best part is her cik/cap turns. She does know the directionals and is coming along pretty ideally, I've been told. Fun fun fun!


I had an 'official' measurement on her today- 14.75".  The judge of measure thought she was quite likely to stay under 16" at this point. Fingers crossed. So very, very crossed.  For both my girls!

Friendship Bread: Best for Enemies.

So have you heard about this Amish Friendship Bread thing? I hadn't.  But when my so-called friend from work described it, I was intrigued.  

Apparently, it's a chain letter in the form of bread. I know, weird, riiiigggghhht? 

You get a 'starter' compound from a so-called friend from work and then spend 10 days stirring and adding to the starter (which is left on the counter, but there is milk in it??) and then you scoop out some portions which are new starters that you are supposed to give to your friends. You take the rest, add a bunch of things and ta-da! bread. Then your friends start the cycle anew. 

Like I said, I was intrigued. 

I said I would take a starter and give it a go. 

Little did I know, my so-called friend was trying to kill me.  

10 days I spent stirring and adding and not questioning the health implications of 10 day old counter milk. (Really, perhaps the milk bit was the first sign she was trying to kill me...)

On the 10th day, I was to bake my bread. Note the following: Recipe followed exactly. Loaf pans under-filled to allow for baking expansion.  Essentially, ideal set up for the perfect bread. Twenty minutes into cooking, it smelled of heaven. It WAS the perfect bread.

Oh, yeah, until it exploded. 

So there I was with bread goo all over the oven.  The oven which then caught fire a little bit. I tried to scrape the burned bits off the bottom and keep the rest cooking, but the pans just kept overflowing and adding more bits to the bottom to be burned. Then my oven filled with black smoke. I figured the bread probably would taste like charcoal, so I chucked everything. Then my kitchen filled with black smoke. Then my first floor...

You may be thinking, gee, all that fire and smoke and no smoke alarms sounding?  And you would be wrong. The smoke alarm AND home security thingey were both screaming at me intermittently for about one hour. One hour spent scraping...fanning...entering silence codes...running upstairs...entering another code...repeating this cycle over and over again.  

And now, my characteristic loose tie to dogs thus rendering this worthy of posting on the dog blog: 

Even the monthly test 'bleep' from the security system is enough to turn The Dog into a puddle. And The Pup has yet to experience a full blown alarm. Imagine a solid hour of screeching with two squirrely pets. Suffice it to say, they were not happy. Extra concentrated doses of squirrely. The Pup eventually begged to be let into her kennel. The Dog begged to be allowed in the closet.  Neither appeared again for some time. 

My so-called friend insists that no one ELSE had a problem with the starter she handed out. However this just serves as further evidence that she was somehow trying to kill ME in particular. 

As for my starters, I hid them in the back of the freezer. I couldn't think of anyone I dislike enough to impart them on. 

***

Anyways, despite all that fire, smoke, and DOOM life goes on.

Too, too quickly. 

I cannot believe how fast The Pup is growing up.  

To give you a place of reference...

The Pup, 9 weeks.

Now, just LOOK at her!!! She is a big girl. All adulty looking and everything, she even sits still for pictures on a regular basis now. 

I luv how well she matches the kitchen decor...

Pensively posing. Not The Dog tho, she just wants the toy.

Sigh. Gives me happy/sad feelings. I like that she is not so breakable anymore. I like that I can start DOING stuff with her more. I like that she is slowly but surely becoming normal and not being her alter ego Crack Puppy on a full time basis.  It's nice not living with a completely feral beast. 

But still... does she have to grow up so quickly?? Squishy baby stage doesn't last quite long enough if you ask me. 

Though I am REALLY proud of her for not climbing in the dishwasher ONCE last night. 

I guess there really are perks. 

To close, a few of our favorite things, to prove that we are keeping busy here. 

Expert container cleaning squad at work.

Always ready with a toy offering to the Fun Gods

YAAAAY!!!!! SOOOOOON.

Training Rapture: Probably the Only Kind of Rapture Happening this Weekend.

Of course, it WOULD take the impending end of the world for The Pup to finally start to grasp the concept of dropping an object in another object.

If you've been here recently, you may know I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to shape the "put it in" trick.  (Though seriously, WHY would I want TWO dogs that try to drop toys in the toilet??? I must learn to think these things through). It was in our homework for the ST course and we were failing MISERABLY. Seriously.  I whined and whined on the class forum about my failures. I whined and whined on a previous post.  I stupidly reinforced this trick further with The Dog in order to feel like I wasn't less of a trainer/human being. 

I tried about 50 different approaches. But still The Pup just looked at me. Or did 'monster.' Or took the object and chewed on it. Or ran away with it. She certainly didn't bring it back or try to drop it by the bowl.  We couldn't even shape the most basic part- taking it and holding it. Every time I clicked, she let go for the treat. Clicking without treats (playing with a toy) meant not a lot to her.

But Duh.

Wrong approach.

ST told me it wasn't actually about the hold, but the drop.  I should let her take it, and click for dropping it, as she was going to do anyways, near the bowl (which would be conveniently close). Then in the bowl.

Big. Fat. DUH.

10 minutes later- she has it. 

OK, so I still don't feel like much of a trainer for not thinking of that myself, but whatever.  I don't need all the answers. I have to learn too. Click/Treat me!

So, if the world ends, at least we got #4 on the homework.

Sorry, Rabbit- AND Kids- Trix are for PUPS!

 This’ll show those nasty little kids who never shared their Trix with the Rabbit.

Trix are for DOGS now- ha!

OK, I guess they are for rabbits too- per the RABBIT SHOW JUMPING LINK that our friend at BC Insanity found.  I’m so getting rabbits now.

So there you go: Rabbits and Dogs, 1. Kids, 0. Reason one thousand seven hundred and twelve that I have dogs instead of kids still. For anyone keeping track.

OK so I really digressed a bit there. What can I say? I’m delirious from a severe lack of Mexican food. I need 50 cc’s of queso fundido, stat.

ANYWAYS. I really love trix. By which I mean tricks.  When I brought The Pup home, I decided to experiment a little. I decided to try 100% tricks-based foundations with her.  Why? Two reasons- I love tricks and find them to be very entertaining, which makes training more fun and not a chore (how many millions of times have I heard people say “UGH I can’t wait for the puppy stage to be OVER, I HATE foundations, I just want a trained DOG??” I so didn’t want that to be me.)  Second, it was in the name of The Project.  Remember, one of my goals here is to try new things and evolve with the sport.  I definitely don’t want to be one of those people who trains every dog the same way… forever.  Blah. Even if it works. Blah.  I can’t even imagine how much it would suck to have an agility ‘brand’ that you are known by- try to change anything, and it’s like suddenly you’re no longer behind your own product!  How limiting.  So the key is to ALWAYS be trying new things.  Further, (secret hidden third reason?) I’ve had the unique perspective of teaching hundreds of other people’s new dogs for several years now- I have a pretty darn good idea of what works…and what really doesn’t.  So it isn’t a totally uncontrolled experiment- I am working under the reasonable assumption that this will pay off.

And it SO is, for those wondering.  I am NOT working on obedience, manners (except the not biting thing), drive or the other countless things that some people obsess over.  Just tricks.  And ta-da.  Those other things are all popping into existence on their own.  PLUS I have a brilliant, confident puppy who works to engage me.  She IS a bit (ha!) naughty, but it’s all coming along.  And I would rather have a dog who feels good enough about herself and her life to attempt a crusade onto the counter to steal a taco (and who can solve the problem of getting up there!) than a dog who never tries anything because she’s too scared or lacks ingenuity.  At least I get good stories out of it.

In case it isn’t totally obvious, we’ve had some good training sessions around here recently.  I’m dang happy with how all the trick work has morphed along into obstacle performance.  I did get some video of things last night:

Teeter- her favorite thing on the planet.  I couldn’t even take the two seconds to lower it before she was trying to run over it, so I caved and let her do it as it was.  It’s about 12” high here.   This is her third time on am entire teeter.   Contributing tricks: Wobble board, perch work, perch work on wobble board, Four feet in a box, plank work, ‘ready-steady-go,’ drawer slams and the bang game.  Find it fascinating that we spent most hours away from the actual obstacle only to have close to a proficient final product within a session or two of actually seeing it. Similar to making a really good mole sauce. 

Plank work- I decided she understood the concept of committing to staying on the length of the plank well enough to start raising it up. It’s maybe 6” off the ground- I grafted it onto the actual DW which works awesome(ly?), FYI.  She did very well, did not come off the sides, and seems to have a non-leaping stride.  I did a few (not shown) running with her so the concept wouldn’t be foreign to her in the future and those were good too.  I am still targeting only to food, not toys.  I’ve dubbed the ‘method’ Tex/Mex: a Daisy/Silvia bastard brain child- I took what I liked and what is appropriate for The Pup from their training and squished it together.  I very much agree with the Daisy/Linda idea that thinking matters most right now and will equal more correct behaviors, which equals more positive experiences/reinforcement, which equals confidence which equals speed.   I’ve seen this in action on the jump training- why not apply it to contacts too? So this is another experiment.

As for jumping, we’ve done many sessions of the various one jump c/t exercises and I decided to move to the next stage of walking through sequences.  Obviously, the jumps are low, basically non jumps.  We will revisit the one jump work when it comes time to raise the bar, but before then I have lots of time to get her used to seeking out jumps, loving them, and learning my handling cues too.  Also am simultaneously teaching the cik/cap style turns.  

Not completely throwing Silvia’s idea on speed from the get-go though, doing lots and lots of flatwork with this concept in mind.  (The Pup is the best chaser ever.)   I really liked the idea of training everything separately- handling away from equipment and equipment from other equipment so I am doing this to some extent. Hopefully it all mushes together like some kind of beautiful agility nacho plate. 

Not to be outdone, The Dog is lovely. Cik/cap turns up to 20” and holding strong. I can’t get over that I have to do it, but we are building lots of tunnel drive still and last night I had fun directing her into various tunnels from across the ring at breakneck speed.  Oh, she had fun too, don’t worry.

Now, onto the next big problem- getting’ me some Mexican-y goodness.  Ole! 

Oh god, so good looking I may lick my screen...