I try to put Scoop on the table at least a few times a week to get groomed whether he needs it or not. The first picture looks like I am getting the stink eye, but actually he always shows a bit more white on that eye, funny:) Now you can really see how big he is.

Scoop and I survived an all day foundation and groundwork seminar last Sunday. Unbelievably Scoop pretty much worked as a demo dog all day. I kept waiting for him to say he was tired, or to not want to play with me, or forget some of his skills, but he didn’t. He was almost perfect! Well, jumping out of the 18 inch high X-pen a few times wasn’t what I wanted everyone to see, but if that’s the worst he’s got I will take it. Scoop has never really trained indoors before, other than in private homes. We were in a small doggie day care center with matted floors, and 20+ people sitting around, and he never missed a beat responding to cues, total attention and great tug and retrieve. One thing that Scoop could really not cope with was me working Ace with him in his cage. So, I decided it was easier just to use him, rather than listen to him whine in another room while Ace tried to work. Really gotta work on that!

One thing I covered when I discussed retrieving with the group which I think is important, if I send Scoop to a toy from my left side I expect him to turn to the right as he picks up his toy, like this diagram. I really don’t want him to turn away from me every time I toss a toy. Some dogs turn their favorite direction because they are just patterned to do so, others turn in a way that is more physically comfortable. For whatever the reason, I don’t want him to turn away from me. If I throw the toy a really long distance to my dogs I don’t pay attention to this, but on close retrieves or during training I do watch which way they turn. If they turn away I take a little step towards the toy, sort of shaping the pickup for a while until they always turn  back to me.

Scoop is a circus dog now. He loves to stand on his little stools, we don’t really train it very much, but he thinks it is fun to use them both.

This is a short post, lots of REAL work to get done tonight. Hope you keep balancing your training skills with your pup, as much as I try to with mine.

NJG

Scoop is 5 months and one week old now. He is all legs and tail. He is 20 inches tall. YIKES! I keep wondering if I stop feeding him if he will stop growing. Doubt it:(   His size has led me to decide absolutely no more jumping on guests. A cute little 5 month old pup can get away with it, but not a bigger than usual one. I have to tell friends and students not to talk to him until all four feet are on the ground, don’t even look at him! He is extremely friendly, (pushy, engaging) and can’t quite figure out yet what all the fuss is about.

I am happy with his training progress and especially pleased he did not go totally feral last week when I had absolutely no extra time to spend with him. The AKC world team was here at my home for team practice and guests started arriving early in the week and stayed the full weekend. We had 10 guests here at the house and of course that meant lots of people in and out and much ado about nothing according to the baby border collie. Morning and night I saved time to go to the field for some training and exercise, but not nearly as much as he is used to getting. I wanted to do restrained recalls with him, not just trot him around the yard, to burn off some of his steam. That was ok for a a couple days but he started to become upset about being held while I ran away so many times, and decided he did not want to be kept from running along side of me as I left him. He wasn’t scared, he just had too much anticipation of the run and didn’t want to be passed off to Jim so I could leave him. I had not really seen a negative side to doing restrained recalls with any of my dogs before, but he certainly showed me there could be. I really felt if I pushed him to comply with being held while I left that I would make being left with someone into a really big negative instead of the fun it usually is for him. The last times I passed him off I didn’t leave, I just fed him for accepting that someone could hold him by the collar politely while I stood next to him. I will pass on these recalls for a while and hope he forgets about it, and I will be sure to reinforce him for liking others to hold onto his collar or leash while I am with him. I do not want to crossover from play to coercion with this dog, I know I will lose the game!

In a couple days I am teaching a foundation workshop for a local agility club. Scoop will have his first real demo job as I expect to use him on and off throughout the workshop to show training skills which are both finished and in progress. I am a little nervous about how he will perform. He has gotten so much better about hanging out quietly while other dogs are working, but usually that is because I am rewarding him or playing with him. I will be busy talking and working with handlers and their dogs, as well as using my border collie Ace for some skills. I hope Scoop will mind his manners and show how good he can be. A few weeks ago I would not have considered being able to have him with a room full of working dogs and handlers, he would have been screaming if I did not give him my full attention. I will let you know how it goes.

Here’s an update on what Scoop knows and what I hope he can show everyone he knows this weekend. Tug, retrieve, leave it, sit, down, stand, break, kennel up and wait with door of crate open to be released, short duration in sit and down and in the crate, left, right, feet (put your feet on anything I point you towards) touch (nose touch a plexi target or target stick with a ball on the end) hop-up (2o2o on a  step) close and side (swing to heel on both my sides) heelwork on both my right and left, go around a chair or post and probably some other stuff I am forgetting.  All of these skills are still rewarded a lot with food and toys. They are not perfect and would probably not stand up to lots of repetitions without food and toy rewards.

Tonight I worked on having Scoop stay quiet in his kennel while I trained my border collie Ace. He whined loudly when the cage door was closed, but was really good when the crate door was open and he had to restrain himself and think about staying in the cage. He did come out a couple times and I silently  walked him back to the cage, then after he stayed for maybe 5 seconds I threw a reinforcement treat to him and started to play with Ace again. I lobbed cookies to Scoop periodically while I  interacted with Ace. I called Scoop out of the cage a few times and rewarded him then sent him back in again and repeated all the steps. I have not done nearly enough of this work. I think I will get Jim to reward him for me while I train Ace next time. I think that will make a big difference. I do have to remember though, he is just 5 months old! I am trying to keep my expectations realistic.

I hope you enjoy the photos of some of our balance training and water play that Marcy shot of us yesterday in my field.

I hope your weekend is as successful with your puppy training as I hope to be with mine.

NJG

Feet,  nose and teeth.

This morning while I was training Scoop I worked on him standing still while I did a full body examination. I had him stand while I went over him and then decided I should stack him up like a little show dog. (not!) I had a brief stint showing in the breed ring years ago with my German Hovawarts, so I know how to handle a dog into a stack. Run my hands down the shoulder and stop at the elbow to gently position the lower leg by grasping the joint and setting the  leg and foot down square. I do the same for each rear leg. I start by running my hand down the leg from the point of hip and stop at the hock, circling the joint gently with my hand, lifting up the lower leg and squaring the foot on placement to the ground. Scoop stood there nicely so I fed him some treats, released him and started over. I like that he stood square on placement and did not wiggle around or fight my handling.  I liked working on this skill with him, it certainly could help his understanding to stay in one spot without moving a muscle. I looked at his ears, and mouth and handled the privates as well. I lifted each lip with his mouth closed to see his teeth and bite and then opened his full mouth. He is a little tender  from loss of teeth. I keep ripping them out accidentally while playing tug with him, and then if they don’t go flying he swallows them, whoops! He knocked one out during some “mouthy” play with his sister last weekend, and he has lost some chewing on the marrow bones he gets daily.

Today I started working on two different skills. Rolling over and disc targeting. They don’t interfere at all with each other so I can do them in the same practice session if I want. The roll over went ok, not perfect, I will keep playing with shaping that tomorrow. The disc targeting though was incredible. I held out the disc and he immediately touched it with his nose to investigate, and we were off and running. I got great hard nose touches with the target held in both my right and left hand and moving it around the front of me. Clicking and treating each touch of course. I got the target within a few inches of the ground when I thought I better stop as I was getting greedy on the first day of training. Scoop does not know a hand target so I did not know how easy this would be. I sure wish I had thought of this before with my other dogs and students. Duh.  Nice clean disc touches having nothing to do with my hands. Once he knows the touch cue with the target on the ground I will probably teach hand targeting, or maybe not:) I haven’t missed not having a hand target with him.

I also played with one more skill this evening. I was looking for stuff to play with in my storage shed and found some heavy paper plates. I tossed a couple on the ground and went from one to the other using his “feet” command. Scoop places his front feet on anything I point him towards. This was pretty cool, I might be able to put the foot target to use on my contacts. He got it right away and stood on the plates, got rewarded and waited to be released. Basically a great training day I would say. I love staying home and getting to train my puppy as often as I want.  I hope you had a good time with yours this weekend.

NJG

Scoop and I have been busy busy busy. I drove the RV to Los Angeles last weekend to teach a seminar for Wendy Vogelgesang and of course took Scoop and Ace with me. I am not really wild about the driving part of owning an RV, and being away from home for 4 or 5 days to teach a three day seminar, but I love having my dogs with me while I am teaching. I like to have a dog to demonstrate exercises or handling techniques, and always feel a bit handicapped if I don’t. That is a really good part of traveling withyour dogs to teach. And I love the hang out relaxing time before and after the seminar with dogs and friends. It has been great for my dogs. Instead of rushing off to a hotel room after a show or seminar day is done, the dogs can hang out, exercise, get trained, meet new people, and I can really take the time to introduce the new and different environment to my puppy. I just never realized that great aspect of having an RV.

The first morning before the seminar I was up early and walking the dogs at 6 AM. Scoop was on leash and Ace was loose. We walked down the street of a gated community with private drives. No chance of meeting any cars, but apparently lots of chance of meeting coyotes in this beautiful rural setting. As I turned to head back to the RV after a short walk, we came face to face with a huge coyote who essentially blocked the road by sitting in the middle of it staring at us from about 50 feet away. My dogs did not even bark, just looked at him with curiosity. Rather exciting, something intimidating, definitely not on my list of critters that I wanted Scoop to meet on this trip. I called Ace in and made him share the opposite end of the leash with Scoop and then after a few minutes staring contest with Mr. Coyote I decided to just move forward with intent  to see if he would scare off. He let us approach a short distance and then sauntered away in hunt of breakfast. Just glad we were not part of the menu.

Scoops breeder Stephanie Spyr was at the seminar and we let our pups have some fun romps and we did some training together as well. Stephanie suggested testing our retrieves on the pups by sending them for their toys side by side at the same time. This could have been a small disaster but as it turned out it was fun and I am still a bit surprised Scoop could do it. Steph sent her pup for a toy and after Keeper picked up her toy and turned back to Steph, I threw my toy and sent Scoop. Voila! They passed each other like little flyball dogs, what fun. Then we tried back to back retrieves. Steph and I had our back to each other and threw the opposite direction at the same time. They would be running towards each other and us on the return, no colisions, just solid retrieves and they ignored each other totally. Steph and I have both worked hard on our retrieves. We have straight line fast sends to toys, clean pickups withthe pups grabbing a toy and turning immediately back to us and pretty much deliver the toy to our hands. I worked each part of those skills with Scoop, and while I think he has natural ability and desire to retrieve, the shape of the retrieve has been taught and encouraged.

Scoop’s retrieve started with just throwing the toy and letting him run for it at the same time I tossed it. (read about it on my May 20^thblog) I sat on the floor and encouraged him back by patting the floor or my leg to get him to return to me. That changed into me holding onto his collar, throwing the toy, waiting for it to land, and if he was looking forward to the toy, I would send him with the command “get it”. This worked well on short retrieves in the house with me on the floor. Once I went outside and was standing up I wasn’t getting as much speed back to me on the retrieve.   I added a second toy to the game. It all goes like this: I am standing up, I have his collar in hand, I throw the toy at least 25 feet, I say “get it” and release him to the toy. I take a step forward with him as I release him and sometimes I run with him  towards the toy. As he does the pickup, he spins to me, I call his name then take a couple running steps backwards, (facing him) and just as he is getting close to me I dangle a tug toy on the ground in front of me. He drops his toy and grabs the tug and we have a short tug game. Then I put him on my opposite side and started over again. You can see Scoop in action in the photos below. These were from a few weeks ago, he is much bigger now:)

Some of the retrieving basics are:

• Move towards the toy or at least take one step and “bowl” Scoop towards the toy.
• I don’t release and send Scoop unless he is looking forward at the toy.
• I move backwards away from him after the pickup and encourage him to return fast and straight.
• I have faded out the need for a second toy by just holding out my hand and encouraging him to come to it. I would like him to have the attitude that he should push the toy at me and ask me to engage more in retrieving or tugging with him.

Enough talking about retrieving. Scoop has been patiently waiting all morning for me to finish teaching and writing, it is his turn now to have my attention.

I hope to write more about Scoop this weekend, maybe I will get brave and measure him again. He was19+ inches tall last weekend and not quite 5 months old. I am still praying he will stop growing soon! I hope you have as much fun this weekend with your pup as I am planning on having with mine!

NJG