Two On Two Off

This vid shows Eepie learning a version of "two on-two off" which means that she is learning to stop with her back feet touching a specific area on agility equipment. Yes, i am concentrating on the placement of her front feet - but when we work on the stairs this has the effect of also controlling the placement of her back feet. You can't see it, but i am pointing to each step to show her where i want the "one" step to happen.

We ended up with the command "one" because i was asking her to do "one step at a time" - One is our shorthand for "take one step, stop and watch me"

When she's coming off the agility equipment, instead of leaping with Great Enthusiasm as her puppy heart loves to do, she must come off deliberately, taking care to touch the contact areas - we don't have a dog walk or an A-frame to practise on at home so the stairs are quite handy for this.

I am looking forward to putting this new skill to work next time we're in class.

Well done, Mz Eep!! This new trick has taken three x 2 minute sessions to shape and now that she has learned how to do it, i'm beginning to increase my distance from standing directly in front and blocking her 'flight path' to standing one or two steps away from her.

As i increase the distance - in effect taking the props away - it gets harder for her because she has to think and remember and behave in a certain way all by herself. Her reward for getting it right is her release signal that means she can BOLT the last step or two and go flying into her back yard where she loves to charge around.

If she forgets and charges down the steps midway through i just stop her and ask her to go back up onto the deck and start again.

We do two reps - that's enough - Bouviers do not do "robot dog" training.............

Extra distractions for this exercise are provided by people, dogs, kids on bicycles etc passing by in the park on the other side of the fence.

Target & Weave Practice

We had a better morning run today - there was nobody else at the club so Eepie just got distracted by racehorses doing trackwork across the road, some kangaroos in an adjacent paddock and lots of tiny little finches flying about catching insects in the early morning sunlight.

We did some targetting today - she needs to learn to stop on the contacts on her Agility equipment so today we took a plastic lid and practised stopping with one paw on the lid - she's amazing - after a few attempts she was doing a half playbow with one foot on the target, wagging her tail and looking at me with her cheeky grin.

At home we have been practising coming down the stairs off the deck out the back in a slow, controlled way. If i let her just "go" she flies down those stairs and lands with a thud on at the bottom - i don't like this because of the risk of injury and long term potential for arthritis - so learning to come down the stairs slowly and controlled is a good thing. Her command for this is "One" - meaning one step at a time - and she does this nicely as long as i am right in front of her insisting that she pays attention to the task.

When we got home she did a couple of runs through the weavers. This is coming along well and she's running twelve poles set in a V leaning out from a straight line - she's learning to lift her feet nicely and pretty soon i'll start straightening them up.

Harpo is still recovering from an episode of bloat (he ate some old leather and made himself very sick) so he's not working much right now. I am just happy to see him running about, playing with Ieper and wagging his tail, we came close to losing him which was pretty scary.

Fence Running

Really annoying morning - there were some people and their dogs at the dog club when we arrived this morning - i let the dogs out of the car and into the paddock and she was gone. From then on Ieper just wanted to race up and down the fence staring and barking at the other dogs and behaving like a lunatic. She would NOT pay me any attention, would NOT come she just ran up and down the fence getting more and more excited and more and more out of control. At one point i took Harpo down beside the club house so we were out of sight and called her. I hoped she'd worry that she couldn't see us and come looking - but nope - she just kept on behaving badly at the fence.

This behaviour makes me so MAD i don't know what to do about it. It is clearly very self-reinforcing, a lot of FUN, to race up and down the fence. I am wracking my brains to figure out what to do with her that is more appealing that her own special "naughty game". I caught my naughty little bitch, put her on lead and walked her away from the fence - she was immediately very well behaved.

I got my dear Harpo the Hooligan and put him in a sit-stay a little way away from the fence and Eepie and i heeled some figure eights with Harpo as a "post". She heeled beautifully with all that adrenaline from the fence running flowing through her - paid good attention, forged nicely into the cross-over point and sped up automatically on the outside circle till she was working the circle with a nicely flexed spine and, essentially, herding me with her shoulder - beautiful work...........thank you, Eepie!

Harpo used to do something similar at other dogs on the other side of the fence - he'd charge to the fence and puff up and bark and carry on as though world war three was about to break out and he was defending Flanders - it took a few years to train him to come back away from the fence and away from barking at or investigating dogs on the other side. He is seven now and, though he will still charge off to see who has just arrived, he comes back when called with a grin and a wagging tail, most of the time without even making it as far as the fence.

I am not sure how to begin this with Eepie and i certainly do not want it to take years - she has three modes at the moment - completely self-absorbed (when she's fence running), completely engaged with me (when we are working) and somewhere in between when she's working but watching something else on the other side of the paddock.

I guess the answer is partly in training attention and partly in being willing to let her grow up a bit more - she still has "puppy brain" and will have for at least another twelve months - perhaps i can set a goal for twelve months' time and chart our progress.

Fence running really annoys me. Sorry, Peep, it has to stop!

Lots of love

Mum

Heeling Towards a Championship

If you're interested in the higher levels of competition obedience, heelwork needs to be smart and precise.

It is just as easy to train your dog to heel well as it is to train them to lag or heel wide - so why not aim for perfection to begin with? .

For starters, WunderDogs don't wear a collar and lead to learn to heel because we don't use corrections - I can't "correct" something that my dog hasn't yet learned. So I start by teaching my dogs to sit close and square at heel. When they can do that, i move a little and ask them to come up close to me again - back into heel position. When they can do that reliably sideways and through 90 degrees clockwise and anti-clockwise, i ask them to take it around through 360 degrees in both directions. When they can do that and wag their tails at the same time, they're ready to starting working on some straight lines - both backwards and forwards.

When I teach heelwork starting from the static heel position, I don't have to teach an "automatic sit" because it is already there - the dog learns that heel means "sit square by my side unless i'm moving, in which case i want you to move square alongside me and resume heel position when i stop". So i teach heel as a backchained exercise.

The bottom line for heelwork with my dogs is - it must be FUN. I like to see my dogs animated and having a good time when they work - i'm not interested in producing another sad robotic obedience dog with flattened ears and a low-slung tail. In the ring, a wagging tail and a cheeky grin from my dog assures me that regardless of what the judge says about us, we're having a good time and that is the most important thing.

Working With Distractions

Today's exercises were directed jumping and some heelwork. Ieper gets very excited at the dog club when she sees other dogs and it is hard for her to concentrate. She pulls and wants to go talk to the other dogs. If she's off lead she wants to chase and play with them. It can be frustrating and embarrassing trying to get her back to me and paying attention. When she finds a dog to play with she is fast and furious in pursuit and her playmates need to be robust to withstand her herding and roughhousing - she's not nasty or mean in her play, she's just strong and boisterous, full of life.

Last week in obedience class, after doing a perfect recall, she wanted to run off and play chasings with a Cocker Spaniel. She started with a lovely play-bow, then herded the poor Cocker, shouldered it into the ground, tipped it on its back and left it screaming in fright. Wimps need not apply to play with my puppy - sorry - she's not aggressive or a thug but, like most Bouviers, she's not a dog for the faint of heart.

I'm not sure why she gets so excited by other dogs at the dog club when she manages to stay quite self-contained at dog shows - there are many more dogs at dog shows.

But this makes the dog club a good place to practice paying attention and working through distractions. It helps, too, that there is a mob of hereford cattle in a paddock at the end of the working ring - they are interesting for a young working dog - another good distraction.

At home in our training yard we have no distractions - so her work is wonderful and focused. How many times do you hear someone lamenting "but my dog does it perfectly at home"................

Today we had cattle at one end of our working area and two small dogs playing in the adjacent paddock. Excellent distractions!

We started with sendaways and directed jumping - eepie was watching the small dogs playing in the next paddock and i had my work cut out to get her attention back onto the job which was simply to go out to the box and sit - and then to watch me for the signal to jump either bar or solid on the way back to me.

I stayed calm even though i was nervous about letting her off lead. I didn't want her to run away and scamper up and down the fence line and rehearse "bad behaviour". It is important to learn to trust your dog - to expect the correct behaviour and set the dog up to succeed rather than fail. I have been training her to Watch Me - so i asked her to Watch as we headed out to face the box. And because she was so interested in the dogs playing next door, i shortened the distance to the box to make it easier for her to succeed at the sendaway. Once she was in the box i walked backwards to the full distance before asking her for the jumps. When she was in the air over a jump i added the command "Here" so that she would look at me and not be tempted to take off and run to the fence to investigate the dogs-next-door. When that worked i could praise her for getting it right. Little by little i will be able to remove these "props" and she'll be working happily with other stuff going on in the background. It is important to build her confidence and mine by rehearsing successes.

The extra work on my part meant she did well with a high level of distraction - i was surprised - and i reflected that her beginners Agility class is probably also helping her to handle the pressure of working to me and paying attention to me when there are a lot of interesting happy chaseable dogs close by.