Sharky & Cannon Agility Blog: July 2008

Sharky's Diary Chapter Five - Written January 2008

Sharky’s Diary – Chapter Five

Well the Christmas break is well and truly past, the first agility show has been and that has given me a bit of a hurry up to think about my training with Sharky. I have been very good over the last week giving him lots of time, so long may that continue!

One thing that I have been doing with Sharky since he was a puppy is concentrating on his rear end awareness. It is much easier for a dog to manoeuvre itself around an agility course if it is aware that it has 4 different legs, and how to make them all work at the same time. This may sound silly – surely a dog knows how to use it’s legs? The easiest way to explain this is to try to walk an adult dog through a ladder lying on the ground, or get them to walk backwards away from you. Many dogs find this difficult as they are not in the habit of lifting their hind legs separately, driving from the front and letting the rear end follow along.

The first step is to get your puppy trotting through a ladder. I used the metal ladder that is in my garage – not the most ideal but seemed to work for Sharky to get the initial idea. A wooden ladder can be a bit easier, and often does not have rungs as high as the metal one. Your dog should trot through with head down looking forward, and should not bunny hop through the ladder, twist his head to look at you, or rush towards the end of the ladder to get the treat.

To get your pup walking through ladder, stand with you on one side, and pup on other. When pup puts feet inside the rungs of the ladder, click and drop a treat within the rungs. Then step across to the other side of the ladder. When pup is happy crossing the ladder, move to one end. When moving from one end to the other, it is good to click which the dog is still within the ladder and drop a treat within the rungs. If you always click and treat at the end of the ladder, you will encourage your dog to rush to the end to get the treat. The idea is to have your dog trotting confidently from one end to the other without rushing. This can be done at an early age as long as you have the attention of your pup. Do not lure your pup through the ladder. He should think about what he is doing, and then offer the behaviour to get the click/treat.

Once your dog is confident on the ladder, you can introduce caveletti work – often used with young horses to encourage balance. The cavaletti are low jumps which can be in a straight line or semi-circle. When your dog is more experienced, you can vary the height and distance to encourage him to watch and think about each step to be taken. Cavaletti can be made out of many things. I started using crushed coke cans placed on bricks with poles balanced on top. Below is a closeup photo of this, as well as Sharky completing them. You can see that even though Sharky is trotting round a slight bend, he has his head down and looks balanced.

Another idea that I saw recently used pool noodles strung together to make a lightweight ladder. This has the benefit that it can be used one way with the rungs very low to the ground, or up the other way the rungs are higher. These noodles can be purchased from The Warehouse and are easy to cut into lengths and tie together. Following is a photo of this, as well as Sharky trotting through them. The fact that I took these photos while at home by myself should give an indication of how happy he is to trot through the cavaletti. You can also purchase small cones and punch holes in the sides to put poles through as another idea or use that good ole Kiwi ingenuity to come up with your own plan. It doesn’t matter what the cavaletti are constructed of, but in general a normal jump pole across the middle is good. Personally I would not use actual agility jumps for this exercise because they are harder to move around and get close enough, and your dog might get a bit confused about whether they should be trotting across or jumpingthem.

I recently attended a seminar on “Maximising Performance of the Canine Athlete” run by Rachel Dellar of Hydropaws (http://www.hydropaws.co.nz/) and Charlotte Rundgren of Dynamic K9's (http://www.dynamick9s.co.nz/) where I got some of these ideas from. There was a lot of information given on this seminar about exercises to improve both the adult dog, and also to start with your puppy. Rachel and Charlotte will be holding another seminar near Hamilton before winter starts and you can contact them through the above web-sites.

In an earlier article I talked about perch work. This is another excellent idea to -encourage rear-end awareness. You should ask the dog to rotate around the perch both ways. It is possible that he may more stiff to work one way than the other. If this is the case, ensure that you work that side more often.

You can also teach your dog to walk backwards away from you. Make sure you reward for baby steps as this can be a hard thing to learn. You want your dog to think about what he is doing rather than walking into him to force him to move away. If you are sitting down, and your dog takes one step backwards, click and throw a treat between his front legs. This means he has to take more steps backwards to get the treat with is further reinforcement. Again you want your dog to move backwards confidently using each leg at a time rather than bunny hopping. Once your dog is able to perform this exercise, you could try and get him to walk backwards up a flight of stairs. This requires very good awareness of the rear-end, and you should ensure that your dog is physically strong enough to do this. Do not overdo this training, and take it just one step at a time (joke?).

Another exercise I have done with Sharky since he was about 5 months old is working around 2 stick in the ground poles. To start this work, I put up the pole, moved Sharky towards it and clicked/treated when he moved around the pole. He quickly learnt that I wanted him to walk around it. Then I was able to move further away and send him around the pole. Once he was confident with that, I added another pole and now send him round one pole then the other. This enables you to practise front crosses with your dog as well as training an “out” command. I don’t always do front crosses, sometimes get him to go round the 2 poles in a circle rather than a figure eight. Sharky loves this exercise, and I mark the finish of it with a “yessss” at which time he hoons towards me to get his tug toy. Without intending to, I have created a huge drive by saying “yes” which I think will be very useful when I start training the weaves. Following is a photos of the poles that I am using – great quality purchased from my local soccer shop for $6 each (photo 1010548). I have just recently found this shop in Hamilton which has a lot of agility equipment for soccer players which can be adapted for dog training. The shop also sells equipment on trade-me (yes I am slightly addicted!).

Thanks to those of you who have given me positive feedback about this article.

Sharky’s Diary – Chapter Four

Sharky’s Diary – Chapter Four

At this time of the year I am so pleased that I put in a lot of time with Sharky in his first couple of months – he is now 8 months old. I have been very busy with work (yes horror of horrors, I have to do something to fund my dog activities!), and have not had a lot of time to spend with him. I am pleased to say that I have achieved all the basic things that I wanted my pup to be able to do ie:

Be toy motivated
Be food motivated
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
Travel and sleep happily in the ute

Because these things are second nature to him, it makes life so much easier when I don’t have as much time. I have lots of toys spread around the back yard, so can pick one up at any time and practise his waits, releasing him to tug on the toy. I do this anytime I think of it such as when I am hanging out washing, picking up dog poo, getting the mail etc. It only takes a couple of minutes, but because I do it so often Sharky gets a lot of reinforcement.

I have done crate games with Sharky (based on Susan Garrett’s methods), and that is very good for building drive and control. Recently I decided that I wanted Sharky to wait in a down while I trained my other BCs because I am too lazy (or I should say, don’t have the time!) to get out a crate out. Cannon is very noisy and enthusiastic while he is being trained, so he was a good distraction. I started with sending Cannon over one jump to a toy, then immediately rewarding Sharky with food for holding his wait, then releasing him and playing tug. I built up on that, rewarding Sharky often and praising him for his wait, always giving him a really good play time after releasing him. I can now train Cannon for 10 mins or so with Sharky waiting patiently.

The secret to getting a nice consistent wait is to reward often. I have seen a number of people lately with pups who have “wriggle bum” issues, rather than knowing they should sit still. My view is that this is because the handlers do not reward regularly enough. It is not a sin to give a pup 10-20 rewards at a time for maintaining a position! It is important that your pup does not move towards the treat if you are trying to get him to hold his position. To fix that, hold out hand to pup, if he moves, quickly move hand back towards you without giving him the food. He will quickly realise that he is not allowed the food until you say so. A useful control game that you can also play is having pup in the down position, and putting a bikkie on the floor on front of him. If he moves towards it, remove the food. Only let him have it once you have said “ok” (or whatever your release word is). This reinforces your release command, and also emphasizes the point that you are in control of the food/game.

And for those readers who are having a wee snigger about my lovely waits with my bestest boy Cannon, all I can say is that I should have trained him a lot better, and I am not ever going to have the same issues again! Part of my issue with Cannon is that he gets anxious about me leaving him. I have practised waits with Sharky in lots of locations with lots of distractions from an early age. He is very relaxed about being left because I have made it so clear what he is supposed to do, have given him heaps of rewards, and it has always been based on positive training. Occasionally Sharky might misunderstand and move. If this happens he doesn’t get a reward, generally I just look at him, he thinks about it a bit, then moves back to where he was in the first place. Because I spent so much time ensuring that he was very focussed on me in the early stages, Sharky has a huge desire to please me and that makes him very easy to train.

Last month I said I would describe some issues that I have had with teaching contacts with Sharky, and how I have resolved them.
To start with on the stairs, Sharky did not look down and focus on the target, so when I released him he did not drive into a nice hard nose touch, because he wasted time looking at the target first. I started doing lots of nose touches on his target away from the stairs again, re-creating his enthusiasm for the game with lots of verbal encouragement, and rewarding for quick touches.
When using the travel plank, I would hold Sharky by the collar, say “ready ready go”. Then he should have run onto the travel plank from the side, into the 2o2o position with a nice hard nose touch on his target. Often doing this, he would dawdle into the 2o2o position which is not something I want in the future. I corrected this by stopping holding his collar. I had taught him to release toys by holding his collar, and think he was a bit confused. Now he runs around my body onto the travel plank.
At times I repeat too many times with myself forward of the travel plank. Then Sharky starts looking forward to the toy and the release, without the nose touch. I correct his by doing rapid reinforcement of the nose touch while in the 2o2o (ie click and treat for every single nose touch rather than waiting for multiple touches). I also try to send Sharky ahead of me so he nose touches the target while I am still behind him.
At times Sharky has not understood what I am trying to teach him. My command for the nose target was “touch” while my release command was “tack”. These were too close together, and it took me a while to realise it. I wondered why Sharky was not doing a very fast takeoff when I released him on “tack”, and I think it was because he was wondering if he should be doing a touch or a tack. Since I changed the command to “nose” he has been a lot better.

I hope to have time over the Christmas holiday break to remember all the things that I was supposed to be teaching Sharky, and sharing them with you in the new year.