Novice Obedience

Reagan tortures me so in obedience. She is so cute with her antics and leaps. In obedience class, we all think she is so funny and flashy. But I really just want to get her showing as soon as she is ready and finish her Novice level title, so we can stop practicing. Knowing that she will probably never master a 3 minute sit stay required in the next level (Open) is disappointing. Reagan would be so cute retrieving, jumping, and doing the harder exercises at the higher levels. She would be such a crowd favorite. So the sooner we can quit practicing obedience, the sooner I can forget how much fun it is minus sit stays. I know that is not a good attitude, but I just am not going to force her to do something so uncomfortable. I have seen enough greyhound sit stays to know when I am fighting a really tough battle.

So here is Reagan working through all of the Novice exercises.

Red Headed Stepchild

Reagan is also doing great in obedience. Here she is working on her heeling. She often will sit with her rear to the outside. For some reason, I am not seeing it from my vantage point, but it is brought to my attention in class and when I watch our videos. It will result in some minor deductions, but at this point I am not picking too much at it.

Here, Reagan is working on fronts and finishes. She has a bad habit of correcting herself dramatically when she comes in crooked. Instead of doing a small movement to straighten up, she leaps and jumps. I generally give her a chance to straighten up and if not we start over.

Part-Time Work

Reagan is finally back to part-time work. She is not allowed to go full tilt or do tight turns yet. I have to build her back up gradually. The rule of thumb I use is if you are inactive for 6 weeks, you need 6 weeks to build back up. Reagan is so bouncy and is always in a hurry. She is giving me a heart attack at times.

Here is a recent clip of heeling. Reagan is a little rusty, but she is happy and bouncy. Heeling probably gets a bit boring to watch, but if you compete in obedience you know how very important it is. Heeling is a requirement at all levels, so we practice it a lot.

Reagan weighed in at 52 lbs yesterday (up from the mid 40's)! I think she is really starting to look great and the difference is becoming apparent.

I think these photos even show that her hair is filling back in.

Front Left

Here is a video clip of Reagan working on fronts. I am making her commit to a position by sitting. She still seems to be stuck on moving her rear end and correcting her position too much. When she does finally stand or sit straight in front of me, I click and treat several times in an attempt to convince her that its the position I want and not really the movement. She is so much fun to work with. Reagan is such a good little worker.

Next, Reagan is working on left turns in heeling. Kathryn (trainer) has me working on left turns slowly and exaggerated so Reagan is encouraged to move her rear end to stay in line.

My goal is to have Reagan ready to compete in Novice obedience at the Hound obedience trial September 18th. The trial is limited to dog breeds in the hound group so it should be a small, quiet trial to start at.

Clockwork

Here is another doodle for training fronts. You click and treat when the dog is positioned straight in front of you. Ideally, you spit out treats, but in this clip I am feeding from my hand because it was something I did not want in my mouth. :-P You then pivot as if you are standing on a clock face. Starting at 12:00, you then pivot to 2:00 or to 10:00. You click and treat when the dog moves over (especially the rear end) and regains a straight front position.

I thought Reagan was especially cute at the end when she starts to wag her tail when it became clear to her what was right. I have had an unexpected consequence though. Reagan has since then started to think I was rewarding her for swinging her rear end back and forth, so she started to offer lots of back and forth moving. I am now rewarding her for moving into a still, straight, and front position and she is getting the idea.

Get Close

On Sunday, Reagan and I attended a small, local seminar with Kathryn Willis. Kathryn has been training and competing in Dog Obedience for 15 years. Her Golden Retrievers have been nationally ranked for the last five years and have qualified for five National Obedience Invitationals. Kathryn has earned 3 Obedience Trial Championships, a perfect score of 200, over 50 High in Trials, and over 50 High Combined awards..... and best of all, Kathryn uses clicker training.

The seminar focused mostly on teaching the dog that he/she has a rear end, how to move the rear end, and where the rear end should be (something Riley, pictured above, needs a lot of help with). The difference between a nice obedience performance and a great obedience performance often comes down to straight fronts and finishes and a good heel position. With 4 legs, its easy to forget where the rear is and to let it drift off to the side. Kathryn taught us several "doodles" to help explain the rear end to the dog.

The first "doodle" (shown below) is teaching the dog to move into heel position or "get close" (dog is parallel to handler's left side). I have always been in a bad habit of asking my greyhound to sit and then positioning myself parallel to my dog (except with Katie, somehow I managed to explain to her how to move her rear end). With finishes (dog returns to heel position and sits next to the handler at the end of each exercise), it was always hit or miss. I would get credit for my dog's effort at finishing, but would lose points for the sit not being parallel or straight.

This is not the most interesting video clip, but I have to say I was quite thrilled to see how just twisting my hand with a treat and stepping back with my left foot encouraged my dog to move her rear into a more parallel position. You start by clicking and treating just a small side step, but eventually require a move into correct heel position.

Training Update

Just a couple of videos of Reagan training.

I have movie editing software now. Right now, I only know how to piece short clips together.

This clip shows a super nice jump sequence. Reminds me a little of Travis :-). For those that think I am a "meanie", notice that I bend down and pet her before we start. I probably also said something nice to her as well. So there is some love for you. Also shows a short clip of Reagan on the new weave poles. I am switching her back to the weave-o-matic style. I think that works best for big dogs.

This is Reagan working on lead outs. Its nice to be able to put your dog in a stay at the beginning of an agility course, so you can get a head start. Since her sit stays are very important for obedience, I do not want to use them for agility yet. This is why I have her doing stand stays instead. I am careful to not always call her out of a stay. I return and reward her frequently. I also want her to release only to the word "done". I want to be able to move around, wave my arms, and talk if I want to.

A little more heeling and some sit stay work. Her sit stays have not been very good until suddenly. Reagan would melt and want to lie down. She did really well in this clip.

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.

Midget Report

I hate it when I start a post and then I save it for when I have a picture. The news gets old...... especially with Reagan. I write this nice bragging piece about her and then suddenly she has a bratty week............ so here goes without a photo.

I am starting to gear up to start some serious agility training with Reagan. She should be about 100% physically mature now. It is time to add the contact obstacles and to start weave poles. Mentally, she seems focused, motivated, and ready for some real work. We will keep doodling with obedience training. Her stays are pretty good and she has some nice heeling moments here and there, but I don't think she is that mentally ready for hard core obedience. Agility is fun because they get to run and jump. There is a lot more freedom. Obedience strives for perfection and is strict and rigid. I am not sure if she will ever be a good obedience dog due to her very WIDE sit position, but we will see. I'm ok with an ugly sit (Katie sits like a bulldog), but it needs to be comfortable for the dog to do a 3 minute sit stay. Not always easy for a greyhound.

Reagan's recalls are very good. When she is in an unfenced open area, I have her drag a long line while she fetches or while Stephen and I practice recalls back and forth with her. Long lines are such an excellent tool for off leash training. They allow you to force the issue if you are ignored, adds an element of safety, and also gives the handler a good feel for how responsive the dog is from a distance. BUT YOU HAVE TO BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL about not wrapping the line around yourself, your dog, others, objects, trees, etc. A greyhound speeding around could injury himself and others easily. I used to try and incorporate more long line use in my basic greyhound obedience classes, but I found that people were either good at using them or horrible. It seems so common sense to me, but it just was not for some students. I just decided I didn't want to risk it.

Reagan no longer has any pee inhibitions. She will pee anytime, anywhere outdoors, multiple times.... dirt, grass, gravel, or even concrete and asphault.

Reagan's house manners are really good. I have not caught her chewing on anything. Her housetraining is very good.....(here comes one of those whoops I waited to long to post this) except for the day of her first swimming lesson. She drank a lot of water and she had 2 little accidents that evening. None since though. She does not counter surf and does not bother us when we eat at the coffee table.

I have started working on her noise sensitivty. I've noticed that Reagan cringes if I drop a muzzle (happens a lot when you have 6 in your hand) or something else. I want loud noises to trigger "where's the treat?". The training is going well. Unfortunately, in Asheville we were finishing up our final potty walk when 2 jets took off from the nearby airport. These were not normal planes, but 2 of the loudest noise makers I think I have ever heard. They made me cringe too. Travis, Katie, and Allie had no problem with it, but Reagan wanted out there. She struggled to the end of the leash and wanted to run away. She started to shake and was obviously very nervous. I did not want to hurry up and put her away especially since I did not want her to associate indoor agility venues or crates with blown eardrums. Instead I sandwiched Reagan between the steady redheads, Katie and Travis, and continued to walk her until she calmed down. Going forward, hopefully Reagan will have a fighter jet free life since that is not a sound I can nor want to reproduce.


My only complaint right now is that she bites too hard! I like to wrestle with my guys, but Reagan needs to learn a little bite inhibition. It hurts!

Is That a Chicken Back in Your Pocket or.........

I have been feeding my dogs raw food for about 10 years now. I love it and the dogs love it. Greyhounds are notorious for bad teeth and giant piles of crap. Raw food is great for reducing both of these issues among other benefits. However, the problem is that raw food is tough to train with. You can't exactly put a chicken back in your pocket and pull it out as a timely reward. Its messy and not exactly safe for humans to handle. Katie and Travis have always been extremely food motivated making them very easy to train and reinforce correct behaviors. They have never refused a treat that I have offered and have never needed any additional incentives to eat.



Reagan is also an eager eater, but she would sometimes rather do something else than to have to perform a behavior for a piece of food..... she is happy to eat the food, but doesn't want to work for it at that moment. I would like to increase her food drive and intensity a few notches, but herein lies the problem..... she receives the highest value food at the beginning of each day and for free (our dogs eat once a day). Ideally, she should work for her meals or at least be fed after she trains.



With kibble, this is so easy. You can throw 5 kibbles into a bowl and ask the dog to sit for it. Its not exactly a fulfilling meal, but at least you can forgo the stress the dog feels about skipping a meal all together and then save the rest for training later. The other benefit to kibble is that its boring, so training with it can easily be jazzed up with some hot dogs, cheese, or roasted chicken mixed in. With raw meaty bones, its difficult to get much jazzier than that.






So I was on a mission to somehow incorporate raw food into the training program and to have Reagan earn it. And to also train her when she is hungry. Each morning over the last few days, I have measured out her food and given her just a small bite and I have saved the rest, generally, 2 chicken backs for later. Then as luck would have it, the local Kroger finally started stocking the "Pollo Fresco" packs again which are mostly chicken necks and several backs. The necks can be cut in half with kitchen shears..... (I know you guys just love to read about this). OK, so now what? I remembered that I had a stuff toy with a Velcro opening that you could stuff with food, squeakers, etc. So I put some chicken neck bites in a little Ziploc bag and stuffed it into the little pouch and **WA LA**! I now had a fuzzy, stuffy, squirrel with editable insides. Well, Reagan liked this new toy very much and chased it with more intensity. It was much easier to throw further now that the squirrel had some meat on its bones. Reagan fetched her prey like a champion courser and brought it straight back to my hands each time after she realized that she needed my help. So while this was messy and inconvenient, it was a successful way to use raw food in training, increase her food and toy drive, and to make her earn that meal.

So now you know for certain that I am weird.