The Adventures of Trick and Treat

For brothers, they couldn’t be more different.  Trick is playful, friendly, and outgoing.  He chases butterflies.  Treat is tough, serious, and all-business.  He could easily survive in the wild on his own.

Trick caught a baby chipmunk and gently carried it around for a while, but didn’t know what to do.  He dropped it (with encouragement from Judy) but was very distressed about the whole situation.  Treat would have known  exactly what to do, and it would not have ended well for the chipmunk!

 

Trick also enjoys lazy naps on the balcony edge.  He makes us very nervous because it’s about a 25 foot drop to the concrete driveway below.  But he doesn’t seem to notice.

Obedience in the front; agility in the back

I LOVE that I can get outside and train regularly now.  Except it is horribly hot!  But, we have almost all the equipment out so we can do quick training sessions when we have time.

Here’s the front yard set up for Utility training.  Luckily, it’s exactly the right size for a Utility ring.  Our neighbors are very curious about exactly what we’re doing out there, but lots of times they stop to watch, which makes for good natural distractions.

And here’s the back yard set up for agility training.  We’d love to have more space but it works for 6-7 obstacle sequences and for short drills.

We just got a new set of 2 x 2 weaves so we can work on those in the yard.  I love that you can set up to work on the specific place you are having issues.  Judy was working Quest on his on-side entries and could angle the first set.  Zen was having 10th pole pop-out so I angled the last set.  Easy way to work things out!  We did some “entries at speed” drills with a set of two, then a set of four, then six.  Jump, weave, tunnel, weave, tire, weave, table.  By the end of the day yesterday we had the entire set of 12 together and both dogs were driving into and through with great intensity and speed.

Treat has entered adolescence

At the moment Treat reminds me of a teenage boy.  He stays out all night, comes in the house and crashes out.  Wakes up, stretches, eats, and then heads out again.  Every once in a while he initiates a short petting/bonding session with me, then he’s off.  It seems the outside world is much more interesting than the inside one.

I have tried hard to make him an indoor cat but he has become quite skilled at finding ways to sneak out.  I’ve finally given up and accepted that he is going out and coming in when he wants.  That means I’ve also accepted that he may encounter dangers I can’t protect him from.   Our next door neighbor’s yard is like a mini-forest, so there is much to keep him occupied.

He’s caught and killed birds and chipmunks, and last night he tried to bring a live baby mouse into the house when I brought the dogs in after their last potty break for the night.  Luckily I saw the tail hanging out of his mouth.  He dropped it and the baby raced around the patio.  I distracted Treat long enough to let him get away, but Treat wasn’t even pursuing him with much conviction.

Luckily we’ve convinced Trick that heading towards the doors is a very bad thing that leads to getting a face full of water from the squirt bottle.  He is much easier to keep in than Treat.  That’s good because his long coat would end up a tangled mess.  Trick seems to enjoy the creature comforts that the inside world offers and not be too concerned with what he might be missing outside.

Competition obedience

Where to even begin on this topic?  It seems that this may indeed be a dying sport.  And those that love it don’t really seem willing to make substantive changes.  When I look around I see mostly middle-aged (& up) competitors.  I definitely don’t see younger people coming into this activity the way they did 10-15 years ago.

So, why is it dying and why does anyone really care?  There are newer performance events that people seem to prefer, specifically Agility & Rally.  Obedience, by comparison, seems slow and dull.  The intense focus on precision means that it requires lots and lots of training and practice.  Not that other sports don’t, but this seems different to many people.

People in obedience like to “blame the victim” and claim that people are just too lazy and want results too quickly, so they don’t have the patience for competition obedience.  But I don’t know if I totally buy that.  People train hard and long for other dog sports, none of them are so easy that they require little to no effort.  Most trainers want to enjoy the process of training as well as showing.  Agility is definitely fast paced and exciting, and there’s such an adrenaline rush involved!  Rally allows for more interaction between dog & handler in the ring (extra cues & redos) and still allows for passing scores even without perfection on the first try.  Obedience gives you one chance only; it has to be right the first time.  It can feel quite restrictive and artificial, compared to how we interact with our dogs in the real world.

So why bother with it at all?  Why not let it go the way of the dinosaurs?  I ask myself that all the time!  Why am I still involved in a sport where many of the trainers use methods and techniques from the Dark Ages and where I see and hear the most appalling things?  Why stay around when it feels like you are the lone voice advocating positive methods for training?  It would certainly be easier to just walk away and do more reinforcing things with my time.  But just look at Zen’s face in this photo!  He loves it and I love working with him.

Teaching a relaxed down

Here’s a session with Judy & Trick.  Judy’s using a placemat as a target and her goal is to teach trick to lie down and flop over on his side.  As you can see, he is getting the idea that staying on the mat pays off and that lying down works well.

Judy is shaping (reinforcing those small actions that will lead to the ultimate goal).  Trick has become very operant.  Meaning that he has learned that his behavior has an effect on the consequence.  In other words, he can make Judy click & treat when he offers the desired behavior.  This understanding makes an animal extremely easy to train.

Also note that the open bowl of food is sitting on the floor.  But, Trick has learned that it’s not free, he needs to work for it.  And he really seems to enjoy training.  When we work the dogs he is always right there!

A couple pictures…

Here are two of my favorite recent pictures of Trick & Smudge.   We were worried in the beginning that Smudge might hurt the kitties because he has the highest “prey drive” of the bunch.  But he is now their protector and nanny.  In the second pic he is gently holding Trick down with one paw so he can clean him.

Long time gone by…..

I suppose that lots of people start blogs with good intentions and then get sidetracked as I have.  But I’m going to make an honest effort to keep up with this a bit more, at least for the summer.

First thing… if you got here from the DogRead group you can go to our website at www.k9infocus.com for more information on us and our training methods.  We are VERY excited about the puppy book and about being the August featured authors!

Second, a kitty update…  They are no longer kittens, they are CATS.  We are still training them and they are doing quite well.  I’ll post more details, photos and video soon.  You can see the videos on our YouTube channel (k9infocus).

Finally, I intend to add a bit more of my thoughts and ideas on competition obedience.  This is a very controversial topic in many ways and I want to think out loud about some of the important issues here.

More soon…..

Cats ruin everything!

Judy made this statement when I told her we couldn’t get poinsettias this year.   We also have a naked Christmas tree because we’re a little afraid to put on the ornaments.  The tree has been up for two weeks and we still chase the cats away from it from time to time.  But I’m sure the shiny, dangly ornaments will be waaaaaay too much temptation.  They’re very good kitties, but it’s a lot to expect them to leave it alone.

Trick can’t climb trees

We were out in the front yard playing ball with Zen yesterday and Trick was out hanging around with us.  Apparently, his tree climbing gene has kicked in.  He tried the big tree in the front yard and only got up about a foot.  Without front claws this is clearly never going to work.  Then he tried it again with a running start!  He got a little higher, but not much.  Then he went to a tree next to the neighbor’s driveway and tried again.  Still no luck.  Next, he came across the yard to a tree by our driveway and gave it quite a running start.  He actually got up maybe 2 feet with his momentum, but couldn’t hold on.  I don’t know how long it will take him to figure out it’s not possible, but he’s giving it a very, very good try!  I thought it was cute that he tried 3 different trees, apparently thinking the tree itself was the problem.

Kitties become cats!

They caught their first mouse!  It’s ridiculous how exciting that is for me.  We get the occasional mouse, particular downstairs in the laundry room where we keep some dog treats.  I have no problem using traps, but was so pleased that the kitties are actually doing their job.

They must have played with it for hours overnight on Saturday, and eventually left it on the bedroom floor as a present.  At least they didn’t bring it up in the bed!