CPE Nationals Trip 2011: Lake Elmo, MN

From Munising, MI, we made our way across the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin, and arrived in Lake Elmo by early morning Thursday.  We set up camp, visited with friends, walked the dogs, and prepared for three fun days of agility at the CPE National event.

The trial was a blast.  All the rings were outdoors on grass this year, which Django loves, and the weather was pretty much perfect for a dog event.  While it rained overnight a couple evenings, the days stayed dry, and a bit overcast for most of it.  Temps were in the 60’s.  While for some people this might seem somewhat cool, the dogs loved it.

We had three runs each day, two games classes and a standard run.  Django, at about nine years old, ran great for me in every run.  He came in to the ring every time motivated and focused, ran with speed and enthusiasm, and followed my handling cues very well.  Our runs were by and large some of the fastest and smoothest we’ve had, and he was up and happy the entire time.

On Friday, Django closed out the day with a Full House course, and ran agility at a speed I’ve never seen him run before.  I was stunned, as were Lowell and our friends watching on the sidelines.  I ran at an all-out sprint to keep up with him, and he ended up earning second place!

We had one off course in a Wildcard run when he missed a weave entry and in my effort to re-start them, pulled him in to a tunnel behind me.  His Standard courses were all run very nice, but I think he has decided never to hit a dogwalk down contact again in competition.  And, honestly, I am trying to decide if I care.  Initially, Django was never trained with any clear contact performance criteria.  He just was always moving cautiously and slowly enough on them that he almost always hit the yellow.  In the last year or so, we have been working a lot on drive and confidence, and he has picked up speed considerably.  But, that has also meant that now he is all-too-often launching off his contacts.  I have tried this spring to re-train them, but haven’t translated this into competition successfully yet.  After all the work we have done with motivation, there is no way I would walk him off a course and risk shutting him down when he misses the contact.  Plus, he is about nine years old, and although he is in great health with no sign of slowing down, I can’t guarantee how long he will run agility.  So, for now I am not setting goals beyond have fun and try to push ourselves to run fast and smooth and clean.  If Standard Q’s aren’t in our future anymore, I think I’m fine with that.  I’m having the most fun running him that I’ve ever had, and I think the feeling is mutual. 

Maebe and Lowell had amazingly fast runs all weekend, as usual.  She took first place in Jumpers, even with a spill coming out of a wet tunnel.  Unfortunately, she was having a bit of a bar-knocking weekend, otherwise I’m sure they would have taken home several more blue ribbons.  They had fun and had some great runs other than the occasional bar down though, which is what really mattered.

We had some non-agility successes over the weekend also.  Therapy Dogs International had evaluators on-site during the trial, and were offering testing if you wanted to certify your dog to do therapy work.  The TDI test basically consists of the AKC Canine Good Citizen requirements (basic obedience and manners with other people and animals).  It also includes a few other components which really test the temperament of the dog as well.  Dogs need to be OK with loud noises, novel sights, people using wheelchairs or other assistive devices, and they need to be friendly and accepting of other adults and children.

Cadence has always done well when I’ve taken him to public events for Dog Scouts.  I’ve thought of TDI testing him at some point, so decided this weekend to give it a try.  Lowell decided to test Maebe as well, so Saturday we signed up for a couple test slots.

As far as testing sites go, I think this was a pretty challenging one.  We did most of the testing in a pavilion set back from, but within view of the four agility rings, and they had to be able to walk through the crowd closer to ringside.  The pavilion itself was in a grassy field that was being mowed right as Cadence and Maebe began testing.  When Cade was doing his sit/stay and recall, the riding mower was cruising along right next to the pavilion, providing considerable distraction.  Nonetheless, both he and Maebe did great, and passed the evaluation.  Once all the remaining paperwork is complete, we are excited to start looking for volunteer opportunities with them.

Finally on Sunday evening after awards, we prepared for the return leg of our journey, all of us tired but proud of the many accomplishments of the weekend.

CPE Nationals Trip 2011: Munising, MI

We spent the past week taking our annual summer vacation/road trip to compete in CPE Agility Nationals.  This year they were being held in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.  The last few years we have tried to visit a couple National Parks during these trips, but this year we decided to have a vacation in our home state of Michigan.  By taking a slightly longer route to Minnesota, we were able to travel through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and visit several beautiful attractions up there on both legs of the trip.  It ended up being one of our favorite and most memorable vacations to date.

With Django, Maebe, and Cadence in tow, we spent the first two nights in Munising, MI, home of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  On our first afternoon, we hiked some of the few dog-friendly areas on the mainland (most of the lakeshore trails are closed to dogs).   Still, we were able to visit a waterfall, and hike along a quiet, remote beach at Sandy Point.   Cadence as always was fascinated by the water, and had a great time splashing at the waves on Lake Superior.

The next morning, we took a short ferry trip over to Grand Island, and hiked about five miles with the dogs.  They again had the chance to wade in Superior and to catch glimpses of the Pictured Rock cliffs across the bay.

We returned to the mainland by lunch time, and decided to look into renting a pontoon boat for the afternoon so to better see the cliffs from the water.  Superior was smooth as glass, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  We checked weather from the dock before we left – predictions remained absolutely beautiful, and there wasn’t a blip of rain on the radar anywhere in the UP. 

Lowell drove us out along the lakeshore, where we had amazing views of the cliffs and beaches.  Everything was perfect, and the dogs were having a great time lounging around the pontoon.  After an hour we reached Spray Falls, where we had been told by the rental company we needed to turn around.  As we steered the boat back towards Munising, we suddenly felt a shift in the wind and things began to suddenly change.

The smooth waters of Lake Superior were growing increasingly choppy.  The breeze was now cool, and ominous clouds were gathering.  The dogs became nervous.  As we began to be bounced around more, I started to gather the dogs on leash to hold them near the center of the boat, and experienced one of the worst 30 seconds of my life when I suddenly couldn’t locate Django on the boat.  I was scanning the lake and screaming for him, when he suddenly emerged from an under-seat storage compartment that had come unzipped.  Clever guy had found a very tiny safe spot for himself to hide in, and gave me the scare of my life. 

We began to hear claps of thunder.  Lightning was striking ahead of us.  Waves broke over the boat and drenched all of us with water that was still less than 50 degrees in temperature.  When the hail started, it just felt like adding insult to injury.  The boat rocked violently.  With just sheer cliffs alongside us, there was nowhere to pull in and get off the water at the height of it.  I have spent a lot of time in boats and on water in my life, and am a strong swimmer, but I can say I’ve never been more scared in my life. 

We fought our way back to shore during what seemed like an eternity but was probably a bit over an hour.  At the dock, the staff looked at us, dripping wet and shivering, and perplexedly asked if we’d been rained on.  The severe storms that were sweeping along the lakeshore cliffs had not caused even a drop of rain at the inner part of the bay.

We decided our new policy is to not rent boats when the neighboring business charters guided glass-bottom boat tours of shipwrecks in the bay.  Perhaps not a good sign.

In hindsight though, we had an amazing view of a spectacular lakeshore, and have a great story to tell.  We experienced first-hand the extreme and sudden changes that Lake Superior is famous for, so I guess we got the full Superior experience.  The dogs probably won’t want to get back on a pontoon boat any time soon, but they were great troopers during the whole ordeal.  When things got bad, they curled around me and laid still, just quietly waiting it all out though I know they were scared as well.

The rest of the day passed quietly.  We drove a bit farther up the shore on the mainland in the evening, and walked along the beach at our campground.  Our experience of Pictured Rocks was amazing, and we hope to return, though next time we will stick to the commercial guided tour of the cliffs in the really BIG boat!

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 . . .

Milo

So much to say, yet words simply can never describe him.

He was simply the coolest cat you could ever meet.

He was a young stray brought in to the Humane Society of Huron Valley.  We stumbled across him ten years ago in the last, lower cage in the cat room on a casual stroll through the shelter as we considered whether our current cat, River, would like a friend.  All the other cats were curled up in the backs of their cages, freaked out and wishing they were somewhere else.  This beautiful grey and white cat was having a grand old time by himself though, tossing toys around his cage, and pawing at a spider on the floor outside the cage door.  There wasn’t a doubt in our minds.

Throughout his entire life, nothing ever disturbed Milo.  He was totally unflappable.  When we took him for his first exam after adopting him, he curled up in the window of the exam room and chilled out.  The vet said, “You could never find a cat with a better temperament.”  He loved everyone and everything.  He wanted to be with you always.  He greeted everybody at the door when they arrived, curled up in everyone’s laps, followed us around the house everywhere we went.  He was endlessly happy, and it was infectious.  Everybody loved Milo.  People who thought they didn’t like cats would find themselves stroking his soft fur as he curled on their lap for hours.

He and River became the best of friends.  They were inseparable.  River adored Milo.  Being a little more anxious and high-strung by nature, River seemed to lean on Milo for comfort and support.  At vet appointments, moves, and other stressful events, a calm Milo would stay by a nervous River’s side.  They spent their days curled together throughout the house, and slept in a “cat pile” next to us at night.  If River couldn’t find Milo, he paced through the house yowling until Milo was located, then would curl up with him.  They groomed each other, played with each other.  It was beautiful, and we hated to think of them ever being parted.

Milo’s purr was amazing.  It never stopped and was practically a dull roar.  Many nights it woke me up from a deep sleep.  Because of his purr, it took veterinarians about three years to conclusively diagnosis his heart murmur.  They would all listen, suspicious, but that motor wouldn’t stop and it masked all other heart sounds.  Finally, there was consensus that something wasn’t right, and we were referred to a top cardiologist at MSU for evaluation and an EKG.  I asked if they would have to sedate or anesthetize him for the EKG.  Our vet rolled her eyes, laughing, and said, “Not this cat.”

Waiting for the appointment, I read up on feline heart conditions.  I didn’t like what I read – cardiomyopathy was believed to be the leading cause of death of middle-aged indoor cats, and their life expectancy was about 10-12 years.  I pushed that statistic out of my head.

At MSU, Milo was cool, calm and collected as always.  After the EKG, the cardiologist brought him in and exclaimed, “I love your cat!!”  He confirmed that Milo had a heart murmur, but they couldn’t pinpoint where in the heart it was, there was nothing else he was really concerned about, so he advised us to just continue as usual and watch for signs of him slowing down, cautioning us at the same time that often cats don’t display any signs beforehand.

Years passed happily together.  Milo never slowed down and was always healthy.  Every year, we brought him in for an annual exam and listened anxiously as the vets listened to his heart.  It didn’t seem to be worsening and all seemed well.

We can honestly say we treasured every wonderful moment with him.  At nights, he would wait on our bed for us to crawl in, then would dart under the covers between us, curl up, and purr contentedly.  We would curl around him, faces pressed into his beautiful fur, hands petting his milky white belly – what we called his “cream filling.”  His purr would melt away any stress or sorrows of the day.

On May 2, we arrived home to find Milo in distress – weak, dazed, and unable to use his rear legs.  Hours earlier he had been fine.  In fifteen minutes we were at the vet getting emergency treatment, but he was departing fast.  Something had just failed suddenly and completely.  Through sobs, we said our good-byes, held him, kissed his fur, and helped him be in peace again. 

We always said that Milo’s heart was probably weakened because it was so full of love to give.  In the end, it simply couldn’t contain it all, and he had to depart us, leaving all that love to burst out and into the world.

When we got home from the vet that horrible evening, we witnessed an amazing sunset with brilliant red and pink skies.  We aren’t particularly spiritual people, but nevertheless we felt it was Milo’s spirit being set free into the heavens.  Two days later, despite our sorrow, we forced ourselves out of bed for an early morning run, and witnessed a spectacular sunrise, and both of us felt a sense of Milo looking down on us, always with that unconditional, endless love.

Thank you, Milo, for all that you gave to all of us.  You will always be with us.

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.

Bird Dog

As I’ve written about before, Cadence’s biggest training challenge is overcoming his desire to chase motion.  Impulse control and focus have been major areas that we have been working on together.  Recently, I think we’ve had a bit of a breakthrough using a classic psychological principle – the Premack Principle.

Many dog owners learn about Premack in their first household obedience classes, though they may not always know the term.  The principle states that more probable behaviors can reinforce less probable behaviors.  So, you can train your dog to sit politely at the back door while it is being opened (a low-probability behavior) by reinforcing it with the reward of running and playing outside afterwards (a highly-probable behavior).  It is a wonderful tool in the trainer’s toolkit, yet one that I, at least, often forget to use as much as I could.

I have been working on heeling more with Cadence, and have been starting to add increased distraction by working in new locations.  A couple weeks ago, we went to the park at the end of our block to work some heeling patterns, but it started out as an exercise in frustration as he could heel for about three steps, then would charge forward to stare at some robins on the ground many, many yards away.

I tried upping my rate of reinforcement, clicking and treating every step, being more exciting – all the things they tell us to do.  Finally, I reconsidered my strategy:

“You really want those robins?” (Cadence stares into the distance blankly, as he has been doing.)

“Heel.” (Cadence looks up and heels four steps.)

“OK – LET’S GET THOSE ROBINS!!!!” (He and I charge off like maniacs across the park toward the totally oblivious and unbothered robins.)

(Pause.)

“Heel.” (Cadence heels several more steps).

“GET THE ROBINS!!”  (More crazed running.)

We repeat this maybe three times, and by the last repitition of running, he is turning his head back to me, getting that we are playing some sort of cool game now, and more interested in what I’m doing than he is in the robins.  We then resumed our heeling session, now able to do bigger heeling patterns and no longer gazing off in the distance at the birds every few steps.

I began using this along with Leslie McDevitt’s “Give Me a Break” Game to start our park training sessions.  Rather than immediately asking for attention, we play a bit, then I tell him to “Go Sniff” or “Get the robins” and stand about while he does his own thing.  He very quickly starts turning back to me to see what is up.  I reward him, then send him back to sniff.  It only take a couple reps now before he is standing at my feet, wanting to work.  We are both much less frustrated and having a lot more fun.

Plus, now on walks if he sees a bird, he turns to me as if to say “Do the thing, Mom!!”  I usually call him to me, ask for some behavior (hand touch, sit), then we take up the chase for a few feet.

We probably look a bit odd, but the robins don’t seem to mind.

Who’s Shaping Who?

When he was just a young Noodle, Cadence, like all puppies, could get a little “busy” and needed close supervision to keep him from finding his own entertainment around the house.  Often, if we were unable to watch him closely, or if we just needed a few quiet moments to read, we would crate him in our extra crate in the living room with a chew treat to keep him happy.  We keep a constant supply of frozen stuffed Kong toys in the freezer for just these occasions.

Now that Cadence is two and much more reliable around the house, he doesn’t require as constant supervision and is allowed a lot more freedom.   Lately, however, we have noticed an interesting chain of behavior.  Frequently when Lowell is working from home, or at the end of an evening when we sit down to read for a little while before bed, Cadence will start with a series of activities. 

First, he will start “poking” the other dogs and the cats, trying to get some attention.  We call it poking – he basically makes the rounds barking at everyone a couple times as they lie there annoyed, trying to ignore his pleas for attention.  He will then run to the crate, and stand there looking expectantly at us.

If this doesn’t elicit a response, he will then go to the mat by the front door, grab it, shake it a few times, then run to the crate again and wait. 

As we are just hoping for a few minutes of rest, after a few rounds, this is the typical result:

Hmm, what have we been reinforcing all this time?

Always humbling when the ones at the other end of the leash demonstrate how much more skilled they are at the art of shaping behavior than we are.  He has not yet reached the skill level of my first cat though, who had Lowell and I both trained to give him his water in one specific coffee mug, which needed to be dumped and refreshed with clean water every couple hours, under his close supervision.  If he didn’t come with you to the sink and watch it happen, it didn’t count.

I notice two things about Cadence’s behavior chain that interest me though.  One, we clearly were not just rewarding resting quietly in his crate, but actually reinforcing the “naughty” behavior that would precede being given some quiet crate time.  Also, it is interesting what the greater reinforcer is here.  I had assumed that the value would lie in being allowed to hang out with the whole family, but clearly if we are going to all sit around and be boring, then sometimes a crate+Kong is preferable to our company.  Of course, Border Collies like their structure – all of ours do welcome crate time as an opportunity to slow down their too-active brains.

At least they are content with payment of Kongs and fresh water.  Here’s hoping they don’t start wanting the keys to our cars, or a beach house in Maui.  We’d be doomed.