Proofing Outside the Square

We have just reached a big milestone in our agility journey as Ivy has been entered in her very first trial.
Even though at this point I am not exactly certain if she will actually get to run, it was very exciting filling out the entries and seeing her name in print with all the other agility dogs - this is a trial that uses online entries so instant gratification.


Our favourite motivator - anything that includes a ball

I have no doubt that Ivy is capable of running a novice jumping course- that's all we have entered at this stage.  But that's not the motivation for entering at the moment.  I have reached the point where I now need to put her out in a trial environment to see how she deals with it as this is something that is close to impossible to recreate- especially living in a state that hates the idea of not for competition runs and won't even consider them.  Let's not go there with what I think of that attitude.

So I figure that if I choose a sympathetic judge who is at least a little bit open minded about such things - and we do have a handful- then I can create my own not for competition run if I decide to, or at least something resembling it, without anyone being any the wiser.

So I chose an open minded judge who has the Novice ring in the afternoon and then entered Atilla in Masters for the morning and Ivy in Novice jumping for the afternoon - but now Atilla has injured his leg and joined Cruz on the sidelines. I'm not sure if he will be ready to run by the weekend of the trial plus with his past history I tend to err on the side of caution and will most likely wait longer than I need to anyway.  Whether or not I think it's worthwhile driving 3 hours for Ivy's very brief debut I am still contemplating - especially when I can wait a couple of weeks and then have a whole month full of trials to choose from.  I am in no hurry to get her out - this becoming all too common attitude of 'my dog is only 2 and has Masters titles' doesn't really impress me one bit -  but the little voice inside my head keeps telling me how valuable it would be to have that first hand knowledge of how she reacts to the trial environment in my toolbox..... and it's very tempting.
Decisions, decisions !


The feral one showing her jumping style - accidentally captured when L. was meant to be shooting video.


For a brief moment a week or so back,  I almost had 3 broken dogs ....... Ivy had a fall from the top of the dogwalk which she was negotiating like a formula one racing car in her usual style.  She has fallen from the top at home once before where she landed on her feet, then raced back to the start to get on again, but this time she squealed and held up her rear paw when she came down and scared me to bits.
By the time I had her lead back on and walked back toward the ring entry she was walking normally and showed no effect whatsoever.  We had a walk around for a bit, then played tug for a bit and when I was pretty sure that she was OK we did a couple of jumps and the dogwalk again, which she had no trouble with.  And no sign of anything wrong since thank goodness.

The whole experience really scared me and has made me back up a few steps and think about how I can do some more proofing on the dogwalk, especially as I was told that she turned her head and looked at me before she came off, which she does not usually do.  When I think about working the dogwalk at home, I am usually working it as a recall to try and tempt her off the end, or we are running together, where she is usually so fast that she well and truly gets to the end before me and completes the middle ramp ahead of me.
Friday was the first time she has completed the dogwalk in a sequence and as I was ahead of her when she got on, I was actually running right beside her when she came off.  I am wondering if this might have been the first time that I have ever been in this position, so now need to proof it.

I have lowered my dogwalk and have been running right beside her as fast as I can but no matter what I do I can't seem to make her look at me, which I am actually pretty pleased about.
So far I have tried :
*Running alongside really fast - well as fast as my short legs will allow me to anyway.
*Pumping my arms in a very exaggerated fashion as I run.
*Running in a flapping coat and hat.
*Running with me on one side and L running on the other side.
*L. standing still really close to the middle ramp and then calling her name as she came over.
*Waving a tug toy around as I run.

Nothing takes her focus from the end so currently I am leaning toward some sort of a shadow going across the dogwalk that distracted her as we train under lights and this was the first time she has done the full height dogwalk at night.  The experience has given me some things to think about though and made me realise just how many things we take for granted and don't proof.  It's also made me a bit more aware of actually looking for where my shadow might be when we run at night, especially if it's falling across contact obstacles.  I don't want her to react to people very near contacts as it's common for a couple of judges here to run very close to the dogwalk as the dog is completing it, not something that I particularly like but something that I may very well have to deal with occasionally and I don't want to be worrying about her safety.

Another area needing proofing has also just surfaced - her A Frame has been really solid up until now and I have done lots of proofing involving me being in different positions, but we ran a few reps today and I had dragged the tunnel really close while I was moving equipment around and hadn't put it back.  When she came over the A Frame and saw the tunnel entry directly in front and very close, she was so excited that she didn't stick her end position and leapt off before being released.  Even though she was well and truly in the colour, this is not the behaviour that I want to encourage so I now need to do some equipment proofing as well.  Again, I have done this with the end of the weaves but it never occurred to me to do it with the contacts as well.  The list keeps getting longer and longer.

Last Friday we ran the Masters Jumping course at training as I was instructing in the same hour as the Novice/Excellent class that she normally works in.  I broke the course up into 3 sections and rewarded in between and she had no trouble with it, providing I was able to stay ahead on the tricky sections.

The only area of her training that I really feel is way behind where I would like it to be would be the seesaw, mainly because I totally shelved this after I had my accident last year.  Last month we went back to working the seesaw between 2 tables in the shed, then removed one table and worked the bang game, and now I have moved the adjustable seesaw out to the back of the agility area and we are working on the whole thing at the lowest height.  Hopefully I will be able to raise it at least one link by the weekend but I don't want to rush it and I am unsure how long it will take realistically to get to full height.  She is confident but I am very conscious of how easy it is to have a setback on this obstacle and really want to avoid this if possible.  Plus her position at the end at the moment is kind of awkward and I'm not sure if this will disappear as she gets more confident or whether I need to look at a different behaviour for the end of the seesaw.

I certainly don't remember having such a long list of things to work on with Atilla when he was younger, but as your training knowledge increases so does the training list !  Guess it's all part of the journey and she will be ready when she is ready and there is no time limit on this apart from my own impatience.

How To Get Two For The Price of One

Take a perfectly good agility tunnel.   Add a Border Collie (see illustration above for appropriate model.)

Now mix the two together at warp speed - or something that feels very much like that when you are trying to get into position for a front cross anyway.

Goodbye stitching !   Hello daylight !

Now take hold of each end and apply a little pressure (thankfully I now have two arms that work again so I can actually do this bit)  and  ............. tah dah !......... you  have 2 tunnels, or at least you will have after a bit of renovation involving some sharp scissors and a pair of wire cutters.

That sure was fun, can we do it again ?  Can we ?  Can we ?

To be fair, the tunnel(s) in question has been sitting outside for the past seven years so I can't really blame the Border Collie, however I'm sure she played at least some part in helping it on its way. 

The kelpies are totally miffed with her as they know that the tunnel is the best hiding place for those days when you don't feel like bringing the toy back and will be lost without it.

I always did mean to pack that tunnel up and put it away but somehow or other I never ever got around to it.  Seven years though?  That works out at around $30 a year for loads of tunnel fun - quite a bargain when you look at it that way and Ivy is dog number 5 to enjoy it.

Oh well, looks like another belated Christmas present is on the cards in our household.

When Things Don't Go To Plan

Pretty crap video quality as it's just from my digital camera, (hopefully a Flip is on Santa's pressie list)  but it shows the type of one armed training we have been doing for the past month.

Ever since Ivy arrived, I have been writing a list of the things I want to focus on with her each month and putting it on the fridge as a reminder but thanks to my own stupidity resulting in an accident involving a broken window, jagged glass and severing muscles and a nerve in my arm, the November list certainly hasn't gone to plan.

It could have been a lot worse and I am truly thankful that I am still around to blog about it, but I figure that almost 6 weeks of splinting, huge discomfort, feeling helpless and the ugliest scar out at least gives me some credibility in having a little pity party - but on the scale of things I promise it's very little indeed.

Training related, the things that I am most pissed about are:

-Missing the Susan Garrett seminar, especially after I had paid for both the seminar and accommodation.

-Missing my favourite trial, Warrnambool, with the kelpies.  At least Ivy got to go along for a beach holiday and some more trial socialisation and focus work outside the rings.

-Having to put an enforced halt on a lot of the work we were doing, espcecially when she was making such good progress.  We were just about to start alphabet drills and double box work, but these have been put on the back burner - hopefully for not too much longer.  Seesaw training has also been put off for a bit as I really feel I need 2 arms to train it safely the way I want.

My long hair has also gone as I couldn't manage it with one hand, so I now have a new much shorter haircut to get used to which will also take me some time.

Luckily there are a lot of positives to come out of our revised training plan for the past month.  Not being able to do so much has meant that I have probably looked a lot more closely at what we have done, rather than just thinking 'that's ok' and moving on.  So our focus has been:

-more crate games, and trying to invent some creative ways of using crates.  We have been using two crates to teach a verbal left and right cue.  I don't know that I will ever use this on course, but she is totally nailing it and we have had a lot of fun with it.  I have also been recalling from the crate with a high value ball on the ground in various positions where she has to come to me and tug first before I release her to the ball.

-lots of startline work and lead outs, as you can see on the video.  I have been trying to vary the angle and distance of the jumps to really get her to think about her jumping. 

-revisiting 'jump around the clock' type work with one jump, varying how close I set her up to it.  She generally finds her take off point a lot better when I set her way back compared to when I set her up close so this is something that I need to be aware of and may need to use a stride regulator at some stage.

-set point exercise using the spread jump in loads of different configurations.

-recalling through the weaves, which is something that I always focused on when teaching channels but haven't done so much with 2X2's.

-continuing with lowered contacts, the A Frame is almost at full height now and I am planning on the dogwalk going up next week, once I can get back to adding some run bys to the recalls and sends.

-some straight line work involving a tunnel, 2 jumps and a table. (Thanks Trish)

Last week my splint was shortened so I now have 2 good hands at least, and the splint is a lot lighter so I don't need the sling any more.  Yesterday I was able to start on push through threadles with her which she had no problems with.   I have to say this whole experience has also made me realise how much more important good positioning and shoulder movement is rather than sticking your arm out and pointing, so another positive thing to come out of it and a lesson I need to remember.  Plus I already have a training list ready and waiting for me for the next couple of months when this splint finally comes off.

So I am grateful that I am still here to spend time with my amazing Ivy and that she loves me unconditionally - no matter how many arms I have and what my hair looks like and how cranky I feel sometimes.  Fingers crossed for getting back to normal training soon.

Coming and Going

Love working with this girl so much......... Love trying to work with Photoshop so much and once I get around to reading the 'dummies' book that has been sitting on my desk for the past 3 months I may love it even more......... if I ever get this layer thing figured out that is.

I really enjoy reading Nancy Gye's blog on training her new dog (see the link on my Blog List)  and a few weeks back she had a great post where she compared her training to Greg Derrett's '3 point system' relating to which way to turn your dog around a jump.  I thought it might be helpful to do the same thing with Ivy's training at the moment so being a bit of a compulsive 'list chick' I am going to steal the idea and look at 'where we are coming from' and 'where we are going to'. 

First up - FLATWORK
Coming From : A ton of foundation here, especially Circle Running and incorporating Crate Games.  This is one area where I think I have done a much better job than with any of my other dogs, but as knowledge of its importance increases I guess it is pretty much a no-brainer that its training improves with each dog.  I am a bit of a foundation junkie and have done a few seminars with different presenters, but I would have to say that last year's seminar with Laura Derrett was a big turning point for me - for the first time I actually saw how each exercise, no matter how trivial it might seem, forms the basis for something very specific in the Derrett system down the track.
Going To : Continuing Circle Running for life !  (I have been slack over Winter in this area and need to get back to it, especially those inside circles)  Adding lots and lots of distractions using Crate Games and my start line procedure.  Beginning change of arm = change of line foundation on the flat.

SHAPING
Coming From : Most of our proprioception exercises were taught with a clicker and also some simple 'tricks' like going to a mat, backing up, getting into a basket and things like that.  I am using a verbal bridge more often as the sight of the clicker sends her nuts and she immediately goes into a frenzy of offering behaviours.
Going To:  Using the clicker more often without it sending her nuts!  Documenting trick training more regularly than I do.  At the moment we are working on speak on command and standing on my shoes between my legs, kinda 'doggy dancing' style.

WEAVES
Coming From : 12 Poles taught with 2X2's.  Speed and footwork developing plus some good independent entries.  Can front cross at the end and rear cross the beginning.
Going To : Different environments, different sets of poles and lots of distractions.  Proofing staying in the poles whatever I do.  Consolidating speed and footwork. 

CONTACTS
Coming From : Lowered dogwalk and A Frame - recalls, sends and run-bys.  Working on sticking that end position no matter what I do and understanding of release cue.  Beginning 'bang' game on lowered seesaw.
Going To : Adding more distractions and further proofing of holding end position.  Working up to full height obstacles.  Deciding on which method I will use to train the seesaw so we can build on working the end behaviour - leaning toward 2 table method at the moment.

Something funny that came out of her contact training has been trying to get her to tug on the end of the contact.  She thinks I am offering her the tug as an 'it's your choice moment' and absolutely refuses to take it.  Ideally I would like her to tug while maintaining her position on the end but there is no convincing her that this is OK to do so.  She literally clamps her teeth together, turns her head away from me if I try to insist and then gives me this look that says, ' you can't trick me, I know I'm not allowed to take it until I finish my job and you release me.'  Then when I do release her she lunges at it and tugs like crazy.

Another funny habit she has is if I make her stay for what she considers to be too long a period of time on the startline, she gives this little growl as she takes off, sort of like a war cry.  That one cracks me up and I confess that every now and then I really drag out leaving her and releasing her just to hear it.

JUMPING - A whole entry in itself !  And I'm way too tired for now so this will have to be for another instalment.

There She Weaves by Night and Day

Ivy at 13 months - all grown up now. Her puppy days seem to have gone in a flash.

When I first downloaded the photos for this post, Ivy had started her 2 X2 weave training a few days earlier and had clocked up 8 very short sessions.

3 weeks later (yep, that's dial up for you- LOL) she is weaving 2 sets of 6 poles with a short gap between them which I plan on starting to close up at our next training session.

Ivy is the first dog that I have actually taught to weave from start to finish using this method, although I did use it with Cruz to train his entries after I taught him to weave on channels.

Although not quite '12 poles in 12 days' (which I certainly wasn't aiming for) I am still blown away by just how fast this method actually is. It's the first thing everyone says about it and you hear this over and over, but I think you have to experience it yourself before it really sinks in.

Same thing with the entries - they are truly mind-blowing at times and although a lot more proofing will need to take place over the next few months, I can't believe what this baby dog can do. Currently she is making entries that my Masters level dog would struggle with - after around 4 weeks of training.

It hasn't been all smooth sailing though - some people write about training this method and make it sound like it was all too easy from start to finish. It's easy to watch the DVD too and think that it's not that difficult to get results. Not even considering the fact that Susan Garrett is a highly experienced world class trainer, it does say on the DVD that what you see is a 'compilation' over a number of training sessions so even though we get to see some of the 'failed attempts' we don't get to see how many of them there actually were which makes the training process appear that it's really going fast.

One thing that I would have liked included with the DVD would be to see the success rate percentage from each of the sessions that the demo dog had. From my experience with Ivy, there were a couple of what I would call critical points where her success rate plummeted for a bit before coming back up again. I have a friend also currently training this method with her young BC and when we discussed our results we found that we both experienced this at around the same points in our training. This is not something that I found with teaching channel weaves, where the success rate percentage climbed slowly but steadily at each session, or maybe it's just a training kelpies V BC thing ?

So would I use this method again ? Absolutely, especially now that I have worked through it and have had the chance to use some 'problem solving' along the way. Would I recommend it to everyone ? Yes, but with some cautions.

Firstly, as SG says also in the beginning, you really need a dog that is comfortable with the shaping process and understands offering behaviours. Although I have trained Ivy with shaping right from the beginning, there were still occasional times when we ran into a stumbling block and I got all the associated stress behaviours of barking, spinning, doing zoomies, etc. Dealing with this, or with a dog that lies down and refuses to offer any behaviour at all, is hard and I think at these points you have to know your dog well enough to make a judgement call about how to continue. Plus it was also a first for me having a dog that defintiely 'stresses up' rather than down and was not easy to deal with at first, hopefully I have a bit more of a handle on it now.

For an inexperienced trainer, I would think that you need someone to actually demonstrate each stage along the way - I have seen a number of people training it from the DVD only who are not necessarily doing it 'right'- even though the DVD is very comprehensive it's still a lot to take in. After watching it 3 times now, I'm still getting little bits and pieces out of it that I missed the first couple of times. And people are very impatient. (Including me at times !) You only have to look on You Tube to see some of the liberties people have taken with this method, and to me this is not a method that lends itself well to 'a little bit of this and a lot of my own spin.' I am using it in one of my classes with a small group of students at the moment. Although I am pleased with their progress, it has taken a lot longer for them to work through and there have been a lot of misconceptions along the way, despite handouts and demonstrations given to them in most sessions. (The reward line concept appears to be one thing that is confusing to them for some reason)

Even as a more experienced trainer, I was glad to be able to compare notes with my friend - and there were times for both of us (no matter how brief they were) where we questioned whether this was going to be the best method for us when working alone. It was a big help when we shared our experience and discovered we had both faced similar things. This is the downside when you use a method that is not currently being taught at most clubs and many people have heard of it and watched the DVD but never actually tried it, or worse, watched it once and then believe they are an expert.

I also think you need to have the confidence to be able to work through any problems that arise. SG has really good troubleshooting tips available - and luckily for me the majority of problems Ivy had were covered. But there were a couple of times (those previously mentioned critical points) where her accuracy went right down and I had to deal with this, plus any stress signs she showed. An understanding of latent learning is helpful at these times, plus record keeping where you look for signs of stress, not always as obvious as that exhibited by a crazy BC but very important to be aware of and to understand how far you can actually 'push'.

Just for the record, my main critical point was:

-with 2 sets of 2X2's, the first rotation after the poles were already at 1 o'clock and 7 o'clock - this obviously changed the picture for her a lot more than it seemed to as this session clocked up 30% accuracy compared to the 90% recorded in the session before. All of a sudden she got totally stuck at going in the wrong side of the poles on the right although she had never done that before.

There were also a couple of 'lesser' ones along the way which I won't go into as this post is probably already boring enough for anyone not training weaving with their dog, and maybe even boring for those who are. (Yes, it's all about me - LOL)

My highlights along the way are :

-watching her weave 6 poles on video for the first time.

-adding a jump (and then a tunnel) before the poles and seeing her run a jump-tunnel-jump-poles sequence ....... I can't believe that the first sequence I have ever run with this dog actually included weave poles.

-and the big one for me........... weaving 6 poles outside the ring at club training last week while her 'bestest gal pal Sassy' tugged with her mum right alongside the poles. (We 'repaid' the favour when Sassy had her go !)

So a big vote in favour of 2 X 2's and everything that training them has taught me along the way. I would love to hear from anyone else who has trained them and what their experiences were rather than just the stock standard forum comments implying that it was easy to get the dog weaving using this method, but then the follow up that they 'tweaked' the method a bit.

Hopefully I will have just as favourable things to report about her contact training in a few weeks time, which has also begun to transfer from her travel board to lowered contact equipment. We will see how that pans out - so far 4 out of 4 dogs with sucky A Frames (except for Cruz on the occasions he gets his striding right and nails it ) - can I finally train one that I actually like with Ivy ? Watch this space I guess. My beautiful 'ball girl' relaxing between training sessions - and one 'up close and personal.'

A Border Collie in Kelpie Town

Last weekend Ivy became an honorary kelpie and tagged along with her 'big brothers' to the Casterton Kelpie Muster. She obviously felt that having Atilla and Cruz there gave her some legitimate kelpie street cred as she bounced around full of confidence all day, almost like a furry balloon on a string when things excited her .... like the street parade complete with very loud bagpipes, the pens of sheep, a whole bunch of people to kiss up to looking for a pat and of course all those kelpies. Did I mention that it doesn't really take all that much to excite her ?

Sitting pretty with L down by the old railway yards ...... now where did all the kelpies go ?

Posing at Island Park where all the bales of hay give some atmosphere to the auction held on the following day.

She really has her 'big girl' face now and at 510mm at the shoulder (or thereabouts as she looks absolutely identical to Atilla in height) I think she is pretty close to fully grown - hopefully anyway. This week she has a new 'big girl' collar, a new 'big girl' bowl and we are phasing out the puppy food for 'big girl' food. So I guess my baby is a baby no longer. This time between 12 and 14 months is a real transition time for me in her training. All the foundation work we have done will hopefully pay dividends when I apply it to equipment, which she is almost ready for, but it's so important not to rush things before she is totally ready. These couple of months are the danger time for me in that respect where it is so tempting to start start stringing things together but I know it's still better to wait and to really consolidate her foundation work.

And her favourite thing from Casterton after all the kelpies ? Toss up between the pens of sheep, the indian runner ducks and all the wonderful smells along the main street.

Happy First Birthday

I can't believe how quickly Ivy's first birthday has come around. It seems like only yesterday that she looked like this ...........

And all of a sudden the puppy has morphed into this ............

I decided on a very feminine theme for her birthday cakes, after all with hobbies that include excavating, gardening, swimming, ball chasing and sheep stalking through the fence, she is such a beautifully groomed 'girlie dog'.

This was part of her cupcake tree - unfortunately some doggie taste testing had already taken place before I thought about photographing it. But if you squint a bit and tilt your head you won't notice that there are actually a few cakes missing.

She didn't get to eat the icing, as Border Collies and sugar are not really that good a mix, but it didn't effect how quickly her cake disappeared anyway.

Looking back on her training I am very happy with where she is at 12 months. My main goal was to have what GD calls 'really brilliant circles' by now - I'm not sure if I would describe them as brilliant just yet especially by his standards, but they are pretty close.

Her toy drive is outstanding - she will tug with absolutely anything I present, any time and anywhere, which was also pretty high on the goal list. She has a very solid stay, thanks to crate games and also what I would call a good 'off/on switch.' We have done a few Susan Salo jump bump grids, although not to excess, and I am also very pleased with her work on these. At the moment I am working on her end position for contacts on a travel board and on the end of an extremely lowered A Frame (the wonders of a long length of chain !) and next month I will start weave training with her.

I love working with this gorgeous girl so much and I am so very grateful that her breeder decided to take a chance on sending her so far away to me. So Happy Birthday sweet Ivy and may you stay just as driven to work as you are right now for the next 12 months ! I have lots of new things in store for you over the next few months.