Katie's Obedience Career

After Katie retired from agility in December 2004, we switched all of our efforts to obedience.  We had already competed at the Novice and Open levels and were starting to work on Utility exercises.  Utility is the highest level of obedience with scent work, signals, directed jumping, and lots of retrieving.  In hindsight, it was probably a blessing that she became unsound for agility as Utility required our full attention and it was well worth it.

Our adventures in Utility are my most favorite memories of Katie or even my greyhounds in general.  Katie was so hard working.  You could drill her with repetition after repetition and she happily continued.  The details never bored her.  Obedience is sometimes thought to be "stuffy" or boring, but working with a dog like Katie makes it so much fun. 

The Utility exercises are very difficult and require a lot of practice.  Obedience competition has been around for over 70 years and in that time only 14 greyhounds have earned a Utility Dog title (UD) (versus thousands of the more traditional obedience breeds).  Katie was the 14th.

One of the most difficult exercises for us was the scent articles.  You have five leather dumbbells and five metal dumbbells.  The handler scents one leather article and one metal article.  The judge adds a scented article to a pile of 8 other dumbbells and your dog uses her nose to find the one that you touched.

 Katie was not very interested in using her nose.  She rarely used her nose on walks or to investigate a new environment.  She is a sighthound, but she really took it to the extreme.  Traditional methods were not working and I was simply unable to explain scent articles to Katie.  That is until I blindfolded her.  I put her in a down, covered her eyes, and then I would hold various articles up to her nose.  When I held the correct dumbbell to her nose and I saw her nostrils quiver, I would click and treat.  Then I would hold up and a wrong article to her nose and gently tell her it was incorrect.  It worked!  Articles were still tough and required a lot of work, but blindfolding Katie got us jump started.

This is my favorite Katie video as it shows us qualifying in Utility (our 2nd leg).  It took us 25 attempts to qualify the required three times. Interestingly, all three qualifying performances were outdoors. We were close many times indoors, but for some reason she seemed more comfortable showing outside.

This is Katie's last filmed obedience trial. Here she is competing in Open B at the 2007 Greyhound Nationals in New York. How about that show site right next to the busy road?  No worries with Katie and Travis, but I would never take a greyhound I was not absolutely sure about.  Katie showed over the next four days at another dog show nearby and was a crowd pleaser, receiving lots of compliments.

Two weeks later (October 2007), Katie suffered the neurological injury that forced her to retire finally. I feel extremely blessed that we had no unfinished business. We had achieved all of our goals and more. At the time, we were simply competing because it was fun.

Utility Dog

I am extremely proud of Katie's Utility Dog title. Obedience competition has been around for over 70 years and Katie is only the 14th greyhound to ever earn a Utility Dog title. Utility is the highest level of obedience and I have said it before... it was the hardest thing I have ever done with a greyhound. Katie earned 3 qualifying legs in 25 attempts. This is the only video I have of one of three qualifying Utility legs. I am so happy to finally be able to post it to the blog.

Cool Old Dog

I would really love to have this crazy, old greyhound (age 11) by my side. Katie would be so much fun to take to dog shows, class, and training sessions. I would love to enter her in practice agility run thrus at a reduced height, compete her in the veteran obedience classes, practice my heeling footwork, and feed her lots of treats. Socially, she is perfect. She would be so wonderful to.... blah, blah, blah.... I know you have heard this complaint before.

As you know, Katie has developed a phobia/fear of riding in our van, so most of the time she stays home. Well, I decided to make her go to my training field last Saturday to burn some of her energy. So here is a video clip of Katie practicing some of her obedience and agility. Rusty, but I am always amazed by how much they remember.

And then it started to rain and RAIN and RAIN! Well, I had already tortured Katie with riding in our van..... we were going to maximize her time away from the house. Rain or shine, Katie was coming home tired! Many greyhounds won't potty in the rain much less fetch a toy. Katie is just so awesome! I placed the camera under my agility table so everyone could see.

Remember Katie is 11 years old and had already worked in obedience and agility before fetching her toy. Just so much energy.

Jackpot - Part 2

The need for jackpot training became apparent when I started training Katie for Utility obedience.

In Novice and Open level obedience, I played on my dogs’ good will to continue working with the hope of a treat. Generally we qualified the three required times with minimum attempts (with the exception of Travis who offered "creative" open obedience exercises and tortured me a few extra times for the third Open leg). We were done and ready to move to the next level before my greyhounds became “ring savvy”. Ring savvy is when the dog figures out that there are no treats to be had in the ring, so there is no sense in working all that hard.



Well, Utility Dog exercises are so much more difficult. Exercises call for responding to signals from across the ring, complex heeling patterns, directed retrieving and jumping, scent work, and go outs. It’s the hardest thing I have ever done with a dog.

Katie earned her Novice title in 3 tries, Open in 5 tries, and Utility in 25 tries. Entering the ring 25 times (not to mention the 8 times at the lower levels) gave Katie plenty of opportunities to figure out that she would not be receiving any treats in the show ring. The secret was out. Thus the need for jackpot training.

Between exercises in an obedience class, you are allowed to praise, so I used to praise excessively because I was nervous and without any food..... thinking that my awkward praise made up for not having what she really wanted. However, after entering the Utility ring so many times, I learned that even with a delayed food reinforcement, Katie was still not looking for affection as a reward. I learned that just a small touch, a word of praise, the appreciation in my heart, and most importantly… rushing to do the next exercise was what Katie needed. She knew the jackpot awaited her and she did not need to insulted with lots of affection between exercises.

I am not saying that other dogs do not love lots of praise and excitement between exercises. Some do and need it to be successful. I just want to point out that affection is not what every dog wants and in some cases too much of it might be a deterrent.

For example, have you ever watched an excited person praise a small dog? Its not pretty :-). Often the small dog is physically moved when a person places their hand on the dog for petting. I see it all of the time in beginner, all-breed obedience classes. The puppy or the small dog comes when called and the happy person physically rubs the dog in a manner that physically rocks the dog back and forth.

One side effect to my jackpot approach is that Katie tended to rush exercises in an attempt to get things done quicker and this sometimes led to mistakes. There is not a perfect answer. Training is not a science, but more of an art. My preference was to work through her hastiness since she was working happy and willingly. I just had to remind her to to keep it smart.

Photos: Katie showing in utility in Chattanooga TN. Top: Bringing back the correct scent article. Bottom: Heeling & signal exercise.

Heeling

The obedience classes I attended with Jes more than 10 years ago used lots of collar corrections or quick jerks on the leash. I was never comfortable with this approach and Jes clearly did not like it either.

Heeling is an exercise where the dog matches the handler's pace and maintains a steady position on the handler's left side. For competition purposes, the dog is required to sit automatically at each halt.

Initially, I was taught to give my greyhound a quick pop on the collar if she was not in the correct position or not looking at me. For a soft dog especially, imagine how the collar corrections suck all the joy that could possibly be found in heeling. This is another reason I fell in love with clicker training.

With a clicker, I can identify behaviors I want my greyhound to repeat including a nice heel position. Marking and rewarding the correct heeling behaviors makes heeling fun for the dog and easy for the handler to teach.

Here is Riley demonstrating some beginner heel work. She did better than I had expected, but you can see that when she loses heel position, I use a little leash to get her back into place. There are no corrections. I simply click & treat when she is right again.

Pure clicker trainers prefer to train heeling without a leash. I believe using a leash helps to speed up the process because you can at least keep your dog in the general area, so he or she is more likely to succeed.

Here is Reagan. She has been working on heeling a little longer than Riley has. The clicks & treats come less frequently. Her criteria has been raised and I want a little more from her before I reward.

I think some trainers resist using a clicker/marker for heeling because it does interrupt a moment of good work. I find that it is well worth the interruption. Over time, I introduce the idea of working for a longer period of time for a jackpot. Katie understands this concept precisely. Here is Katie showing advanced heeling.

Katie is trained and titled through Utility Dog obedience and is 8 year older so she is way ahead of Riley and Reagan.

Hound Obedience Trial

It took Youtube several days to process the Utility class video. Obviously it is too long.

Katie and I supported the hound only obedience trial last Friday. Katie competed in Wildcard Utility and Wildcard Open. The Wildcard classes do not count for anything and you can pick your jump height. We had a good time. I have decided that utility is just too hard to do when you don't practice very much. When we used to compete, Katie and I practiced just about everyday. But with all things considering, I think she did very well. We got first place out of one :-).

So here is the run down on the Utility Excercises:

1. Signals - Katie heeled beautifully as usual. I love heeling with Katie. She missed her down signal which was a problem in the past. There is just something vulnerable about standing alone on the far side of the ring and having to lie down. I had to verbally insist.

2. Scent articles - Katie is no dummy, so she thought it might be better to just head on out of the ring for her treats and skip all of this work. She did get the first article right. The 2nd one she just grabbed one randomly.

3. Directed retrieving - She retrieved the correct glove.

4. Moving stand - She did fine.

5. Directed jumping - I was actually impressed that she gave me any go outs at all. I figured she'd head for the gate instead, but she actually did head for the other side of the ring.

Open obedience is so much easier. I think in the future, we will stick to entering open. It doesn't require nearly the practice. Here is the run down:

1. Heeling - The judge screwed up our heeling pattern. So she had me restart somewhere in the middle. Figure 8's were fine.

2 - 4. Drop on recall, retrieve on the flat, and retrieve over the high jump was fine or good enough.

5. Broad jump - I chose to skip the broad jump.

In Open, dogs have to do a 3 minute sit stay and a 5 minute down stay with the handler out of view. I am always very proud of my greyhounds when they can maintain a 3 minute sit stay and even more so when I am not standing there. This is something we never practice anymore, but like a champ Katie held her sit stay while the basset hound failed by lying down.

All in all, we had a fun day reliving our glory days! :-)

Credit Is Due

Katie has been retired for almost a year now. With no training goals, no shows, and no traumatic events (knock on wood!), there just isn't much to report on Katie. Its been said that Reagan has some serious paw prints to follow in, but almost everyone is referring to Travis when they say that. Recently someone said something to the tune of "even Katie will be tough to follow" and it got me thinking that she needed a little credit because Katie IS in fact a tough act to follow as well. She isn't as flashy or as soundly put together as Travis was, but she will always be the first agility champion greyhound. Unfortunately, she developed back problems that caused her to have issues with jumping and weaving and I retired her from agility soon after. If she had no physical problems, she would probably have several more MACHs by now. Travis was always little faster, but Katie was smooth, handy, and efficient and still holds a hard to beat record as the #2 greyhound in AKC agility.

Retiring from agility ended up not being such a bad thing. It switched our focus to obedience. Katie already had her novice and open obedience titles (CD and CDX), so we began training for the highest level of obedience, Utility Dog. It is the toughest thing I have ever trained. The dog has to do difficult exercises independently and often away from the handler. Katie is so much NOT like a hound. She is so good at letting me pick on the details and doing lots of repetitions. She is a work-a-holic due to her food addiction..... thank goodness she doesn't have the free will to feed herself :-). Katie finished her UD last May (luckily... before the spinal stroke).

Although Katie is retired from competition, she would probably die if I stopped working her. Plus its good for Reagan to have to share the attention. Katie and I mostly run through her obedience exercises and do some agility. The jumps are lower and we avoid the narrow plank obstacles (teeter and dog walk), but otherwise she takes her work as seriously as she always has.

Lastly, there is a hound only obedience trial in Atlanta on Friday, September 19th. They are offering non-regular classes, so I have entered Katie in the Wildcard Utility and Wildcard Open. The classes don't count for anything, but I'm allowed to pick the jump height. So now Katie and I have something to practice for. Competing in obedience (especially Utility) makes me so much more nervous than agility, so I like getting all of the ring experience I can get. It will be fun to get back in the ring with no pressure and to support the Hound Club of North Georgia.

Katie is just such a doll. She was quite the aloof hunter scanning the horizon as she would drag me along behind her when I adopted her over 7 years ago. When she realized I was the keeper of the food and toys, she looked at me and hasn't turned away since. Her focus is perfect. She is perfect. She has done everything I have ever asked of her. I could not ask for more. Thanks for letting me give props to my "Lil Pumpkin".

Scent Articles

I have pulled out Katie's scent articles again. Scent articles can be a source of a lot of frustration and stress when you are training for Utility level obedience. Katie, with no talent for using her nose, and I were no exception. The scent article exercise consists of 5 leather articles and 5 metal articles. Dumbbells are commonly used. The handler scents a leather article and a metal article with his or her hand and then one at a time, they are placed within a pile of the 8 other articles. The dog then has to use his/her nose to find the article the handler touched. In competition, I always touched food prior to going into the ring so there would be a food smell on my hands. When articles are going well, it really is neat to see your dog search the pile and to find the correct one. With no upcoming show pressures, Katie has been working her articles like an Obedience Trial Champion.


Prior to learning articles, Katie did not use her nose for anything. She was very visual and had no clue what to do when we started training scent articles. There are lots of methods to use, but I decided to make something up. I put Katie into a down stay and blind folded her. I would then hold up the correct article and when I saw her nostrils quiver, I would click and treat. I would then hold up a wrong article and give her a non-reward mark, so she'd know that it was incorrect. Next, I started working her with a pile of 2 articles and then 3 and then 4..... and so on. The blind folding worked and I actually know of one other person who took my idea and succeeded with an American Eskimo dog :-).


Now, we just do articles for fun! The correct article is the metal one at 12:00.

Greyfest Weekend

We completed our annual demonstration of obedience and agility today. I think we did an especially good job this year. Stephen announced for me and bragged about Katie and Travis. And then I actually took the time to explain to the audience what Katie was doing during obedience exercises.

How does Travis know which way to go when I'm pointing in 2 different directions -------------->



We also got to meet Cindy the world record high jumper. I can't believe how high the jumps are and that wasn't even her record height. She's also very cute in agility. She has some issues with getting on the table obstacle so it has stunted her agility career some. Hopefully, they will get it worked out and she will be out there again. Overall, Greyfest was a lot of fun and a big success!

Then on Sunday, I competed Travis at a local agility trial. He was perfect. He placed first in both classes and 66 speed points. It was so funny because my friend, Anne Jones, and her ridgeback, Kira, earned first place in both classes the prior day. Kira does not normally earn such high placements, but is in need of more speed points. When you place first, you get double points, so those 2 first places were a great boost. Anne was so happy we were not there on Saturday to take them away :-). Can you believe agility folks are scared of a greyhound? :-) I love it!

Check Out the Gating!

Katie and I tried out the new gating I just built. Hopefully it resembles what we will see at the Greyhound Nationals. Katie did awesome. We did some remedial work and she quickly caught on and was doing full length go outs to the new gating after just a few minutes.

A New Wrench

Well, my good obedience greyhound friend, Kathy Helmke, just alerted me to a new twist I can look forward to at the Greyhound Nationals. She'd already warned me about the show grounds being near train tracks and the noise created by the changing of rail cars. The park is not fenced and we are near a busy road. There's a pond with possibly ducks and geese. Overall, just a distracting and sort of bizarre place to say "hey, what a great place for a dog show". My guess is that the show folks don't have to worry as much about distractions as the obedience folks.... remember you have to be perfect in obedience. A loud noise or flapping wings could easy cause your dog to miss a signal or a voice cue. Katie and Travis are used to working outside and are pretty well focused..... especially Katie, so I wasn't too worried about what she had told me thus far......... until now.

In utility, directed jumping requires you to send your dog to the other end of the ring (50 feet) and request a sit. Once seated you direct your back over a jump on your left or your right, per the judge. You repeat the exercise, sending your dog to the other end of the ring and then directing them back over the other jump. The jumping isn't too hard, but sending your dog to the other end of the ring (go outs) is a difficult concept to teach. Ideally, they should run straight to the other end, but to a dog... what is straight... where is the other end...and why the hell am I doing this when I'm just going to come back? It takes a lot of practice to get a dog to run confidently away from you, all the way to the other end, and straight and centered. One of the ways you accomplish this is by teaching your dog to run to and touch the middle section of gating. This gives your dog a visual target. In the southeast we typically use, ring gating that looks like old style baby gates divided by stanchions (see picture). Katie has learned to target a stanchion. WELL, Kathy informed me that the Greyhound Nationals do not use the same gating, but use posts and chains. Poor Katie is not likely to make sense of this new visual in a show ring setting. BUT luckily we have over a month to work on this. She should transfer her good go out skills to a new type of gating fairly easily as long as we actually practice it.......... so guess what Stephen and I are building this weekend........ new ring gating!

And by the way, Katie has been just perfect. Absolutely wonderful! Her article pile is up to 6 now and she's finding the correct scent article like a champ. We'll keep adding 1 article a week until we are up to 8 again.

Travis on the otherhand is sloppy, but oh well. He's still quite entertaining and so animated. He does everything as fast as he can. I'll have to warn the judge on the drop on recall that he comes in like a Ferrari!!!!

Back to herself

I am so pleased with Katie again. She is working so well. She is working her scent articles very quickly, confidently, and correctly. The exercise looks great! Everything is coming along just fine as well.

Well, the humans are off to a little weekend trip to Kentucky. Katie and Travis are staying with Anne Jones. I am sure they will be bored, but they will be safe and not learning any bad habits.

Perfect

Yesterday, Katie was perfect! No mistakes. I definitely needed that. We were working at the training building prior to the greyhound obedience class I teach. We did all of the utility and open exercises and she did great. Her articles have been much better. She seems to be so much more confident in that if she smells the right one first... she grabs it and goes. Before she seemed to have to narrow it down and check the other articles before deciding on the best pick. I much prefer her to be confident and quick to find it.

Today she wasn't perfect, but she still worked really well. She has a bad habit in the signal exercise of walking several steps prior to laying down when I signal her. So basically she's standing at one end of the ring and I'm 40-50 feet away at the opposite end. I give her a hand signal and she is suppose to drop to a down, ideally in place. But she tends to take a few steps towards me and then lie down. Its passing, but you can lose a lot of points. So I've been placing a pole in front of her that forces her to lie down in place. Well, today I tried it without the pole and she looked as if I was talking to her in sign language (ok, bad joke since I sort am doing hand signals :-). So we will need to work without the pole. She dropped beautifully in place once she figured out what she is suppose to be doing, but obviously the pole had become part of the signal.

Photo - Here's Katie hoping a squirrel would fall out of the tree.... of course, the pesky muzzle would make a falling squirrel almost impossible to catch, but she would still like to try.

Back to Work!

Well, after a week of hiking at Wildlife Action, we are back to training again. Travis didn't miss a beat. He's still running very clean. When I set up practice agility courses, I try to make them difficult, so we have something to work on. However, he's really been running clean lately and even with a week off, he still is. I guess I would say that Katie didn't miss a beat either. She's still making the same mistakes, but I'm more relaxed about it. Its funny how you think... "once we get the UD, it will be so nice to not feel the pressure anymore". Well, I just cannot not put pressure on myself. We are going to do remedial article work. Will work with a pile of 4 articles this week, 5 next... and so on. I think she just needs to build up her confidence again.

All of the NY premiums are out and I started filling them out. I've already entered agility and my entry has been confirmed.

We are experiencing a heat wave right now. We hit a record high for the low the other day.... the low temperature for the day was 82 degrees... Yikes!

Time Off

Well, we have taken some much needed time off............. I have not trained Katie and Travis for 4 whole days now. OK, so it is hardly a break by most standards, but for me this is a long time. I just do not take breaks... the joke is that my tombstone will read "Finally, she rests." (thank you, Stefanie Noe :-). For the most part my greyhounds are not looking for a break either......... after all this is all suppose to be a fun game and it is the highlight of their day since I am generous with the food rewards and I always have good food. I was trying not to train for an entire week, but now I'm kind of missing it and thinking about starting up again this weekend. I am getting over the fact that no one really cares if Katie ever finds a correct scent article again and the sooner I don't care, the sooner she'll be just fine and able to do the exercise. It truly is not a big deal. Both of our obituaries will probably not mention anything about scent articles and even if they do, I doubt anyone will remember that either. So its time to just relax and look forward to our trip to NY.

The Complaint of the Day

OK, today is one of those days where I seriously consider retiring Katie. I had this fairy tale dream that after you get your UD, you should be able to just practice, tweak a few things, but otherwise just continue to reinforce all that good training you have done. I know this is totally unrealistic. For those who have not given utility a try, it is this endless cycle of exercises falling apart. After you fix a problem, something your dog completely understood yesterday is no longer understood. You fix that and then it is something new. So today was one of those days where I am feeling a little burnt out, but was going to train anyway and Katie had problems with her articles again. Only this time, it has been a problem for almost 2 months and its starting to wear me down. Katie's scent articles have been very reliable for probably a year up until 2 months ago. I have done a month of remedial work. Things are better, but the mistakes are still happening especially if there is any stress or pressure involved. I'm at the point where I'm simply doing obedience for fun, but its not fun. I'm not really trying to get a UDX, so when its not fun, its hard to push through it when there is not a big goal to go after. I really really really hope that she does well at the NY dog show. If she does, I will be revitalized for sure. If not, it might be what finally does it for me.

A Brag on Solid Stays

Last night, Katie and Travis were practicing their sit and down stays at Anne's building. They had already successfully completed the 3 minutes sit stay and were working on the 5 minute down stay with some other dogs. The line up consisted of a coonhound mix, Katie, beagle, Travis, and American Eskimo (medium sized white fluffy). During the down stay, friends, Anne and Holly, were trying to look at and treat a sore on another American Eskimo. He was overreacting and screaming his head off. Katie and Travis are super high prey and no doubt turned on by animal screams, so I tend to keep an eye on them when something like that is happening. Suddenly, the screaming Eskimo turned it up a notch and dogs were bolting from across the room. I spin around and there are my two perfect angels lying down exactly where I had left them. Not only had they ignored the screaming dog, but they also resisted chasing the 3 dogs that bolted from both sides............... the coonhound, the beagle, and the American Eskimo had all broke their stays and bolted as a group. I'm actually not that surprised they would stay and I would expect nothing less from them, but its really wonderful when the opportunity for them to demonstrate just how good they are comes up so I can give them big reward jackpots. Good Greyhounds!!!

Utility B in Asheville

Katie and I made our first attempt at Utility B at the Asheville Kennel Club show. Luckily, we have a good 2 months for some back to the drawing board training. She actually did very well with the mix up of exercises, but she had a very hard time concentrating on scent articles when it is the last exercise of the class.......... the case both days!!! She never once took time to search for the article and she never brought back a correct one. That and I would really like to improve her down signal. She continues to move forward quite a bit and is probably starting to push the qualifying limit. The most difficult seems to be stopping her creeping forward on go outs. She goes all the way to the gate, turns, and moves forward 10 feet or so before sitting. I do not have much trouble with this in training, but it sure shows in the ring. Not sure how to correct that. However, other than articles, she did qualify in all the other exercises and was probably going to score in the low 180's.

Occasionally, Katie does sleep in my presence (normally she stares at me). After a long day at the show, here she is chilling in our tent at the Red Gates campground in Hendersonville, NC.

I'm Kind of a Big Deal!

A friend of mine, Stefanie Noe, said to me once that she saw a T-shirt in Florida that says "I'm Kind of a Big Deal" and that it always made her think of Katie when she would see it. I think it is so funny, but I would have to agree :-). It is finally sinking in that we finished the utility title. I was smiling all day long about it. I just love that dog! Today, we started working on Open exercises again and she did not seem rusty at all. We are going to give these B classes a try.

Utility Dog Title!!!!

I'm very pleased and proud to announce that Katie quietly earned her Utility Dog title today at the Oakridge Kennel Club Show in Harriman, TN. This was an outdoor trial, on dirt, under cover. No friends or family were there to witness, but a few fellow competitors would happily vouch for us. She showed very well both days. We were the first pair to compete at 8 AM both days. Yesterday, during scent articles the National Anthem began and we had to stand their waiting between scent discrimination exercises for it to finish. Luckily, she waited patiently and did not get creative and start offering new behaviors. I was a little bit concerned about our scent articles because normally I send her directly to the pile, but lately she has been occasionally stopping after we pivot. So I changed to sending her after sitting her which we have never done and its usually a bad idea to change what you do right before a show. However, it worked and her articles were excellent both days. The only error for the entire weekend was a missed down signal on Saturday. BUT today, we started after the National Anthem, she nailed the signals, and everything else. She earned a 187.5 out of 200 with a first place, beating the other qualifier (a border collie :-). This was also our 25th attempt at qualifying in Utility A and I have learned that succeeding in 25 attempts is quite good for any dog, so I'm especially happy that my little greyhound did it so quickly. She is the 14th Utility Dog Greyhound!