Breathe.

This past weekend, Maebe and Django were entered in a CPE trial.

On the Thursday before the trial, I was printing out the running order and noticed that the last class of the day on Sunday was Jumpers Level 1/2, and that there were only five dogs pre-entered in that class. 

I casually mentioned this to Lowell, and that they were taking Day Of Show entries.  Cadence has had several very good weeks of agility class in a row, and the judge at this trial was one that we know, and who I knew I would feel comfortable under if anything goofy happened.  Somehow, this comment led to discussions with him, our agility instructor, and a friend, who in the end persuaded me to sign Cadence up for his first agility trial run on Sunday.

Coincidentally, the next day a gift arrived for me in the mail – a t-shirt with paw prints and the word “Breathe” printed on it, my mantra whenever I am working Cadence.  It was meant to be a Valentine’s present, but its arrival turned out to be perfectly timed.  It was something I knew I was going to have to remind myself to do many times that day!

On Sunday, we arrived early, dropped off Cadence’s entry form and had him measured, and set up our crates in a relatively quiet location.  None of our dogs particularly like to be crated at indoor trials, as they don’t care for the noise, crowds, movement, and barking, and I wanted Cadence especially to stay calm throughout the long day of waiting.

I was delighted that Cadence actually was the most relaxed I’ve seen him in a crating area.  Throughout the day I took him out several times, and he was happy, attentive, and eager to play tug games with me.  We did the practice jump a couple times to make sure he could focus in that environment.  I was prepared as I was going to be.

As if to ease my stress, Django ran great all day.  He ran clean and fast, and placed in each run.  I was very proud of my veteran dog.  It seemed like he was telling me that whether or not the baby dog was ready to start trialing, not to worry because he wasn’t retiring yet!

Finally, it was time to walk the course.  I put on my headphones, which I often do for walk-throughs, and listened to Coldplay’s “Yellow.”  I reminded myself of how much I love my dogs, and that no matter how the run went, what really mattered was the relationship Cadence and I have formed.  I pictured looking down at Cadence on the start line, taking a breath, and us taking off together.  I pictured us running the course, and then us playing together at the end.

And the run itself?  Well, I was very happy.  Video is below, and you can see that it is far from perfect, and not pretty all the time.  But I see a lot of good things, that make me feel very good about how far we’ve come.  The clip begins after we’ve started, but after taking his harness off, he sat nicely and focused on me.  I was able to stand up, take a step forward, take a breath, and release him (I didn’t try for a big lead out, but did want him to hold a sit for a moment, which he did).  Unfortunately, after the second jump, he was directly lined up with the timer, scribe and judge, who were grouped in the far corner, and so he had to go see what was going on over there.

He came back to me, and I was able to direct him in to the next tunnel.  He came out, and while still generally following my motion, he did go wide around the next couple jumps, I think noticing the bar setter in that corner.  I didn’t worry about those obstacles, and kept moving down the course, waiting for him to come down enough to realize what we were doing.  Which he did, and we finished the end of the course completely connected.  He even followed me when I directed him to an off course tunnel!  The best part – and what I had been most concerned about – was he came over that last jump focused on me.  We ran together to his leash, and tugged and celebrated as we left the ring as a team. 

Cadence has been an amazing dog to train, and while we still have a ways to go, I am pleased with how far we’ve come and how much we’ve learned.  He can amaze me with his brilliance, and he has also challenged me to become a more skilled trainer.  He has a very strong desire to chase motion, even more so than our other border collies, and this has been, and still is, our biggest obstacle in working off leash in a high state of arousal (like, say, in agility . . .).  So, while some may see him being distracted initially by the ring crew and the trial environment, what I see is his ability to come back to me and start thinking again despite that distraction, and that is something that I don’t think he could have done several months ago.  To me that is huge, and it gives me confidence that we are moving in the right direction. 

So, more training ahead, and I am thinking we will do this again – another end-of-day Jumpers run – at the end of March and see where we are at that point.  I’m looking forward to it.

Have I mentioned how much I love this dog?

If It’s Not Broken . . .

I follow a lot of dog training blogs and dog training discussion forums, and always enjoy reading about others’ training journeys, successes, lessons learned, and words of wisdom.  But recently, I have noticed the language that people seem to use when talking about their training challenges, and have been surprised to hear talk about “fixing” dogs.  In this context it isn’t slang terminology for spaying or neutering; people are referring to dogs as though something is fundamentally broken.  People refer to fixing their “bar dropper” or their “reactive dog” or their “shut down dog”, etc. 

I am wondering, how helpful is it to use this terminology? 

I am not saying that we should not try to modify behaviors that are problematic, or that we shouldn’t try to fine-tune our training so that the performance meets the criteria we would like it to, but I feel that viewing the dog as somehow broken does not help us do this.  I prefer not to label my dogs, and especially not to label them according to what some may see as faults.  When I approach training, I feel it is more helpful to identify behaviors that I would like to reinforce and make stronger, and behaviors that I would like to replace and minimize.  I want to give the dogs I work with the skills to make correct decisions, and the ability to manage a variety of environments, experiences, and social interactions without stress and anxiety.  I prefer to call this process “training” – not “fixing.”

I very much believe that our language shapes the way we approach and view the world.  When we start to reduce our dogs, our selves, or others to what we see as their shortcomings, we become blind to what is brilliant, unique, and extraordinary about that same individual.  I am a social worker by training, and the human services field picked up on the power of the strengths-based approach years ago.  So It surprises me now to see even very positive, forward-thinking dog trainers slip into the deficit-model of viewing the dogs they are working with. 

I share my life with five dogs, who all have very distinct personalities and temperaments.  Every one of them has behaviors that I would prefer to see less of (OK, I had to think hard about this for Django, but he does bark a lot a meal time).  And every one of them has fantastic qualities and strengths that amaze me every day.  It has been my job as their owner and trainer to build on those strengths, and increase the presence of all those attributes that I love.  To me, none of them have something that needs to be fixed – they are all simply perfect at being themselves, and I want to help them be the best, happiest version of themselves that they can be.

Happy 12th, Jade!!

Today is the day we celebrate Jade’s birthday, and it hardly seems possible that our first dog is now twelve years old.  We met Jade a little over eleven years ago at a pet rescue adoption day.  We had just bought our first home, a move strongly driven by our desire to be able to have a dog, and had decided we wanted a black Labrador.  When we saw him in his crate at the adoption event, I think it took us about 30 seconds to decide we wanted him, and we picked him up a week later – the day after we moved in to our new place. 

Jade had boundless energy and drive, and we loved trying new things with him.  Our world began to revolve around finding fun things to do with him.  We began a journey together of learning and playing that led us to many great friends and new experiences – I always say he is the dog that changed our lives. 

Jade’s true passion in life was flyball, and he was a fantastic flyball dog.  His fastest time was 3.9 seconds (not bad for a Lab), he was ranked in the top ten point-earning Labs in flyball, earned over 40K points in racing, and had he raced just a few months longer, would have received the new NAFA Iron Dog award.  What matters most though is how much fun we all had together.

Jade’s athleticism made him an extremely talented agility dog as well, but after an bad crash into the side of a closed tunnel in an early competition, he never enjoyed trialing as much.  Still, he was always up for a fun match or some backyard practice.

After breaking a toe in 2009 on the flyball box, Jade has been retired from competition, though he did try Rally Obedience this fall for the first time, and we hope to do more in the future.  He has been so happy to find a new “job” to do!

This past year, Jade has begun to show his age more and more.  I still think most people would be shocked to know that he is twelve, but we see the signs of him slowing down.  He had surgery this summer after being diagnosed with laryngeal paralysis, and fortunately since then his quality of life has definitely increased.  Unfortunately, the condition also usually involves neuropathy in the rear legs, and he is beginning to lose some muscle mass and to get a little weaker and unstable.  He is pain-free though, and still gets around very well.  He walks at least a half hour every day, does strengthening exercises to keep as fit as he can, and is still happy to fetch the occasional ball in the back yard.  As much as I hate watching him age, I think he still has plenty of miles left in him.

Thanks for over a decade of great times, Jade!  We hope our journey still has many roads ahead!

Django Day

Today is the eighth annual “Django Day” – when we celebrate bringing our beautiful red boy, Django, into our home eight years ago.

Django is known to many of our friends as “Mr. Perfect.”  He is the most honest dog I have ever known.  All he ever wants in life is to do the right thing.  Working with him always brings a smile to my face.  He is my heart dog, and I adore him.

This year brought us many more adventures together.  We attended Kay Laurence’s border collie workshop in Missouri, where we learned that he is much too polite to want to bother the nice sheep.  We toured the Upper Peninsula, hiking at Grand Island, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and the Porcupine Mountains.  I also had probably the worst 30 seconds of my life on a boat in Lake Superior during that trip, when during a severe thunderstorm I suddenly couldn’t locate Django on our pontoon boat after a wave had broken over the boat.  It makes me ill to even think of those seconds looking out at the turbulent waters, terrified that I had lost my precious guy to them.  Happily, I found he had somehow curled up to about the size of a house cat and was hiding under a bench seat, safe from the elements.  Upon hearing my panicked cries for him, he crawled back out, I’m sure wondering why he was being called from his safe little cubby hole to sit in the rain, but as always, willing to oblige because I’d asked.

We competed at CPE Nationals, and he ran in top form all weekend, even getting a second place in Full House.  We had another great week at dog camp.  This fall, at the Michigan troop outing, he helped our troop win the friendly competition by showing off some of his favorite tricks, such as retrieving a dog biscuit and carrying a beer bottle for me.  Things I had even forgotten I had taught him years ago . . .  but he didn’t forget.

One memory I will treasure from this year was a reminder in how far Django and I have come together.  When we first adopted Django, he could be leash-aggressive and reactive towards other dogs, and we worked hard at modifying that behavior.  The process taught me a lot about dog training, and allowed us to build our relationship even more.  At the Kay Laurence workshop this spring, Kay wanted to demonstrate working on socialization and ignoring distractions for some of the younger BC pups present.  To do so, she needed some very stable, non-reactive, calm dogs who would stay focused on their handlers while the pups worked on their impulse control in their presence.  Kay looked at me and said “Bring in your chocolate guy.”  I paused for a second, about to say, “No, he’s too reactive . . . ", but then I realized – no, he’s not.  Not anymore.  He trusts me, he’s connected to me, and he only wants to make me happy.  I brought him in, beaming with pride the entire time to see the confident, happy dog he has become.  He is a long way from the underweight, sun-bleached, scraggly stray that was picked up in Detroit eight years ago. 

I’m enjoying every minute of our journey, Django.  I hope it continues for many more years to come.  Thank you for all that you have given and continue to give us.

Changing the Approach

I have been struggling on and off for a few months in my attempts to teach Cadence a formal retrieve – the type where he waits to retrieve the object, then brings it back and sits in front position holding the object until I ask him to release to my hand.  He does play fetch with enthusiasm, and happily brings his frisbee right to my hand so we can tug a bit before I ask him to drop it, but it lacks finesse and is anything but “formal.” I taught Django a formal retrieve years ago when I had a broken arm and could do little else with the dogs.  Though I haven’t done obedience, it is one of the coolest things he knows, and lends itself very well to a lot of useful behaviors and fun tricks, so I think it is a great skill for them to have.

Cadence and I have been working with a dumbbell, which he will bring back to me, but then chucks it at me as he approaches.  I have been attempting to fix this by back-chaining the behavior, so I am first trying to teach him to hold the dumbbell for a second and release it on cue.  He quickly will grab hold of the dumbbell if presented to him, but spits it back at me immediately.  I have been unable to raise my criteria to much more than a nanosecond of tooth gripping.

When I start shaping behaviors, I often am sitting on the living room floor with Cadence as we work.  This was the case again the other night as we struggled with another session of “Please just hold this for half a second before chucking it at my lap.”  After a couple minutes, I stood up for some reason, maybe just to stretch, and presented the dumbbell from a standing position.  Now, seated to look up at me and with his head tilted upwards, Cadence gripped the dumbbell in the back of his mouth, and legitimately held it for a second before I gave him the release cue and took it.  All he needed to help him out was a little change of position that made the desired behavior feel either more natural or more comfortable, or just more obvious.  In a few more repetitions, I was able to have him get a good hold on it, still only for a second or two, but we now have a behavior to build on.

It reminded me that in training when we are hitting our heads against a wall, we need sometimes change our context a bit and start again from a new perspective or a new approach.  If something isn’t working, even if it is the “right” way to do something, we need to be willing to be creative and figure out what the dog needs from us to understand.

The next night, I experienced this myself.  I have been taking swim classes and lessons for the last year trying to fine tune my freestyle technique, and improve my form in the other strokes as well.  This week, we worked on breaststroke.  I have been told that the front half of my breaststroke is actually pretty good, but my kick is . . . well, it wouldn’t be considered legal in competition.  It resembles something more like an inverted scissor kick.  And unfortunately, breaststroke is mostly about the kick.  My former instructor even got in the water one day and tried to guide my legs through the correct motions, but it was as if I had some neurologic deficit that I simply could not reproduce the correct motion on my own.  I started to kind of hate breaststroke. 

Last night, a different instructor gave a new tip - “Start by focusing on bending your knees together straight toward the bottom of the pool.”  That mental image helped me suddenly start to put together something more closely resembling an actual breaststroke kick.  I mean, swimming being what it is, I still need to do it about 8,000 more times before it is going to look at all respectable, but I stopped feeling like I had no connection to what my knees, ankles and feet were doing.  I also finally had a behavior that I can build on.

All of my instructors are good, and all have helped me tremendously.  I don’t think that the new instructor was necessarily better than the previous one, but she happened to have the lesson for that particular skill that helped me have an “aha!'” moment in the pool.

So, this week, as I start to make a very small step towards progress in these two previous sources of frustration, I am reminded of the importance of creativity, and the need to respect the individual learner and figure out what is going to work best for them.  It is easy in both swimming and dog training to get so concerned with the ideal method for learning a flip turn, or learning weave poles, that we can become unwilling to step back if that isn’t working, and try a new approach.  But sometimes that slight flexibility is all that is needed to make something fall into place.

Catch-Up

I hate when I get behind in blogging, because I never know where to start, and can’t figure out what to write about first, what to skip over, etc.  So, in the interest of catching up, here’s some highlights of what we’ve been up to in September.

We started out the month by taking our first two dogs, Jade and Tristan, out of retirement to compete in a C-WAGs Rally Obedience trial.  Each dog was entered in two runs, and had a great time.  Each qualified in one run, and Tristan earned a fourth place in his second run.  Most importantly, they both were so happy to be working and competing again, and it felt great to be out there as a team with my first competition dog, Jade, again. 

The next weekend, we participated in Run Woodstock, which is a weekend long camping/running/music festival in Hell, Michigan.  The central event is a 100-mile ultramarathon which begins on Friday afternoon.  For those runners who wish to to run a more conservative distance, there are a wide variety of race distance options on Saturday morning.  We opted for the 5-miler, and also ran in the three non-timed “fun runs” offered throughout the weekend.  Cadence and Maebe joined us for the fun runs, and all involved much slogging through mud, but were still a blast.  Cadence did not appreciate the post-run hose down though.  Lowell ended up finishing first in his age group in the 5-mile race, while I took second, so a good turn-out overall.

We’ve also been busy with a number of dog scout activities.  Cadence, Maebe, and Tristan got to help out at the Troop 217 booth at the Pet Awareness Fair in Walled Lake.  All did very well meeting and greeting the public, and behaved like model dog scouts. 

Last weekend brought us to our final camping trip of the season up at dog camp for the first ever tribal troop retreat – a friendly gathering/competition between Michigan troops.  Django was my chosen competition dog for the weekend, and he was a rock star!  In the first game, he shut out the competition by retrieving a dog biscuit to me from across the room – a trick I taught him probably five years ago and had forgotten he even knew!  Later that day, he finished in a three-way tie in a “My Dog Can Do That” challenge.  He successfully completed every new trick that was thrown at him, while his special trick (retrieving a beer bottle) ended up eliminating a few of the competitors.  Django is always my dog that tries to do everything I ask of him, and it was very fun to spend special time working together with him this weekend.

October looks to be a busy but fun month, as Cadence and Maebe begin therapy dog visits, we have a few agility trials scheduled, two 5K races, and several troop activities.  I will have to be mindful not to slip behind again as we enjoy the progression into fall!   

Transition

With my triathlon season having ended, I have been enjoying the “transition” phase of my annual training plan.  This is the time of year when I can take some time off from sport-specific training, and spend a few weeks recovering and enjoying other activities during the time I had been spending at the pool or on the road.

Lately, this has involved a lot more hiking, camping, backyard dog training sessions, and generally just enjoying the lovely weather we’ve been having after an especially hot July. 

Cadence and Maebe still get their early morning trail runs several times a week, and soon the fall running races, swim and agility classes, and agility trials will start up again.  We also will be trying some new activities – Jade and Tristan will make a return to competition in their first Rally Obedience trial, we are looking to begin Therapy Dog visits with Cadence and Maebe this fall, and Lowell and I are excited to join the “Pit Crew” at the local humane society – a group that runs with the high-energy shelter dogs in the mornings to help them get some exercise and burn off some of their excess energy before meeting with their potential adopters.

But, for the remaining days of summer, we’re enjoying the different (if not necessarily quieter) pace.