The Ruby Project, Week 8: Fun with Foundations

Ruby and I have now done three weeks of our foundation agility class and we started our domestic Good Basics class this week too. We’d had a pretty quiet week apart from that as I’ve not been feeling well.

I’ve also been a bit slack about keeping her occupied with food toys, and have had to confiscate a few items of contraband as a result.

Assorted treasure in Ruby’s lair – a sock, Able’s crackle ball, a roll of poo bags that had been in the same pocket as some yummy treats, and miscellaneous bits of fluff from a stuffed toy she pinched off the top shelf of the bookshelf.

Ruby also got to enjoy her first few 1-2 minute off-lead micro-walks this week, during one of our walks at Knottingley. Unfortunately it’s been quite hot so most of our walks are near twilight, when there is too great a chance of hedgehog-hunting antics to risk a repeat just yet.

Agility Fun

We have some good moments in foundation class but also a lot of not-so-good moments. I am struggling to get her to consistently chase and pick up any of her balls club. She will happily play fetch at the dog park (yup, I’ve become one of those people!) but there are so many more interesting things at club that the ball doesn’t rate a mention.

We had our first introduction to weave poles this week (one set of two poles) and she very quickly picked up the idea of going between the poles to get a treat that I’d throw ahead. A couple of stations later I was trying to get her to wrap a cone – something she’s learned with several different props at home – and every time I released her she’d wander up to the cone and wander right on past…

In between classes I am rationing myself to one session of training with agility equipment at home per week. We have plenty of other skills to work on so while I love doing “real agility”, it isn’t the main focus right now.

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The Ruby Project, Week 6: Agility Antics

This weekend Ruby went to her first ever agility show. Her favourite part was the belly rubs. And the nest of sparrow chicks under the verandah. And meeting new four-legged friends – except for 14-week-old Zeffer Walker, who tried to hump her, twice.

Agility shows are fun!

She did spend some time actually watching agility – but not a lot, because she found it quite exciting and I don’t want her to get in the habit of tuning me out so she can watch agility TV. She also got her official measure done, thanks to some help from Reece and Sallie, and she stood pretty much perfectly! I knew she was going to be 500 but she has come in a bit taller than expected at 510mm.

She still looks very little next to Able…

It’s Yer Choice

This week Ruby joined in our club’s new foundation agility class intake. She is not really ready for this, but there was one spot left in the class and I figured we could at least do the first few weeks.

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The Ruby Project, Week 5: Measuring Up

Ruby is now loose in the house all day, except for popping into her crate when I’m feeding or training Able. She’s had literally zero accidents inside the house (there are advantages to starting with an adult dog!) and there haven’t been any major scenes of destruction. She does like to collect up dog-approved things she finds lying around – cow hooves, balls, empty Kongs – and amass a hoard of them on the back deck, her favourite sunbathing spot.

Ruby enjoying some midday sun, not long after I’d confiscated her collection of treasures.

A New Approach to Measuring

Ruby was, like many dogs, quite worried about the measuring stick when she first saw it. I’ve played around with a few things to build her confidence to have it looming over her and touching her:

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The Ruby Project, Week 4: Building a Balance

This week Ruby met her first ever pushy squeaky toy. She enjoyed pulling the stuffing out (holes pre-made for her by Able). She liked it when it squeaked, unlike poor Rik who ran off and hid behind the loo the first time she heard a squeaky toy. Most of all, she was very determined but ultimately unsuccessful in plucking all the fur off.

Yes, that’s a jump in the background. It’s in my living room (temporarily) because I LIVE in my living room … and most of my life revolves around agility.

Out and About

Now that we have the vaccination situation sorted out, Ruby has a big wide world to explore. Some outings this week:

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The Ruby Project Week 3: Learning to Learn

This week Ruby has been to the vet clinic (for vaccinations as I don’t have any record of when/if she has ever had these done) and she met her physio.

The vet visit went better than expected. She walked into the consult room voluntarily and she was able to eat while she was in there. She didn’t mind her intranasal or intramuscular vaccines, but she did not like it when the vet straddled her and tried to stretch her rear legs out. However, when I took her back on Friday for a little “happy visit” she looked a little less happy about the place, so we’ll have to do some more of those to help her learn to like the vet.

On the other hand, she loved every minute of her initial physiotherapy assessment, and spent most of it upside down demanding belly rubs. I’d noticed that she is a bit more muscly in one thigh than the other, but this is apparently nothing to worry about and she has a clean bill of health.

Ruby meets Lucy the physiotherapist/belly rubber.

Different Every Day

This week I picked one of the very few skills that Ruby has – jumping up on a raised dog bed on cue – and presented it to her in a different way every day:

  • Monday – with her hippo sitting next to it. Very tempting but dinner won out!
  • Tuesday – with me sitting on the ground next to it. She was thoroughly bamboozled for 90 seconds and I had to help her, but after that she had it sussed.
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The Ruby Project, Week 2: Hippo Hysterics

Ruby discovered something underneath a side table that was super exciting to stalk. When I investigated I discovered … A GRUNTY HIPPO!!! I gave it to Able a couple of years ago, but he never saw the point in it and I’d forgotten he ever had it.

Ruby staring lovingly at her new hippo bestie.

Ruby is delighted with her hippo. She very rarely puts her mouth on it, but it’s super fun to poke it with her paw and make it grunt. And of course it’s also good to stare at…

Ruby loves her hippo so much that she has been ferociously resource guarding it from Able, who didn’t give two shits about the hippo when it was his, and still doesn’t now. Fortunately her hippo-specific personal space has been shrinking throughout the week as Able continues to pay no attention whatsoever to her treasure.

It’s All About Rewards

I like to train with positive reinforcement. That isn’t possible if I don’t have things that I can reward my dog with. This week we’ve experimented with lots of rewards including:

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The Ruby Project Week 1: Birds on the Brain

It’s been 8 days since Ruby came to live with me and Able. This is my second time adopting an adult dog, and I think it takes a bit longer to build a relationship. My Christmas break has not been full of sunshine and strawberries, either in the literal sense or in terms of Ruby fitting into the household … but as the cheese ad says, good things take time!

Ruby was on my wee training dogwalk within 2 minutes of coming home, and seems to prefer it to walking on the boring old grass.

Exploring the World

Ruby is much more confidnet than Rik was when she came off the farm. I was expecting that she would need careful introduction to the big wide world of being a townie dog, but she hasn’t been bothered by anything she’s seen or heard, from the dishwasher to supermarket trolleys, the fire siren to a screaming baby in a pram.

She has met four unfamiliar dogs – a huntaway, a border collie cross, and two mini schnauzers. She’s also seen a bulldog from the other side of the fence and she did not seem too bothered by that. Poor Rik had a complete meltdown the first time she saw an unfamiliar dog (a pug, something that looked quite unlike anything she would have seen on the farm) and jumped onto the roof of the car! I am trying to manage interactions with other dogs very carefully to prevent bad experiences in her first few weeks at home, but so far she seems to be quite the social butterfly.

Bird Brains

Ruby is very, very, very interested in birds.

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The Ruby Project

Tonight I went for a drive and picked up a wee present for myself and Able…

Meet Ruby. She’s about 2.5 or 3 years old. She’s been through a couple of farm homes but hasn’t done very well on sheep or cattle so now she’s going to try being a townie agility dog. She is quite a squirmy grovelly wee worm and I’m sure she is looking forward to meeting you all soon!

Reimagining Our National Event: Part 2

In my last post I talked about some of the problems that I see with the current format of NZDAC. Now let’s imagine how it could be very different!

No Standard Classes

Firstly, why does NZDAC have to resemble an ordinary champ show at all? The standard classes are about graduating and achieving titles. Bread and butter stuff. In many other countries (e.g. USA, UK, some European countries) their major events are run on a different format and don’t count towards graduation at all.

The thing I don’t like about most of these events is that everyone is competing against each other – the only classes or divisions are based on height. I guess it makes sense for a world championship that you’re only going to have the very best – you don’t see Over-65s classes in the Olympic swimming events, after all. But for our NZ agility nationals I would like everybody to be able to take part.

So I propose 3 divisions:

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Reimagining Our National Event: Part 1

The Agility Committee currently has a survey open to find out what people like and don’t like about NZDACs (if you haven’t filled it in yet, here’s the link). This is something I’ve thought about a lot over recent years, as I’m not a big fan of the format of the current NZDAC.

Here are a few of the things I’ve been reflecting on and some possible solutions – I’d love to see a big bold reinvention of our national agility event! I’m aware that I contradict myself in places – that’s because I’m still thinking these ideas through, and because there are inevitably tradeoffs that need to be made in order to create a viable event that works for most people.

Timing and Weather

This is topical due to the weather being ghastly last weekend, pretty much everywhere. On the other hand it’s been pretty nice for the last two NZDACs. It’s difficult to find a time of year when the weather is consistently nice but not too hot. February in Hawkes Bay could mean a 30-degree day or Cyclone Gabrielle, or anything in between. And then there’s climate change to consider – if we shift the event to March to try to get the best weather, will that be too hot in another couple of decades’ time?

The ideal solution would be to hold the event indoors. Unfortunately we just don’t have enough suitable venues for this in New Zealand. Manfeild is the only one as far as I know (yes, the surface could have been better in 2018, but there have been more successful events there in the past), and even that is barely large enough to fit such a large event. While we have NZDACs that require 3+ rings to fit in all the events that are crammed into the weekend, we’re stuck with the great outdoors.

Aside from the weather, a late spring date is not ideal for an event which requires dogs and handlers to be in peak fitness, and which has increasingly become a marathon. It would be nice to see the NZDAC as the culmination of a season of agility, rather than being awkwardly tacked on near the start. It would also be nice not to have all three DogsNZ national events – the National Dog Show (breed showing), the NDTA (obedience) and the NZDAC (agility) – crammed into the same month. There has been discussion of moving it to Easter in the past, which is not ideal due to the date moving around and other large events that might compete with the NZDAC for venues (e.g. Warbirds over Wanaka).

Possible solutions:

  • Move it to Easter. Down side: movable date, competition from other events, potentially difficult to get accommodation.
  • Move it to a set weekend in the late summer/early autumn period. Down side: not on a public holiday any more, but given NZDAC has now swallowed up Friday as well perhaps that’s not really an issue.
  • Give NZDAC committees flexibility to choose their own date, e.g. change the regs to state it must be held between 15 October and 30 April each year, and let each zone choose a date that works for them. Up side: able to use venues that might be booked out for Labour Weekend/Easter, able to choose weekend with best chance of good weather for the particular location. Down side: movable date will require some rejigging of the show calendar each year.

A Four-Day Marathon

The NZDAC has become an extreme endurance event. This year each dog could be entered in up to 10 standard agility and jumpers classes. If a dog was also on the zone team, and also made all three finals it was eligible for, that would bring it up to 14 runs. If that dog was also an Agility and Jumpers Champion it could potentially have 16 runs over 4 days. It is getting to the point where I wonder whether it is in the best interests of our dogs, particularly when the weather is on the warm side.

I’ll admit I’m not the fittest competitor out there, but by the end of four days of agility I’m pretty happy to put my feet up for a bit. I remember the Monday of the 2016 NZDAC – I’d just changed out of my agility shoes into my nice comfy sneakers when I found out I’d made the finals, and it took me a few minutes to feel happy about having won the chance to do more agility! By Monday afternoon most people seem a bit tired and crabby if we’re honest, and the early starts and long days also mean the evening social function has been dying a slow death over recent years.

Possible solutions:

  • Limit the number of events on offer. At my first NDOA in 1997 there were just two sets of agility on offer, plus the interzone teams – 5 runs max. Do we really need to have triple agility and triple jumpers as well as all the special NZDAC classes? Trimming the schedule a bit might also mean fewer rings are required.
  • Count finals results towards top dog trophies. This might encourage people who’ve already qualified for the finals to scratch from some of their runs and save their dogs for the finals.
  • Reimagine the format entirely – stay tuned for my Part 2 post…

Who’s the Best?

To me the point of an NZ Dog Agility Championship is to crown a champion. One of our sponsors at the 2019 Cromwell NZDAC wanted to give a prize to the overall champion – but who is that? The Agility or Jumpers Champ of Champ winner? The Top Dog trophy winner? The Senior or Jumpers A final winner?

I’m a bit torn here. I love that there are lots of opportunities for people to get up onto the podium and win a souvenir to take home, but I also feel like this scattershot approach dilutes the prestige of each of the major events that are held over NZDAC weekend. Back in the day when it was just a few sets of standard classes and a teams event, there was one dog and handler that walked away with the Top Dog trophy, and they were The Best.

Possible solutions:

  • Remove the Champ of Champ events. I do like these as a way to put names to faces for up-and-coming competitors from other parts of the country, but personally I’ve never felt they were particularly important. It’s difficult to get the course at the right level – hard enough to showcase the best skills of the best dogs in the country, but achievable enough that there will be plenty of clear rounds to build suspense. I ran it once or twice when I was eligible but I didn’t particularly see the point of it so I stopped entering it.
  • Remove the Top Dog trophies, and reduce the prizes on offer for the standard classes. These are effectively “heats” for the big event, the finals. I’m torn about this one too. I’m so proud of all of the top 3 placings I’ve had in large classes at NZDAC over the years . In general I love that our agility system in NZ has lots of different ways for people to succeed against their own goals – but I’m not sure that a national championship needs to be all things to all people.
  • Reimagine the format entirely…

To Qualify or Not To Qualify?

This is a dirty word that pops up in NZDAC discussion every few years.

I love the fact that a handler can bring their brand new, barely 18-month-old dog along to NZDAC and go home with some loot. I love that I’ve been able to compete in 26 consecutive NZDACs, even though some years I haven’t had dogs that were massively competitive. One of my best agility moments was winning two Novice classes at the 2010 NDTA in Taupo with Spring, who almost certainly wouldn’t have qualified since she scarcely went clear twice a year.

I would hate to see the NZDAC become completely invitation-only or have a strict qualification criteria which sees people missing out. On the other hand, it’s a massive event and it takes a huge amount of space and human resources to get through nearly 6000 runs.

Possible solutions:

  • Be strict about training in the ring. If you want to redo your dogwalk, fine, redo it – but then expect to leave straight away. Ditto for reattempting a sequence where the dog went off course. Ditto for dogs that rack up lots of refusals, or miss their weaves multiple times. I skipped part of one of my runs after my dog had 3 refusals at one jump that was apparently invisible – and really I should have moved on after 2.
  • D and out. Personally I don’t like this and I feel like it takes it a wee bit too far. It’s also not great for the person following you if you get D’d at #2 and they thought they still had another 30 seconds to play their warmup games with their dog. I think it’s fine to keep going as long as you aren’t taking significantly longer than the competitors who are going clear.
  • Some sort of pre-qualification, e.g. requiring dogs to have achieved a clear round in order to enter NZDAC. With the closing date being two months out from the show and not a lot of shows over winter, this would mean a lot of promising young dogs have to sit it out on the sideline. And if the criteria is a bit stricter, e.g. needing to have a clear round in the class you’re entering, then a dog that wins out of Novice at the last show before closing date will have no chance to qualify to enter Senior.
  • Run a qualification round at NZDAC for dogs that don’t pre-qualify. This could be a Friday morning thing, while most people are busy setting up their campsites and catching up with old friends. It’s still a rough deal for somebody who’s travelling a long way to potentially only have half a day of NZDAC, but my hunch is most who don’t qualify will be more quite local competitors, or experienced handlers who will have other dogs entered as well. It also requires some thought about how the dogs that qualify can be slotted into the running order for the main event without creating too much work for the show sec.

Bringing Back the Vibe

The Sunday night social used to be one of the really fun parts of NZDAC – when the show was over before 4pm. This was the perfect amount of time to go back to the motel for a nana nap and a shower, get changed into your fancy dress, and pop into the bottle shop on the way to the function. The less formal things on Friday afternoon/evening have been more variable – I can recall one in a rugby club where I had a great time meeting out-of-towners – but the trend has been generally downhill as the number of classes scheduled for Friday has increased.

There’s less time for socialising on the sidelines during the day too. I used to come home from an NZDAC feeling like I’d caught up with all my friends, seen everyone’s new dog in action, and witnessed at least a handful of the winning runs. With six rings on the go people have less time for socialising, and unless you have the most perfectly central day tent site it’s hard to see what’s going on beyond the ring you’re hanging out next to.

The Interzone used to be a really fiercely fought-out event with most of the best names in the country battling it out alongside some talented newcomers in the lower classes. These days it seems like quite a few handlers either don’t trial or use the trials as a training opportunity, perhaps because they have so many runs at DAC already that they don’t really want another one.

And then there’s prizegiving, which now takes well over an hour, with the applause getting less and less enthusiastic as it drags on. I look at some other sports where the prizes are presented over dinner in the evening and wish we could have something like that – but given the sheer number of prizes the food would be getting pretty cold by the time they’d all been dished out. 5756 entries at NZDAC this year means 575 prizes to give out – if each one takes 30 seconds that is 4h45m of prizegiving time!

Possible solutions

  • Reimagine the format of the event. Fewer rings or fewer runs means more time for hanging out and socialising.
  • Bring the social stuff to the show venue. The best social I can remember going to lately was a pub quiz under a marquee at the venue, at Cambridge in 2017 maybe? The dressup aspect was a bit lacking but I got to move round the tables and catch up with people, plus my team won the quiz. I think Zone 5 did well at Cromwell in 2019 too, using a function room at the venue to host the dinner, although as show sec the 5am starts caught up on me and I didn’t last the distance.
  • Encourage mixing and mingling during the day. I liked the tables set up near the food trucks at the Rakaia in 2016, and they encouraged people to sit and eat together with others they didn’t know or hadn’t seen in a while, rather than scurrying back to their day tents with their food. Spot prizes could also be a way to encourage more mixing and mingling, e.g. “find somebody whose dog shares your birthday”, “find somebody who used to live in your zone but doesn’t any more”.
  • Revert the interzone to the geographic zones only. Being on a zone team is a great chance of a newcomer to share an experience alongside some of their idols, pick up a few training tips from them, and feel like an important part of their local agility community. JDT camp is a huge opportunity each year to bring all the junior handlers together and build connections in that community. I think the interzone should be about local ties, and about young handlers feel part of their local agility scene, not setting them apart from it.
  • Let zones choose their own methods to select teams. I was opposed to the standardisation of team trials when it happened back in 2011, because I felt that different zones had already found different methods that worked well for them, so why mess with it? For Zone 5 (which is pretty spread out) I feel it was better to consider results from regular shows rather than holding a dedicated weekend of trials that requires another weekend of travel – and it might make me more likely to trial, if I had a dog that was up to standard.
  • Reduce the number of prizes on offer. I suspect this is not going to a popular idea, but hear me out. I think it’s great to have lots of prizes on offer at local shows so that most people have a chance of winning one now and again, and there’s nothing like a ribbon to get a newbie hooked on the sport. But at a national event there needs to be a balance between encouraging participation and rewarding truly exceptional performance – and at a national event that has grown to the point where prizegivings take over an hour a day, I don’t think that balance is quite right.

Coming up in the next post – my idea for a very different NZDAC!