Two weeks holidays are coming up and all I am thinking about at the moment is how many mornings I will get up at 7am (or earlier once daylight saving time is finished) and drive to the local oval or the showgrounds so we can do some serious circle running. My non-agility friends at work are horrified when I mention this plan so it's got me thinking that maybe I am just the tiniest bit obsessed with running around in circles.......When Greg Derrett was here earlier last year he was adamant that to succeed in running his system you need to have brilliant circle running with your dog. Although I ran circles with the kelpies during their foundation training (and plan to revisit them with both shortly) it wasn't my top priority with either of them as I was too busy training other things - like obsessive nose touches with Cruz for example.
Derrett's comment should have been a no brainer but was a big lightbulb moment for me. At the time I struggled with whether I should even write it down, let alone live it and breathe it. After all, who wants to spend so much time running around in circles - or running in any shape or form if I am honest about it.
Well, I bit the proverbial bullet, dedicated a page in my training journal to Circle Running (which has now turned into 2 pages and will shortly hit page number 3) and set a goal to focus on having brilliant circles by the time Ivy was 12 months old - well very good ones at least !
After a couple of months of training circles, I found I was actually enjoying running them and looked forward to doing them again. Which makes me think that I may be just a little bit addicted- especially now that I am planning getting up early on my holidays to run them in as many different locations as I can.
But there is something truly addictive about circle running with a dog that really enjoys it and actually tries to follow your body and match your pace. Not to mention the crazed tugging in between. As compared to 2 kelpies where number one runs great circles- about 5 metres away from your side and just about has a melt down if you ask him to come in closer to your leg. (Yes, he is a good Gamblers dog ) And number 2 is like a big sooky la-la lagging about a metre behind you because he only wants to do dogwalks with aforementioned obsessive nose touches, not run around with you. (Think we'll be revisiting motivation and reinforcement with kelpies as well.)
We have trained other things and not just circle running - honest ! I even have the videos (which I still don't seem to be able to post) and photos to prove it.
Here's Ivy playing 'It's Your Choice' with a toy - which is way harder for her than with food.
Her stays are really coming along well and she has been used quite a bit lately as 'demo dog' at club on Friday nights when instructors are teaching stays with distractions. I am very proud of her work but realise that we still have a lot further to go as although she is fine with everyone standing around watching, running dogs are still a big distraction for her - especially in the first 5 minutes of class before the tugging obsession really takes over.
And here she is posing in front of a jump bump grid - she loves these exercises and we are about to start some bend work plus some further 'problem solving' by dressing up the jump standards with streamers, pot plants, wings and anything else I can find in the shed/man cave.
But Circle Running still remains our top priority and I find that I am finally nodding my head and agreeing with GD when he talks about its importance, rather than screwing up my face and thinking that I really don't want to do this.So why do I believe it's so important? It's teaching Ivy to respond to my body movement, plus building an understanding of the concepts of Blind Cross Body Line, Reinforcement Zone, Acceleration and Deceleration - all of which are vital to the Derrett system. The key is to build value for her being in the Reinforcement Zone (a concept that I didn't quite 'get' with the kelpies) so we have incorporated lots of play and reinforcement into the early training and still continue to do so even now when we can run larger and faster circles.
My ideal picture of Ivy's circle work - from my training diary- is:
Ivy runs at my side with no lagging, no forging ahead, no pushing on my line, no shaping of the circle itself, no crossing in front of me, no crossing behind me. Ivy also matches my pace when I accelerate and decelerate. Ivy can run both outside and inside circles of different sizes and can change sides on outside circles when I incorporate a front cross on the flat.
Our weaknesses would be :
Occasionally forging ahead on inside circles, although we are improving at this. Plus occasionally trying to dictate the size of the circle if she doesn't think I am running fast enough for her.
And my reminders to myself when running circles are:
Play often, carry the toy in both hands as well as in my pocket, make sure I am using the toy as a reward and not as a lure, reward quickly, mix in some straight line running with the circles if I feel she is dictating the size of the circle or forging ahead, run in as many locations as possible and add distractions when she is ready for them - which is probably now.
If there are any other circle running addicts out there - please make contact. We can form a support group if necessary and share circle running tips ...... which will make me feel better about what a tragic I am becoming when that alarm goes off next week at 6am !
