October 2021 - Five Fault Club

Stopped Contacts, Part 2 and DASH

When I last described our foundation contact training, Able was taking a short step towards his upside-down bucket, then stepping onto and over it and stopping in his 2o2o position. I was then feeding him on his ice cream lid target.

I had grand plans about transferring this training to a plank as soon as daylight saving started, but I still haven’t found the right object to prop it up to the height I want. In the meantime I’m making plenty of progress with my trusty mop bucket anyway.

Susan Garrett’s DASH

Training the actual 2o2o stop position at the end of the plank is only a small part of stopped contact training. The much bigger and more important part is proofing – making sure that the dog is confident to go to that position at speed no matter what.

Susan Garrett has an acronym for which elements of your training you should focus on in which order – DASH (short for Desire, he finds that Accuracy, Speed, Habituation).

New Beds and Side Change Confusion

I bought a few things from Kmart recently, including new dog beds. I thought Rik might appreciate an upgrade from her slightly-too-small bed which has lost a fair amount of stuffing to Able, but she was most indignant and refused to go anywhere near the new beds. After two weeks of watching her sleep on the floor, I caved yesterday and restored her old bed to its place of honour.

Rik is very happy to be reunited with her bed. I find the ways she arranges her legs while she sleeps fascinating.

Able outgrew his crate recently so he scored a new bed to fit the gigantic second-hand crate I got off TradeMe, and a couple of cheap toys. The toys did not last long but he enjoyed them!

Which Side Now?

I’ve been working on our outside circles recently. Most of agility is outside circles/ovals, especially if your dog is faster than you. Watch these handlers at Crufts 2020 – they are all on the outside all the way after the weave poles at #6, although they choose different places to cross on the straighter segments.

SHEEEEEP and Buckets

Our favourite off-lead dog walking park is grazed by sheep for part of the year. Yes, that’s right – a council-owned off-lead dog walking park filled with sheep. No warning signs either; it gave me quite a surprise the first time I took Rik for a walk there!

The sheep returned a couple of weeks ago, with fairly young lambs at foot. I saw them long before Able did and got him on lead. He had a bit of a freak out and let fly with some incredibly loud alarm barking. The next two walks we were able to get a bit closer to them before the barking started, but he was still in rather a flap about them.

And then … today this happened.

The “face” of a Border Collie puppy who just chased his first sheep and knows they went THAT WAY!

We were walking along happily, well away from where the sheep usually hang out. Able was wandering in and out of a stand of trees. I called him – and at that moment half a dozen sheep came charging out from behind the trees, with an intrepid Border Collie puppy hot on their heels.

The Tug Toy Rules

Last weekend Able and I went to an obedience seminar. It was the first chance we’ve had to take part in a class with other dogs and people since lockdown, and I was mostly pleased with how well he behaved. He did get a bit over-excited and make a leap at my nose at one point though!

I used to compete in obedience a long time ago, when the training methods were still very traditional. I haven’t kept up with the new advances over the last decade, and this was a great chance to catch up on what I’ve missed. I took pages and pages of notes and I’m looking forward to applying what I learned with Able a year or so down the road, once he’s started his agility career.

I was particularly interested in the new method I learned for training heelwork. Regardless of the sport, good dog training is about splitting behaviour into pieces. I taught my last obedience dog to heel by just rewarding him for being right next to my leg and hoping for the best … but now I know how to split this up into different skills (like driving forward from the rear so that the dog can use his body well, and knowing exactly where heel position is during the different parts of the handler’s stride).

The heat pump has retired for the summer and Rik is back to sleeping in her bed. She has some very creative ways of arranging her legs.

The Maimed Finger Incident

I was walking the dogs a couple of days before the seminar when Able and I had a very painful misunderstanding.

Able at Nine Months

Today Able is nine months old. This is his “halfway to agility” birthday, as he can start competing from eighteen months of age.

At the moment it’s very hard to imagine that we will ever be ready to run an agility course. He is not very mature, physically or mentally, and I have lost a bit of motivation for our training over winter. With daylight saving starting this week and the weather warming up, I’m hoping to find my agility training mojo soon.

Able celebrated the first evening of daylight saving with his first roll in cat poo, followed by his first bath.

Our Three Biggest Strengths

I am so pleased with my puppy’s recall. He is way better at coming when he’s called than my previous dogs were at this age (or some of them ever were) – even at high speed

Similarly, an awesome retrieve.

But best of all, I’ve managed to get him to this age without any major traumatic incidents in his life. This is partly good luck and partly good management, I suspect. It helps that he has a “grumpy big sister” at home who only tolerates him in small doses before she gets snarly with him. When he did get snapped at by a strange dog for the first time in his life, he got out of that dog’s face and carried on with his day as if nothing had happened.

Month: October 2021