Last weekend was the Waimate Big Easy. This is our equivalent of a Round the Bays run: a mountain-bike race/fun run/fun walk which attracts hundreds of people. The finish line and prizegiving ceremony were held in our local park, which is also a dog exercise area, so I was able to take Able along.
Most dog owners know that socialisation is crucial during the puppy’s first 3-4 months. This is true, but it doesn’t stop there. You need to keep taking your puppy out and finding new things for him to see and hear and explore regularly throughout his first year of life, or you may still end up with a dog that is nervous in strange situations.
The biggest event on the agility calendar is the NZ Dog Agility Championship (NZDAC), held at Labour Weekend every year. Over the years the NZDAC has grown larger and the atmosphere is now a bit offputting to some dogs. In particular, there’s usually a loud, echoey sound system (think racecourse) and there might be somebody talking on that right before your dog runs. There might also be lots of people applauding, which some dogs don’t like.
Since he was 9 or 10 weeks old, Able has had to sit and wait every time I open his ex-pen door to let him out. If he doesn’t wait, no problem – I just shut the door and wait for him to remember his manners. He is only allowed to move when I give his release cue “OK” (see previous discussion of release cues).
At 11 or 12 weeks, I started doing more formal Crate Games with him, and the learning from the ex-pen transferred over almost instantly.
One of my training focuses last week was on holding a sit stay while I throw a toy for him to retrieve. I started this in a crate, with one hand on the door so I could shut it, and the other hand putting a toy down on the floor. He was OK with this, but it was a real struggle for him the first time I actually threw it a short distance.
He cottoned on very quickly. I only had to shut the crate door a couple of times during the first session. The next night I couldn’t get him to do it wrong it all, so I parked him on the ground just in front of his crate, and he was still perfect. Good puppy!
Sitting and staying. But only because he’s not sure if he fits through the gap or not.
A reliable sit stay in the face of temptation is an important agility skill, vital if your dog can run faster than you. 99.5% of my agility runs start with my dog holding a sit stay while I move out towards the second or third obstacle. This is called a lead-out and it is a behaviour that commonly breaks down in competition because the dog is more excited. It’s important that you always wait until your dog is sitting still with his bum on the ground whenever you are training anything that starts from a sit position, or you are likely to run into trouble with this down the road.
“but he Does It at Home” Syndrome
Also last week, I tried to get my puppy to sit and stay in everyday life for the first time. I just wanted him to stay put while I moved some hedge trimming from one side of the gate to the other side. He wouldn’t do it. He could sit, but as soon as I took a single step he was off again. Eventually I just shut the gate a bit so that he couldn’t escape while I put the clippings in the bin, and captured the super-cute photo above.
What Able had was a case of the very common dog training complaint: “But he does it at home!” This cry of despair is heard almost weekly in every obedience or foundation agility class in the world.
Able still spends most of his time in his ex-pen or out in the garden. One of the benefits of this is that he hasn’t been able to get into and chew up any of my stuff.
Until last week. Turns out he is getting very clever at moving his crate around on the floor by pushing at the bottom of it with his nose. And also very clever at somehow hooking stray objects through the bars -usually a dog toy or the ever-present roll of paper towels (this puppy pees with truly astonishing frequency) … but this time he found a new victim. A victim that I dumped in the corner of the office when I was unpacking some boxes, because it’s 2021 and I don’t actually need an alarm clock any more.
Left: A super-cute puppy who would never get up to mischief. Centre: Several pieces of power cord off an alarm clock. Right: My poor alarm clock is now officially retired.
The Importance of Nail Trimming
Long toenails increase the risk of arthritis in the toes, and also of the toenail getting caught in something and ripped. Keeping your dog’s nails short is one of the simplest things you can do to help them enjoy a sound, injury-free agility career. Once the quick of the nails grows longer it’s quite difficult to make it recede again, so it’s best to start with frequent nail trimming while your puppy is very young.
Able is now 13 weeks old. Things are going pretty well in some regards. My other Rik has accepted his arrival much better than I thought she would. He’s learned how to sit and down on cue, he loves to play with me, and he’s getting better at his baby body awareness exercises.
But there is a double-edged sword that comes with being a smart cookie.
Graeme helping me with some restrained recalls. If you have a super duper puppy who would never ever dream of refusing to get in the car, scroll to the end for some tips on how to introduce agility handling skills to your pup instead.
Our First Knottingley Park Adventures
I take Able to a local park 2 or 3 times a week. There’s long grass and gravel and uneven terrain and logs and sheep poo and all sorts of other things to explore. It’s important to get your pup out to explore new places and to give him new challenges to his balance and coordination, although at this age fifteen minutes is plenty.
Able has been to two agility shows now. He was a bit overwhelmed by his first experience (I probably should have set his ex-pen up in a less high-traffic area so he could watch from a distance) but he gained more confidence as the day went on. He loved meeting lots of new people, especially Isaac and Kate.
He also has a new nickname – “Beaver”. I have never met any dog so obsessed with chewing wood. He spent his first morning at home trying to chew the hardwood floors. He’s given that up but he’s still keen on ripping all the rotten wood off the railings of the deck, or just digging up the deck itself, or chewing on the edge of a door… Hopefully my house will survive his puppyhood more or less unscathed!
Kate and Able get to know each other
My main focus this week has been our retrieve. I taught my previous dogs to retrieve by … well, I never taught my first three dogs to retrieve. I started it but didn’t make a lot of progress and then one parent or the other swiped the puppy off my hands and taught it how to retrieve. The basic method I was using was Chuck It and Pray – grab an exciting toy, get the puppy engaged with it, then throw it and spend the next ten minutes begging them to bring it back while they had a whale of a time without me.
I’ve had my puppy for two weeks now, and I swear he is getting bigger and heavier every day. He is quite a confident pup and loves exploring new things, especially with his mouth.
The garden at the new house is an overgrown treasure trove full of puppy toys.
I had a list of over twenty things I planned to do with him in the first couple of weeks. I’ve actually managed to do a little bit of most things with him, although of course we are only at the baby steps of everything. Unfortunately he has to spend a lot of time in his ex-pen as Rik is not quite ready to meet him face-to-face yet, but I shut her in my bedroom with a Kong every few hours so that he can come out and have an adventure in the garden.
Here’s The List … most of these things will be works-in-progress for many months.
Paws in a Box is a great fun trick to introduce you and your puppy to training through shaping. It’s also useful to develop your pup’s understanding of where their back feet are at they move around. Most pet dogs need to improve in this skill when they first start agility training, as they aren’t used to thinking about it too much – the back legs just tend to follow the front ones.
Shaping Behaviour
A lot of dogs learn how to sit, lie down, and come by following a piece of food in their owner’s hand. There’s nothing wrong with this, but for agility training it is easier if the dog is more thoughtful about exactly what he is doing. We like to use a process called shaping to encourage the dog to invent new behaviours that he can offer to us. If you have used a clicker previously, this can be useful in shaping – if not, you’ll need a verbal marker such as “Yes”, as shown in this video.
Paws in a box with the late Dr Sophia Yin. Notice how she starts with the easiest possible behaviour (looking at the box) and then gradually increases the complexity. This dog is very experienced at shaping – your dog may not make so much progress in one session, so try to keep the “step” between one level and the next as small as possible so that you can still reward frequently.Continue reading “Paws in a Box”
This is not a post about how to stop your puppy piddling on the carpet. If you need help with that, I’m sure there are lots of other great resources out there on the internet for this. My basic approach is to confine the pup when he’s not supervised, take him outside very frequently when he is, and gradually extend his level of freedom.
Recent experience with Able has taught me that I am not, in fact, a toilet training ninja. Just as well he’s cute…
Agility dogs lead a slightly different life to most pets. They often travel in the car for several hours at a time (and stay the night in there too), and are required to toilet on a short time frame in unfamiliar, high-distraction settings. There are a few extra things you can do with your toilet training to help make these situations easier for both of you.
I recently got a new puppy – my first baby puppy in 14 years! This happy event has been several years in the making, and I have spent most of that time working on an absurdly detailed puppy plan that will no doubt go out the window shortly after first contact with a real puppy.
One thing I’ve thought about a lot is the Very First Training Session, which has been a frustrating and disappointing experience with each of my previous dogs. After a lot of research and reflection I think I’ve figured it out and Able had a much more pleasant introduction to training. But first, a tour of my previous dogs…
1995: FUNZIE
The only baby photo of Funzie where she isn’t just a blur of fluff. Berta the cat does not look amused.
When: Six months old, at the local obedience club. Everybody knows you couldn’t train a puppy before it was six months old!
The Plan: Not be the worst puppy in the class, and pass our Grade 1 certificate.
The Result: 3 stars
Funzie was rather overwhelmed by being in close proximity to 9 strange large dogs at once, so walking with me on a loose lead wasn’t a problem. She was also good at sitting when I pushed on her bum, but not so good at lying down ad very bad at staying – because she was terrified. Still, not the worst puppy in the class so goal achieved!
Well, it’s been an interesting year. What with lockdown and a back injury, I’ve only competed in 2 shows since mid-March, and I was at home for Labour Weekend for the first time since I started competing in agility in 1997.
I have struggled a bit with my motivation for agility-related things this year, but my dog is sound again and I came away from the Taieri show feeling very motivated to get back into it. I’m sure I’m not the only one dreaming about all the successes I want to achieve in the agility ring next year, but here’s a few other resolutions you could add to your list…
1. Give Your Dog a New Nickname
Shithead. Retard. Stupid dick. Idiot. Nightmare.
These are all names I have heard handlers calling their dogs in the ring this year … usually after they’ve just stuffed something up for their dog.
Please stop it. It’s not as cute or funny as you think it is.
I know your dog doesn’t know what those words mean, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you don’t actually think your dog is a shithead. But spectators don’t know that, and newcomers to the sport don’t know that, and this is not a great first impression for our sport.
And even if you don’t really mean these words, I do wonder how they affect your attitude towards agility training on a subconscious level. At least 95% of what goes wrong in the ring boils down to either handler error or trainer error. If one handler leaves the ring saying “you’re such a retard” and another one says “whoops, we really need to work on those weave entries”, which handler is taking responsibility for the problem and also helping their brain to develop a growth mindset about their dog’s potential?
2. Speak No Evil
This has been my New Year’s resolution for about 4 years now, after I heard some not-nice stuff being said about me. I realised that I too had a tendency to say not-nice things about other people at agility, and so I decided to cut it out. For what it’s worth, I’ve “failed” 4 years in a row, but I’ve definitely reduced the amount of backstabbing that I do, and I’ve found that there are plenty of more interesting things to talk about anyway.
I don’t think we have a major malicious gossip problem in our sport, but it does happen and it can lead to some awkward situations, especially when it starts happening within a club. There’s lots of people at agility and you won’t like all of them – but focusing your energy on the ones you find irritating won’t make anything better. It won’t really make you feel better, either.
So next time you catch yourself looking over your shoulder to make sure So-and-So isn’t in earshot before you make a catty remark, try just thinking it instead of saying it. And if you just can’t keep it to yourself, tell your dog all about it on the drive home.
3. Help a Newcomer
Way back in February 1997, I started a Beginners agility class. I entered Elementary at our club’s Anzac Day ribbon trial and I got a ribbon.
It’s getting harder for our newcomers to get started in competition, not just because the standard required is higher but also because in recent years some practical barriers have popped up. These days you can’t just mention an upcoming ribbon trial to your newbies on Thursday night and have them turn up and enter on the day. There are fewer ribbon trials to enter, and there’s permanent numbers and measuring to worry about first.
The gap between the first-time competitor and the experienced handler running their baby dog in Starters is growing. Courses are getting harder to remember, the best dogs are getting faster, and sometimes you’re going to encounter backsides in Novice. It’s inevitable that somebody who’s been doing agility for 20 years will have more skills than someone who’s just entered their first show, but we need to help our newbies to succeed and enjoy the sport so that they will stick around and become the next generation of Senior handlers.
This is an area that I’d love to see the incoming Agility Committee work on over the coming two years, but we can all do our little bit to help all of our newer competitors (young and old) to feel welcome, and to help them learn the ropes of the sport.
4. Train in the Ring. Or Don’t.
Here’s one I have often been guilty of in the past few years, and I’m going to try to be more aware of how I train in the ring next year.
I’ve been on a dog geek video binge this week, watching a four-hour lecture by world-renowned animal trainer Bob Bailey.
According to Bob, the definition of training is that it changes behaviour.
You’re not “training in the ring” if your dog misses their dogwalk contact, and you go back and repeat it four times, and your dog misses it four more times, and then you carry on to the next jump. You’re just adding thirty seconds onto the show’s finish time while you rehearse crappy dogwalk performances.
Judges like to see people and their dogs succeed and work together as a team. They don’t mind if you go back and try a tricky handling sequence again, or use your time in the ring to build confidence for your young dog. But it must be rather frustrating to watch people repeat the same mistakes over and over … and then over and over in their next run. I know I find this pretty tedious viewing from the sideline!
If you’re going to train in the ring, use that time strategically to build towards your future success. Have a plan before you go in about what you will do if your dog misses a contact or breaks their start line or stuffs up their weaves. How many retries you will do, and what you will do if your dog keeps getting it wrong? If you notice that your dog is often failing at the same thing, think about how you’re going to fix it. Maybe you could take a toy into the ring next time so that you can reward your dog as soon as he gets it right?
And ask yourself afterwards whether you and your dog are better off than you were before you started the run (another tip from Bob!).
5. Sharpen the Saw
My last dog Spring had a little problem with her retrieve. She always came straight back, but I nicknamed her the Grinch because she just couldn’t bring herself to let go of the toy. If I asked her to drop it she would – but then she’d grab it before it touched the ground. Then she’d lie down with her chin pressed into the ground so that it was almost impossible to wrestle the toy out of her mouth.
The Grinch, aged four months. Possibly the last time she ever let go of a toy!
I put up with this minor annoyance for at least five years, and then one day I decided to actually fix it. It took me three weeks to train a new cue for Spring to jump up on my leg and push the toy into my hand.
Suddenly I could get the same amount of training done in half the time, and I wasn’t constantly having to bend down and get hair in my face while I negotiated with the Grinch.
My current dog Rik has a pretty awful retrieve because she likes to parade around and chew her ball for a while. Yesterday I took a ball and some high-value treats outside to work on tunnel threadles, which she finds very difficult. I don’t often train with food, and I was shocked to discover that her retrieve was flawless and we got heaps of repetitions done in just a few minutes.
So this is another of my New Year’s resolutions – I am going to fix Rik’s retrieve so that I can get the ball back straight away, even when I don’t have pockets full of dead animal.
What’s one frustrating or time-wasting behaviour in your dog that you could improve? Maybe it’s a slow or fidgety start-line sit, or a fondness for keep-away like Rik, or a dog that won’t let go out of a tug toy. If you work on it several times a week you should be able to make a huge difference – and then you’ll have more time for agility!
