Beep Bother Part 3 by Toni Dawkins

A regular feature by Toni Dawkins about training her new dog Beep!

Plus Video footage of seesaw training

Beep Bother

By Toni Dawkins April 2008

Beep is now 12 months old and I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. What is scarier is that Kite who always acts like a puppy is now nine. I hate how quickly the years go and how too easy it is to start worrying about how few are left with each dog. Kite is my oldest dog and really doesn’t act nine at all physically or mentally, but every year when it is her birthday I start worrying about how old she is. Looking around though at dogs that are her age or that I remember starting in competition at the same time, she is the only one still competing at the top and winning. I put this down to being careful not to over train or compete, swimming regularly, glucosamine and diet. Of course some luck is involved as sometimes whatever you do a dog can still become ill or injured, and I have to say I am lucky too. I can’t tell you though how many people recently have told me they are retiring their nine year olds! It makes me wonder what they do to them, I am sure I will have to retire Kite at some point but I dread the thought of it, not because I miss running her but because I will then be admitting that she is old.

Sorry for the depressing start, this time of year is not only Kite’s birthday but Beep’s too and she is only a year old so lots more years to spend with her. I explained last month about Beep being in season and finding everything suddenly scared her. Well since then she is slowly getting better, I have to say I have been going over the top with everything I can think of to cure this phase just in case it wasn’t just a phase and it seems to be working.

What is helping is that of course the show season is starting so I can take Beep to different venues both inside and out. The first two shows are at Ardingly and are indoors. The atmosphere in these shows is mad, very loud and busy with people and dogs very close all the time. At the first show I took Beep inside and although she didn’t seem very bothered about the noise I couldn’t get her to play or work for me very easily without being distracted. At the second one in the same place she was much better and I got her playing tug very easily and doing some tricks for me without looking around at all.

Agility

Motivation

Now the shows are outside with much more space and playing is easy. I have been trying to do agility related playing near the rings. What I mean by this is simple things like leaving Beep in a wait and running off waving the tug and then releasing her to chase and grab it. This will test her wait in the correct environment and get her racing to me without worrying about what else is going on. When Beep reaches the tug I spin away from her to make her turn and follow, if she tries to go behind me to get the tug quicker then she doesn’t get it. What I want from this is to teach her that when my hand is down she follows it and doesn’t pop up on the other side. She is doing this very well and fast wherever I try it now.

What I am finding with Beep is that however much toy motivation I do, she prefers food or a tug before the ball I would prefer to use. If I let her choose, food always comes first and although I don’t like food for agility training I think I am going to have to use it to get the best out of her.

This requires a little thinking on my part on how to do this as most people who use food have dogs that won’t drive away from them. This is because they always feed from the hand so the dog looks at them constantly for the reward rather than ahead. I don’t want this and need my dogs to look ahead and run away from me when needed. This is especially important for Beep as she really easy to turn and call off things so the drive away from me is harder.

With any training it is about finding the right motivation for each dog and I have been told by many that dogs often get quicker with more confidence and sometimes just as they find they enjoy agility. I, however don’t want to take chances and just hope that this is the case so have been trying anything to see what brings out the ‘killer instinct’ in Beep. I have been trying different foods and raw chicken is the best. Beep will kill for raw chicken so this is what I will use.

Jumping

Since finding the correct food for motivation, jumping is going really well. I sometimes carry raw chicken with me and call it doing the ‘chicken run’. If I am sending ahead I put the chicken in bowl big enough to be seen from a distance. In this way I am teaching exactly the same as if using a toy. As well as the food, Beep will run any distance to a tunnel so I can use the tunnel to send her away and make her chase me for the food.

I am doing lots of straight line running and luckily as I do lots of training days I can do some with her at different venues.

Turns are easy, she is a natural and has a lovely way of checking herself before a turn so she can wrap around the wing. I am still working on this though as if ground speed is a problem her turns will make up a lot of time. What I tend to do is either turns or straight and not put them together too much yet.

I train Beep with Amanda Pigg one evening a week and she is great as she will let me do whatever crazy thing I want to keep Beep motivated. Beep has a good wait now but usually Amanda holds her to get more speed from the start.

Weaves

These are going great, I do love teaching the weaves though. I have channels in the garden and they are about 6 inches apart now. I am just continuing with sending ahead and different angles into them, I have jumps before and after so I can teach her that I will run off to the next jump while she completes them. I am also putting equipment close to the weaves e.g. the tunnel so she can see the tunnel entrance but doesn’t come out of the weaves early to go in it.

Tunnels

I have put tunnels separately this month as I have just started teaching turns out of the tunnel. Again though, I can’t do too much of this as I then lose the drive into the tunnel, so each time I practise I add a couple of turns in. In another month I will also teach the signals I give for wrong end of tunnels. I think this is important to do early because of the way I am teaching contacts. (I won’t have a dog to wait on the contact for me to decide which end of the tunnel!)

Seesaw

This is just continuing the training from last month except I am taking the box away most of the time now and Beep is doing it perfectly. This I do in the garden so the only thing I am missing is more speed onto the seesaw as the garden is not big enough to get as much of a run up as I would like. When ever I go somewhere with more space I set up tunnel to seesaw to get maximum speed. I don’t want her to learn that she does the seesaw slowly as this will affect the contact as she speeds up. I have attached a couple of videos of the seesaw, just mobile phone ones again though so not great but better than nothing. The important thing is too see how confident Beep is already, so this can only get better.

Beep Seesaw Training1

Beep Seesaw Training 2

Contacts

I haven’t touched the a-frame yet but I have one coming in a couple of weeks so can start. The one at training doesn’t go low and I don’t want Beep to run a full height one till she is older.

Last month I explained  how I started the dog walk, well that was the easy bit. The next stage involves teaching Beep the difference between running and jumping. It starts with a plank on the ground and just repeating running over it, when it is right Beep gets the ball, when it is wrong she doesn’t.

When you get 100% correct for three to fours days you raise the plank and start again, just an inch at a time. Now this is hard as you have to watch the feet and reward for the correct behaviour but you are not making the dog hit the same spot all the time you are just rewarding for a continuing stride pattern. I found videoing helped a lot to teach me to reward correctly. I started this in December so five months ago and am still working on just the down plank on a bank in the garden. I found using the bank I can get more speed and I can slide the plank up the bank a little at a time. Beep does ten repetitions twice a day every day except for weekends and has still taken me five months so far, it is certainly not a method for everyone as you do need a lot of patience.

I do have some of this on video but it is a little boring watching someone elses dog repeatedly running the plank so if I get a short version I will add it later.

I will explain turns with this method in the next article as they are not easy either.

Tricks

I have been a little lazy on the tricks side of things recently, other than working on what she already knows. I do have new trick I want to teach though and when I do I will let you know.

Obedience

Just waits really but not so much keeping them but getting Beep to run quickly out of them.  I explained how to do this above but I also key her with ‘ready, steady’ so she knows a release is coming.

In terms of how much time Beep is spending training for agility, the contacts, weaves and turn work is done in the garden. This is week days and just 10mins morning and night. I am usually away at weekends so nothing is done but I think this is good as she gets some time off and so do I. One evening she has an hour of jumping but this is in a group of eight other puppies so again not too much. It is surprising how much you can teach if you keep your training sessions short and fun!

That’s all for now

Toni

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