Freestyle Seminar

The weekend proved to be a real learning experience and not just about freestyle.  I learned just how much seminar excitement Gimme can handle and what the best way is for her to experience it.  After how well she did at the agility seminar this summer, I expected her to be able to handle this better.  But in hindsight, there are several notable differences.

• agility seminar was outside, this was inside
• at agility seminar I was able to position us further from the other people/dogs and still be able to see and hear everything that was going on
• about a dozen teams at agility vs 20 teams and 10 more auditors at the freestyle seminar
• at agility only one or two dogs were out of crates at a time; here there were often all 20 teams out at once
• agility seminar was quieter overall
• this weekend she was in season - obviously not by plan, having come in almost a month early

By the end of Saturday Gimme was just about shut down.  I had tried hard to keep her up and happy, but it wasn't working well.  I made big changes in how I handled things for Sunday and it worked much better.  At the end of Saturday I was about ready to cancel our working slots for the seminar in April.  At the end of Sunday, with the changes I made she did much better, so knowing that she won't be in season again, I decided to let things stand.  However, I do plan to email both seminar presenters (Sdao and Pouliot) and ask them some questions before I make a final decision.

I was really disappointed in the people attending this seminar.  Many years ago when I was taking Michael to freestyle seminars, people were much more respectful of others' space needs.  Most people back then were fairly novice dog owners, whereas this group was more experienced owners.  I asked the seminar host to make an announcement and remind people to be more respectful of other dog's space needs, but it didn't seem to make any impression.  I repeatedly asked people to keep their distance and not crowd us.  Only two people got the idea that I was asking for consideration for the weekend, not just a few minutes.  Other people I had to remind over and over and over again.  I asked one lady to move herself and her dog so we could get to our crate, explaining that we needed more space.  She moved and then moments later walked her dog within inches of my crate with Gimme in it.  Fortunately I happened to have Gimme distracted at that moment.  I really had the best spot that was available - had anyone shown even a smidgen of common sense and courtesy. 

Naturally I think the person who allowed their dog to pee on my cooler, which was sitting next to my car -- well that's just well beyond R-U-D-E...

I chose to work off to one side during the working sessions and gradually got further and further away until I could find a place where Gimme wasn't too distracted by the other dogs and yet not too close to the food tables, which she also had a huge interest in.  Unfortunately this meant we got ZERO personal attention from the seminar presenter, Julie Flanery.  Ordinarily I think Julie is very good, but a couple things conspired to make this one the least positive experiences of the several seminars I've taken with her.  The fact that the seminar was being taped made it a logistical pain.  Also almost all the exercises for the second day were geared toward people with much more experienced dogs.  Since that wasn't made clear in the information about the seminar (and since I expected her to run the seminar as she had in prior ones), I don't think we got our money's worth as a working team. 

Since I'd paid to be a working team, I made the best of it.  I worked on as many of the exercises that we were supposed to be doing as I could.  But once I hit a snag, without any help, I couldn't go any further.  I learned between day one and two a bit better how to "read" Gimme and know when she is done.  She is not obvious in the way she shows it (remember what we went through when we were taking classes with Ursula and she had the false pregnancy to go through).  For much of the time we worked on other things, things I knew Gimme could do getting a high rate of reinforcement, so she was having a positive experience.  On the second day I kept her out in the car when she wasn't working, except for one brief time in late in the afternoon.  Often this meant by the time I went out to the car, got her "dressed" and got back inside, the working session was half over. 

Still, for all that, I learned a lot.  Julie has some interesting new ways to teach the freestyle staples in ways that the dog learns very quickly and so can get a higher rate of reinforcement while they are learning.  She makes these "guides" out of ten 12" x 12" grids (the ones you normally snap together to make little shelving sets), put together with zip ties.  Using those the dogs learn some really quick concepts, so you aren't teaching the same thing over and over, just using a different "prop".

For instance, if you set up the guides to form a circle and stand in the middle with the dog, you can just wait and the dog will move around you.  Click and treat that and soon the dog will really be going around.  Within two or three sessions you'll have a very solid behavior that you can put on cue.  Then you can do it again, but position the dog facing the other way and since the dog already knows the concept of moving in that circle of guides, you can get the other direction on cue even faster.  Then there is always backing up in each direction.  You can stand outside the circle with just one leg in and the dog will quickly figure out to move around that one leg.  Or stand outside the circle with a cane held in the middle of the guides and in no time you'll have the dog going around that too.  As you can imagine, there are any number of things you could teach the dog to go around in very short order.  Develop a routine that has a prop you need the dog to go out to and circle around - no problem, you can teach the concept to your now more experienced dog in a single session and that's likely including a cue. 

The beauty of this is that there is no luring that has to be faded later and its faster than free-shaping, because the dog learns that the guides in a circle mean one thing.  And in particular, for getting the dog to move around one leg, since you aren't luring or using your hand target, you aren't leaning over the dog, which means you aren't crowding them socially while trying to teach them something.  The guides can also be used to form a channel, a u-shape or a v-shape and any number of other configurations (limited only by your own creativity).

We did our session at the seminar in a 36" expen, since I wanted to be able to have Gimme off leash and know she wouldn't jump out.  Here I have a short video of a session that we just did with the set of guides I made.  You'll see that Gimme jumped in and out a couple of times.  I think she felt crowded because I hadn't made her circle big enough.  You'll see that she stopped jumping out and was more conformable moving around after I make the circle a little bigger.  She even tried backing up, she does love moving backwards.  To stop her all I had to do was briefly step back so I was in her way.  Sadly the camera battery died so you don't get to see the end of the session.  Another thirty seconds and she was going around me in one direction while I was spinning the other way.  It never occurred to her that there was anything for her to do other than continuing in a circle, something that often happens when you try to teach this part of the move without the guides. 

Gimme already knows "around", but its not very tight.  So I'll be interested to see if using the guides makes it a cleaner move.