household stats

someone else started, ill continue...

Ears: 1 cropped and standing, 1 cropped with one floppy, and 2 natural button ears
Tails: nubs!!!
Dewclaws: no rear dews, 2 sets of front dews.
Colors: black, white, blue, and blue tri merle
Coats: smooth and one fuzzy
Breeds: dobermans and one aussie

Sizes: 1 that is 38 lbs, 1 that is 55 lbs, and the boys are 75-85 lbs
Ages: 2, 2.5, 5 and 6.5
Testicles: none
Ovaries: none
Barkers: all to some degree. berlin MOST OF ALL.

utilitime

so wednesday - no agility.

decided to put rah in open and utility because 1) he's been ridiculous since he has no playmate and 2) open broke at the match too thanks to stupid decisions on my part and poor run through procedure

we didnt do heeling in open (on hindsight) just the individuals... his fig8 wasnt bad at all - a little pushy, but he was with me and never took his eyes off me. we worked this more last night too, so ill bring it up there...

worked broad jump - did a pretty nice job. heads up working his fronts hard core even though he was sliding away from me, did a nice job so i didnt make him do more than 3 - just played some set up games and attention games there.

worked ROF, ROH and DOR - worked his trying to take the jump during the DOR when the DOR was done close to the jump, hopefully got that out of his system (for now) - clarified that. when he's within 3-4 feet of the jump he just thinks he needs to take it :) he was hitting nice fronts on the ROH and we were working some on the flat. all in all a nice class...

utility -

go outs is what we started with - rah because he's biggest. had gloves and toys out in the ring, someone doing heeling/signals in the ring with him on the side and behind him, and someone doing articles behind the ring gates that he was doing go outs to. rah handled it just fine, but he kept touching the stanchion and trying to get his ball - but he went out straight and sat when i told him to (After trying to get The Go Out Toy Of Wonder - hereby referred to as TGOTOW). Took the right jumps when i indicated them, even when simon and karin were heeling behind me and had perfectly straight fronts. last week terry had me using a calm voice for go outs and it makes a difference for him (instead of yelling the command to him) and it really has him in a smoother frame of mind.

moved to articles - he brought back the cheese article (his teaching article) - somehow it made it into the pile- ignored it, and he found the other two just fine. ill just ignore that one for now. went to signals and the slight anticipation i saw last week on the come, which turned into straight anticipation at the match now resulted in no come at all wed night. worked that - it was clearly me because he did it just fine for kathy, the person in the world he is most intimidated by because she is THE ENFORCER!!! so it was me that was the problem. tried to work through it (probably made it worse) and then just decided to ignore it...

gloves - he's NOT allowed to get his glove unless he looks at me. his pivots are still ugly. im at a loss. i give up. but he's bringing them back, albeit sometimes slow. kathy said that still looks like a dog trying to figure out what i want. i thought it looked like a dog not wanting to come near me.

fast forward to thursday -

started with heeling, he was crazy. signals- much better - did them with heavy distraction - he was able to do all the parts and even came when i signaled him to come. NICE JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

worked the moving stand- not anticipating the stand on the judges command to stand (or in rahs case, not anticipating the FORWARD on the judges command to move!) and then the stand itself. rah did a nice job.

articles - nice job on his part - even though he almost killed himself by tripping on the pile. on articles he did a better job. need to work fronts with his distraction of things he loves next to him.

go outs - worked on him trying to get his ball before he turns - started pinching his butt and now he turns on his name :) he needs to run out with an ear on me waiting for him to turn, not run out ignoring me!!!!

all in all much better...

i havent posted yet about last night

i will though... but it brings up some interesting thoughts i have, especially after reading some posts from some of the email lists, and some posts from other peoples blogs...

how much responsibility do you take for your dogs reactions to things, and how he acts?

if your dog blows you off, do you say - oh that was my fault! or do you go after the dog and say "should have known better!"... does it depend on the dog? level of training? where you are? the situation? do you always give the dog the benefit of the doubt? do you always blame the handler? are there certain exercises where you always give the handler the blame? are there certain things you know you do poorly and are your fault? are there certain times where you thought it was the dog, and it ended up being you and you felt badly?

examples:

dog is called for the DOR, but takes the jump on its way to you at a match. you stop him, set him up and next time you call him, he flinches and starts, but wont come at all. now what? what happened? whose fault?

you're running a course in agility and all of a sudden your dog goes off course and takes a few extra jumps. what happens now?

a dog refuses to retrieve a db thrown - will go out to where it is, sees it, but will not pick it up.

a dog does a go out, but after the turn and sit isn't taking any jump, despite repeated signals...

after an agility run, the dog wanders away, sniffing...

the dog, seasoned at scent articles, comes back with the wrong article. lets say the dog was taught using around the clock and it brought back your cheese article. lets say the dog brought back the entirely wrong article.

during an agility course (this would be better if i had a course map) a dog repeatedly misses a push out to the tire... runs around the tire, but doesn't take it (goes PAST the tire)...

whats going on here? what do you do to evaluate whats going on? whose fault is it here? do you blame the dog? do you punish the dog? what does it depend on?

no agility today - debbie got called into trial unexpectedly. which is ok, because i technically have no dog to take to agility anyway- i havent decided if im putting rah back in class yet.

so ill probably nap until i get to obedience class.

but lets discuss one thing --

ALL BREED LURE COURSING???????????????????

http://www.ukcdogs.com/WebSite.nsf/News/UKCAnnouncestheAdditionof05192010102704AM

risk of heart attack or not, rah may have to do this.

the match show

had a match today... didn't go as well as i would have wanted it to go, for a variety of reasons.

rah and i weren't communicating well, and he got hectic - we worked through a lot of it, but it was frustrating. combined with him biting me about 1126092349 times, i wasnt pleased with that.

dont know if its worth getting into...

berlin says dog jail killing her.

stealing this...

from lori drouin ---

the end of a very lovely message -

The lesson for me is that none of our training tools should be used
without conscious choice and pointed intention. Physical corrections
cannot be exaggerated in force and used for the purpose of expressing
anger about a technical point. Food should not be used to apologize for
a lack of information, nor to distract the dog from the point of a
corrective interaction. If either a correction or a reward is to be
useful for progress, the dog has to be clear on what it was applied to,
and allowed to discover what he needs to repeat or to stop doing to get
the trainer's approval. Too much focus on "behaviors" and "exercises"
can blind us to the importance of teamwork development and two-way
communication.