Friday, May 30, 2008

Sharky & Cannon's first outside meeting


Is there milk in that thing?

Sharky's Diary Chapter 2 - written October 2007

Sharky’s Diary – Chapter Two

It has been suggested that a small section about me might be appropriate at this stage. I have been involved in agility since 1993. I have trained 8 dogs of my own and have attained the following titles with them - 6xADX, 3xADXGold, 5xFD, 3xCDX and 2 Agility Champions. I have participated in dog sports of agility, obedience, flygility, dancing with dogs, and a brief interlude with tracking. I have been on the agility judges panel since 2000, was Treasurer for Waikato Agility Group for a few of years, Deputy Zone One Representative for a couple of years, and NALA Treasurer/Membership Co-ordinator for far too many years (over 10 anyway).

My goal in starting this diary was to make people aware of some of the early training that you can do with pups. I am happy to answer questions about my training methods and possibly will be able to direct people to other trainers in their area. This diary is not supposed to be a comprehensive list of everything you can teach your pup with step by step instructions.

Anyway, enough about me and back to Sharky (Rainstar Shark Attack).

Next month I will explain how I intend to teach Sharky to do contact equipment. But, before you start thinking about this, it is very important that you have a few basic skills with your dog first.

1. Be able to play tug with your dog in any place at any time. So whenever you are in a different place, or there are different distractions make an effort to get out your toy and have a play.
2. Your dogs should understand how to wait, and know what their release command is.
3. It is very helpful if your dog is used to offering behaviours. To get your dog to offer behaviours, you need a clicker, food, and patience. There are many web-sites and books which explain how to train with a clicker, but the easiest way is to get someone you know to show you. Once your dog knows what the clicker is, the next step is to put out your object (footstool or whatever), and wait. When your dog does anything to interact with the object, click and treat. This could be looking at it, advancing towards it, touching it with nose, or foot etc. Once dog knows that you want it to do stuff with the object, they generally get quite carried away with offering different behaviours around it. The funniest one that Sharky had was when I put a bucket sideways on the ground. He thought what I wanted was for him to put his head in and scratch at the bottom of the bucket at the same time. Was hilarious to watch, and I did click him for it, but what I had originally wanted was just the head in the bucket. The reason I reinforced the behaviour was because it was so funny, and a good party trick.

As an example the photos following show a couple of different things that Sharky will do with a footstool (purchased for $9 from The Plastic Box).

The action in the first photo when he has got his front feet on top of the stool is a perfect position to start his rear end awareness work. Click when your dog’s feet are on the top of the stool. Once the dog is confident and happy to put his front feet on the perch, move on to pivoting your body slightly to encourage him to move his hind legs around. As soon as one leg moves, click and treat. Generally it doesn’t take long for the dog to realise that you want them to pivot their hind legs in both directions around the stool. The idea of this exercise is to be for your dog to know that it has rear legs, and to start to think of where to put them.

The action is the second photo is where he has his back feet on the stool – the 2 feet on the stool 2 feet off the stool (2o2o) contact behaviour that I eventually will want to teach. I like to reward this behaviour often, and wait until Sharky lowers his head before I click and treat. Eventually I will want to shape his head position as well as where he has his feet, and this is a good start. When you click and treat, you are clicking for the behaviour, and rewarding for position. So when you give your treat, make sure that you offer it down low if you are wanting to encourage a low head position. If you always treat your dog in the 2o2o position when his head is up, then he will assume that the position that you want is with his head up.

If you do not have good food and play drive, a reliable wait, and dog offering behaviours, then it is well worth while delaying any other training until you have achieved this. You will find that training a dog with this focus will take far less time, and be more enjoyable than a dog that doesn’t. You can teach all the other agility stuff later, but getting these basics right is extremely important.

Next month, those damn contacts!

Fiona Ferrar

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Winter exercise regime Cannon & Fiona

My plan is to get Sharky trotting on the other treadmill beside Cannon once he is a bit older. At present I bike with him walking on the treadmill.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Cannon 1st Intermediate EBOP 19.5.08

Sharky's Diary Chapter One

Sharky’s Diary – Chapter One

Sharky was born on 10th April 2007 and is a black and white Border Collie bred by Keri Neilson. His mother is Relko Let it Rain (currently competing in agility), and his father is Astra Cap (an imported working dog). Having had a fair bit of success in dog sports with my dogs, and a number of people interested in what/how I train, I thought it could be interesting for people to read about my training goals, methods, and Sharky’s progress.

My dogs are all pets and live inside. My reason for getting a pup was that 4 of my dogs are getting older, and I wanted another dog coming on to compete in agility. My ultimate goal at present with Sharky is to be an Agility Grand Champion, so whilst he is still a pet, all my training is aimed at achieving that goal. Hopefully I won’t be setting myself up to fail, but the first step to achieving a goal is to set it, write it down, and then identify the required steps and barriers to achieving it.

Following are things that I want to ensure that Sharky is able to do:
Be very toy motivated – makes training much easier. Sharky has had lots of toys whilst still at Keri’s place, and plays every day with me with a range of toys.
Be food motivated – some behaviours are easier to train with food than toys.
Have control around doors, in the ute, feeding time, on lead etc.
Be well socialised so has a nice nature around other dogs and people.
Is happy to offer a variety of behaviours when faced with a new situation or obstacle (eg a box, stair, bucket etc).
Travel and sleep happily in the ute in 1 big open area with my other 5 dogs.

My ideas of training are based on various books/videos, and a lot of information gained from the seminars I attended with Susan Garrett in 2006 and Greg and Laura Derrett in 2007. There are many other people in NZ who have knowledge of the methods that I use, and most are happy to share information. I generally use a clicker for training as it makes it easier to mark the exact behaviour that I want repeated. I always have food in my pocket when moving around anywhere with Sharky so I can reward him for coming when called, having his attention on me etc.

When Sharky first came home, it was fortunate that I had shows for the next 3 weekends that I travelled away for. This has given me the opportunity for heaps of controlled socialisation, and for training in distracting environments. I really noticed how many people called out to my pup and wanted to meet him. In general I tried to not allow Sharky to meet other people or pups until I had called him away, and rewarded him. It would be very easy to end up with a pup that tugs on the lead, tries to meet every person or dog that walk past, and jumps up on people. If you are at a show and see a pup, please try to be aware of what the owner is trying to do with the pup. For confident pups, it is often better to talk to the owner and ignore the pup until it is calm.

Sharky is currently 4 months old, and following is some of what I am doing in training:

Control – to teach a wait, all I have done is to ask Sharky to sit, down or stand and then fed him at various intervals of hopefully varying duration ie feed at 1 second, 3 secs, 6 secs, 7 secs, 11 secs, 13 secs etc. He is now quite comfortable holding his position for a length of time, but I still reward him regularly while he is in position.

Sharky is very keen on his toys, and not always careful about what his teeth are doing around my hands. It is great to have a pup who is keen on tugging, but they have to know when to give up the toy. Sharky’s command initially to give the toy up is me putting my other hand on his collar under his neck. To train this I would put the hand holding the toy on his collar while holding out a piece of food with the other hand. He quickly learnt that a hand on his collar meant that food was coming. Recently I have added a command “give” by saying this at the same time as holding the food out.

Release Command – it is very important for a pup to know what his release command is. Sharky’s command is “tack” and I have used this because it is part of his name, and different from other commands that I habitually use. My other young dog’s release command is “kay”, which is quite different. I use “tack” as a command to release Sharky from anything I have asked him to do. So if I ever ask him to sit, or down, I should release him from that. Of course I am human, so forget every now and then but the more I do it, the more it becomes second nature, and the better proofed that release command will become.

Crate Games - There are many benefits to this including teaching pup to be comfortable in a crate, learning to offer behaviours, learn control, increase speed and motivation.

That’s all for this month.

Fiona Ferrar