Why is Attitude Important?

There have been so many things written and spoken about attitude and how it affects your performance in sports.  There has been less written about your dog's attitude and how it affects their performance!

I believe that the same principals apply.

• A positive attitude can give you a higher level of performance
• Negative emotions (such as worry) adversely affect your performance
• The act of laughing and play relaxes you and increases your level of performance
• Hanging around positive people (or dogs) can give you a more optimistic perspective
  
  
   

(Chasing Prairie Dogs)

I have been focusing on my dogs attitude lately.  I will be the first to admit, I have great material to work with (my dogs that is).  Yes, they are border collies, yes they love to work, but my boys are also very concerned with doing it right.  The concerns with doing it right often affect how well they can perform.

Split, for instance will not send to a tunnel unless he has confirmed twice that it is the right obstacle to do.  Tangle won't run at full speed if he doesn't have all the information two days in advance.  (Tip, well she really doesn't have a confidence problem and is FULL of attitude.)

So, with the two boys I am working very hard at PLAY.  The more they play, the happier they are, the more confidence they are building.  This increases their drive, speed and desire to play with me.  It is a win/win for all involved.

So, tips to improve your dogs attitude or excitement level.  Use these right before you go into the ring or start your agility practice.

1. Put behaviors such as jumping on command.  Any activity where the dog has to get some feet off the ground , raises the heart beat and gets them excited.  Spinning is another great one.
2. Dogs bark when they are excited.  Put it on command, use it to your advance.
3. Put a a word to an explosive start.  My dogs LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it when I open the agility gate in the morning.  When I release them I am amazed at how fast they can go from 0 - 60mph.  I am put a word on that so I can evoke that same behavior when needed.  When do you get an explosive start?  Chasing a squirrel, another dog, restrained recalls. 
4. Tug, tug, tug!  I use to have a "drop it" command as a part of my tug with my dogs, but I noticed that Tangle wouldn't put all his effort into a tug.  So, I put different rules on the game for him.  He has a command to "get it" (I get an explosive run to me) and that is it.  Once I stopped asking for a release, started trying to pry the toy from his mouth, played keep away when he released it I got a tugging fool!  Those little things made all the difference.  I believe that Susan Garrett has a YouTube about building drive as a bad dog trainer. :)
5. Play chase with your dog, increases their prey drive and heart rate.  They will go to the start line very excited and ready to chase.
6. Race your dog to toys
7. Observe your dog, anything they get excited about in everyday life can be used to get them excited and focused before they go into the ring.  For instance, Split loves to catch dirt when I flick it.  This gets him going, and it is a great warm up for his hind end.

Think about it.  A controlled and calm dog is great (when you are eating dinner), but a happy, confident, and excited dog is gonna be an awesome partner in the agility ring. 

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony - Gandhi

Working on Discriminations (and other tough stuff)

I set up this course the other day to help work on discrimination's with the dogs. Tip and Split are fairly good with them, but I really haven't worked enough with Tangle. Tangle is really good in following my motion, so if my motion is perfect he doesn't need specific training right?

#1

This course ended up having several challenges that were really fun to work out.  The opening 1-5 is fairly straight forward, however there is bar knocking opportunity.  I led out to #3 and found that I had to leave almost upon release in order to keep all the bars up.  6 was not a problem if I drove straight in, but if I wanted to leave earlier, I found that I needed more than just motion to get the tunnel.  #7!  I really want to have the skill to just drive hard and look at that tunnel and the dog follow, not there yet.  However, it was fairly easy to get with an outside hand so the dogs would not pass my plane until I released them to the tunnel.  Blind cross between 7-8, rear-crossed at 9.  13-14 just be careful to give the dog a good approach t the AF.

#2

Only had to move one jump (#12) for this course.  The opening although it seemed kind of dicey when I was setting it up ended up being fairly doable (1-6).  I ran with the dog on my left for the entire opening.  7-8 I decided that I wanted to RC #8 and run the outside of the dog walk just to add some additional challenge (and trying to show the dogs different things at the end of the DW).   First I tried just scooping the dogs up at the end of the DW, paused after 9 to get them turned into me to hit the #11 tunnel.  Turns out they are committed to the #13 tunnel right at #9 and it is very hard to get them turned.  Living life with too much uncertainty there!   I put a blind cross in between the end of the DW and #9 and drove right into #9, I then peeled out to #11.  This got the dog turned and following my motion much better.  However to get the #11 tunnel and not the AF proved challenging.  Something I need to practice for sure.

11-12-13 was a great moment of learning.  I put the restriction ahead of time on #12 that I would have to blind in between 12 and 13.  Turns out you would NEVER want to do that.  There is NO WAY to cue the dog to take the back side of 12 (even though I used my back side verbal), your motion is just too strong and they run around the jump.  You can't turn fast enough to get the side cue done before the dog has to commit.  Basically you are twirling and the dog twirls with you--good dog!

As I write this up, it seems that what I learned while running the course were things I should have already known.  I strive to get better at recognizing these challenging in advance and making the right choices before I run.

Deposits in the Agility Bank

I was on a trip back east with my son recently and had a chance to catch up on a fair amount of agility reading--Clean run, reviewing foundation articles, and a few small books.

One of the books that made an impression on me was "Click and Play Agility", by Angelica Sneinker.  She had a lot of really good information in there in general, but one concept hit home.  Now, I don't remember if it was something very specific that was said, or just one of those concepts that rang other bells in my head. Or if it was a combo of all the things that I read on the trip.

 It was the concept of 50% of your trials should be training trials.  That is, you are true to your criteria (startlines, contacts, dropped bars) and don't let things slide.  You take the opportunity to proof what you train (huge lateral motion away from the weaves).  You make "deposits" into the agility bank and a solid foundation.

I have been practicing this concept for a couple of weeks now.  I was at a trial this past weekend where I did just this all weekend.  Let me tell you, it actually feels great to walk a course, plan ahead exactly where you are going to test your training and do just that.  It feels even better when your dog holds up his/her end of the deal :)  But if they don't you are perfectly prepared to handle it well. 

Startlines - At the trial I worked several start lines.  1) put my dog into a sit-stay, started running away and then released  2)  sit-stay, walk out and then walk back and reward (only with praise in the ring)  3) stand-stay, lead out a fair distance, turn around, smile and talk to my dog, then release.  You never know when all of these skills come in handy and one thing I have learned in agility is you want to be confident that you have the skill when you need it.  This is by far the most challenging skill for Tip and Split (startline stays).  I didn't push either one to the point where I KNEW they would fail, I just took it to the edge.  Tangle, who has a solid stay, got tested much more.

Weaves - I sent to the weaves, I charged full speed (that is, I didn't collect even though my dog had too), moved away laterally, and rear crossed weaves.

Dogwalk - All my dogs have a 2o2o contact performance.  I ran past the end while they stayed, I let them get ahead and arrived late (testing Independence).

It is amazing the pride that you feel as your dog begins to show you that your training has held up!  The one item that was a challenge for all three dogs was a dogwalk with a tunnel as the next obstacle.  Of course they can resist the tunnel in the backyard, but not at the trail.  All three dogs broke once and I had the opportunity to take them back and train the criteria (NADAC).  The next dogwalk and then tunnel, all three stayed!  Good dogs.

Just as a side note to all of this, I once took a seminar from Carry Jones who said that she proofs the weaves in all sorts of ways, however in competition if it is a tough entry, she always helps her dog get the entry.  This made sense at the time, but now I am not sure that I agree.  If the dog knows that you are always helping under difficult situations, isn't that training the dog that you will always help?  Don't you want your dog to be independent no matter what?  That way, when you really need the skill you can depend on it being there?

As another side note to this topic, I worked this idea in class last night.  I found that I needed the work, not the dogs.  There were certain things that I didn't have a solid skill or muscle memory to depend on when working these skills.  One in particular was leaving the dog in the weaves and recalling laterally over an odd angle jump.  Not hard to learn, but I had to think too much about it.  My point being, proofing builds skills in the dog and YOU! 

Just do it!  Put deposits into the agility bank, you WILL need to make a withdrawl later when it really counts!

A week of learning

Last week was a week!  Every single day of it was filled with learning experiences both personally and professionally. 

The agility aspect of the week has been awesome.  I watched inspiring video, took a class that was just FULL of nuggets, and did exercises that were super challenging.






First, Mary Ellen Barry Video, a friend sent me this video of Mary Ellen Barry running Maizy and E-Z in Steeplechase.  It hit me almost immediately this is by far the best example I have seen of a couple of different things 1) Cue and Go  2) The value of independent performance of obstacles.  I am not a stranger to either of these concepts, but it is so valuable to me to have these visual examples of what I can achieve when I push the envelope of both of these concepts.  Inspired to once again to push the envelope. I think that my dogs have these skills, but since I rarely test it to this extreme I am going to work on it this week.

Second, Tangle and I took a class last week that was full of nuggets. Several things that I already knew, but it was great to hear again. New reasoning put to proven concepts, ingrains the concepts that much more. And lastly, new ideas. What I realized last week, Tangle is getting to a transition point. That point where agility is beginning to seep into his bones. It seems that when they just start out in agility, all the behaviors are fresh and the pups try really hard to keep doing the right thing. Then, sometimes fast and sometimes slowly, agility seeps into their bones and the behaviors begin to change. The beautiful startline is corrupted with anticipation, the contact behavior lines begin to blur because they know what is next, and the speed and confidence begin to change the picture. Tangle has arrived and I am thrilled. It is time to "Train to Maintain". The little nuggets and reminders that we picked up this week are:

• Always mark behaviors good and bad.  Contrast them well, party when they are perfect, and mark when they are not desired.  I will be setting up really short (3 obstacle drills) to mark dropped bars, this doesn't apply to Tangle, but to Tip.  Although Tangle will do the same drill to maintain his beautiful performance.  Low confident dogs almost need this more because of the parties when they do the right thing, this applies to Split.
• A better strategy of cue and go to get the tight turn that I want, but loose any babysitting behavior. Mark the spot of the bar that you want the dog to turn on and get the heck out of there. This works beautifully, although it is hard to appreciate because you are not there to spectate :)
• Push and trust your dog in class. It is the perfect time. You have teachers and students who will tell you when something happened. A great example of this is, blind crossing the end of the weaves. I can't see that my dog finished them, but others can and quickly so the behavior can be marked.

Lastly, we did an exercise from the World Agility Open (WAO) E-Book, www.waoteamusa.com. I won't post the exercise, but the E-Book, well worth the money. But, it was an International Drills exercise by Blake Stafford, page 119. Great exercises to twist your mind and figure out how to get the job done!

Just Because!

Sometimes I have to step back and be a proud mama of my dogs.  I am not proud because they just won some huge national competition, I am proud because they have done something that was hard for them or overcome some obstacle that has been in our way.
I went to drop-in last night with Split and Tangle.  Both of the dogs did really great and it was nice to sit back and just love being their mom!

If you have read about Split on my blog then you probably know that he is a very driven, focused, yet an issue filled boy.  Sometimes life is a little too much for him and he develops a fear to something.  Sometimes I have no idea why that fear developed.


Lately Split and I have been working through his teeter issues.  He decided that he would be afraid of some (not all) teeters and would refuse to get on them.  Also, he is "Border Collie" stuck when it comes to downing on the table.  He just can NOT lie down quickly on the table and I have yet to work through that with him.  But, I love this dog and he has taught me so much about training!  He is my hero!


Split's run last night at drop-in was amazing for him.  Lately he has been taking 15 extra obstacles (can't keep his head), running (quiet nicely) his 2o2o dog walk contact and running around the teeter.  I was really happy with how he kept his head in this run, took the teeter willingly (twice), and downed fairly well on the table.  These are all things that we have been working on and making some progress.







Tangle did well last night too!  I am super proud of him and how he is transitioning from a baby dog to a confident dog. There are things on this course that would have been very challenging for him 2 months ago. He is picking up speed and breezing right through them.  His stand on the table made me laugh. His trained behavior is an automatic down, which until last night had never been questioned. A green dog has to try it all on and see what sticks, don't they?

Retraining an AFrame

More than anything I wanted to put these thoughts down for myself.  One, to remember what I have done, and two, it helps me solidify my thoughts on this topic.

I decided about a year and a half ago (maybe more) that I needed to retrain Split from a 2o2o AFrame (AF) to a running AF.  He clearly didn't like the pressure on his shoulders and after 5 or so reps he would start limping on the front-end.  Plus, I just really like the fluidity that it gives my runs.

I tried many things and some I believe contributed to the solution and some didn't.

Split is a boy that wants to do the right thing, is very sensitive, and is a little (a lot) Velcro.   His personality is key in how I trained things.  It is hard to work with sometimes and almost always I have to adjust my plan.

The first thing I needed to do was "break" the 2o2o and have him run his AF.  I put the AF  down low so that it would appear different to him.  It took me about a week of practice every day to get him to start running it without hesitation (see doesn't take long to ruin criteria does it?).  When it was down low he would run it without a leap.  Once I started to move it up, he began to leap (it was probably less than 5 feet high).  I tried marking the correct behavior, but things didn't really improve.  He enjoyed leaping and sometimes would creep to make me happy.  He just didn't get it.

Frustration and many weeks later...

OK, so now he is leaping.  I decided to train him to hit a box on the ground, similar to Rachel Sanders box method.  I trained Split so he would run away from me, intentionally hit the box and keep running (to catch a ball or something).  Although I don't remember exactly, I think this probably took several weeks to get the behavior that I was happy with.  Once I had this I put the box on the AF. 

Fast forward many months...

When the box was on the AF he would hit it.  Trying to fade the box was murder!  Also, a gnawing feeling in me just knew he didn't really "understand" the criteria.  After all, how do you explain that to a dog.  Really, this is about muscle memory to a degree.

Frustration again, and a break from training this (after all, I wasn't getting a reward)...

While re-training Split on the AFI began to train Tangle on a running DW .  Let me just say, everyone should train a running dogwalk.  Not to get the end behavior, but because it teaches you and your dog so many valuable things (maybe I will blog on this some day).  Seriously, this is a fabulous experience but it does take diligence.

The training of the running dogwalk gave me a much deeper understanding of how to teach a dog to run a contact.  I learned details on how to progress through the process that I never would have learned retraining Splitty.  So, I put Split through running AF 101 school which Tangle was doing running DW 101.  I didn't want to retrain Split's dogwalk, just too much.  But, fundamentally all the principals that I learned with Tangle applied to Split and his AF.

AF went down low again, clicker came out, and the treat-n-train.  Another obstacle to overcome with Split!  Some days he would be afraid of the clicker sound and almost always the treat-n-train.  Back to the tennis ball!

In order to not make this a novel, basically I followed many of the steps that Sylvia uses for training a running DW.  Low obstacle, very little stimulation, low motion, lots of repetition, gradually increase all of those.  Always, jackpot and high reward for getting it right.  Training the AF was now Split's favorite game!

Again, once I raised it to about 5 feet he began to leap.  Frustration set in!  This is when I began to put a stride regulator on AF between the change of color.  There are two things that this did   1) Split's stride would ALWAYS hit the yellow 2) it allowed me to get his performance on a higher AF to the point of frequent reward--key!!!  I ran the AF this way for probably a month.  Slowly adding more motion and other obstacles.

When I took the stride regulator off I had leaping back again.  Another round of frustration! 

But once I sat back and thought of everything I learned with Tangle and running DW the emotion wained and some constructive thoughts set in (I learned this process from training Tangle's running DW).  I removed my motion, stimulation and obstacles and left the AF high.  I began to reward Split for successes and not reward for failure.  Presto, I was beginning to get different results!

To me, the key was teaching him what success was (the look, sound, and my reaction).  That is, when he did something right what would happen and when he did something wrong what DIDN'T happen.  When Split got his AF right I would throw a huge party (not too much happy sounds because he is emotion sensitive I had to increment into this), throw the ball, and give a boat load of praise.  When he didn't get it right, there was no reaction, just walk back and try it again.

Within days I began to see Split adjust his stride to "get it right"! 

So, we are now several months into this break through.  We have done a couple of trials without any AF calls.  I still work the AF 4-5 times a week in a training mode.  Each session starts with little motion and increments into full motion and obstacles.

Can I call him "retrained"?  Nope, not yet!  But have we hit a major success milestone? Yep, we have!

P.S. There are a ton of thoughts out there on what the "proper" running AF performance looks like.  Leaping over the apex, almost touching their belly over the apex, only one stride on the downside, two strides on the downside and on and on.  I now have three dogs with a running AF.  Each performance is slightly different.  The answer is "it depends" and ultimately what can your dog do confidently and reliably matters!

Split's progress to date, http://youtu.be/vZiwfyocu2Y



Split and Tangle with stride regulator, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGrB8XgXS_Y

Updated USDAA Nationals page

Everybody has to eat right?  Once of my challenges while on the road with my dogs is finding a great place to eat.  I will probably update this info as I remember all the great little restaurants we have tried.  I have also included comments about the availability of shade parking for the pups.  http://bcagility.blogspot.com/p/cynosports-2012-usdaa-nationals-denver.html