working on the retrieve

Here is a couple of quick clips that I made over July 4 th weekend. Because of the dog aggression issues, I am always interested in finding dogs that I can use a training aid. This particular dog is always out on the back yard and likes to bark a lot, unfortunately the owners started locking him up when we show up, don't really know why:-(
Another problem with this dog that by now it stopped being a good distraction because Brandy simply ignores it, my guess is the big chunk of it is due to the fact that the dog is barking because he wants to come and play and not showing any signs of aggression.
I forgot to bring my tripod with me, so I decided that I will not video the toss and the camera would shake too much anyway, instead I would throw the dumbbell first and then turn on the camera.
My second goal was to start laying foundation for scent discrimination work for Utility, that is why I was specifically aiming for the tall grass.

We did some torturing of Brandy to make sure she will not jump at the small dogs that people love to carry around. She absolutely hates it , and it was a big problem few times.
http://sanityshome.blogspot.com/2010/07/more-history-of-beast.html
I love the video. I find it's amazing to see how she is turning away from the temptation to make sure she can control herself.

another match

This past Sunday we went to another match.
It's interesting how my impression of the match different from someone watching the recording. After we were done, I thought it was terrible, but watching the video makes me think we did pretty good. The set up was perfect - just what I was afraid of when thinking of the real thing. The space was tight, and owners didn't care where their dog sticks it's nose. If not for the toy that Brandy had to carry, I would have been in real trouble. On the ring next to us was a papillion doing an open run through. If you pay attention you can see how Brandy's body language changed at the end of the on leash heeling, when papillion was doing the jump, so I get a chance to correct her, and few more times until I thought I got her attention.
During stays, on the ring next to us was a tiny boston terrier, doing utility, so Brandy's head was following the dog, but she never broke her stay. However, I was pretty disappointing with Sit/stay, I didn't feel it was solid enough. Brandy was trying to get to know dogs next to her - not cool! I guess I need to find another match to go to ASAP, as I got ahead from Margot to enter Brandy in trials at the end of august. I hope it's not too late and the registration is still opened.

back to the agression problem

Although I have my sight set on the CD title before the end of the year, I still have a lot of work to do where aggression is concerned.
And a week and a half ago, I was reminded yet again that I cannot forget myself and keep the eye on Brandy at all times. The thing about the terriers that once that button is pressed that turns "cold" terrier into the "hot" terrier you cannot undo it. you can manage it, control it, but you cannot completely erase it. So when you are dealing with terriers it's very important to keep them "cold". Brandy on the other hand is smoking hot.
We spend lots of work last august on teaching Brandy that attacking other dogs will not be tolerated in any way. Ellie and Rugby were two brave ones that we used as baits. To read about it more go to http://sanityshome.blogspot.com look at the august of 2009 to 5 or so posts that called "taming of the beast".
Brandy was doing pretty good where small dogs are concerned, especially with Ellie and Rugby. They could walk under her nose and she would politely turn away. That doesn't mean of course that I could live her out of sight with either one of them.
However, Brandy still has one big issue - she cannot help herself when one of toy breed dogs is being held in the arms by their owners. Brandy is not the only dog who has that problem that I know of, so my advice to the owners of small dogs: if you have to pick up your dog into your arms in presence of another dog that you do not know, do not walk in close proximity to that dog.
As it became obvious that this matter cannot be ignored any further, we had to do some extra work to correct it. One of the things we did were using a retrieve to teach two dogs to work together. To see what we did, go to http://sanityshome.blogspot.com and look up post dated June 28 2010.
Although this doesn't address "dog in the arms" problem explicitly this is just one of the steps of the rehabilitation program. And please, do not attempt this at home without the help of the professional trainer.:-)

The match

So yesterday we went to our vry first match. If we were at trialts we would have NQed, as not only I forgot to give Brandy a stand command I also stepped off with the left foot, really can't blame her for following me. Otherwise, except her lagging on the fast off leash heeling it wasn't too bad. IT was 96 degrees yesterday, so she probably decided that it was too much to ask of her by making her run after me. I guess we still have things to work on.
For some reason the video is not embedded correctly in the blog as part of it cut off, if you want to see it in proper format, please go directly to youtube, until I figureout how to fix it.

This morning we worked a little bit on the retrieve and then we did a run through. I figured that at 6:30 am I can let her off leash near the woods as I never ran into anyone there. I feel that I need to work as much as I can with her outside completely off leash. I do not dare to do it in public yet, but woods with all the sounds and smells provide some distraction, better that nothing I guess. I just wish I could get deer and foxes into my audience:-)

Tuesdays Anya has tutoring so I pick up Brandy on the way so we could work while we are waiting for Anya. There is small street mall near by , back facing to us, and one of the stores has a rooster. I am not really sure why they have a rooster, but I think they might have it as a pet as once I saw a girl sitting on the stump and petting the rooster. Anyway, I've been trying to catch a moment when the rooster is out so I can work with Brandy, but was unsuccessful so far. But today, as I've heard the rooster we stopped what we were working on and went to see it.

The rooster was sitting in the box with the head sticking out:-) For some reason it wasn't even trying to get out, which was very convenient for us as we didn't have to worry about running rooster.

First, we worked on the retrieve. I started with tossing the dumbbell to the side of the rooster, maybe 6 feet away from it. After that I tossed it directly to the rooster again, about 6 feet away. We were working on the leash as I didn't dare to use the longe line ( didn't want to have to pay for the new rooster). And that was a smart move, this time Brandy couldn't stand it, passed the dumbbell and headed for the bird, got snatched back and corrected.

On the next attempt she was so eager to get to the dumbbell that she threw a temper tantrum when I didn't let her to anticipate the command. On the next toss dumbbell landed may 3 feet away from the box and Brandy quickly delivered it to me.

Next we worked on the heeling. We started with heeling about 6 feet away from the bird, halting and doing slow pace as we were passing the bird. Then we did about turn and Brandy ended up on the side close to the box. We did the same pattern on the way back. Then we moved closer and did the same thing 3 feet away from the bird. Brandy did very good job with the heeling, but we didn't dare to do it off leash (ha-ha). All this was observed by the owners of the rooster and they were quite entertained.

Before we left, we did a sit/stay about 6 feet away, although it seems more on the picture. I didn't dare to come closer as I didn't want Brandy to eat it while I was trying to take the picture.

Brandy is doing sit/stay near the rooster.

After we were done with the rooster, we went back to the car and worked on jumping. After I increased the distance between me and the broad jump we had a bit of a set back. So I started by doing brake away with the motion cue, then we did it without the motion cue.
I didn't even try to stay and turn as I didn't think it would have gone well.

The high jump went pretty well.

Next we worked on heeling. For the off leash heeling I attached the string to her, but I really didn't like holding it. I feel that it's on the way, it's touching her legs no matter how I do it and it also stops me from moving my arms naturally, so I simply dropped it on the grass. I am sure that she can feel 10 ft cord dragging behind her, but I felt that it's still better then me holding it. I figured that id something I will have a chance to step on it. Am I wrong?

We also worked on the "come" and fronts. We really need more work on the finish as she constantly over spins when she is off leash.

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.