Invited to visit friends in the mountains about three hours to our west, this afternoon I packed up our frozen pheasant in dry ice and Lumi and I headed out in the van with various family members. After settling in the cabin, we went out to the snow-covered hillside to try our hand at pheasant retrieving for the first time.
AN EASY TIME OF IT
As with the duck Lumi learned to retrieve a couple of days ago, her initial reaction to the pheasant was essentially lack of interest, and that meant another shaping session. Unfortunately, we didn't have a creek I could throw her dummy into for reinforcement, but on the other hand, we did have some pretty deep snow banks that seemed to appeal to Lumi's sense of excitement.
That turned out to be all we needed, and it didn't take much time. In fewer than ten reps, Lumi was retrieving the thrown pheasant on the run, and within another five, she was carrying it all the way around to left heel before I took it from her.
MOTIVATED
Lumi showed me that she was enjoying herself, and not merely working for extrinsic reinforcement, in at least two ways. The first was that she broke her "wait" a couple of times when I threw the pheasant as Lumi sat at heel. While I wasn't happy to see her break, I was pleased that the thrown pheasant called to her so strongly so soon in the training.
It only took a couple of restrained reps to repair the "wait". Perhaps another trainer would have been more adamant that Lumi hold her "wait" every time, but we're out there for fun, and that's what we were having. I was comfortable in this case loosening up on one behavior a couple of times to enable high value auto-reinforcement of another.
An even better indication of Lumi's attitude about our work was when I thought, after about three continuous reps of retrieving the bird, that Lumi might like to play a little tug with her dummy before we resumed. I whipped the dummy out of my pocket by its rope and swung it past Lumi's face, fully expecting her to go flying after it as she typically does. Instead, she just stood there grinning and panting, looking back and forth from me to the pheasant. "Let's play with the dummy later, Daddy. I want to chase the bird again!"
A LITTLE FREESTYLE
That was it for our outdoor activities today, but I thought I'd mention that Lumi and I also got in a little freestyle training in the evening. The cabin has an empty carpeted room, and we used it to work on backing together with Lumi in right heel.
Many freestyle dogs flare in this move, and Lumi is especially inclined to because I've stepped on her, even fallen on her, occasionally when practicing. When I use our hand cue for "get it in", Lumi's next option is to back up quicker than I'm moving in order to get out of my way. Besides putting us out of alignment, this makes the backing move difficult to perform at the controlled pace appropriate to our style of choreography.
The solution I came up with a few days ago is to use the clicker and train the move as a distinct two-step chain. The first step is for Lumi to remain in a standing "wait" as I take a step back, coming even with her lower back. The second step is then for Lumi to back up so that she's aligned again at heel -- her withers even with my hips -- which is where the click/treat occurs.
My plan is that after we've done that chain enough times, Lumi will be able to repeat the chain over and over uncued as we seem to back up smoothly in tandem, Lumi neither flaring nor getting behind me no matter what pace I choose to back. Truth be told, I need as much practice with my footwork for this maneuver as Lumi does with her timing.
We're not at the stage of continuous backing yet, but after a few sessions, Lumi and I are performing the chain in short groups of repetitions better and better. Lumi's looking sharp, engaged, and enthusiastic about the game. Now all I have to do is avoid falling on her again.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Monday, March 5, 2007
The Hound and the Mitt
As faithful readers of DogTrek will know, Lumi and I are in the middle of a shaping challenge proposed by Sue Rivers: training our dogs to retrieve an article, cued by seeing the article's mate.
Here's a video of our current stage of training in this challenge, after roughly a month:
As you can see in the video, there are two articles ("targets") on the floor, in this case a mitten and a chess piece representing the Hound of the Baskervilles. With Lumi a few feet away, I hold the mate of one of the articles directly between the two targets and cue "match". The correct response is for Lumi to pick the hot target up in her mouth and "hand" it to me.
THE PLAN
At this stage in the training, I am as careful as possible to give Lumi no information other than the mate itself to help her make the selection. I use no pattern of when I change hot targets -- sometimes after one rep, sometimes after two -- and I try to move the mate on a plane exactly bisecting the two targets, giving no hint in the mate's movement which target is being "aimed" at.
My intent is to click the moment Lumi makes the correct selection, but in order to discourage testing -- Is this it? Is this it? -- I don't want to click if she touches the article without picking it up. In this video, I get trapped at one point by clicking and then realizing she didn't actually pick up the chess piece. It's the usual wrong-click dilemma. You don't want to dilute the meaning of the click by not following with a treat, but you also don't want to reinforce the incorrectly clicked version of a behavior any further by feeding. I chose to wait for the behavior to be finished and then fed.
Oh, you can't see it in the video, but for each rep, I have a piece of cheese in my mouth. A split second after I click, I lean over and Lumi takes the cheese from my mouth with her sweet little tongue and lips. You might not want to see that.
TARGET BIAS
Although Lumi has a high percentage rate of correct responses (10 for 11 in this video), she is still not perfect in this skill, and I don't know if she ever will be. Part of my goal as a trainer is trying to understand what's confusing her at any moment and training past each particular difficulty. In this case, the biggest issue seemed to be preference for one article, what you might call "target bias". We've seen this often before in this project.
What happens is that in any particular session, one of the articles tends to be easier for Lumi than the other. In this video, she was more confident about the mitten, although when the session is over, she's under the impression that I'm going to let her disappear somewhere to chew on the chess piece.
So Lumi doesn't necessarily like the mitten better, she just got stuck on it in this session for some reason. We work with about eight different articles, and I can't always predict which one she'll get stuck on for a particular session. I try to select two targets of nearly identical attraction to her, and the better I do at that, the easier the session is for her.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
It's interesting, and for me dismaying, to hear the sound of one's own voice. In listening to the sound track on this video, I sound neither as thrilled as I actually am when Lumi gets a match correct, not as indifferent as I actually am when Lumi gets one wrong. Even more disconcerting is the distracted-sounded "I love you" to DW Renee as she's leaving the house near the end.
All I can say is, don't believe your ears. My heart is filled with love for my wife and my dog, my voice just doesn't show it very well at times.
One more thing to work on.
Here's a video of our current stage of training in this challenge, after roughly a month:
As you can see in the video, there are two articles ("targets") on the floor, in this case a mitten and a chess piece representing the Hound of the Baskervilles. With Lumi a few feet away, I hold the mate of one of the articles directly between the two targets and cue "match". The correct response is for Lumi to pick the hot target up in her mouth and "hand" it to me.
THE PLAN
At this stage in the training, I am as careful as possible to give Lumi no information other than the mate itself to help her make the selection. I use no pattern of when I change hot targets -- sometimes after one rep, sometimes after two -- and I try to move the mate on a plane exactly bisecting the two targets, giving no hint in the mate's movement which target is being "aimed" at.
My intent is to click the moment Lumi makes the correct selection, but in order to discourage testing -- Is this it? Is this it? -- I don't want to click if she touches the article without picking it up. In this video, I get trapped at one point by clicking and then realizing she didn't actually pick up the chess piece. It's the usual wrong-click dilemma. You don't want to dilute the meaning of the click by not following with a treat, but you also don't want to reinforce the incorrectly clicked version of a behavior any further by feeding. I chose to wait for the behavior to be finished and then fed.
Oh, you can't see it in the video, but for each rep, I have a piece of cheese in my mouth. A split second after I click, I lean over and Lumi takes the cheese from my mouth with her sweet little tongue and lips. You might not want to see that.
TARGET BIAS
Although Lumi has a high percentage rate of correct responses (10 for 11 in this video), she is still not perfect in this skill, and I don't know if she ever will be. Part of my goal as a trainer is trying to understand what's confusing her at any moment and training past each particular difficulty. In this case, the biggest issue seemed to be preference for one article, what you might call "target bias". We've seen this often before in this project.
What happens is that in any particular session, one of the articles tends to be easier for Lumi than the other. In this video, she was more confident about the mitten, although when the session is over, she's under the impression that I'm going to let her disappear somewhere to chew on the chess piece.
So Lumi doesn't necessarily like the mitten better, she just got stuck on it in this session for some reason. We work with about eight different articles, and I can't always predict which one she'll get stuck on for a particular session. I try to select two targets of nearly identical attraction to her, and the better I do at that, the easier the session is for her.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
It's interesting, and for me dismaying, to hear the sound of one's own voice. In listening to the sound track on this video, I sound neither as thrilled as I actually am when Lumi gets a match correct, not as indifferent as I actually am when Lumi gets one wrong. Even more disconcerting is the distracted-sounded "I love you" to DW Renee as she's leaving the house near the end.
All I can say is, don't believe your ears. My heart is filled with love for my wife and my dog, my voice just doesn't show it very well at times.
One more thing to work on.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Real Duck
As Lumi and I were leaving yesterday's field training, the woman who organized it was kind enough to say we could take along a dead duck and a dead pheasant to work with at home. I chose one of each and put them in the freezer when we arrived.
BEST LAID PLANS
This morning, I thought I'd try out the training plan I had come up with. I took Lumi to one of her favorite places, a wooded park with a strong, deep stream running through it. As we walked from the van to the stream, I brought along Lumi's favorite water toy (a retrieval dummy with a tennis ball surface) and the frozen duck.
The theory was, I'd toss the dummy several times, and of course Lumi would run and grab it and come back all crazy to play tug or for me to throw it again. I'd do that a few times and then throw the duck instead of the dummy.
Tried it, didn't work. Lumi had no interest in picking up that duck. She wasn't afraid of it, but she wasn't interested in having it in her mouth.
FALSE TRAIL
OK, she needs to generalize what we're doing here, I thought. So I added a big stick/small log to the mix. Toss the dummy, yay! Toss the log, yay! Toss the dummy again, yay! Toss the duck . . . nothing. "I know what you're doing, Daddy. I just don't want to pick that thing up."
Hmm, maybe she's thinking too much, was my next idea. Instead of a retrieve, we'll play catch. So I lobbed the dummy to her, and she leaped at it and caught it and came right back for a quick game of tug, as per usual. I lobbed a small stick, and she caught that, too, then brought it back so I could toss it for her again. Lobbed the duck . . . and Lumi stepped back so that the duck could fall to the ground in front of her. She glanced at it for a second, then up at me. It was kind of comical.
CLICKERLESS CLICKER TRAINING
So much for capturing this behavior, I finally realized. We're gonna have to shape it. Too bad I don't have my clicker, but we'll make do. I assume you know what I mean by "shaping", so I won't discuss the general concept. But here's a description of how it went.
I brought the duck and the dummy over to the edge of the creek, lay the duck on a little mound, and stared at it for a few moments. Lumi knows this game, and knew exactly how to get started. She put her nose an inch or so from the bird and I shouted "Good job!" (that was our click for this exercise) and flung her dummy into the water. She leapt after it, brought it back, and we played a little tug. Then I took the dummy away from her, as though I were about to throw it in the water again.
But no, I looked at the duck again and waited a few seconds. Lumi took it in, understood what she needed to do to get what she wanted, sniffed the duck again, and then I flung the toy into the water.
RAISING CRITERIA
On the third or fourth rep, I didn't reinforce the simple sniff. After hundreds of shaping sessions, Lumi knows what that means, too. Got to try some variation, got to try harder in some way. So she put her mouth on it. "Good job!" and there goes the dummy flying into the water.
I wondered if we'd run into some barrier, but we didn't. Lumi progressed smoothly to putting her mouth around part of the wing, to dragging the bird an inch and then further, to lifting it an inch off the ground and then higher, to putting it into my hands, to retrieving it when I tossed it a yard away and then further, to retrieving it out of shallow water, and so forth.
A HUNTING DOG
Our last rep went like this. With Lumi in a sit-stay and watching me like a hawk, I walked 30 yards away through the woods and tossed the bird up in the air, so that it dropped on the ground a few feet from me. Then I ran back to Lumi, excitedly called her to left heel, and cued "go out". Off she flew. She found the bird, picked it immediately, and headed back. She accidentally dropped it at one point, got a better grip, and finished the retrieve. Good! With practice, she's teach herself how to get a solid grip the first time.
That final image of Lumi lingers in my mind. Less than an hour of meeting her first duck, she looked like an honest-to-goodness hunting dog, running toward me through the woods with real quarry in her mouth.
PHEASANT NEXT
We'll do a similar session with the poor dead pheasant at some point in the next day or two. I assume it will go even faster, but another hour wouldn't be bad.
I just have to wonder how people who don't use shaping would have solved this. How many just give up on a dog who doesn't instinctively offer the desired behavior?
BEST LAID PLANS
This morning, I thought I'd try out the training plan I had come up with. I took Lumi to one of her favorite places, a wooded park with a strong, deep stream running through it. As we walked from the van to the stream, I brought along Lumi's favorite water toy (a retrieval dummy with a tennis ball surface) and the frozen duck.
The theory was, I'd toss the dummy several times, and of course Lumi would run and grab it and come back all crazy to play tug or for me to throw it again. I'd do that a few times and then throw the duck instead of the dummy.
Tried it, didn't work. Lumi had no interest in picking up that duck. She wasn't afraid of it, but she wasn't interested in having it in her mouth.
FALSE TRAIL
OK, she needs to generalize what we're doing here, I thought. So I added a big stick/small log to the mix. Toss the dummy, yay! Toss the log, yay! Toss the dummy again, yay! Toss the duck . . . nothing. "I know what you're doing, Daddy. I just don't want to pick that thing up."
Hmm, maybe she's thinking too much, was my next idea. Instead of a retrieve, we'll play catch. So I lobbed the dummy to her, and she leaped at it and caught it and came right back for a quick game of tug, as per usual. I lobbed a small stick, and she caught that, too, then brought it back so I could toss it for her again. Lobbed the duck . . . and Lumi stepped back so that the duck could fall to the ground in front of her. She glanced at it for a second, then up at me. It was kind of comical.
CLICKERLESS CLICKER TRAINING
So much for capturing this behavior, I finally realized. We're gonna have to shape it. Too bad I don't have my clicker, but we'll make do. I assume you know what I mean by "shaping", so I won't discuss the general concept. But here's a description of how it went.
I brought the duck and the dummy over to the edge of the creek, lay the duck on a little mound, and stared at it for a few moments. Lumi knows this game, and knew exactly how to get started. She put her nose an inch or so from the bird and I shouted "Good job!" (that was our click for this exercise) and flung her dummy into the water. She leapt after it, brought it back, and we played a little tug. Then I took the dummy away from her, as though I were about to throw it in the water again.
But no, I looked at the duck again and waited a few seconds. Lumi took it in, understood what she needed to do to get what she wanted, sniffed the duck again, and then I flung the toy into the water.
RAISING CRITERIA
On the third or fourth rep, I didn't reinforce the simple sniff. After hundreds of shaping sessions, Lumi knows what that means, too. Got to try some variation, got to try harder in some way. So she put her mouth on it. "Good job!" and there goes the dummy flying into the water.
I wondered if we'd run into some barrier, but we didn't. Lumi progressed smoothly to putting her mouth around part of the wing, to dragging the bird an inch and then further, to lifting it an inch off the ground and then higher, to putting it into my hands, to retrieving it when I tossed it a yard away and then further, to retrieving it out of shallow water, and so forth.
A HUNTING DOG
Our last rep went like this. With Lumi in a sit-stay and watching me like a hawk, I walked 30 yards away through the woods and tossed the bird up in the air, so that it dropped on the ground a few feet from me. Then I ran back to Lumi, excitedly called her to left heel, and cued "go out". Off she flew. She found the bird, picked it immediately, and headed back. She accidentally dropped it at one point, got a better grip, and finished the retrieve. Good! With practice, she's teach herself how to get a solid grip the first time.
That final image of Lumi lingers in my mind. Less than an hour of meeting her first duck, she looked like an honest-to-goodness hunting dog, running toward me through the woods with real quarry in her mouth.
PHEASANT NEXT
We'll do a similar session with the poor dead pheasant at some point in the next day or two. I assume it will go even faster, but another hour wouldn't be bad.
I just have to wonder how people who don't use shaping would have solved this. How many just give up on a dog who doesn't instinctively offer the desired behavior?
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Gundog Meets Gunfire
Today, Lumi and I made a four-hour round-trip to a field training site for gundogs. Originally planned as Lumi's introduction to both real birds and real gunfire, I decided in the last few days we better just stick with seeing how Lumi does with gunfire, and then take some dead birds back with us as homework for next weekend. That turned out to be the right decision.
FIRST SHOT FIRED
Lumi was apparently the only dog there with possible sound sensitivity, and when I introduced myself to a couple of the organizers and mentioned my concern, they were naturally too busy to point me in any particular direction where Lumi and I could get far enough away so that the first gunshots fired would be sub-threshold.
Trying my best to understand the training layout, I took Lumi several hundred yards from where I surmised the guns would be fired and we began playing retrieve and tug games with one of her dummies. Lumi is quite enthusiastic about these games, and I didn't want to wear her out, but I did want her to be in mid-game when the first gunshot sounded. As luck would have it, she was just about to pick up her dummy.
Well, I think it's fair to say that, despite my best effort to make an accurate estimate of how much distance was needed, we were not sub-threshold. Lumi froze, and was completely unwilling to pick up the dummy or play in any other way.
MAKING A START
Since we were clearly too close to the gunfire after all, I moved us out another three hundred yards or so, and ran up against woods and a wire fence or we would have gone further.
There, we started worked on D&CC, first just asking for recalls, then running around in the meadow whenever a shot sounded, and finally chasing the dummy together an instant after each blast, though Lumi would still not pick up the dummy when we got to it.
This was an interesting time to me, rich in variety and nuance, but it would not be interesting to record, I think. I will mention these notes, though:
Though pleased with our progress, I was disappointed that Lumi was still unwilling to play with her dummy. The breaks between shots seemed to be around 10 minutes, so there weren't that many in an hour and a half. But Lumi clearly did not consider that area by the treeline to be any more hospitable to play than the meadow had been. So we began wandering further afield, first one direction, then the other.
Suddenly we came upon a pond hidden in the woods, complete with clumps of reed and decoys scattered here and about. Lumi's demeanor transformed the instant she saw the pond's surface glistening through the trees, and I didn't hesitate. I broke into a run, Lumi at my side, and as we approached the waterline, I tossed the dummy into the water.
I knew at the time that if Lumi didn't retrieve it, it was lost, because I sure wasn't going after it. But I was certain it wouldn't be a problem, and it wasn't. Lumi was back to her old self.
We played the rest of the morning at that pond and two others, each successively closer to the original meadow. Besides retrieving her dummy from the water, we played tug, short land retrieves, and even a little catch and tug with her soft disc.
Staying sub-threshold was not easy, and I wasn't always successful at it. First, everything is fine for a while, and you figure you can move closer. But you can't move an inch at a time or a foot at a time, because its fifty yards or more to the next good place to play. Then you think the dog is fine there, but after a few shots, you realize that she's tensing up and that you need to retreat back to more distance
Of course, we could have stayed at that pond in the trees the whole time, but we could barely hear the gunshots there. If we just wanted to play in the water, we didn't need to drive four hours to do it.
ALL'S WELL
We finally quit around noon, though gundog training continued at various locations around the facility. Lumi may have had more energy, but I was done. We stopped at one of the training stations to select two dead birds -- a duck and a pheasant -- and then we were on our way home. In the next few days, I'll see if I can get Lumi to retrieve either or both of the carcasses. That should be another interesting challenge, but she's already shown me that her issue for that training will be lack of interest, not fear.
As for gunfire, we only have one more chance to work at the same training site for the rest of the season, and that's next weekend. We'll be there, and once again we'll work on D&CC. But this time, we'll start at that pond in the woods with the clumps of reed, and the decoys scattered here and about.
FIRST SHOT FIRED
Lumi was apparently the only dog there with possible sound sensitivity, and when I introduced myself to a couple of the organizers and mentioned my concern, they were naturally too busy to point me in any particular direction where Lumi and I could get far enough away so that the first gunshots fired would be sub-threshold.
Trying my best to understand the training layout, I took Lumi several hundred yards from where I surmised the guns would be fired and we began playing retrieve and tug games with one of her dummies. Lumi is quite enthusiastic about these games, and I didn't want to wear her out, but I did want her to be in mid-game when the first gunshot sounded. As luck would have it, she was just about to pick up her dummy.
Well, I think it's fair to say that, despite my best effort to make an accurate estimate of how much distance was needed, we were not sub-threshold. Lumi froze, and was completely unwilling to pick up the dummy or play in any other way.
MAKING A START
Since we were clearly too close to the gunfire after all, I moved us out another three hundred yards or so, and ran up against woods and a wire fence or we would have gone further.
There, we started worked on D&CC, first just asking for recalls, then running around in the meadow whenever a shot sounded, and finally chasing the dummy together an instant after each blast, though Lumi would still not pick up the dummy when we got to it.
This was an interesting time to me, rich in variety and nuance, but it would not be interesting to record, I think. I will mention these notes, though:
- It was gratifying that, even unwilling to retrieve, Lumi's recall remained strong during this period.
- I was able to be somewhat objective in measuring Lumi's progress during this hour and a half. Since I couldn't use play for the counter-conditioning, I used food, and had three different kinds of treats with me. At the beginning of the process, Lumi would only accept one of the three kinds. By the end of this work near the trees, she was happy to accept all three.
- Lumi is not a dog who leans on people (including me), but for this one time, Lumi would lean against me as we stood together waiting for the next gunshot. Based on that, and also how Lumi has acted the rest of the day, it almost seems as though this experience has brought Lumi closer to me in a way, perhaps less independent than she usually is. A part of me admires her independence, but I have to admit that I like it when she wants to be close even better.
Though pleased with our progress, I was disappointed that Lumi was still unwilling to play with her dummy. The breaks between shots seemed to be around 10 minutes, so there weren't that many in an hour and a half. But Lumi clearly did not consider that area by the treeline to be any more hospitable to play than the meadow had been. So we began wandering further afield, first one direction, then the other.
Suddenly we came upon a pond hidden in the woods, complete with clumps of reed and decoys scattered here and about. Lumi's demeanor transformed the instant she saw the pond's surface glistening through the trees, and I didn't hesitate. I broke into a run, Lumi at my side, and as we approached the waterline, I tossed the dummy into the water.
I knew at the time that if Lumi didn't retrieve it, it was lost, because I sure wasn't going after it. But I was certain it wouldn't be a problem, and it wasn't. Lumi was back to her old self.
We played the rest of the morning at that pond and two others, each successively closer to the original meadow. Besides retrieving her dummy from the water, we played tug, short land retrieves, and even a little catch and tug with her soft disc.
Staying sub-threshold was not easy, and I wasn't always successful at it. First, everything is fine for a while, and you figure you can move closer. But you can't move an inch at a time or a foot at a time, because its fifty yards or more to the next good place to play. Then you think the dog is fine there, but after a few shots, you realize that she's tensing up and that you need to retreat back to more distance
Of course, we could have stayed at that pond in the trees the whole time, but we could barely hear the gunshots there. If we just wanted to play in the water, we didn't need to drive four hours to do it.
ALL'S WELL
We finally quit around noon, though gundog training continued at various locations around the facility. Lumi may have had more energy, but I was done. We stopped at one of the training stations to select two dead birds -- a duck and a pheasant -- and then we were on our way home. In the next few days, I'll see if I can get Lumi to retrieve either or both of the carcasses. That should be another interesting challenge, but she's already shown me that her issue for that training will be lack of interest, not fear.
As for gunfire, we only have one more chance to work at the same training site for the rest of the season, and that's next weekend. We'll be there, and once again we'll work on D&CC. But this time, we'll start at that pond in the woods with the clumps of reed, and the decoys scattered here and about.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Visit to Carol
Lumi and I saw Carol, her holistic vet, today. We covered the usual items of the visit -- acupuncture, chiropractic adjustments, laser therapy -- and also some new items.
BIG DOGS
I brought up the question of whether I was responsible for the degree of Lumi's arthritis (both hips and left wrist), and whether I had been negligent in having her arthritis diagnosed. Carol dismissed both ideas and pointed out all the things Lumi is doing right -- good diet, good weight, daily stretches, trained exercises, sports, supplements, regular vet, holistic vet, two orthopedists, three sets of hip X-rays, and two sets of forequarter X-rays already in Lumi's three years. Carol noted that it's difficult to keep a big performance dog sound. She must have run into questions like this before. She said that people with smaller dogs don't always seem to understand.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Then Carol said that Lumi's wrist seems quite a bit better this month. To my surprise, she added that she doesn't think there's any reason Lumi should not resume both agility and freestyle, within limits. She suggested two areas of limitation.
First, she feels that I can rely on Lumi's behavior to choose freestyle moves and agility obstacles. Carol feels, based on a year and half's monthly visits with Lumi, that if Lumi doesn't want to do something, it's not likely to be motivation or a training issue, it's likely to be pain. Therefore, when Lumi shows avoidance of something, I should trust her. We know two things that Lumi has a history of avoiding: flip finishes on the left, and the teeter. But that doesn't rule out whole classes of other freestyle moves as I had surmised, nor all agility.
The other limitation is that Carol would like to see Lumi jump no higher than 16". Since Lumi stands 24-1/2" at the withers, that rules out AKC agility as far as I know, but I believe that NADAC and CPE would both have provisions for Lumi jumping at 16".
Cool, huh? Lumi can start doing agility again, and we also have a much wider palette of freestyle moves to work with than I had thought. We may eliminate more moves besides the flip finish to left heel in the future, but we'll do it based on observation rather than assumption. Soon we'll start coming up with a new routine for her.
As for agility, Carol had another suggestion I liked very much. Let's start with work on a single obstacle until our next visit. If Lumi's wrist is more painful at that time, we'll know what probably caused it. For me, the choice was between Lumi's two favorites, weaves or jumps. Given how hard the ground is these days, I decided to go with weaves. In a month, assuming all is still well, we'll add jumps for another month and then see where we are.
Well, that brings you up to date on Lumi's freestyle and agility. As for her other sports, here's a quick update.
SELECTING A TRACKING STYLE
Lumi's making great progress in FCI/Schutzhund-style tracking, and also in AKC-style, but IMO this can't go on. One day there will be no bait in the FCI track and Lumi won't be able to distinguish it from an AKC track. So except for one more AKC class in about two weeks, I think we've done all we're going to do with that style of tracking. I assume we'll eventually test for an AKC title or two, but we'll be working in FCI style.
REAL BIRDS, REAL GUNFIRE
Meanwhile, tomorrow is a big day for Lumi's field training, her first chance to be around real birds and real gunfire. Lumi and I have spent the last month doing D&CC with various loud noises, and she's fine with all of them now: she thinks they're recall cues.
Of course, gunfire is different, but something else Carol said makes me optimistic. It seems Carol's Berner is as scared of thunder as Lumi is, yet had not the slightest problem with gunfire the first time she heard it, and that was with a gun in her immediate vicinity. Carol thinks that dogs experience gunfire differently from thunderstorms and fireworks displays. No guarantees, but my fingers are crossed that Lumi has as easy time of it as Carol's Berner did.
BIG DOGS
I brought up the question of whether I was responsible for the degree of Lumi's arthritis (both hips and left wrist), and whether I had been negligent in having her arthritis diagnosed. Carol dismissed both ideas and pointed out all the things Lumi is doing right -- good diet, good weight, daily stretches, trained exercises, sports, supplements, regular vet, holistic vet, two orthopedists, three sets of hip X-rays, and two sets of forequarter X-rays already in Lumi's three years. Carol noted that it's difficult to keep a big performance dog sound. She must have run into questions like this before. She said that people with smaller dogs don't always seem to understand.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Then Carol said that Lumi's wrist seems quite a bit better this month. To my surprise, she added that she doesn't think there's any reason Lumi should not resume both agility and freestyle, within limits. She suggested two areas of limitation.
First, she feels that I can rely on Lumi's behavior to choose freestyle moves and agility obstacles. Carol feels, based on a year and half's monthly visits with Lumi, that if Lumi doesn't want to do something, it's not likely to be motivation or a training issue, it's likely to be pain. Therefore, when Lumi shows avoidance of something, I should trust her. We know two things that Lumi has a history of avoiding: flip finishes on the left, and the teeter. But that doesn't rule out whole classes of other freestyle moves as I had surmised, nor all agility.
The other limitation is that Carol would like to see Lumi jump no higher than 16". Since Lumi stands 24-1/2" at the withers, that rules out AKC agility as far as I know, but I believe that NADAC and CPE would both have provisions for Lumi jumping at 16".
Cool, huh? Lumi can start doing agility again, and we also have a much wider palette of freestyle moves to work with than I had thought. We may eliminate more moves besides the flip finish to left heel in the future, but we'll do it based on observation rather than assumption. Soon we'll start coming up with a new routine for her.
As for agility, Carol had another suggestion I liked very much. Let's start with work on a single obstacle until our next visit. If Lumi's wrist is more painful at that time, we'll know what probably caused it. For me, the choice was between Lumi's two favorites, weaves or jumps. Given how hard the ground is these days, I decided to go with weaves. In a month, assuming all is still well, we'll add jumps for another month and then see where we are.
Well, that brings you up to date on Lumi's freestyle and agility. As for her other sports, here's a quick update.
SELECTING A TRACKING STYLE
Lumi's making great progress in FCI/Schutzhund-style tracking, and also in AKC-style, but IMO this can't go on. One day there will be no bait in the FCI track and Lumi won't be able to distinguish it from an AKC track. So except for one more AKC class in about two weeks, I think we've done all we're going to do with that style of tracking. I assume we'll eventually test for an AKC title or two, but we'll be working in FCI style.
REAL BIRDS, REAL GUNFIRE
Meanwhile, tomorrow is a big day for Lumi's field training, her first chance to be around real birds and real gunfire. Lumi and I have spent the last month doing D&CC with various loud noises, and she's fine with all of them now: she thinks they're recall cues.
Of course, gunfire is different, but something else Carol said makes me optimistic. It seems Carol's Berner is as scared of thunder as Lumi is, yet had not the slightest problem with gunfire the first time she heard it, and that was with a gun in her immediate vicinity. Carol thinks that dogs experience gunfire differently from thunderstorms and fireworks displays. No guarantees, but my fingers are crossed that Lumi has as easy time of it as Carol's Berner did.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
