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.
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.
Our Three Biggest Struggles
I have spent more time trying to teach this puppy how to greet people sensibly than I think I have ever spent training anything to any of my four previous dogs. He no longer wets himself (thanks to physical maturity I suspect). He no longer jumps six feet in the air, although he does still like to sproing up at people’s noses if they bend down to greet him. He’s also learned to take the hint that if somebody isn’t looking at him, they don’t want an enormous Border Collie jumping on them. That is a huge improvement as at least most of his victims are volunteers, but we still have a long way to go before he can keep his paws to himself when someone stops to pat him on the street.
Another area we are struggling is with our close proximity walking, both in formal training sessions, and informally when we’re out and about. Able isn’t too interested in walking close to me, and he’s especially not keen on walking next to me when he could be a body length ahead. This isn’t something that’s been difficult for my previous dogs to pick up – most tended to swing their bums out at first, but they got the basic idea that walking next to me produces lots of lollies quickly. I haven’t put a lot of time into it but I do want to sort it out so that I can walk into the agility ring for our debug with Able walking next to me, off lead.
I haven’t mentioned Able’s over-arousal around food much here, but it’s been a theme since he was around ten weeks old. The first sign was the super-cute extravagant lip-licking he did whenever he saw me carrying his food bowl, as he dribbled away like Pavlov’s dogs. This grew quickly into resource guarding behaviour, culminating in the little snotbag biting my wrist when I was taking away his empty bowl one day. I have worked through that, but now that I am using his food as a distraction, there are more challenges. It’s very difficult to get him to turn around and face away from his dinner bowl during a training session. Last week I tried to play position change games in front of his breakfast bowl, but he was so entranced by the sight of his food on the floor that he literally couldn’t move.
What We Haven’t Done
Able has not seen a single weave pole yet. He has not gone through a tunnel yet. I’ve never asked him to jump anything, except for striding over a jump bump. He has only had one brief encounter with a contact ramp.
He’s never seen a wing, except in the context of his jump bump grids. He’s never seen a cone either. I haven’t been doing any work with him on wrapping things, something that many people start with their puppies at a young age. I have noticed the rise in dogs with chronic shoulder issues over recent years, and there is part of my brain that wonders whether this is related to doing lots of wraps at a young age. I don’t know – but I do know that I can train an agility dog who is ready to hit the ring at eighteen months without doing wraps as a baby, so I’ve left it for now.
I’ve left some things a little bit longer with Able than I did with my previous dogs. I feel like I’m “behind”, but when I think about the timeline, I still have time to get “everything” done in time for him to debut near his eigtheen-month birthday, or perhaps a month or two later. Next year the NZ Dog Agility Champs will be in the South Island at Labour Weekend (covid willing), and I would like to get him out to have some experience in the ring before then. Heaps of time!
I’m looking forward to the next nine months of adventure with my super cute puppy…