The doggies had an agility match in NJ yesterday. I was super excited, as it would be Maxwell's first time 'performing' in front of strangers. The site was a horse barn that had been converted into a dog training facility. A perfect place to work on Sadie's distractedness, and give Maxwell a new agility location.
Maxwell ran first, at 16 inches. He didn't want treats or any of the toys I had brought, which made it tricky to keep his attention. Luckily, he found a disgusting old tennis ball that he just had to play with, so we used that. Overall, he kept his contacts very nicely, and did less zooming that I expected. We took different kinds of jumps, all the contact obstacles, tunnels, you name it. He even had one really nice 6-pole weave!
He did find all the other dogs and people hard to ignore. Waiting handlers had their dogs in a semi-gated-off area that was open to the course on both ends. Maxwell decided he wanted to play, so he buzzed the line, running as close to the dogs as he could, obviously on the non-course side of the gates. Another time he saw some people leaning on a gate watching, and he just had to say hello.
Every time he left me and wouldn't be called back immediately, the match coordinator would tell me I should go get him and bring him back by the collar. First off, I plan to run him naked, so he wasn't even wearing a collar. And second, I have no interest in physically forcing him to do anything. I'd rather he work out the excitement and learn to cope with distractions than learn to just stay out of my reach.
Sadie was awesome. Yes, she sniffed. Yes, she blew her most of her contacts. But she completely ignored her daddy (my boyfriend) watching from the corner. She was so good that I even had him out on the course following us around on our final run! I was very proud of her, as he has always been her strongest distraction.
I did a lot of work on contacts with Sadie. Even though it ate up our run-time quickly, I put her back on every single missed contact. Once she got it, food appeared, and we'd continue the course. She also had some beautiful weaves. I realized that it's not the weaving that is hard for her, it's being focused enough to enter the poles. Once I got her in, no problem. After we had successfully done 6-pole weaves several times I decided to challenge her. On our last run, I put her into the 12-pole weaves... and she did it perfectly! That was probably the highlight of the day with her.
As with Maxwell, the coordinator had advice. The course went from the A-frame to a tunnel whose entrance was perpendicular to the dogs' motion off the frame, maybe 10 feet away. About half of the time Sadie wouldn't take the tunnel on my first cue. As I was running my last course the coordinator started talking to me, saying she wanted to talk about that line. Fine, I'm willing to hear what she has to say. When the timer called "10 seconds left" she told me to come over to the A-frame. I was trying to get Sadie to weave at that particular moment, and was not pleased to be so clearly interrupted. I said I'd be there when we had completed the weaves.
At the A-frame she had me put Sadie in her 2-on-2-off and walk over to the tunnel. She told me that I was cuing the tunnel while in motion, which was pulling Sadie out again. That's a good point, and I intend to pay more attention to my tunnel cues. HOWEVER. Sadie broke her contact (it had been several second with no reinforcement, or even attention) and walked over to me. Organizer said to put her back on. Fine. I gave my usual "Sadie, get up" to put her on the obstacle and gave her a treat in position. Well, that definitely wasn't good enough for organizer, despite the fact that Sadie did as asked. Apparently I should have dragged her over by the scruff (again, no collar) as a correction, and I certainly shouldn't have given her a treat. When she told me to correct my dog I looked at her and said "I don't wish to". I can't believe how hard it was to say that simple phrase to her. Happily, that was that.
To get on my soap-box for a moment: I had paid a per-run fee to bring my dogs. Runs were a maximum of 2 minutes, and we'd driven 1.5 hours to get my 8 minutes per dog. I was not this woman's student, nor had I asked for help. She had never met me. She didn't know anything about my dogs that couldn't be seen during those runs. If she had asked if I wanted advice, I almost certainly would have said yes. But interrupting my runs and telling, not asking, me to do things against my training preferences seemed inappropriate. I went home happy with the dogs, but not sure about returning for the next match. What do you think?
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