Ideas for getting reconnected and reorganized with your dog after a whoopsie.

I wrote this for my novice students and then it sort of morphed so I thought I would share it with all of you. It’s long – but then I am often not succinct.

When it falls apart on the competition course you need a plan and some skills in order to get reconnected. Whether you have a young dog or a fully trained one, sometimes things just fall apart and you need to get reorganized/refocused/and reconnected in the middle of a course if you want to stay in the ring and finish the run. And sometimes you may WANT to leave the ring but your dog has other ideas, like randomly doing obstacles, or barking and jumping on you, or even biting at your clothing. Some dogs really struggle with moving around a course while NOT doing obstacles.

Even getting reset at the poles after having your dog leave early or miss an entry can be a nightmare if you don’t have some reorganizing skills. Don’t wait to practice these until you are in the middle of a competition run that has gone south, you should practice and reward these during regular training sessions even when your dog is being perfect.
Here are some reorganization skills that should be in everyone’s toolbox.

• Recall directly to you-Call your dog to you, and teach them to stay attentively at your front or side until you give another cue or release word for them to move forward towards an obstacle. You should have a specific recall cue that your dog recognizes as a handler focus cue and one that is trained well enough that you get a really fast and happy response to come into you and will keep your dog’s total attention on you. This needs to be trained well enough that even when you do not have toys or cookies with you on course your dog will still quickly and happily respond and stay attentive once he reaches you and will continue to stay connected to you until released. Work hard to earn your dogs respect and attention so he happily will wait for the next direction from you all the time making eye contact and staying engaged with you.

• Recall and heelwork. Have your dog recall to your side and heel with you somewhere so that you can get reset. Practice at a brisk pace so you can get back to a specific spot on course very quickly.

• Controlled position- Have your dog sit, down or stand stay quickly at any time while on course. This is not giving your dog a position cue as punishment for misbehaving, but asking them for a controlled and well taught cue which has been rewarded many times and proofed until your dog will cheerfully do the behavior without the bribes of toys or cookies.

• Tricks or hand targeting. If you have a non-qualifying score and need to give your dog something specific or fun to do when he gets to you, teach hand targeting and have your dog come to your side and touch your hand, or do a high five or other trick. However touching your dog is an elimination for most organizations so I would only use this if you are not qualifying or don’t mind the judge calling a fault for touching your dog. During training hand targeting and little tricks that engage your dog while staying close to you are great reorganization skills.

You should practice these skills away from agility training and then morph them into your daily practice or in the middle of training during class. Help your dog at first by being lavish with the rewards for them ignoring agility obstacles and taking a position like sit or down or lining up at your side and staying close to you until released. These kinds of skills should be rewarded as often as you would reward contacts, weaves or jumping/handling efforts.

Ask for the behavior and once you get it take the hidden cookies/toys out of your pocket and reward, or use the skills to run all the way off the training field and having a fun party rewarding your dog off of the course instead of out in the middle.We don’t have material reinforcements for our dogs while on an agility course but we have ourselves, our enthusiasm and our praise which take the place of those other reinforcements when they are not available. I personally like my dogs to think that at all times I have a cookie in my pocket and a toy tucked down my pants. I work hard to transfer the value of the reinforcements to the cue and subsequent behavior. I want the values to be equal whether my dog is recalling to my side, doing independent weaves, or staying on a contact till released without the necessity of physical reward being present and visible. Balance what you reward. Contacts, weaves, tight turns, come to heel, threadles, lie down, go-ons’ at the end of the course and recalls in the middle. Don’t over reward the obstacles and under reward the handling and handler focus cues. Randomly reward all of it!

Try a couple of the following exercises at your next training session or class.

• As your dog exits a tunnel call him to heel, and turn a tight heelwork circle with him, pull a cookie out of your pocket for him, then send him back to the tunnel and proceed with your drill.
• After a short sequence of jumps, ask your dog to lie down and praise and reward him very quickly for doing so. Run a short distance away leaving him in a down and then call him to you to restart your drill.
• After a set of weaves that your dog successfully completes, reward with lots of praise then walk or run with him at your side back to the beginning of the weaves for a restart and reward that second set of poles or go right back to your full sequence.

During training sessions

While your dog is in an agility training/competition area he should at all times be doing some kind of specific behavior which you can put a name to. That could be actively running agility, playing with you and a toy, doing a behavior or trick for cookies, or hanging out in some kind of controlled position like sit, down, stand, or heeling with you. He could be waiting attentively on a table, chair or mat. If he is not doing “something” you should likely have him tied up or in a crate so that he can rest without being “on duty”.

If you need to talk to your instructor while training you should also have some skills taught for those events as well. Calmly tugging while chatting with someone; nibbling on a large treat you which you do not completely relinquish; controlled with your hand in their collar; in a position close to your side; jumped up into your arms; kneeling down next to your dog with an arm wrapped around them; these are ways to gently control your dogs’ location rather than always relying on a sit or down stay.

Train don’t complain.

NJG
PS: At trials you should also have a plan for broken start lines, busted contacts and early table departures. Plan ahead of time for how you might address  each of these errors while you are in the agility ring.

Picture says it all. Scoop got one of these fancy pages when he won the ‘Pixie Prix’ last weekend, what us locals call the Performance Grand Prix. And his performance team with my friend Mia Grant & Vic won the Team event winning every single one of the 5 classes in overall points. Yep. The PERFORMANCE classes.

This was the first time 6 year old Scoop and I competed in Performance. He measures into the 26 inch division and has been competing there since he was 18 months old. Over the years I would say he has been competitive locally at 26 inches. He’s won many local GP’s and a Regional GP and our share of DAM Tournaments as well as local and Regional Steeplechases- when we are lucky and the bars stay up, and of course- if I handle him correctly. 🙂 In March this year we finished second at the AKC Nationals at 24 inches, just .02 seconds off the winner. But at 24, not 26.

Scoop takes off early, especially on spread jumps and the table. This past year he has had some spectacular table crashes in both USDAA and AKC. I dreaded the 24 inch table. At least when he creams through a spread jump the bars are displaceable- not so those big unmovable metal tables. The feeling in the pit of my stomach when he hit those obstacles is horrible and frightening and at some point I know he could be seriously hurt. It was hard to finish a course after those crashes with tears filling my eyes and a knife in the pit of my gut.

I have talked about retiring Scoop or doing performance now for a couple years, but then I would come home from a trial with some impressive wins and I’d be buoyed to keep on keeping on. Deciding to move to performance has been something I have done with my 10 to 12 year old dogs- not one in the prime of his life. It felt like giving up and giving in to a less competitive form of agility. But Scoop and I want to do stuff together, and what we like to do besides tricks, and hiking and swimming is agility. He likes agility, a LOT! Maybe I was waiting for a ‘bigger sign’ that it was time to move on. We are in the beginning of the qualifying season for Cynosport and I needed to make a decision. Stay the road, retire from USDAA or move to Performance. I am a Libra, the scale sign- and I can tell you that I went back and forth way too many sleepless nights making the decision. However, I had no time left to contemplate things if I wanted to compete with him at Cynosport this year. And the answer was that “I do!”

My stress over the decision was all to naught. Last weekend was so freeing, so much fun to let him jump lower with no spreads to crash, and I know the decision was the right one. It was wonderful to walk a course without worrying about how to help him over those gigantic spreads, and not even giving a second glance at the low table. Anyone whose dog struggles with jumping has these concerns and worries over balancing up what we WANT to do with our dogs, and what we SHOULD do with our dogs. For me, last weekend I knew I made the right decision for Scoop’s mental and physical well-being, and certainly for MY mental health as well.

And to top off the joy of the moment, Scoop got re-measured two weeks ago at an AKC show and easily got two measurements that moved him from 24 to the 20 inch class. I was sitting with friends on day two of a three day show, whining (yep, sometimes I do that) about how he had crashed almost every triple two weekends in a row and I had tried everything in my arsenal to help him to no avail. A friend suggested I get him re-measured. Scoop’s AKC measurement at 18 months got him just over 22 inches and at the time I was fine with that: 24 inches in AKC (as well as Nationals) and 26 inches in USDAA. No problem- until it became one. I had never measured Scoop again, and I believed he was just over 22 inches tall. Moments after this conversation I walked over to a measuring judge who just happened to be available, and she got him at 21.3/4. 20 minutes later I asked another judge to measure him and she had him right at 22. Within a half hour our competitive life was changed. No more 24 inch spreads and tables for Doobie!

I believe Scoop jumps early because he is somewhat cross eyed. His strabismus has been noticeable since he was a puppy. He has always struggled with jumping but for some years I believed it due to other kinds of health issues. Maybe there are other unknown factors as well as strabismus, but I think the biggest factor is that his binocular vision is off because of his eye placement. I can only guess that his depth perception is inaccurate and that is the biggest underlying cause of his Early Take Offs.

I am working on an article right now to update everyone where we are in researching the causes for Early Take Off. Not all dogs that take off early for jumps have strabismus.There are likely at least a few causes for ETO. You will notice I am referring to this problem as “ETO” not “ETS”. We do not know if there is even a syndrome to be found- so Linda Mecklenburg, the ETO researchers and myself have begun using the acronym that actually describes the problem. So ironic that I started that project long before I suspected my own dog to be affected. But I’ll save that story for another day.

My long post is over, but happily not Scoops’ agility career and all the fun times ahead for both of us playing at our favorite game.

I can hardly believe that Scoop will be three years old in a month. I want my lost year back! Ok, enough whining:) Scoop and I went to his first competition in almost a year and he did really well. No Q’s on day one, but on the second day he got his third open jumpers leg to finish the title and this weekend he will run in EX jumpers for the first time. His last time in the AKC ring was exactly a year ago, his 2nd open jumpers leg was on 2.12.2011, almost exactly one year between open jumpers legs!

Here is a video of the jumpers run and the EX standard Q we almost got till I dumped him in the weaves and had to pay for it with his departure.

Scoop is still getting weekly massages and last week he got one on both Friday and Saturday, Maybe that was why he was good on Sunday!

My student Mary VanWormer sent me a link to a really interesting article on why massage heals. I found it an eye opener and it has even more confirmed the need to have body work done on my dogs. I am now trying to adjust the time I spend working on Scoop myself so that I save time after training and not necessarily before. I really don’t think I can make time for both! Warm-up, stretch, train, then a least a little time devoted to massaging his tightest parts.

I hope our success continues and am really looking forward to this weekend instead of with the trepidation I have felt for so long on his progress.

I hope your youngster is right on track and that you make some time and same some money to spend on those valuable massages for your competition partner!

NJG

Dennis Sprung, President of the AKC, sent us a big envelope in the mail with a fancy piece of paper that says Scoop earned his novice jumpers title. woohoo! And after last weekend we have 2 open jumpers and 2 open standard legs, and an open FAST leg as well.

I was trying to decide which of Scoops videos from the weekend to share with you but got all hung up on the imperfections and couldn’t decide which ones to use. A couple late front crosses from me, a pulled bar and a couple refusals from him, a couple suspect rear crosses that felt just great when I did them but look a little “flickish” on video. Darn! Even with our little goofs though Scoop was a good boy. He is growing in confidence, gaining speed, and he is starting to realize that the leash is sitting on a chair at the gate and that he should head that direction to tug with the leash, rather than jump on me at the end of the run.

Through the magic of modern editing I have managed to compile a little video showing some good stuff we did together, and well to be honest, I just cut out the parts I didn’t like:) Wish all of my life’s faults could be “edited” away so easily!

Our weaknesses are going to start biting us back once we move to Excellent. I haven’t yet got the independence I need on his contacts and weaves so that I can position myself anywhere I want while he is doing those obstacles.  Right now I am not letting him stay long at the end of the DW or teeter because I don’t want him to try to nose touch the board. And I am not asking for extra touches like I do in training. At home this past week he was better, but at the show he was shorter than I want in 2o2o.

I don’t have a show for another 3 weeks, and I have a 4 day seminar away from home to teach before then. I am planning on getting in plenty of contact training time while we are in a new location. Hopefully in three weeks I will be feeling more confident on the reliability and independence of those obstacles. For now I am going to stick with AKC for Scoop as I don’t feel confident yet that he can do the higher USDAA frame reliably. Heck, we are not 100% on the low one yet!

Oh well,  lots to train this week and next week and next month and next year! Hope you had a great weekend showing your young dog, and maybe that you too got a really nice piece of paper in the mail.

NJG

The good news is that Scoop was in his second full AKC trial this past weekend and finished his novice standard title and is now in both Open JWW and Standard. The bad news is that we have not trained all the skills that he is going to encounter in open and excellent. The big ones we are missing are discrimination with contacts/tunnels and different side changes at the A-frame, as well as a bit more independence on the weave exits.

Scoop got his first open jumpers leg, here is the video.  You will see a bit of a bobble when I momentarily lost my way, and almost skipped an obstacle. Scoop did not seem to care, I resent him to the jump and he scooted off nicely and I got back on track. duh:) And we did most of the open standard before the wheels fell off. We got through  obstacle 12 smoothly which included a tunnel to DW challenge (by sheer luck since I have never asked him to turn out of a tunnel and go back up a contact). He had a nice DW and good weave entry, lovely table and THEN we had a really most spectacular teeter flyoff. One of those catch your breath in your throat and hope the dog comes down out of the air at some point without any broken bones.

And a skill I really discovered I was missing was what to do on course after an error without a toy to toss or play tug with. Scoop got a bit overstimulated when I had to reset him after a bobble and he considered using me as a tug toy. He stayed at my side when we went to re-enter a set of weaves he had popped at pole 10 when I tried to fade laterally, the problem was how close he was at my side. He was close enough for me to feel his breath on my leg but luckily a word of warning kept him from stepping over the edge.

This week we have discrimination on our list of training goals, along with practicing heelwork in the middle of a course without any toy reinforcer in my hand, and continuing Scoop’s frame training with more side changes before and after. And of course, Letter K and hopefully one or two more letters if there is time.

I hope you have a long list of training goals this week with your novice dog too. Life would be so boring if everything was perfect and we didn’t have a training goal for the week/month & year.

NJG