On Being a Champion

When I was 18 years old I went to work on a dairy farm. Now I was born and raised in a city of 300,000 people. I had no idea what to expect or what cows were all about. I applied to over 50 jobs that summer, most of them in a government program for finding students work. The only one that offered me a job was the Junior Agriculturist Program. I was a Jr Ag. The farmer I was sent to work for (Morely) and his wife (Thelma) used to poke fun at me because I dragged my heels and walked with my head down all the time. Then, after being at the farm for 6 days we had a Sunday afternoon off. Morely got out a baseball bat and some balls  and two of his kids, a couple of the hired hands and I went to the field where Morely hit out fly balls to us. I rarely missed one. I was bowling people over, sprinting half way across the farm and skidding through cow paddies in order to get to a ball before it hit the ground. When it was all over Morely said to me. “You  need to find a job that you can turn into a game for yourself and then you will be great at it!”  It was such an innocent comment. One that you would make to someone just in passing, half mocking them and then never give it a second thought. However I have never forgotten it. I returned to that farm to milk cows for many summers after that, and yes I became great at it. I still remember that Sunday afternoon like it was yesterday and not all of those 11 years ago. . . okay you can stop laughing now.  

I once read this quote “Champions in any field make a habit of doing things others find boring or uncomfortable.” I thought to myself, I really like the quote but it isn’t me. I would lose interest in things that were boring or uncomfortable, just like anyone else I would imagine. So how have I have managed to do alot of winning, even before I ever started in dog agility.  I was on championship hockey and basketball teams starting when I was a kid. I won events in horse Dressage and did an incredible amount of winning in flyball and obedience prior to coming to agility. Here is how I changed the quote to better describe my thoughts on becoming a champion  “Champions in any field make a habit of taking things that other people find boring or uncomfortable and turning them into a game for themselves.”  It is all about the game for me, always has been, always will be.  

 I still drive up to that farm to visit from time to time, and I am still very grateful for all of the varied experiences that I enjoyed there (I have more cow stories then you can imagine!)

Free Stuff for You

Catchy title for a blog post eh? But really I have some good stuff for all of you and it is f-r-e-e! I have decided to give away 31 dog training tips during the month of March, but there is catch. It is a perk I am only extending to those of you that are signed up to my newsletter. If you sign up half way through the month you will not have access to any newsletter I may have already sent out (mostly because I don’t know how to access them once I have sent them:)). If you are already a newsletter subscriber (you would have received a newsletter yesterday or today) do nothing and these tips will start appearing March 1st. If you are not a subscriber sign up now at our website, on the front page under Susan’s Newsletter or Sign up for Our Newsletter or something like that. So get the word out to all of your friends as I will not be posting these tips anywhere else. If you think this blog has been helpful to you, then you WILL want to be on the list to receive the free dog training tips that I have planned–everything from how I pick a puppy to how I walk an agility course.  Stayed tuned, March will be action packed for all of us, I for one have 16 seminars days to teach throughout the month of March, can’t get more action-packed then that (unless of course you have 17, in which case I would have to have 18 because that is just the kind of person that I am:)).

Today I am grateful for all of the new trick training ideas everyone sent me yesterday. My dogs won’t know what hit them!

Idea List for Shaping

Okay, to follow up on the shaping post, here is my, not-yet-completed list of things to shape. When I get it finished, I will post in on my website. If you would, please look over the list, alert me to any duplications you see and write up your own suggestions. They don’t need to be “tricks” but rather responses you can shape. Some with props, some without. Certainly there are some behaviours unique to certain dogs. It may be easier to teach one do to speak quietly than another. Some of the behaviours I have taught to one of my dogs I likely wouldn’t consider for another (for example I don’t know if I would trust Buzz to hold a lite cigarette the way I did Stoni (he may decide he liked it too much but knowing him he would move on and get with Micheal Phelps for some real action:))).  Seriously there are physical strengths and weaknesses that makes one response more suitable for one dog over another. I wouldn’t teach a hand stand to a dog that wants to pull on their front end in agility but I would get them walking upright (provided they were strong enough for it). You also must consider the age, and physical attributes of your dog and perhaps consult a PT before you undertake them. Mostly they should be fun for both of you.

List of Ideas to Shape

1. Shake a Paw 
2. ItsYerChoice (cookies on your paws, face etc)                    
   

   Stoni performing "hold" and "Pals" - - Shelby being a good sport!

3. Wave
4. Bow
5. Cross Paws in Down
6. Walk while crossing paws
7. Chase tail one way then the other
8. Show me Your Belly
9. Stretch while on your back
10. Speak
11. Speak quietly
12. Talk (different than barking)
13. Crawl
14. Back up
15. Jump Into My Arms
16. Limping on front leg
17. Don’t Peak (cover your eyes)
18. Dig
19. Roll Over (one way) Tumble (the other)
20. Play Dead 
21. Moonwalk (back up while laying down)
22. Pop Backwards vs walk backwards
23. Jump Up & Down on the spot
24. Walk on Front Paws
25. Hold (any item)                    
    

    Twister praying.

26. Stretch
27. Get Your Tail (wrap from legs around mine)
28. Take my Leg
29. Where’s Your Big Butt (lay down and put your butt in the air)
30. Target yourself with your nose
31. Meow (lick Lips & growl)
32. Dead Dog  
33. Pray 
34. Lick your lips
35. Wipe your face
36. cover your eyes
37. In the chair
38. Lift your rear leg on a person/chair etc
39. Wrap yourself in a blanket
40. Turn on/off lights
41. “no” turn head in disagreement (do you agree?)
42. sit up pretty
43. Stand tall
44. transition from sit pretty to tall
45. Transition from tall to sit pretty
46. Cover nose with both paws
47. yawn
48. open door / pull latch
49. pick up and carry 
50. growl/ show teeth
51. lick your nose
52. go under chair
53. back flip
54. circle around something
55. High Five/10
56. target with rear paw                         Feature doing puppy Yoga; “downward facing dog”
57. Pals-put your arm around another dog                    
58. Stand on two paws (on same side)
59. Go to target & sit or down
60. retrieve Kleenex
61. Go-see–visit someone           
62. Walk upright on hind legs         
    

    Feature sits pretty

63. circle right, circle left
64. Put toys away 
65. Put stuff in the trash
66. Discriminate items on scent
67. Discriminate items on sight
68. Lay flat out on your side
69. Target your butt with your nose
70. Pivot on front legs
71. Pivot on rear legs (turn on haunches)
72. Show your teeth/smile
73. In a box then shrink it down—all paws in a tiny tupperware container
74. Stand with your front paws on my shoes
75. Walk with your front paws on my shoes
76. Walk up the walk with rear legs 
77. Puppy yoga (downward facing dog)
78. Jump into arms
79. Jump through my arms
80. Jump and spin off of me
81. Jump onto my back
82.  weaving backwards between legs                   
    

    Encore playing ItsYerChoice

83.  Puppy Pretzel (roll your head as far between your front legs as possible)
84. Bear Skin run – lay flat on with legs behind you and head on the ground
85.  Praying on the bedside or chair
86. Kill the toy (shake it violently)
87. Clean the floor (allow me to drag you)
88.  Balance on a physio disc
89. Sitting pretty lifting one front paw then the other
90. Give kisses
91. Hand Target
92. Give kisses to another dog
93. Climb a ladder
94. Ride a skate board
95. Be pulled by another dog
96. Stand with your 4 paws on my 2 legs (while I am sitting on the floor with my legs out in front)
97. Rest your head flat on the floor
98. Front paws up on the wall (like you are going to be frisked by a policeman)
99. Hide your head under the couch
100. Go to your bed,matt or other targeted location

Today I am grateful for the unique behaviours each of my dogs have learned over the years.

The Three Crucial Keys to Agility Greatness

So you want to know what I view as the three most things in creating a great agility dog? Foundation, foundation, foundation. So few people find the joy in the little stuff. Everyone wants to jump in and do the sexy stuff so they sequence their 5 month old puppies between uprights with a bar on the ground or they  get working their running contacts or sending their wee puppy through a open row of weave poles. That’s the sexy stuff.  Meanwhile my dogs do Crate Games, Recalls, Body Awareness Exercises, Puppy Grids and Shadow Handling Games.  They do not see agility obstacles until they are close to a year old (with the exception of the table which I teach very early on–a low one, 4″ high). My dogs  don’t start sequencing jumps until they are 15 months or older. I don’t think holding off on the so-called fun-stuff has hurt me at all. Feature is now now the third dog in a row that I have owned that has won a big class over seasoned agility dogs within their first couple months of trialling. I am sure to someone watching, it would appear that my young  dog has been running courses from the time she was just a puppy.  To quote John Pinette, “oh, nay nay.”  The reason for my dogs early success has little to do with agility, and  a great deal to do with  foundation training. As I say over and over, I focus on raising a great family pet and the attributes that make a great family pet also lay the foundation for a phenomenal agility dog. With a solid foundation the rest of agility training (handling sequences, training weave poles or contacts) comes quickly and relatively easily. Without this proper foundation you will be frustratedly training and re-training, as you seek a level excellence that may elude you throughout your dog’s entire career. Find the joy in the training the small stuff or what I consider the “important stuff.”  Plan for more time on Crate Games and One Jump Exercises and less time trying to run full courses. Anyone can do it, it is all about focusing on the ground floor as you work your way up to the top floor.

Today I am grateful I can still yak to John on the phone when I am so far away teaching (. . . yeah, I am sure John is really grateful for this too:))

MAC Trial

Well another one in the books. It was cold and snowy here the first day I arrived in Minnesota, well dah. It is Minnesota and it is February! A really well run trial. The girls from Omaha were up and I have to thank Brittney and Dana for making sure my runs got videoed. Some of the runs were a dog’s breakfast.  The  footing was new for me and my dogs, very deep, loose footing. Great for landing, nice and soft for the dogs but very tough for my short little legs to run through. Feature adjusted well and won all her classes on Sunday. She now needs only 2 legs to move into Masters. Encore and I OTOH had the worst weekend of agility we have ever had together. She had a few bars down in her first run but Carol Smorch worked on her and it really made a big difference.  She did have some very pretty runs, winning Standard today and getting the odd other leg but I am just not used to her and I not being in ‘sync’ when we run together. It is like she is driving so hard and fast she is anticipating where the course will go rather than allowing me to show her. My back has been bothering me off and on for the last few months so I am not moving as well as I used to, plus I am in the worst shape I have been in in the last few years. I am sure that all of that has some impact on her. I will have to study the video tapes both from Florida and from Minnesota and see what I may be missing because her consistency is not the way it should be and certainly is not typical for missy En.  The highlight of the weekend, aside from the great company, would have to be the two girlies each winning their height class in the Grand Prix on Saturday.  Here is the video.  Judge Cherie Whittenburg put up a challenging but fun course, I for one obviously enjoyed running it!  

I teach for the next two days here in Minnesota before I head down to Wisconsin on Wednesday where I start a five day teaching stint there. 

Today I am grateful for the new friends I am meeting in Minnesota, great hospitality and the dry roads for driving:)

Time Alone

Well I just finished a long drive from home to Minnesota. I decided to drive and not fly as I wanted to bring both Encore and Feature so I could put them in a trial here before I start my teaching.  It is a bit risky driving from Canada around the great lakes and up to Minnesota (it sounds weird to be driving up to Mn when you live up at Canada to start doesn’t it:)). When I was in the veterinary pharmaceutical sales industry I used to drive about 30-40,000 mile a year, every year for 15 years. I am a good driver, one of the few people that made it through my years as a rep without ever having a mishap with my company car. However driving, like any skill, weakens without practice. I must admit in the last 10 years I rarely drive. Anywhere John and I go together he does all the driving. I think it started because he is a bit of a nervous passenger but now I have learned to love to be the passenger. My van is over 3 years old and still does not have 50,000 km (20,000 miles) on it yet.  Most of the miles John has put on it. Really the only time I drive it is to go to church and that is it. When I am home I am home and I try not to go anywhere:). So this big adventure to Minnesota and Wisconsin is a whole lotta driving from my point of view. It was about 12oo km (720 miles).  I was lucky in that I only had about 1 hour of snowy weather to drive through the rest was absolutely perfect conditions.  I started out at 2:30 Thursday afternoon and drove until about 8:30 at night. I knew my driving skills where pretty rusty when at 7:45 last night (about 2 hour past sunset) I realized I had been driving without my headlights. Actually, if this is going to be true confession time,  I didn’t make the realization myself. I figured the trucker behind me was either trying to induce me to  have an epileptic  seizure with all of his headlight flashing or he was trying to convey something really important to me. Eventually I got the message and put the lights on, poor man, I swear he must have thrown out a shoulder with all the work he had to do on his light switch. Please no one tell John, my absent mindedness is a bit of a sore point with him:).  When I finally arrived at Carol and Terry Smorch’s tonight I realized how much I enjoyed my drive. God bless XM radio. It can keep you entertained for hours without you knowing it. I also figured out (aaah admittedly while driving) that I could unplug the patch for the satellite radio and plug in my ipod and open up an entire library of podcasts to wear out.  Driving like that my mind comes up with all sorts of great training ideas. At one point today I had to pull over for over an hour, pull out my laptop and get some of them down before they ran out of my head as quickly as they came in. As unusual as it is for me to have this time by myself I can honestly say I really, really enjoyed it.

Today I really feel blessed to have the phenomenal driving conditioned I had for my trip here to Minnesota.

PS. Hey if any of you are in the area, I hear two working spots have opened up for the Advances in Dog Training session in Wisconsin next week (Thursday & Friday). Contact Katie at katie@clickerdogs.com for more info.  Of all of the different workshops that I do, if you could only ever come to one of them and I had to pick the one for you, there is no doubt it would be Advances in Dog Training. Everything else I do has all developed from the Advances in Dog Training workshop.

Laugh out loud

Today I am on my way to Minnesota and then on to Wisconsin. I am going to try to catch up with computer stuff while I am on the road:).  I would like to invite you to laugh out loud today. As I have mentioned in the past. I love to laugh. I keep a few video clips I keep on my computer that make me laugh and I play them every once and a while. Here is one that I have favoured on my youtube site. I have a few. John Pinette has got to be one of the best comedians ever, for his timing of delivery and facial expressions. Plus he is hysterical without being totally disgusting & crude, a very unique feature in today’s comedians. If you watch this to the end you will see how salad has become a conditioned reinforcer for John. My favourite part is when the girl scout rings his door bell.

Enjoy. Today I am grateful for the combination of my sense of humor  and lack of a great memory. IT allows me to watch the same thing over and over and laugh out loud like I had never seen it before.

It’s big “A” time

Have you ever seen dogs try to dominate other dogs by resting their heads across the shoulders of the dog they are greeting. Head position is important to dogs, it says alot to another dog. Personally, I am of the belief that dogs do not try to dominate people but rather try to get reinforcement from us anyway they can. If growling at us works for a dog once or twice, it is game on, growling rocks, look ma, I may even show teeth next time! Likewise, if looking at us with big drooping eyes and a low, quick, submissive wag of the tail works best, our dogs will quickly turn into the biggest balls of mush & wiggle possible.  This is a great contributor to the reason why so many dogs continue to “shut-down” in work as the posturing works so well to get them out of a job they really didn’t want to do in the first place!  Anyway, my point is that dogs really don’t do things “to us” or “against us” they are far too pleasure seeking to waste time on how to get us, rather they put their energies into how to get for themselves. I had to tell you all of that to preface what I am about to admit to next with that knowledge that yes, I do have a decent understanding of  canine etiology.  However, when I want to crack myself up, I play this little game with my dogs and let my anthropomorphic side go wild  by conjuring up thoughts that are springing forth from my dogs like the little caption-bubbles above a Charlie Brown – Snoopy interaction.

You want to make yourself laugh out-loud, give this a go this weekend.  It is particularly fun if you have more than one dog in which to compare your results. Put all of your dogs away and take just one out. Get down on all your hands and knees on the living room floor and while you are interacting with the dog, try to keep your head just slightly below the head level of your dog. It just cracks me up to see the response from my different dogs. Buzz would immediately try to lick my face and then sniff the floor ignoring me, imploring me to stop this nonsense. Stoni used to FREAK when I did this to her. She would become almost panic stricken trying to keep her head lower than mine. To the point of flipping herself up side down on her back as if to scream; “NO, NO DAMIT, YOU’RE THE BOSS OF ME, NOW CUT IT OUT!!!”  The terriers are the best. At first they would play bow and run around as if to sing “ding-dong the witch is dead.” But soon they would quieten down and just be.  Sometimes Twister would jump right up on my back as if viewing her newly inherited kingdom from a better vantage point. I remember the first time I did this to DeCaff the look was, “it’s about freaking time you figured this out sista, now move over and let me drive this bus!”  I told you this was big A time (thats Anthropomorph-mania). Go ahead and try it, your dogs will think you have finally lost it. Don’t forget to report back how your dog’s responded– but please don’t take your results too seriously. It is just another way I amuse myself with my dogs.

Dogs really do crack me up.

Today I am grateful for the differences between all of the dogs that I have owned.

Back to the future

When Feature was a puppy I used to shape new behaviours with her all the time. One week I challenged myself to come up with a different, unrelated behaviour to shape each day for a week.  That was fun. None of them were shaped to fluency before I went on the next day to a new response (actually when I think about it, some of them still remain unfinished) but it was great for the puppy and great for me as a trainer to work my timing, criteria and reinforcement. More often then not, these were the “dinner time sessions.”  The ones we did in order for her to earn her meals. It dawned on my yesterday that as I get involved with each dog’s career I don’t have these sessions near as much any more. I don’t know why it took me so long to come to this conclusion as John has been telling me for months; “you know you don’t work with Feature near as much as you used to.” By that he means, I used to shape her almost daily in the house (where he could witness the fact that I trained) and now all of her training is done in the building. When he doesn’t see it happen, it must not of happened right?:). I think the transition of locations occurred when we moved into this tiny apt with shiny ceramic tile floors. The footing is too poor to ask for much from the dogs plus there is no where else to put the other dogs if I want to have an informal shaping session before dinner with one of them. Now when I want to have one of these quickie session I have to go to the building (I know poor, me at least I have a building, I am really not complaining, just making hollow excuses for  my lack of effort). Yesterday I did just that.  I took DeCaff, Feature and Encore out and had 2 sessions with each of them. They acted as if it was Christmas. Especially DeCaff as I rarely take her out to train at all anymore (shame on me, poor girlie, but something has to give).   I think the biggest road block for people to have sessions like these is the ability to come up with things to shape their dogs to do. I must admit most of what I do shape are things I believe will benefit me somewhere as a trainer, either to help my dog with strength, flexibility or proprioception. I have been meaning for a long to put together a list of ideas to shape and put it on my website. It is on my long todo list. However in the meantime on my short list I will plan for the future to do more of what I did in the past.  Pick a day. Like Monday is nail-trimming day for my dogs, Tuesday can be shaping nothing important day. It is something I would suggest you all do. Shape one new behaviour once a week. You can choose to work on that behaviour at different times throughout the week or leave it when the next Tuesday comes around you can start another new response. I will try to get that list finished. I actually started it years ago. Meanwhile start working on your own shaping session.

Today I am grateful my mac makes it easy to find documents I wrote years ago so I can dust ’em off and refresh them.

Crate Games, it is not just for breakfast anymore.

I had small workshop here yesterday with 9, mostly adolescent dogs, and their handlers. It went quite well with a few “aah ha” moments and the odd “oh my” thrown in to balance things out.  We started the day with some grids and body awareness exercises and then finished up the afternoon with some handling drills. Working with dogs that have a solid foundation of Crate Games makes handling drills so much easier. Not only do the dogs have the understanding of control behaviours (necessary for a great start line) but the understand is also there to ‘explode’ off the start line once the dog gets his release cue. In my 15+ years competing in agility I have only ever had one dog break a start line (and she only did it two or three times). That is seven dogs, with a combined experience of 43 years trialing in agility with less than 4 broken start lines in total and none since 1998. Crate Games is a big reason for this understanding. I would guess that CGs could be one of the most under-utilized program I have. I think most people are  like, “oh yeah, I did that. . . next skill!”  There are so many fundamentals to teach an agility dog, and you just can’t wait to get on with them all, so it easy to gloss over the less “sexy” ones in favour of the ones that appear to be more “agility-like.” I don’t want this blog to sound like an informercial for my stuff, but quite honestly everything in my program comes back to Crate Games so it is worth the extra time. I was forwarded an email last week that was sent to info@clickerdogs.com  from someone asking if I thought there was anything in the DVD that would help with obedience “stays.”  Aaaah yeah, of course there is. But it will help ANY dog sport in so many ways, as it is the ultimate activity to introduce the concept of the transfer of value. Sure you have a model to work distractions so that all of the toy-throwing and run bys on the contacts or  weave poles training will seem like a walk in the park to your dog, but you will have so much more.

Seven-week old puppy "Export" being an "expert!"

More distraction work, holding his sit in position with food distractions on the floor in front of him.

 In addition to the control you gain, you will also be teaching drive! Both the drive to move one ahead of you in agility and drive as in motivation. So if you are working on increasing speed or building more intensity, refer back to you DVD before you do anything else.  It will make a difference if you apply the program as it is outlined on the DVD. I could go on but really, dust of your disc and watch it again please, this time with intent!  Okay take a look at these pictures of Tracy Sklenar’s (one of our instructors) cute little Export as a 7 week old puppy (a few years ago). I mean really, how else do you get a 7 week old puppy working through distractions like this!     Check him out learning to drive ahead . . . his first gamble at 7 weeks old, how cute is that?? Did I mention he is only 7 weeks (you should see him now, fast and yet with lots of self control).  

One KEY thing I would change if I was doing the DVD again is the use of the wire crate. I had to use the wire crates to make the DVD so you (the viewer) could see what the dog was doing. However, when I teach this to my own dogs I use a hard shell crate. That way I can be more enthusiastic and throw the cookies into the crate during the “You’re Out-You’re In” stage. Wire is not a problem, I know lots of people that use them with great success but I myself don’t use them much. In the DVD I ‘hand’ the cookies to the dog (to prevent them flying out the back through the wires) but in reality I throw ’em.

The start of distance work! Puppy Exie driving away from Tracy into his crate.

Group shot of Crate Games graduates.

Here is a picture I almost hate to put in because of the stereotypical pigeon-hole Crate Games is already put in. . . working stays. But I will do it anyway, this is our instructors dogs chilling in their crates during a puppy camp. Yes puppies are running all over the place having fun and clearly it is not concerning these dogs.  In case you haven’t seen this before, here is a short clip highlighting some of the CG benefits. Export is the ripe old age of 9 weeks when we shot this video.  Too funny. It was also nice to see the short little clip of my girlie Twister who appeared briefly with the other three dogs I owned at the time (before Feature’s day) during the opening.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebjBo_spqG0&feature=channel_page

Today I am grateful that John is such a sound sleeper as it is 11:00 PM (way past my bedtime) and I am jammin’ to this old Grand Funk song  as he is sawing logs. This song (FootStoompin’ Music) reminds me of my brother Steve. I don’t know how he is able to hear today. When we were kids he would take the two stereo speakers off the stands and place them on the floor facing each other about 2′ apart. Then he would turn up the tunes full blast and lay his head on the floor between the two speakers! Oh my! I guess it is not so different to what some kids do with their ipod today eh?