Learning About Border Collies

I’m very behind in blogging, but a lot has been going on in the last month so I am going to try to catch up.

The biggest adventure we have had lately was our trip to Brookfield, Missouri with Tristan, Django, and Cadence to attend a “Learning About Border Collies” 3-day workshop with the UK trainer, Kay Laurence.  We have seen Kay at ClickerExpo for the last two years, and couldn’t wait to spend a long weekend working with our dogs and learning from her.  The seminar was wonderful.  Perhaps the best I’ve ever attended.  We met wonderful people, and Kay was as always filled with amazing information. 

Basically, Border Collies are just not quite like other breeds of dog.  All of us BC owners have been told that and know that, but this helped us fully consider how it impacts their behavior and what we ask of them. 

BCs are bred to have a very specific behavior pattern, which enables them to masterfully perform the job they were originally born to do: herd.  They are extremely sensitive to motion and sound, they want things to be under control, and they want to chase.  They work on farms with their shepherd and few strangers.  They work in sprints, and must pause to think.  Too often, we don’t consider these traits when we are blushing at the crowded agility ringside as our overstimulated and overwhelmed BC has a tantrum because they can not control the moving dog and handler on the course. 

It’s not that BC's can’t handle these environments – clearly they excel repeatedly in a wide variety of non-herding tasks.  But we need to remember how their brains work, and help prepare them for the types of environments where we want to bring them.  I loved Kay’s response to those who talk about all the “reactive” border collies that you see: “Well I would hope a dog is reactive – it just means he isn’t dead.” 

I’ve come to have a hard time with that term - “reactive.”  What does it even mean?  All dogs will react to some things; it is just a matter of thresholds.  Someone who saw Cadence in one of his bursts of frustration on the sideline of an agility class a year ago might have decided I had another one of those “reactive” dogs.  Unless they saw him the other 99.9% of the time – he is friendly to other dogs and people and is remarkably calm and well-mannered in a wide variety of environments.  I can take him to training expos with hundreds of people and dogs, I can walk through downtown, a busy park, a hotel lobby, a campground, a noisy truck stop, and even a crowded Renaissance Festival without him batting an eye. 

What he is, is distracted by motion, and by things that appear out of control.  What he is, is a normal border collie.  I think all of us shared the sentiments of one workshop attendee at the end of the first day, who said to Kay:  “Thank you for validating my dog.”

Kay also shared a paradigm with us that really beautifully illustrated what we see with our dogs.  Originally presented by Stephen Lindsay (I believe), she displayed an axis where one line ranged from uncontrolled to controlled, and the other from unpredictable to predictable.  A dog’s emotional response to an experience depends on where on the continuum it lies:

-Controlled/predictable = Boredom.

-Uncontrolled/predictable = Frustration.  This is the dog barking at the agility sideline.  He knows there is going to be crazy motion and dogs running, but he can’t control it.

-Uncontrolled/unpredictable = Fear.

-Controlled/unpredictable = Excitement and anticipation.  This is clicker training and shaping.  There is a controlled pattern – dog’s behavior will earn a consequence (reward) - but the dog has to figure out what behavior will get him there.  It is why animals enjoy clicker training so much.

A year ago, when Cadence was having his impulse control issues in agility class, a trainer suggested I medicate him because he was so “anxious.”  I was stunned at this assessment of him.  “No,” I said, “he is frustrated.”  The answer I chose was to work on impulse control and manage his environment to help him better handle his frustration.  Thank you, Kay, for confirming that I know my dog.  As she said, never let some outsider’s judgment of your dog get in between your relationship with your dog.

We also learned a lot about how we can use our body language better – how projecting calmness ourselves can keep them calm.  This was an eye-opener for me.  I thought I was giving my best display of calmness, but Kay pointed out how I was still carrying tension in my body, and jokingly suggested I have a drink before training!   She also advised us to move much more slowly when working BCs.  They have a habit of working us up and getting us to move faster and faster.  What we need to do is slow them down so they can better think, rather than both getting worked up to a manic frenzy.

Finally, the coolest part of the weekend was having the opportunity to see our dogs’ reactions to sheep.  The farm arranged a few sheep in a smaller round pen, and we brought our dogs up to see how they responded and whether they could move them about the pen from outside the fence.  It was a great way to keep sheep safe from green dogs, yet to still observe herding instinct. 

It was fascinating watching Cadence.  He approached with interest but some caution at first, as he often does with new things, then rapidly decided this was the greatest thing ever.  The shepherd commented that he moved into pressure nicely, and held his eye on the sheep until they responded.  She was impressed with his natural instinct and said he had a lot of potential if I was able/wanted to pursue herding with him. 

Much to Cadence’s disappointment, we are not about to sell the house and move to a farm.  But we are on the lookout for some practice sheep and herding lessons . . .

At a Loss for Words

It has been a roller-coaster two weeks to say the least.  It began wonderfully, with an amazing camping trip with Tristan, Django, and Cadence to northern Missouri for a “Learning About Border Collies” workshop with Kay Laurence.  The trip was perfect – one of the best dog training experiences we’ve ever had as well as a fantastic vacation.  Unfortunately, we had a harsh homecoming, when shortly after we returned our dear, wonderful, amazing cat Milo passed away unexpectedly due to a sudden and severe cardiac failure, the result of a lifelong heart condition.  It all has felt like a dream followed by a nightmare, and I’m still dazed and waiting to wake up from it all, though it seems more real every day.  Since I’m reeling too much still from Milo’s loss to write about any of it yet, in the meantime here are some photos from the trip, and of Milo in better times.  RIP, beautiful boy.  We all miss you.

Spring Cleaning

After taking the month of March off from agility competitions, due to ClickerExpo and various other commitments, we were happy to have a half day on Saturday to take Maebe and Django to a CPE trial for a few runs.  We entered them in three games Saturday morning, and both dogs left running a perfect 3/3. 

My goal for this trial, and for all trials these days, was to identify the best handling strategy for each course, and stick to it even if it presented some challenges – no more babysitting areas where we have weak spots.  In preparation, I have been spending a lot of time this spring working on Django’s weaves and contacts, trying to brush them up before CPE Nationals in June.  The courses on Saturday included many off-side entries, which are a weakness, and in one case, rear-crossing the weaves, which I don’t believe I have ever tried with him.  Our work seems to be paying off, as he hit all his entries perfectly.  Not as fast in a trial as in our backyard yet, but certainly continuing to improve. 

Sunday we spent a beautiful spring day outside cleaning up the yard and getting the camper ready for our first trip in a few weeks.  We will be attending a “Learning About Border Collies” workshop with the always entertaining and brilliant Kay Laurence.  We’ll be taking all three BC’s, and are looking forward to learning more about what makes our favorite breed tick.  I’m especially excited to have the opportunity for Cadence to see sheep for the first time.  I’m hoping that Tristan will be able to give herding a try also, but T has been nursing a shoulder injury after a slip on the ice a month ago, so we’ll see if he is in good enough shape by then.  If not, Django will be along as a “back up” working dog for the seminar.  I’m sure it will be a great time. 

We wrapped up the weekend doing one of our favorite spring/summer activities – enjoying a meal on our patio while the dogs played in the yard.  Rather than being a day of chores and cleaning, we viewed it as a day of preparation and excitement – bringing back fond memories of previous summer fun and building anticipation for the good times to come in the months ahead. 

 

Day Three: ClickerExpo

Sunday was the last day of ClickerExpo, so we woke up extra early to pack up the car, check out of the hotel, and head over for our morning park run. There were a couple smaller dogs about Maebe's size in the "small dog" half of the park, so we decided to let them all play. Cadence fell madly in love with a little sheltie mix and was prepared to follow her to the ends of the earth, but we eventually reminded him who he came there with.

Our first seminar of the day was by British trainer Kay Laurence on training self control. It is hard to pick a favorite of the many great lectures we attended this weekend, but Kay's definitely stood out and really resonated with us, as owners of pretty high-drive dogs for whom self-control has not always been a strong point. I know that this has been due to sloppy, novice training on our parts - an issue not helped by the fact that our two most intense dogs, Jade and Tristan, were our two first training experiences.

Kay discussed how we need to be aware of our dog's mental state when we train, because "what you click is what you get." You don't want to start shaping with a dog that is stressed or shutting down, otherwise that stress might become tied to the behavior. Similarly, you don't want too much arousal and lack of control built into the behavior either. This immediately made me think of challenges we have had with Tristan when building new behaviors. Tristan is so smart, picks up on things so fast, and I swear has an understanding of the English language to rival most teenagers. But when working, he can get too high too fast and shaping can turn into a frantic, frenzied mess. I can see now how we need to work with his state of arousal and only reinforce controlled behaviors. She also pointed out how we need to be aware of our emotional state, and what our movements are communicating to the dog.

Kay talked a lot about the benefits of play and games, but also how trainers frequently don't have good rules for play. Instead of cooperative playing with a shared toy (that, she encouraged us to remember, belongs to us after all, not the dog), tug games turn into a hyper competition for resources between person and dog.

Having been involved for years in two high-energy dog sports and witnessing the training (or sometimes lack thereof) that goes on at times in the quest for the faster, higher drive dog, this really hit home with me. I have for years been baffled by the pride that handlers take showing off their battle scars after a day of competition - bleeding bit hands, scratched up bodies, torn clothes, etc. I expect my dogs to know the difference between a tug toy and my hand, and to respect me enough to not assault me for the toy.

When they were running, Jade and Tristan had good bite inhibition if they hit your hand, but did get sloppy at times and "miss" the toy. Of course, I believe there is a good argument that these dogs aren't "missing" anything. Jade was an awesome flyball dog, and I loved running him. But he had bad habits, that I know I reinforced when I didn't know any better, and that ultimately affected the pleasure of handling him somewhat. Don't get me wrong - I loved working with him and treasure my memories of his racing days - but how much more fun would it have been to not get dragged to the ring, have to fight him for the tug toy between every race, etc. I don't think these behaviors did anything to particularly enhance our relationship, nor do I believe they made him faster or have more drive (a fallacy I believed in my early days of dog sports).

Kay demonstrated playing tug and chase games with rules that help reinforce self control. Handlers should tug with their dogs, then ask for a release. If the dog does not release, the handler would hold the collar gently, so as to prevent further tugging, and wait for the dog to drop the toy. The mistake many handlers make at this point is to either whip the toy away rapidly (making the toy once again seem like a retreating prey animal) or to immediately allow tugging again. Instead, the dog should choose not to pounce on the toy again, even though it remains in range, and should sit and wait for permission to begin the game again.

This is very similar to Susan Garrett's 1-2-3 Game and Brenda Aloff's switching exercises that I have been doing with Noodle since he was a young pup, and I am pleased that he does show a lot of self-control around play, even when very wound up. The detail Kay emphasized though was that "a sit is not enough." If the dog sits, but is still in a very high state of arousal - barking, trembling, anticipating the release, etc. - you need to wait for a sign of actual relaxation and impulse control before clicking and releasing to play again. I think a lot of times, us handlers reward, and maybe even desire, a sit with the dog trembling in anticipation, as we want to have a high-drive, enthusiastic dog. This reminded me that there is a difference though between drive and arousal, and we don't want to mistake one for the other.

Afterwards we attended Kay's working lab on these exercises as observers. It was great watching Kay's different games and seeing how she worked with the dogs. Her mantra, that I have run through my head a million times already this week while working my dogs, was to ask yourself: "Is the behavior continuing or getting stronger?" It was her way of evaluating whether you were really reinforcing what you thought you were, whether your reward was actually providing reinforcement, or if the activity was self-reinforcing enough to promote it continuing. I have been using this to remind myself to check in and evaluate whether I am actually building a behavior, or just being a treat dispenser.

After lunch, we attended Alexandra Kurland's talk on "loopy training" or building complex behaviors. Among many things, she discussed how cues become reinforcers, and we can begin to build behavior chains by reinforcing one trained behavior with the cue for the next behavior. At the same time, it is important to not lose your criteria for each individual component of the chain.

The most salient part of this presentation, however, were two videos from a scientific research project of a dog responding to a "come" command that had been trained previously. In the first video, the dog had been trained to have a recall to a specific cue word using shaping and positive reinforcement. The dog worked with its tail up and wagging, head up, prancing happily and quickly around. The second video showed a dog who had been trained a recall using compulsion with a different word cue. The compulsion did not involve harsh correction, but rather collar pressure on a line pulling the dog to the trainer if it didn't respond. This dog worked slowly when it heard its cue word, with its head and tail down, looking visibly stressed and demotivated. Both dogs responded to their cue and came when called, but the behavior looked drastically different. The reveal at the end was that it was the same dog. It was a particularly moving example of the real differences between two training practices.

Of course, Karen Pryor was sitting directly behind me and Noodle during this presentation, so I became self-conscious about maintaining his good behavior and looking like I was a halfway competent trainer. :-) Fortunately, he was well mannered and calm again throughout the presentation, so he made me look good. I even got "tagged" (the token reward system used throughout the conference) by a fellow conference attendee for having such good dogs. Not something that I hear, say, when a stranger walks past our backyard fence, but they were pretending to be good fur-kids this weekend and I was very grateful!

As much as we wanted to catch the closing comments, we are also morning people who are at risk of turning into pumpkins before ten o'clock, so we decided to hit the road a little early. We packed into the car, grabbed some Red Bull, and headed home talking the whole way about how much fun we had, how inspired we were, and how excited we were to pursue new goals as trainers and dog owners. I feel new motivation and confidence in working with the dogs - I know I am following scientifically valid principles that not only work but build empathy and strengthen relationships in the process. I am feeling challenged to do my best in working both with the older dogs on some of their "rusty" spots, and in shaping my little Noodle into the best dog he can be. I'm excited and looking forward to the journey ahead.