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