Last Saturday we went to our first match for rally (at a great site in Graham). It was held by the local Field Spaniel club and they did a great job. It was well worth the time and money for me and you-know-who. Hopefully next year I'll be able to spare some time to volunteer.
First, Gimme was much less over-the-top about the presence of other dogs than she has been before - our classes have really paid off. Last winter at the Stacy seminar she was very stressed and couldn't think at all. She was also very fussy (and loudly so), thus we couldn't work on it then, except during breaks, because I didn't want to disturb the other participants.
She was still very distracted and super alert, but much better. When we first got there she was highly distracted by dogs within 20 feet, so we initially set up well away from everyone. As Gimme got better and wasn't affected by their presence, we moved closer. By the end of the day, dogs needed to be within 6 feet for her to respond to them. She never did anything bad, but was so distracted and wanted to play with them so much, that she wasn't able to think or work. We did a lot of relaxation protocol using her safe place crate. She also got numerous peanut butter bones (6 over the four and a half hours). Normally if she is stressed when she gets a peanut butter bone, she turns her back on the world to savor it. By the end of our time there, she was laying half out of her crate, savoring her peanut butter bone in the grass.
I had pre-paid for four run thoughs at the novice level. During our first one, Gimme was still pretty out of her thinking brain, so I basically lured her through the course with a constant stream of treats. During our second run through, she was trying to work with me and for about a third of the course I was able to work with a normal routine of click/treat. By the third run through, Gimme was working pretty well - she got about a dozen click/treats through the course. She still occasionally got distracted and forged or went wide, but there were places where she did really well.
Our fourth run through was the best. We did the whole course with just five click/treat and she only got distracted twice. If she is able to work that well (and I don't have food and she's not in harness) at a trial - its a strong possibility that we'd qualify.
At the end of the day, even though we have never done group stays... when they were calling for volunteers to join in, we did it. I made sure we were on the left end of the line with me between Gimme and the other dog and kept about 6 feet distance between us and on leash. She also hadn't done stays that long, so I broke them up shorter, returning, rewarding and resetting to do it again. She didn't seem bothered by the other dogs at all. I was most pleased.
Her attitude throughout the day was really super and I was very proud of her. She got NUMEROUS comments about how dang cute she is and how well put together - naturally I can't hear that enough. It was a very good day.
On Sunday we had our follow-up private agility lesson. We'd made some good progress since our last lesson and even though Gimme is not mentally where she was pre-hormones, I was able to show what we'd been doing. She pointed out a couple of helpful things and gave me direction for where we should go next with what we are training.
One thing she pointed out was that I tend to repeat a command if Gimme doesn't do all of it. For example, I'm standing 90 degrees to her sit and tell her to "get in" and she goes about 60 degrees toward heel position - then I repeat the cue. She thinks I need to wait her out and let her solve how to get the reward herself. We couldn't really demonstrate her solving it, since we were close to the end of the lesson when we tried and quickly discovered her brain was done. She thinks Gimme is so smart that she would really thrive on puzzling out this stuff herself - she may be right.
I think this repeating a cue is a by-product of my laziness about putting cues on behaviors. She pointed out also that I have taught a lot of great behaviors and yet many of them aren't on a verbal cue, instead I am sort of "managing" her into doing them. I can't disagree with this observation. I've always loved teaching new behaviors and find it very interesting and fun. I admit that attaching cues is probably the least fun part of training for me. So, this wasn't news to me. I've recently become aware that I'm really going to have to get on the stick about it -- with all the performance venues I want to do, Gimme is going to have a huge number of behaviors in her repertoire, so getting them on verbal cues is essential.
Another observation/idea was about what is really going on with Gimme's attitude right now. We had the whole hormonal issue going on and even though that has passed, I've found her work ethic and attentiveness and focus have really taken a nosedive, while she's getting better about not being so stressed and frustrated. I thought that was a lingering after-affect from the hormones.
Instead, she thinks Gimme is going through an independence phase and that it may have just happened to arrive on the heals of the hormones. I knew that puppies experience an independence phase about 4-6 months. When it came with Gimme, we just play trained our way through it. That was easy because the behaviors we were working on at that time were so simple. But I'd never heard of another independence phase at 9-12 months.
I asked Ursula about this and she thinks it could very likely be the case. She runs a boarding kennel so she sees a lot of dogs over the course of their lifetimes. She said she sees it start in a lot of dogs between 9-12 months, where others may start earlier. She also said it can last until the dog is TWO YEARS OLD!!! I'm hoping that is a function of having a green dog with a novice owner. I don't know if I would survive another year of Gimme challenging me at every turn.
The approach she suggested when I didn't react favorably to her "make her do it" solution, was to restrict Gimme's options when she didn't want to work. Make it so that working with me is the most fun of the available options. To a certain degree I have been doing that (putting her on lead when she's goofing off), but I can be more prepared and go to that quicker in training. I've also noticed since these discussions a bit of "persistent naughtiness", so Gimme is experiencing a loss of some freedom until we get through it.
During a discussion about how we will train weave poles (2x2), she asked if Gimme was toy motivated. So we demonstrated our tugging skill (Gimme is a world class tugger and I have the achy shoulder to prove it). I was pleased that Gimme was able to tug with abandon this time, since she wasn't able to tug last time we were there. Also, her attitude was really good and while we used the safe place crate a few times for relaxation protocol to reengage her brain, we never needed it for stress.
As it turns out, we'll be going to seminar for a day of novice agility with Stacy Peardot-Goudy next week. I'm sure it will be a challenge for us. Getting Gimme to do stuff won't be the problem. Getting her to do it when there are dogs that she should be playing with (in her not so humble opine), that may prove more challenging. :-)
My little girl is growing up...
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