Month: May 2021

Agility training has changed a lot since I last had a puppy in 2001. “Teaching a puppy to jump” back then meant teaching it to run over a low pole between two uprights … and then suddenly raising that pole up to competition height during the last 3 or 4 months before he hit the ring. And it worked well enough – most dogs figured out how to get over the jumps with some degree of accuracy, although not always in the most efficient way.

Since then most people have begun to use jumping grids to actually teach their dog the skills that go into jumping – identifying the correct spot to take off from, estimating the size of the gap between them and that spot, and adjusting their stride so that they can arrive there with their legs organised and their weight in their rear end, ready for takeoff. This concept came from the horse world (where it’s too dangerous to let the animal just “figure it out” through trial and error on full-height jumps) and has become popular in agility circles through a series of DVDs published by Susan Salo.

I’ve watched Susan’s Puppy Jumping DVD a couple of times, and last week I finally had the chance to try it out with my puppy for the first time. I don’t have any jump bumps at home yet, but I’m lucky that we have a set at my club so I got them out after rally-o training for Able’s first gridwork session.

Before Jump Bumps

This turned out be a learning experience, rather than an actual gridwork session, because he didn’t actually go over many of the bumps. Here’s some things I need to work on or remember for next time:

Continue reading “Before Jump Bumps, and Agility Practice On a Walk”

This weekend my club had a rally-o show. Able went along to watch, and enjoyed meeting some more people and dogs. He was fairly well-behaved on the whole – and I was so impressed when he Sat and lay Down because he heard another competitor giving cues to her dog!

After the show on Saturday we went to Knottingley for a walk. There was a cricket match in progress and Able completely lost the plot once we got close enough to the cricket oval to see the action. When he’s spooked by something he likes to let everybody know with some Extremely Loud alarm barking.

As I’ve already written, it’s important to keep socialisation up throughout the first year. That doesn’t mean forcing the puppy to interact with things that frighten him, though. It just means going out and seeing lots of different things, and giving him time to get used to something at his own pace.

So we sat down on a log at a not-quite-alarm-barky distance, and we watched the cricket horror movie while Rik hunted sheep poo in the long grass. There was a lot of snorting and Wuffing at first, but after twenty minutes cricket was fairly boring. He could even take his eyes off it sometimes to look at me and play a game of tug. I would have liked to stay a bit longer, but alas cricket was over. We met a couple of the cricket players – who turned out to be normal people and not ogres – and went home.

We didn’t quite watch enough cricket for Able to get bored of it, so I’d really like to get him out to watch some more soon. Unfortunately at this time of year I suspect there won’t be a lot of opportunity, so it may have to wait until the spring.

A Pivoting Breakthrough

A few weeks ago I started a new body awareness exercise with Able – teaching him to stand with his front paws on one low platform (shoebox sized but sturdier) and his back paws on another one. He cottoned onto the concept fairly easily, but he couldn’t get himself onto the platforms very efficiently from some angles.

Continue reading “Pivoting Success, and a Cricket Horror Movie”

I was playing tug with Able the other day, and I suddenly noticed that the toy was covered with blood. He’s already lost most of his front teeth, but I guess another one came out. He clearly enjoys his tugging enough that he doesn’t mind if his mouth hurts – but your puppy might not. If you notice any sudden changes in play habits or in your retrieve behaviour, don’t panic. Just try again a couple of days later, and maybe things will be back to normal.

On Thursday night Able had his first week of puppy class at my agility/obedience club. He was the youngest puppy in the group (we don’t take them prior to 4 months) and he spent the entire class trying to bounce on all of the other small breed puppies. He was particularly besotted with a Cairn Terrier, which was bouncing around doing play-bows at him as well.

Do You Need to Go to Obedience Class?

Last year my landlord sent a tradie round to install some underfloor insulation. He saw all the agility gear on my lawn and told me that he’d tried to take his own dog to agility class but “I just couldn’t get her to do anything with all the other dogs running around”.

Continue reading “Bleeding Gums and Puppy Class”

This weekend Able accompanied me to an agility show in Dunedin. He hadn’t been to an agility show since he was about 11 or 12 weeks old, so I was interested to see how he would take it all in.

He was a super well-behaved puppy. He enjoyed meeting lots of new people – and playing with lots of new dogs. He walked off-lead in the exercise area without chasing other people’s dogs (I did keep him quite a distance away) and he was even able to focus on some impromptu training sessions with lots of distractions around him.

On the down side, he also spewed all over his bed as we drove through Herbert.

Fake Relaxing

The thing I was most pleased about was that he never got frantic about watching other dogs doing agility. We kept a good distance away from the rings, but we were sometimes quite close to the practice area. He watched a couple of dogs doing their warmups but he stayed quiet and the lead stayed loose.

He spent a lot of time lying on his hip and looking calmly at me. He got lots of bikkies for this behaviour when I first took him up to agility club, just because it was the first thing he did that wasn’t obnoxious. It now seems to be his default behaviour that he offers whenever we’re out in a busy environment and I’m sitting quietly. He looks semi-relaxed, but I don’t think he is truly relaxed – he’s a Border Collie in working mode and he’s offering “fake relaxing” because that’s what I’ve been rewarding him for. Nonetheless, it’s a much nicer behaviour than many others he could do, so I’ll keep paying him for it.

The Relaxed Beaver

Speaking of relaxing … last week Able lay down for a nap outside of his ex-pen for the first time. This is something that’s been worrying me. My other dog can only tolerate him in very short doses, so he spends a lot of time in his ex-pen. I get him out several times a day, but usually only for half an hour or so at a time.

Continue reading “Agility Show Weekend: Paw Waves and Quiet Watching”

Able is now 17 weeks old. Last week he went for his “real” off-lead walk, with no long line.

We’ve been “walking” at Knottingley for several weeks now. These are not really “walks” in the exercise sense of the word – at this age he can get all the exercise he needs in the back yard. They are chances for the puppy to explore new things, and for me to work on his recall in new, very distracting locations. We don’t go very far on these walks – under a kilometre – and after every 60-90 seconds of exploration, I call Able and we play together. We usually do our first little bit of walking alone, and then I get my older dog Rik out of the car to join us.

The first time I called Able while he was eating sheep poo, he ignored me so I walked up to him, took him by the collar and removed him from the sheep poo. I got him to do a hand target, then I let him go back to his sheep poo.

The second time I called Able while he was eating sheep poo, he tried to trot off with it in his mouth. I stopped him (gently) with the lead after one stride. The poo fell out of his mouth and he couldn’t reach it. I waited calmly and quietly through a little puppy meltdown, until he decided to come to me so we could have a game.

The third time I called Able while he was eating sheep poo … I was running out of daylight and the zen-ness required to train a puppy, but he didn’t want to get back in the car. I picked him up and popped him into his crate and we drove off.

Continue reading “Able’s First Off-Lead Adventure”