I have been putting together a K9 Nose Work Kit for myself. I don’t really like the kits they sell on the nose work website, so I figure I’d build my own. On the ones on the site they have only one tin. And I don’t like the idea of switching the different scents around in just one tin. I want a tin for each odor. So I have a big green tin for the Anise, and the little tin… Continue reading
K9 Nose Work is so stinking fun I can’t even tell you. I’ve been getting all the dogs out and putting down the boxes for them to find the treat. In class with Levi, we’ve been putting the treats in even harder places, so last night at home I was doing that too. I got out a chair, and put a treat on the chair a little bit hidden so they would find it there. I put a treat on… Continue reading
Well it’s that time of year for sure. Snow is on the ground, and it’s wet and icky outside. So I have had to move my training indoors. Fortunately we got a lot of training in last summer. I think Jet and Tatum both have a really good handle on agility, and next year they are both going to be competing on a regular basis. I suspect that Jet will move up in the ranks faster than Tatum. But I’ll… Continue reading
`Jet and Levi at the Park
So Levi and I went to our first K9 Nose Work class. It was fun! Levi was a dork. He thinks that barking at people gets him the most treats, so that’s what he spend most of his time doing. LOL. So I might modify the technique just a bit for him. 
Set him up for a bit more success so he understands the value of the boxes. Basically in the first class the teacher scattered a bunch of empty boxes around. And the dogs are supposed to find the value of the boxes themselves… well I like to give the dogs a bit more information at first. So I just used three boxes at home. And all of my dogs picked up that there are treats in a box pretty fast. Levi just needs to learn the value of the boxes, and he’ll do that pretty fast. Once he understands the idea.
I even did it with Lucy at home, our megaesophagus dog. She can eat treats once in a while as long as we feed her afterward and put her in her chair so the treats go down. She was the best at it. LOL but she is a treat maniac and any time she can find food, she will.
Chase was silly. He tried picking up a box in his mouth, like it was a dumbbell. 
Yup he’s too trained. LOL. So I had to jiggle the boxes more for him. He was finding the treats quickly though, so he’ll understand you just have to find the treats in the box. That’s it for now. He has a problem in Rally-Obedience too. He thinks he should interact with the signs. =P
Jet and Tatum also did good. Tatum wasn’t quite sure the boxes had any value at all. But she caught on. Jet was good from the get go, checking out those silly boxes on the floor.
I’ll work with them all more. Why not. Good thing to do in the winter and who knows who’ll be able to pass the test? Maybe even Lucy can! I should keep track of their progress in my Samsung phone to see how they are doing. But I usually get too lazy, and just have fun with it.
Well as this is posted on my blog I’m doing flyball with Chase. And hopefully Jet gets to do some run-backs and even some full lanes. I hope so. He’s such a good boy. Flyball practice last weekend was really making me think about, and appreciate, the importance of foundation training with puppies. Most of my dogs are rescues… and Lucy and Levi, who are not rescues but didn’t get any foundation training at all, show the difference between a… Continue reading
Training for multiple dog sports is a challenge. Right now I’m going through an issue with training Jet for both Flyball and Agility. It’s not the training that concerns me, it’s the reward. Tug or Ball? First of all, there’s prey drive and there’s fight drive. Fight drive is when a dog is tugging and growling at you. Prey drive is when they are chasing something that is moving. Jet is higher in Prey than he is in Fight. Which… Continue reading
Chase and his Frisbee
Although it’s not really an officially acceptable thing by the UKC, afterward the club had a Wildcard class. If you are not familiar with obedience, Wildcard is just a class where you can go in the ring and, well, kinda train, but you can’t really train… and you can’t get legs or qualifying points or anything. It’s just really a thing you can do to see if your dog is ready for the qualifying events. They have Wildcard Novice, Open and Utility. And I think you can opt to not do two of the exercises in each class.
So the only reason I would enter a dog in Wildcard is, like I said, to see how he acts in a real show environment and see how he’ll do. But, I actually pretty much know what Chase is going to do, he’s a very solid and predictable dog, so I wouldn’t enter him. Maybe I would for Utility, I dunno. I’ll get to that bridge when he has training to cross it.
Most of the dogs I saw in the Wildcard classes were… well, just not really good. Some were slow and poky, or seemed like they needed a lot more training. Actually, what I thought they needed was motivation and positive reinforcement. Since you can’t reward a dog in Wildcard with treats or toys, and you can’t correct with words… what’s the point? It’s just like the real thing, pretty much. Okay you can give some double commands I guess if you want to, or need to. But if you are too enthusiastic then you can be asked to leave the ring… at least I think you can. So unless your dog is trained to the point where all they need is a couple of double commands to remind them of things, why would anyone enter?
To me, if you put a dog in the ring, your training has to be solid. My trainer says it’s like a bank. Training puts money in the bank. Trialing takes money out of the bank. You have to have your bank chock full of training before going into that ring. Because it only takes the dog once or twice to realize that there are no corrections and no rewards in the ring. And if you go into a ring, any ring, and your dog doesn’t do a sit when you tell him to, then you take him out of the ring and you either correct him or reward him for a sit, what is he learning? He’s learning that in the ring he can pretty much do what he wants. Outside the ring he has to do what he’s told. Wildcard or not.
So for me, i want my dogs able to do the entire ring performance without treats, in a solid way, before I put them in a ring. Be it agility or obedience. And I’ll tell ya, I’m in no rush to get Jet into a real trial ring. When he’s ready, he’s ready, and I’m not going to say he’s ready until he is ready. And I want his bank totally full of good training before we go in. I want him to be happy and motivated and smiling, doing a whole routine, without treats or corrections, before we even step foot in a ring.
Of course you can never train for every imaginable thing. And I’m sure Jet will come up with some odd things I’ll have to fix. Like Chase and his darn sit stay in the ring. And Chase… well, he didn’t start obedience until he was about four years old, no foundation training at all. And his Open work is actually quite beautiful. It’s that darn sit stay biting us. I was going to show him at an ASCA obedience trial in a couple weeks, but I’ve pulled him because the more he lays down on his sit stay, the more often he’s going to lay down on his sit stay. So back to training it is. And back to ring-like environments so, hopefully, he doesn’t know the difference. Though it’s hard with a smart dog. They know the difference between training and trialing quite well, even when we try to fool them!
With Jet, though, he’s going to love obedience! He already does! And he loves to work, and he loves to do the exercises, so I think he’s going to really excel at obedience. Only one other Danish Swedish Farmdog was doing obedience here in the USA, and she’s moved back to Denmark. So Jet gets to set the standard for obedience work for the DSF. So I want him nice and solid before we even think about going in! And he’s going to get a UD… no doubt! He’s so smart and we love to work!
So anyway, I am confused about Wildcard and I just don’t understand why people keep putting their dogs in the ring and getting the same sloppy results. Okay granted some dogs are just goofy (like a friend sheltie I know LOL) and he has just got to keep trying because he knows all the stuff, and he can do it, as long as his mind doesn’t get too distracted. So in that instance I understand. But for the most part, I don’t!
Took Jet out in the rain (it was just drizzling lol) and got some video of him doing the hop over the prop for flyball, and the contacts on the little contact trainer I have. I think he’s got some good foundation work, just gotta make it more solid.
First the flyball. The idea is for him to hop over and back with all four feet. That’s the start of the swimmer’s turn:
Then we did a little bit of the contact trainer. I need to fix the chain as it’s not as solid as it used to be. I’m training the 2o2o (two on two off) for the A-Frame and the Dog Walk with him. The teeter will be a four on, because he’s small and I don’t want him to get flipped off the teeter. We started this on the flat board, and now we are moving to the contact trainer before we move to the full height A-Frame.
So there ya go! I’ll be working these much more over the spring and summer!
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