Thanksgiving

On a beautiful, sunny Thanksgiving morning I am thankful that I have time to train my dogs a little.  I have a lot to be thankful for, including my family that I will spend this afternoon with, but right now I am thankful that I have been blessed with dogs who love to work with me, no matter what venue I choose.  Lately we have been focusing on obedience and getting Cory ready to show in utility (the highest of the three basic levels).  Cory is the third dog I have trained in utility;  my first dog Levi earned his Utility Dog Excellent (UDX) title and Cory's father Andy needed just one more qualifying score for his UD when he died.  Utility is a tough class for green dogs, because it involves working independently away from the handler and making decisions between "right" and "wrong" (whereas, in novice and open, pretty much the choice is a more straightforward "do it or not").  There is heeling, a signal exercise where the dog must respond to hand signals from across the ring, a scent discrimination exercise where he must choose the dumbell touched by his handler, a directed retrieve where he must choose the correct glove indicated by his handler, and the directed jumping, where he must run away from the handler in a straight line across the ring, stop and sit when directed, and then take the correct jump indicated by the handler.  While utility is the hardest class, it also is the most fun.  

While those who know me might think I got into obedience because I am somewhat of a control freak, that actually is far from the truth.  My "obedience" dogs have all had varying degrees of basic manners, with my current two probably being the worst on a day to day basis for listening and minding me.  Training in obedience has become less about demonstrating control over my dogs, and more about developing teamwork and communication with them.  The bond with a dog that you have trained to a high level is so much more intense than the one you share with a dog you just "hang with".  It is hard to describe, especially without denigrating other types of relationships, until you have experienced it, but it is like the bond you feel with a teammate on that gold medal winning team, the bond with a child that you love desperately and have known from birth, and the bond with a life partner that is your 24/7 companion all rolled into one.  For me at this point in my life, obedience training is not about ribbons or placements;  it's not about scores although I hope before we are through we will reach the level we aspire to;  it is about acheiving the mental picture in my head and the synchronicity you feel on the days when you and your dog are perfectly in tune.  The obedience regulations state that the dog should demonstrate "the utmost in willingness, enjoyment, and precision".  We have a ways to go in the precision department, but I would like to think that my dogs fit the bill on the first part.  

I am including a video below of one of Cory's recent runs in Utility A.  (If anybody has any good tips for how to improve the quality either here or on youtube, let me know- the original video is quite sharp).   This was his second show, entering for the first time away from our home club.  I chose this trial because it was a small, one ring trial;  I knew it would be fairly relaxed and I had shown under this judge before.  Although it was a one ring trial, space was very tight at ringside with no room to have the dogs inside before their turn, not much room to warm up, and varying from quiet as a church (not good for us) to sounds that really stand out because there is not much else going on.  On our first outing at the previous show, Cory did not qualify but overall I thought did not do too badly EXCEPT that he barked (a lot) on EVERY exercise.  That is not looked on kindly in obedience and I knew it was going to be a big struggle for us.  I hoped the smaller trial would not rev Cory up quite so much (he barks both when he stresses "down" and when he stresses "up", and we had one of each types of run at the last trial).  Obedience people who look at this run will no doubt be unimpressed; we blew a signal and the first scent article, we had lots of places to lose points in chunks- he forged quite a bit on his heeling, we had a couple of no-sits (really, not-quite-sits), a sloppy moving stand, an anticipated finish, a bark or two on the scent articles and the go outs and a couple of times between exercises (a HUGE improvement over the last trial), and we didn't move particularly smoothly from exercise to exercise.  All duly noted and being worked on before the next trial.  But on this day I was SO proud of my boy I could just feel my heart clench each time I looked at him.  He was amped up to the max this day;  sometimes this can be an indicator of stress but on this day Cory was giving me every one of his signs that he was having FUN and was trying his hardest to play by the rules.  Unfortunately, he usually feels compelled to remind me of this on each exercise, especially the finishes, by commenting under his breath and in this little building it was pretty easily heard by all :-).  I know just how hard it was for him to keep his focus and not explode, and I am so proud of him for trying.  The next day he was not quite as hyped up, and he made it all the way to the last jump before he chose the wrong one and NQ'd. 

We get to try again next weekend...at our home club, where theoretically we might have a small advantage of a familiar ring.  Wish us luck- we'll need it!

AWOL

Sorry for the lengthy time without posts, but July was the month from hell! We suffered through a total crash of the clinic computer system; lost a couple of weeks worth of data but thankfully NOT our whole database, and are now using our new upgraded computer system (wouldn't you know the system crashed the day they faxed me the final contract for the new system?!). As if that wasn't enough, my personal laptop died as well. I can't seem to get one where the connection to the power cord doesn't go bad, this one was only a year old.

I have a couple of posts I have been working on but am still getting used to the new system and having a little trouble moving pictures around (thankfully I think I was able to recover all of my data from the laptop, including all my pictures- would have hated to lose them!).

In the meantime, a quick brag; Andy's son Fred who lives with Kaylyn Young is tearing up the 4 H rings. After winning their obedience and junior showmanship classes at the county fair under AKC judges who were very complimentary, they went to the Ohio State Fair where they WON the huge Novice B class of 57 dogs, got a gold medal in Rally, and finished a State Fair Championship. They hope to compete in AKC this fall. Cory is going to have to get his act together or his little brother is going to show him up!

Obedience explained...Utility

Ah, we are back to obedience! Yesterday we went to another show n go and I was able to tape Andy's utility routine successfully this time.

Utility includes the most fun exercises of all of the obedience classes. Unfortunately, they also are the most difficult to get a dog to perform consistently and well under varying conditions. While many dogs learn to become extremely consistent in open and qualify the majority of the time, far fewer ever become quite as reliable in utility. Even in the "B" classes on any given day it often ends up being "survival of the fittest" and about a 50% qualifying rate is typical. In "A", with green dogs and handlers who have not finished an OTCh, the Q rate is closer to 5-10%. It's not unusual to have a class of 15-20 A dogs and not have a single qualifier.

It was about 10 years between retiring Levi, my first dog who finished his UDX, from obedience, and starting to seriously think about competing in utility with Andy. I forgot just how darn HARD it is! Teaching the exercises for the most part is not that difficult and Andy had known almost all of them to one degree or another for quite a long time. But the utility exercises require the dog to work away from the handler and to think through situations and make some decisions, and getting them to pull it all together in a strange place on any given day is tough.

The utility exercises are:

-Signal exercise (a heel off leash pattern at the end of which you stand/stay your dog and go to the other end of the ring, then ask him to down, sit, come, and finish. All commands in this exercise are hand signals and a verbal will result in an NQ, although you MIGHT be able to get by with a verbal command to heel if you lose the dog during the pattern- you'll take a big hit though).
-Scent articles- you provide a set of five metal and five leather dumbells; you will keep one of each and handle it to put your scent on it while the steward places the rest across the ring. The dog is sent to the pile twice, once for the leather article you have scented and once for the metal (only one scented article at a time is in the pile). He must correctly identify and retrieve the scented article.
-Directed Retrieve- three gloves are put out at the end of the ring as you and your dog stand with your back to them. There is one in the middle and one in each corner. The judge will instruct you which number glove to retrieve and you must pivot and send the dog to retrieve the correct glove.
-Moving stand- You begin heeling at one end of the ring and on the judge's command, without stopping, ask your dog to stay in a standing position and continue another 8 feet or so. The judge will then examine your dog (run his hands over him) and the dog is expected to stand without moving his feet. You then call the dog directly to heel position.
-Directed jumping- a bar jump and a high jump are placed about midway down the ring, one on either side. The dog is asked to go out between the jumps to a point at least 8 feet beyond them, stop on the handler's command, turn and sit. The handler, on the judge's instruction, then directs the dog to take the appropriate jump and come to front. This is then repeated for the second jump.

When I got Andy, I had intended for him to primarily be an obedience dog but when he was pretty young we got sidetracked into agility. He LOVED it and I was hooked. Up until he was about a year old, we worked on heeling and focused attention but I didn't think he was ready to show quite yet (now I see those old tapes and wish like heck I'd had him in the ring then!). Eventually I thought asking for that extreme focused attention might be causing us some issues in agility so we stopped working it for a while, although we still worked off and on on teaching the rest of the obedience exercises. Our Q rate in agility is awful since there is a big discrepancy between his speed and mine, but we were having fun regardless. Finally when he turned 7 it hit me that I had better get my act in gear and get his CD. He did that pretty quickly with reasonable scores although we didn't put the work in to do as well as my original goal had been (he did blow an all breed HIT on his second or third try, can't remember which, at a horrible muddy outdoor show when I had to call him twice on the recall.. AAAGH! He was easily 3 points ahead of the dog who ended up getting it...). A few months later he was back in the ring in open and earned his CDX (waiting for second commands became my nemesis with this dog...he wanted SO much to make sure he was right!). When it came to utility though we got hung up for a long time because I could not get him to do the signal stand. When I stopped, he insisted on sitting. I worked on that problem for almost two years and FINALLY got it fixed (I'm not really even sure how, it just seemed to "click" for him one day). I started showing him in utility only at my two home clubs' shows, knowing he wasn't really ready but hoping I would "luck" into a leg. Right. When he was almost ready to turn 10, it suddenly hit me that I had better get my act together or he was going to be too old. At that point, he was qualifying consistently on all the exercises except the directed retrieve (gloves), usually not that difficult an exercise but tough for Andy as he never REALLY learned to "mark" the glove you were sending him to. We got some help with that at a Laura Romanik seminar and did several shows where we had such near misses and missed qualifying by the skin of our teeth. We were almost there...and then suddenly he fell apart. In retrospect, I believe that around this time his hearing started to fail. At any rate, his barking became a big issue (previously he only barked once on each go out) and he got to be REALLY bad about barking when he got to the article pile before settling down to work.

At this point, Andy will be 12 in June and I would estimate only has about 10% of his hearing left (the AKC rules state that a dog cannot be "without useful hearing" and still be shown; I figure he still hears his clicker, his squeakies, and some of the things I say to him so he still falls under the legal category). His barking not only got worse in obedience when his hearing started to go, but also around the house, so I don't think we are likely to be able to fix it in the time frame we have left. He has two utility legs and only needs one more qualifying score so we are crossing our fingers he can do it when the spring shows start back up! He has started to have some heart and kidney issues as well, so our time left for him to be able to compete may be getting short.


You can see him below at a local show and go yesterday; this is what we call Andy's "freestyle" utility interpretation! He is going to loose BIG points for barking, and along with the aging and hearing loss he now has a tendency to anticipate (so you will not see him do an actual moving stand, in practice we always keep heeling instead. As you can see, he still knows where he is supposed to stop and getting him NOT to until I give the command is tough!). But he still has tons of attitude and enthusiasm and he is so much fun to train, even if he is an old man!

Obedience explained...Open

Open is IMO MUCH more fun than novice. The exercises are more interesting, but they don't require quite as much intense concentration and independent decision making from the dog as utility. Once a dog gets comfortable in open, they can get very reliable in their performance and and it all just seems to flow along smoothly. Open does require that the dog is physically sound enough to handle the jumping exercises (the high jump is set at the dog's shoulder height and that is doubled for the width of the broad jump; there are certain breeds that due to their structure may jump 3/4 of their jump height- for example, basset hounds).

Probably the hardest part of training for open is teaching the retrieve. For some dogs, it is ridiculously easy (they don't call them "retrievers" for nothing!). For other dogs the idea of putting a foreign object in their mouth, bringing it back to you, and actually holding it until you take it, is just not appealing. Then once you teach it, refining it (clean pickup, no mouthing, etc) is another challenge. I teach a retrieve with a clicker, by shaping the behavior (we'll talk more about that later). It probably takes longer at the start than traditional "forced retrieve" methods, but once the dog starts to get the idea it can go very quickly. It is actually taught in two separate parts, the actual retrieve (running out to get the dumbell and bringing it back) and the hold (holding the dumbell while sitting in front). I usually find the retrieve relatively simple to teach and the hold considerably tougher. You can also tell what I enjoy teaching and what I don't; my dogs usually aren't the best about mouthing the dumbell and having clean pickups. I am working with Cory to clean that up but it's going to be a long haul. Cory probably had the best natural retrieve drive of all my dogs, but he was the hardest to teach a hold to; we got stuck there for a LONG time until it dawned on him that he could sit without dropping the dumbell, then actually fix his sit and get it straight, all without dropping it. It is something we work on daily, although most often not with a "formal" retrieve but instead with bringing me a lot of different objects around the house and learning to hold them until I take them.

The hardest behavior to MAINTAIN when you are showing a dog week in and week out, is the long sit. In open, the stays are done with the handlers out of sight. The dogs are placed in a line, the handlers leave the ring and the dogs are expected to hold a three minute sit followed by a five minute down. At some point, most dogs will get bored or tired and lie down on the sit. Once they discover they can do this and there's not a darn thing the handler can do about it, it is REALLY hard to fix the problem.

The exercises for open are:

Heel Free and Figure 8
Drop on Recall
Retrieve on the flat
Retrieve over the high jump
Broad Jump
Group stays


Below is a video of Cory doing open at our show and go last weekend (aren't I lucky to belong to a club with such a great facility? ). There are a few caveats (that's what you call it when it's your own dog, if it's someone else's dog it's called an excuse!). Cory is very green and has not yet shown in novice. This was only his second time to do the open exercises in public with distractions- he has been working on them at home but hasn't really even done them at club, except possibly a couple of times when we had the building all to ourselves. You can see that the additional distraction of jumps in the ring and a dog doing utility (fun stuff!) in the next ring was tough for him to handle, especially since he knew the dog and handler in the next ring well and the judge was someone he especially likes. It took the whole first half of the heeling pattern to get his head together (didn't hurt that I was between him and the jumps for the second half either). I did not ask for a drop on the recall as he's not ready to put that together yet; and as you will see, we haven't worked the broad jump much.






When I watch this video Cory reminds me for the first time of his great, great, great grandam Tuppence who was a CH/UD dog. Some of my LONG time clients might remember her, she belonged to my tech at the time Pam and came to the clinic every day and was good buddies with my old man Levi. Tuppence passed away in 1997. I never think of him looking like her, but there's just a little hint there! Andy reminds me of her from time to time as he gets older as well.

Hitting the boards of the broad jump with his feet would have been an NQ. He is not really ready to do that yet, I should have faced him and called him directly over. He also would have lost points for the bark (his dad is the champion of that!). For some reason that day he totally lost his "around" finish in both rings, we will have to go back and fix that!

Open is divided into A and B just as novice was; however the rules are just a little different. All dogs start in A UNLESS the handler is a judge or has trained a previous dog to an OTCh (Obedience Trial Championship). Once they finish their title, they have 60 days to continue showing in A or until they get a High in Trial; then they must move to Open B. Dogs can compete in Open B for the rest of their career. They also can enter Utility and Open B on the same day; once they earn their utility title they may work on two additional titles. For a UDX, the dog must qualify in BOTH open B and utilityB on the same day 10 times. In addition, points are awarded for placements in both classe based on the number of dogs defeated. In order to finish an OTCh, the dog must have an Open first, a Utility first, and one more first from either class and must earn 100 points. Open B is VERY competitive and many of the dogs have a very high qualifying percentage. The difference in placing or not may be a bump on the heeling pattern or a slightly crooked sit. To place in the B classes you generally need around a 196 1/2 or higher, I have seen three way run offs for first place with all dogs scoring a 199 1/2. Open B is TOUGH if you are going for scores! Many people showing for their UDX are not competitive for placements and OTCh points and are not as concerned with high scores.

In Open A the scores are typically lower just as in novice. Just as in novice, your dog must Q three times with a score of 170 and at least 50% of the points for all exercises. Once he does, he may now put CDX (for Companion Dog Excellent) after his name.

Obedience explained...Novice

Competition obedience is broken down into three levels: Novice, Open, and Utility. Today we'll talk about Novice...


Novice I must confess is not my favorite. No jumping, no retrieves, no "fun stuff"; a LOT of heeling which is not my favorite. Many handlers especially training their first dogs teach the exercises in order, i.e. all of the novice exercises, then all of the open, etc. With my first dog I didn't start training for the next level until I had finished a title. BORING!


Heeling is one of the exercises that takes the longest to teach; it also accounts for A LOT of points over your dog's career. You can only spend SO much time heeling before your dog starts to get bored...(and my knees start to complain). So I mix up training and teach most of the other exercises while the dog is maturing physically and mentally and THEN we worry about the nit-picky polishing things for heeling. Of course, we are also generally learning agility skills and probably tracking at the same time; we usually don't train "obedience" one day and "agility" the next. Most of our training sessions are a mix of the skills used in various sports; unless we are doing full run-throughs in preparation for a trial.


Personally I hate to heel, it hurts my knees, it's boring. You can tell this because my older dog Andy's heeling has deteriorated quite a bit. He used to be a fairly decent heeling dog, now he is often wide and forged. At his age, I really don't care :-). We are not going for high scores, we need just ONE more utility leg before he gets too old (he will be 12 in June).


Now Cory LIKES to heel. I think he views it as pushing me around the ring. So I have been working with him a little harder and I would like to polish up his performance a bit and get some decent scores. After watching video of our runs at our "show-n-go" (practice show) on Sunday I see LOTS of room for improvement. He tends to forge (be a little too far ahead of me), his finishes are going through a rough patch, and his pace changes and figure 8 leave a lot to be desired. MY footwork needs a lot of work and working on my handling should improve the changes of pace quite a bit. I also tend to drop my left shoulder so I can keep eye contact with him, and need to work on making this more subtle- it could be scored as an extra command. (I bet only flat chested judges score this! They have no empathy!).



The Novice exercises are:

Heel On Lead (including figure 8 around two people who serve as "posts")
Stand for Exam
Heel Free (no lead)
Recall
Group Exercises- Long Sit and Down (the dogs all line up at one end of the ring and do a 1 minute sit stay followed by a 3 minute down stay with the handlers across the ring).


Other important components of the exercises are the "front"- the dog must sit in front of you when called on the recall; he must be close enough to reach out and touch, he should be sitting straight, and he should not bump you with his nose. The "finish" is when the dog is sent from the front position back to heel position. He can "finish" either to his left (the around finish) or his right (the swing finish). He should go to heel position promptly and sit straight and in line with the handler's leg.


Here is video of Cory from our show-n-go this weekend. He is my "young" dog; he just turned 4 and I am hoping to polish up his exercises and have him ready to show this spring. For Cory the hardest thing in obedience has been not being able to socialize with the judges and the "posts"; the stand for exam is especially hard for him- he wants to hurl himself at the judge and get hugs and wrestles. He is coming along but we still have a LOT of perfecting to do. I think he would have a good chance of qualifying at this point (the stand and the stays always have room for brain fade!) but I am holding out to try and improve our scores a little.


You will notice that Cory heels with his head up watching my face. Teaching "focused attention" is very helpful in getting your dog to stay in position and ignore distractions; however the heads up position is NOT required and does not earn you extra points (it does look flashy though). For some dogs it is counterproductive. In Cory's case, he naturally wants to heel this way; it DOES contribute to his forging a bit (he's trying to see around certain anatomical landmarks!) so we have to work on that a lot. My older dog Andy tends to focus a little lower; he alternates between watching my face and keeping his eye on my knees. My first dog, Levi, focused on my knees and never looked at my face; he was not as flashy but was my most accurate heeling dog with many perfect heeling scores (but sadly, we always struggled with crooked fronts and finishes! Oh well). If you watch closely you will also see that Cory paces rather than trots; that is, both legs on the same side of the body move forward at the same time resulting in a kind of rolling gait, rather than a trot in which the diagonal legs move forward together. This is often seen in obedience dogs, in our case it is a combination of me being slower than my dog would like (and shorter strided, I think) and the heads up position which tends to encourage it. It is not scorable, but I would prefer if he trotted simply because it looks better.

In order to qualify in obedience at any level, you must have a minimum of 170 out of 200 possible points. In addition you must pass each individual exercise with at least 50% of the points assigned to that particular exercise. A perfect score of 200 is a rare thing indeed and something that most of us never achieve. After your dog earns three qualifying scores, he may add the title "CD" after his registered name. This stands for "Companion Dog".

Novice is divided into "A" and "B" which are judged separately. "A" is for handlers who have never put an obedience title on a dog before. Once you earn your first CD, you will show all subsequent dogs in "B". Once your dog earns his CD, you may either move up to Open immediately, or show in Novice until he earns a High In Trial award (the top score out of all the winners of all the classes on that day); should he achieve this (we all should be so lucky!) he must move up to open. In our area, to consistently place in Novice B, your dog generally needs to be scoring 195 and higher. High in Trial often comes from this class (usually with a very experienced handler) and so the first place dog often has a 198 or higher. That's not a lot of leeway for tiny mistakes! In Novice A, the scores are typically much lower and the classes are usually smaller. If your dog qualifies you have a good chance of placing.

Points are lost for being out of heel position (forging, lagging, wide, crowding the handler). It can be as minor as an inch or two out of position or as major as being several feet away. Typically a minor hit is 1/2 point; a major can be up to 3 points. Extra commands are a major hit, and more than 1 or maybe 2 will likely result in an NQ (nonqualifying score). Sniffing also will earn you a deduction. On the stand for exam, the dog should not move his feet at all; he will lose points for shifting his feet or moving from position;' he can wag his tail and sniff the judge, but if he gets much more "friendly" than that you risk losing points. If he shows any evidence of aggresssion he will likely be excused. On the recall, the dog must hold his stay until called, then come in "briskly" (does not have to run, but should be at least at a trot), sit straight in front, and go directly to heel position and sit straight on the finish.

In theory, once your dog successfully completes a basic obedience class he should have the skills to earn his novice title. In reality, for most of us it takes a little longer than this to train the exercises adequately (especially heeling) and if we are wise we spend some time "proofing" the dog- that is, gradually increasing the number of distractions as they work so the first time we ask them to perform at a show, the noise, dogs in the other ring, spectators, etc, are not a new experience for them. Having a judge in the ring with them can be a HUGE distraction; some dogs are very worried by this stranger following them. It was very hard for Cory to learn to focus when all he really wanted to do was go play with the judge; it has taken us a while to be able to have him maintain attention through the whole heeling pattern.

Once your dog earns his CD, you generally can feel that you have a dog who can behave himself reasonably well in public and has mastered the basic skills necessary for a well behaved pet- truly a good "Companion Dog". Next post...on to Open! Now the fun stuff starts!