There is a nice spot near our house where I used to work Brandy last
summer. It is a grassy area that is surrounded by the backyards of two
single family houses on one side and woods on other three. Great for
distractions as you can easily run into bunch of deers, fox, not to
mention squirrels or rabbits.
I think I stopped going there during all that snow that we got last
winter and then I just used to our new spot, but past Friday I finally
went back there.
As I mentioned last Friday we started having some biting issues during
retrieves. During our Saturday class Margot wanted demo to everyone
how to handle the it, but of course Brandy refused to provide an
opportunity, so I had to live with just instructions for the future.
As we were approaching the area, I saw the fox standing there, we were
kind of far and Brandy was too busy with picking the potty spot and I
guess smell didn't reach her yet.
By the time we hit the spot fox dissapeared by the smell was really
strong for her. Brandy was all trembling with the excitement . I
didn't want to waste any time , put her on the sit stay and tossed the
dumbbell. She was so consumed by the smell that not only she didn't
notice the command, but also didn't put up any fight during
correction, but one correction was sufficient. After that she was
quite frantic, but did the retrieves.
After 3 successful retrieves I let her to pick up the fox track and
follow it for a bit. When we reached the woods Brandy started
frantically running back left to right and right to left at the end of
a longe line, so I called her and we did few more retrieves. Retrieves
were fine but her fronts are almost non-existent on a good day, now I
had a real hard time getting her straight. Also tomorrow I will need
to remember to grub my throwchains with me as her recall under such a
strong distraction was really bad also.

Sent from my iPhone

Today I broke down and bought myself a small video camera so of course I wanted to play with it. Below are quick clips of Brandy doing a broad jump (40") and retrieve over the high jump. Right now the jump is 16" high, but I should be able to take it to full 20" by the end of the week.20" is what the final height will be.

one step forward two steps back

Tonight we went to our practice place at school. Our usual spot was taken by some people with dogs so I set myself a little bit further but not too far from them. They were a very good distraction for Brandy, but unfortunately they were a distraction for me too. I do not feel comfortable working in front of them, but I guess I need to get over it.
In addition Charlotte was very cranky and was driving me crazy, poor girl has a red swollen, itchy face and was really miserable, so I can hardly blame her for being that way. But this caused me to be kind of up tight and I am sure Brandy sensed it, plus we were short on time.
We went through jumping and then worked on heeling. Charlotte was calling the pattern, that made her a bit happier. We also worked on figure 8, both heeling and figure 8 were kind of bad, I guess partially because of the dogs and I am sure partially because of me.
We worked on retrieve on the flat, and once I had to correct Brandy - she threw a fight but we managed. Later I put out different items for her to retrieve as we didn't practice it for a while and everything went well but she blew me off on the last item - the metal spoon. When I tried to correct her she started growling and attempting to correct my hand. Here is my problem, I didnt feel comfortable taking care of the issue in front of those people as she starts screeching even before I touch her - such an actress, so after Brandy brought that spoon back I headed towards the near by trees away from their eyes. After a bit of a fight she brought the spoon back and we repeated it couple more times until it was clean. When we came home and I put Charlotte to bed, I picked up a small metal lock and asked her to fetch it, of course we did an introduction first, everything went well.

I pissed Brandy off this morning! We were working retrieve as the deer
was running in the near by woods, Brandy ignored me, I corrected her.
The other several attempts were good but the deer was long gone by
then, however I notice that distraction hangs in the air for a while
even if the cause of it had disappeared .
For some reason after that I have decided to work with my keys. I tossed them out and sent Brandy. When she arrived to the keys she started sniffing the ground around
them and then actually stepped away from them still sniffing the
ground. I jerked her back and made an attempt to deliver a correction.
As soon as I started working on the collar she strayed twisting and
hissing and trying to get away from me towards the keys, however I
was determined to make a correction this time. After a quick
correction she lunged forward and I let her, but as soon as she got to
the keys she started sniffing the ground again, so I jerked her back
and attempted to get the correction. This time she was screeching and
hissing even more and even made an attempt to get her teeth
onto me. This time we managed to get together almost to the keys,
when she managed to get away from me, she grabbed the keys and
delivered them to me. On the next retrieve everything went pretty
smooth. I did one or two more key retrieves, throwing them on top of
the old, dry pile of leaves and that went well also, so we stopped.
This evening before Anya's concert I stopped at home to for a few min, the weather was so good that I had to really restrain myself from working Brandy today, although I would not have had time anyway. Hopefully tomorrow I will have a chance. I was trying to chill or rather enjoy a bit of sun on the back yard, watching Brandy hopping around like a bunny. When she does that I wish we had a real yard and not a tiny bit, so she can enjoy chasing rabbits there. Brandy was standing in front of me mybe 6-8 feet away and I suddenly decided to give her a down command, I had no leash on her, but I was ready to step in and use the tab on her collar in case I would need a correction, to my great surprise the down came swiftly and she folded nicely back without any front movement. All that time I was trying to make her to do it and I was totally unsuccessful and here we go! Not sure how I will get it out of her again, she probably was standin naturally and nothing was stopping her from folding back. I guess I just keep on working on the stand and keep on doing what I was doing, so hopefully it will sink in eventually.
Today I was so bored at work! There is nothin worse than being stuck at work with nothing to do and knowing that at home I could be doing so many fun things, like training Brandy for example! I would have probably found a way to sneak out early and work her a little bit, but I think she really needed a day off and today was a good day for it.
I am thinking that I really would like to add pictures to the blog and I would like to start videotaping our sessions, I bet it would be very useful to go back an see things. I have a nice photo camera, I just can't bring myself to spend time uploading those pictures, I am really bad with getting pictures off the card.
Where the video camera is concerned I want to buy the flip camera (HD). they seem kind of neat, but I need to save money. My allowance is $40 a week and the camera on amazon is $160, it will take me all summer to save for one, and then it will be too cold for me to go out to do something like this. Too bad I didn't think about before mothers day:-( Now I need to worry about Alex's birthday and fathers day instead of my camera. Oh well, I guess I should suck it up and use the one we have, althouh it will require a tape and not as small as the flip one.

This morning I decided to change our location for retrieve and moved to our old place by the woods in hope for more distractions. I am not really happy with the retrieve as Brandy seems kind of slow. When we were going back, the dog showed up in the nearby backyard and started barking at us, so I took the opportunity to make another attempt on the retrieve, unfortunately by the time we got closer to the fence, maybe 40 feet away, the dog disappeared into the house. However Brandy was still distracted and slightest hesitation on her end provided me with an opportunity for correction. The next attempt was much faster.
This afternoon I decided to work on the jumps and other stuff near the house. Surprise again, couple kids playing nearby and a guy cleaning his car provided for enough distractions to make it interesting. In addition we caught a glimpse of the poodle and another neighbor walking a rat-dog during the broad jump, that was nice.
After jumps I decided to do some heeling with halts alone the fence line of the single family houses. One of the yards had another small yuppie dog that decided to bark at us. After few more halts I decided to work on downs as I had such a great distraction and then I remembered about the retrieve, the opportunity seemed perfect, but my dumbbell was left by the jumps. When I came back with the dumbbell, I found that the dog was locked in the house - damn it! No luck with the retrieve and barking dogs situation, next time I should remember to grab the dumbbell with me:-(
After we came back to the jumps we worked a bit on about turns and heeling. I noticed during Monday's run through that I am taking a large step after about turn, forcing the correction, so I decided to try taking a much smaller first step that is made by my left foot as last part of the about turn and it worked much better, I think.
Brandy was jumping 12" yesterday and today and we made 20 jumps, so I wanted to try making it to 14" before we leave, I know I know, I am impatient, but I wanted to give it a try. I noticed that Brandy was brushing the jump on the way out, she wasn't hitting it with her legs but something was touching it to make a soft sound, but on the way back she was clearing it just fine. I thought that the problem might be the fact that I am too close to the jump so I moved a little bit back, but it didn't help. I decided to stop after the two tries, maybe she is too tired as we were jumping for a while although we were taking short breaks in between, I'll try again on Friday and we'll see how it goes.

One more victory

I think I can claim one more victory that is related to my dog's aggression. For some bizarre reason every time my dog would get into the fight with another dog my daughter would be by my side. This must've been really bad luck because I always was insisting on walking the dog alone as it would give us "our time" without worrying about anyone else. 

As traumatic as it was for me, and I am not a wimp, watching my dog attacking another dog, I can't even imaging how 7 year old must've felt then. For two years my daughter would become hysterical any time we would consider taking Brandy to public or camping.

When I started going to Margot for private lessons she agreed that it would be a good idea to bring my girl with me. Every saturday I would load my girl into the car crying hysterically terrified that Brandy will destroy Margot's yorkie, then she would be sitting on the bench in Margot's yard quietly crying through the half of the lesson.  

Gradually it was becoming better, and I stopped thinking about her past behavior as much, but last night I finally realized just how much progressed we had made, when on our way from the class she was telling me about how important it is for her to go to the class, that she is trying to pay careful attention to what Margot is saying to everyone, so that when she grows up and gets her own dog she will know exactly what to do:-) My thoughts went back to the class that we just had. The most of the class the leash spent on the floor dragging behind my dog rather than in my hand and not a single time I've heard my daughter's terrified scream - "mama what are you doing?!"

I think I can scratch one more thing of my "to do list" :-)

Retrieve

Boy, it was a very long time since my last post. At the beginning of our training with Margot I started my training blog where I was making entries almost daily which left me no time for posting here. Hopefully now it will change, out training blog is closed and I have a strong desire to continue keeping the training diary as long as I have something to write about. At the beginning of the training daily blogging was easy and almost addictive, now, after we have finished with basic training I ran out of the ideas to write about.
This past Saturday we started working on the retrieve. I was waiting for this opportunity for at least two years. I don not know if all Kerries are like this or it's just mine but she has no desire to retrieve what so ever. The only time she will chase the ball is after I give her a bath, then she might chase the ball for about 5-10 min, but the ball never gets back into my hand, instead I have to chase after her to take it to throw it again. Oh, all those fun things that I could do with the dog that can retrieve were absolutely out of my reach. When I asked my previous trainer to help me to teach my dog to retrieve, I was told that we should wait until her sits are more relaxed. For a while I had those ideas of teaching her to pick up the toys and clothes that my kids leave around the house, now I am finally on the way to achieve this! Needless to say that I was all excited when I got Brandy the pretty new wooden dumbbell and a dumbbell holder. It's very important to have the correct accessories isn't it?:-)
This week all I have to do is to give the "fetch" command, open Brandy's mouth, put the dumbbell in, wait a sec, give the "give" command and take it out. Praise her a lot. Repeat this 20 times a day at least and we are done:-) You can probably guess that Brandy is not a big fan of this exercise, however she comes, jumps on the chair at "place" command and sits, even that she knows what's coming. So I think she is doing pretty good.
Last night I finally decided to introduce small distractions and took the dumbbell outside during our walk. Unfortunately, our walks take place somewhere between 9 and 10 p.m which means that it's cold and dark outside and almost no one around. Really hard to find a good distraction. However, when we were passing by someones house, I heard the dog barking inside which caught Brandy's attention and I used this as an opportunity to pull the dumbbell out and do a set of 10 fetches, will try to do the same tonight.

Longe line work

This is the video of our longe line work. As you can hear from the noises we were working next to the playground and the soccer field, in attempt to provide more distractions.

The wake up call

All the posts prior to this one was a recollection of the events of two years ago. You might want to ask me why am I writing about it now? Here is what happened two weeks ago that prompted me to start this blog.

As I wasn't able to solve Brandy's aggression issue, I fell into a management mode. In the morning I was taking her to the place where I knew I will not run into any dogs during our walk. At night due to my schedule I was walking her late in the dark and dogs weren't much of the problem either. Even if we run into a dog I would pull her to the side and make her sit, while the other dog walks by.

The weekend before labor day our neighborhood was organizing a clean up. As my husband was part of the group behind it he was helping to place the signs around the community and I decided to tag alone. This was probably my first walk around the community in day light in two years. As we were attaching a sign I saw two dogs running towards us. Both were off leash. Both were corgi mix - one is a puppy, one is an older bitch - very dominant, very out of control. While I was trying to keep puppy away from us, I lost the track of the second dog and she jumped on Brandy from behind. My foot slipped and I lost control of my dog and of course, Brandy was happy at the opportunity. My husband came to my rescue and we pulled the dogs apart and nobody got hurt, but all this made me realized that maintenance of this aggression will get me nowhere. I can try to be careful and smart about it, but at the first opportunity my dog will outsmart me and I wasn't about to let her to be put down.

I went back to the message board asking for an advice yet again. I got the same advice as usual - "you need more training", "Find a good dog trainer that can help you to read your dog better". I was reading this and thinking I can read my dog all-right. I know pretty well what's coming, but what I don't know is to what to do about it. Idea of finding another trainer was making me quite mad. So far I have spent a lot of money on trainers and yes, I had some progress in the obedience department, but the aggression issue was still untouched.

The only one thing that made me reconsider was a call from Steve Khun, a professional dog trainer who is the member of canine aggression yahoo group. The one benefit of being a member of this group is an opportunity I had to read advice that was given to people by different dog trainers. This is one of the best way to screen a dog trainer! Reading the advice that he or she gives to a person gives a very clear picture of what kind of dog trainer he or she is.

It happened that Steve was one of the people on that board that I was willing to listen to. He convinced me to give Margot Woods a call. I have to say that this wasn't the first time I have heard her name, other people have recommended her, but by then I just started working with Andrew and wasn't ready to switch. So after thinking it over I have decided to at least speak with her. After our conversation I was invited to a 2 hour evaluation. The fact that it was evaluation and not a demo, sounded appealing so I have decided to give this a shot. After all this is only two hours and I am not signing my life away. So this Thursday, I am going to meet her.

The court

The real trouble

I do not think I will ever forget the labor day of 2007. The day was promising to turn out great! I had a hair cut, took my kids to a butterfly show and was on my way to meet my husband and spend the rest of the day in Annapolis. 

The day turned around when on the way back from the butterfly show my car broke down, the engine over heated and I was stuck on the gas station on the hot day with two kids waiting for my husband to come and rescue us. By the time we made home, we could forget about our planned trip. I was super stressed out due to the car trouble, trying to guess how badly the engine was damaged and how much it will cost us to fix it. As I was sitting on the front steps of my house, with the dog by my side, trying to compose myself, my 7 year old daughter was nagging on me to let her to hold the dog. I said "no" over and over but I finally broke down and let her. Stupid uh? yeah. Maybe those who have 7 year old would understand why I did what I did. But, the rule was broken, "no" turned into "yes" and the punishment followed shortly. 

Please understand that after my meeting with George, I really felt that there is no danger in doing what I was about to do. George told me not to let my dog near other dogs, but the street was deserted and I was on my front yard and there was no dog in sight.

A minute after I passed the leash into my daughter's hands and turned away for a second my neighbor came out with their toy poodle. This wasn't a dog that we never met before. In an instant my dog lunched an attack on that poodle, needles to say that my daughter couldn't stop her from going where she wanted to go. 

So here comes another vet bill, plus I had to pay 3 days worth of the owners salary as she twisted her ankle when she got tangled by the leash and couldn't go to work for 3 days. On top of that two days later the animal control officer was knocking on our door. 

Just because my dog is full of love towards the people, nobody who meets her think that this dog has an aggression issue. The animal control officer wasn't an exception to it. He was very nice and explained to us that our neighbor is planning on submitting an affidavit and if they do that we will be facing an additional $1000 fine on top of what we had already paid about $1700. So he suggested that we should go talk to them and make it go away. However he still gave us a warning and labeled Brandy a potentially dangerous dog.

For those of you who wonders about the amount of fine here is a break down:

$500 for the unwanted contact. Yes, if you think that it's very cute when your dog comes to people on the street without their invitation, if the person is scared of animals he can report you to the animal control and you will be charged with unwanted contact.

$250 for the trespassing - because my dog had to get on their yard to get to them.

$250 for the off leash animal.

I called George the next day in panic. To my surprise the response was something alone those lines: "well, what did you expect, the dog is not trained well". What happened to the "great job" and "your dog is not aggressive"?! I asked if he thought that if I spay her it would resolve the aggression issue. Thank God he said that it's not guaranteed. So I have decided that I better to spend my money on training, but with someone else.

I went back to the aggression board describing the incident, but I was told that George is a very good trainer, and that even best trainers cannot with 100% certainty know whether the dog will bite or not. That might be true, but what bothers me the most and what I cannot comprehend to this day, and even more now, knowing what I know about the state laws regarding the dangerous dogs - is how the experienced dog trainer can walk away so easily knowing that the dog had already done the damage, even if he believes that it was defense driven, and if I were reported to the authorities back then, the next bite could cost the dog it's life.

The training

Uncle George came to my house for the evaluation/training session couple of days after the incident. I have told him that I was following Lou Castle's articles to train Brandy. George said that he doesn't see eye to eye with Lou, but by then it wasn't a surprise to me as I had figured out that Lou brushed many dog trainers the wrong way. I do not really know what the matter was or who was right or wrong and to be honest I don't really care. The one thing I liked about Lou's articles was the fact that they made sense to me and I like things that make sense, but I was  willing to keep an opened mind and give a shot to the new approach explained to me by George. 

The biggest difference was that we didn't use the continuous button anymore, instead, we switched to the "nick" button. For example, on recall, instead of releasing continuous button as soon as the dog would start moving towards me, we would use "nick" button all the way till the dog comes, that was suppose to encourage the dog. Somehow deep inside me I didn't quite understood, how the prickling of the collar would be motivating, but so far I was willing to go on with it.  Then George called his dog and used it as a distraction while Brandy and I were walking around them in a circle. I was told to stop using the word "here" as a  recall command as it sounds too close to "heel" and will make the dog confused so I should start using "come" instead. 

At the end of the session George said that I did a good job overall, that Brandy wasn't a tiny bit aggressive, that the aggressive incident was a defensive bite and that I should be careful and not let her near other dogs without carefully assessing the situation and that I should give him a call again if I wanted to teach Brandy some new tricks. 

Now before I move any further, I have to say that after following Lou's instructions Brandy had a very good recall, she would forget a deer or a rabbit if I call her, but to get there the "here" command had to be proofed with distractions. Well, George forgot to mention to me that if I switch the command I should start all over again. Yes, I should have probably be smart enough, done what I have done by then in the training area, to figure it out but I was so happy and  proud with myself after George told me that I have nothing to worry about and that I did a great job, that I simply didn't think about it.

Begining of the troubles

She was always a dominant one while playing with other dogs, this was obvious from a very beginning and I liked that quality in her. With all the difficulties the terrier brings into your life there is a plenty of joy to compensate with.
As she was getting older I started noticing some first signs of aggressive behavior - crazy barking while passing other dogs we'd met on walks, however when she had a chance to play with them I did not see any signs of aggression.
One morning in June of 2007 I was walking my dog when I ran into a man and a yorkie. This really wasn't an unusual situation as we would run into many people and dogs on our walks all the time. As the person and the dog approached and the dog started their ceremonial sniffing of each other I sensed the tension between them, but before I had a chance to do something about it, one of them growled and a fight started. I still cannot tell you who initiated it. Needless to say that when 30 lbs dog gets into a fight with a 5lbs one the result is pretty bad. This was such a shock that  I have decided that this is a time for an intervention by a professional. Brandy was about 18 months old then. Luckily for me and her, the yorkie recovered quickly and because the yorkie's owner and I both felt at fault, he didn't report me to the authorities, but I had an expensive vet bill to pay.
Now, how would you go about finding a professional? I went online and found a yahoo group dedicated to dog aggression. The answer to me was: " go to dogpro.org and find a trainer", and so I did. I have to say that I found that it extremely hard to evaluate a dog trainer, and I was mistaken that every person listed on that site is highly qualified to train my dog. Every dog trainer you would fine online would have a nice website with plenty of testimonials from their clients saying how he/she was able to transformed their Fido into a perfect dog. So picked one that seemed qualified and made my call.

Puppyhood

I am looking back in the past trying to figure out what I have missed that caused us to end up where we currently are. I wish I have started this blog 3 years ago when all those little details were still clear in my memory, but unfortunately they are long gone.
Brandy was a very happy puppy. We have plenty of dogs in the neighborhood and she was happy to play with any of them. Before we got her I did some reading about the breed and although I have read that the terriers are independent thinkers and tend to be dog aggressive I never fully understood what it means until she was about 18 months old. So at the beginning I was a bit cautious about letting her play with other dogs but seeing how well they get alone I stopped worrying about all that stuff. This all changed one day.
Also from my research I found out that obedience training is strongly recommended for this breed. I really did want to get this right so I started looking for a dog class. The problem is that although I did plenty of reading about the breed, I hardly did any reading about dog training and had very little idea what the well trained dog really means. That and also money consideration made me looking for dog classes at pet stores. Just before I signed up for the session the breeder suggested to me to buy an e-collar and pointed me to the set of articles that describes how to use it. And so I did. Everything was going pretty well. First we worked on the recall and she did have a great recall, she would turn in midair when I call her, even if rabbits or deer were right under her nose. We worked on sit, down and hill commands and I thought we had all we needed, as I wasn't going to do compete in obedience trials. Thinking about it now, I'd say we could have been OK if I just had another spaniel, but as I found out terriers are quite a different story.

Introduction

There is an old Russian cartoon about a "Blue Puppy". If you were to ask my parents they would tell you that when I was about one year old, the only story I would want to hear over and over is the "Blue Puppy".
My dad is a hunter. When I was about 7 years old we got our first dog - "Russian Spaniel". It's a mid size working breed. I always loved dogs, at a very early age I new names of most of dog breeds. I remember there was a book in our house about breeds of hunting dogs and among them there was a picture of a Kerry Blue Terrier. Right then I was intrigued by the word "blue" in the name of the breed. When my parents got divorced my dad took our dog with him and for a few years we didn't have a dog in the house.
When I turned 18 my mom and I started talking about getting another dog. We discussed few breeds and she wasn't very excited about Kerry blues. One day I came home and found a cutest American cocker spaniel puppy, later when we came to USA I took that dog with me. Soon after I moved to the US I got married, my husband had terrible allergies to my cocker so unfortunately she had to stay with my mom and grand parents and couldn't come to leave with us.
My husband loves dogs and other animals ( although he would deny it) very much and it was very hard for us not being able to own a dog. When we finally bought our house we tried fish and parakeets but it could not come even close to owning a dog. One day we were at a party where the host had a Shih-Tzu. Of course we started talking about dogs and allergies and the owner mentioned that she thinks that Shih-tzus are hypoallergenic. My husband was quick to add that he doesn't think he is having an allergic reaction to the dogs in their house. I wasn't about to own a Shih-tzu, I wanted a bigger dog that I can take jogging, hiking and other places and not the dog that I will have to carry around, so I started my research on "hypoallergenic" dogs and people with allergies owning some of those dogs.
On the list of "hypoallergenic" breeds was a Kerry Blue Terrier. But of course my husband was not as excited as I was about the breed. He wanted a GSD or a pit-bull or something along those lines. After a lot of work I managed to convince him to give Kerries a shot. The next thing on my list was finding a dog. I wanted to be super cautious about bringing the dog home. I wanted to make sure that my husband would be able to live with it and we will not be facing two unpleasant options
a) return the dog
b) let my husband suffer for ever.
So I contacted Kerry Blue foundation. My hope was that maybe I could foster a dog. And do something like foster to adopt. Unfortunately they did not have any foster dogs available and I was hesitant adopting a dog without a trial. The thing about me is that I can be very indecisive. I would do my research and thinking to the point that I cannot make a decision anymore, but if decision is made I am not willing to wait much longer before putting the plan in action.
This was no different, I wasn't willing to wait a year or so for a foster dog to become available, so I looked elsewhere. Luckily for me I found what I was looking for. A breeder in PA had a dog available. Originally she kept the pup for herself, but decided that she had too many dogs already and was willing to place it. When I explained my situation to her, luckily for us, she agreed to let me keep the dog for a week, before we would make a decision to buy her. And this is how PennTerra`s Sky Reflection aka Mudpie aka Brandy came to our house. And here I was an owner of 7 months old "blue puppy".