Trick Dog Seminar

We went to a tricks and stunt dog seminar yesterday. 

Gimme's Training Session
After some lecture time we were paired up and got to work on a trick. Gimme actually knew most of the tricks (43 of 80 on the list) and we were supposed to train something completely new. I decided to freeshape her to roll a ball with her nose since the only other ones she didn't have any knowledge of required too much set up.


Our first challenge was to get her focused on me. She was quite distracted by our training partner Pam who was sitting on the floor. Gimme got into an unintended behavior chain, go-to-Pam-offer-attention and I had to move a little farther away to help her realize we could leave Pam out of what we were doing. One of the auditors noticed I'd done this even though I wasn't consciously aware of doing so. It was nice to be complimented on it in the after-training discussion.


Gimme found other dogs very distracting, especially the nearest who was 30 feet away, but moving a lot and fast. She had real difficulty not watching him, despite playing look-at-that. Pam suggested I move the ball so he wasn't in her field of view. I didn't think Gimme would be comfortable turning her back to him, but she was fine with it and we were able to get to work.


She started out well and then decided anything she can do with her nose will be better using her paws. She's always been paw oriented. She wasn't really trying to roll it with her paws, just tending to stand there longer and longer, with one paw on top of it. It was a heavy treibball ball, so it didn't roll too easy, so it would have been pretty easy to get her to do "hands" on it. She got stuck there and didn't offer anything different. 


Kathy used a stopwatch to limit our training sessions to 3 minutes.  I'd started the attention work before the official start of our session, but we still used up half our training time on attention before we even started with the ball and because of the stress related to working near other dogs, I think she was pretty much done. 

Crew's Training Session
Pam's dog was a border collie and she wanted to teach him to jump through a hoop in preparation for teaching him to jump through an arm circle. She wanted to use freeshaping, but he would just lay down and wait for her to tell him what to do. She said she'd taught him this as his default behavior to use when he needed her help/direction. To get him started she used treat tossing and then moved back to freeshaping. Crew got superstitious about only going through in one direction, even though she had done both directions to start with. When this came up was about the time their session ended. Later in the day when she needed to do hoop behaviors in stunt dog - then he offered only going the other way.


After a bit more lecture, we all got the chance to have Kathy review tricks for a title; since she's a certified trainer/evaluator for Do More With Your Dog. Gimme already has her DMWYD novice trick title, so we did an evaluation of her tricks for the AKC Novice Trick Dog (TKN) title. She did a good job overall, despite all the people watching and being pretty sure she needed to visit them. The only problem she had was with "spin", which she normally knows very well. When I changed to another behavior, then came back to spin using "turn" (the other direction), she did fine. Toward the end she was getting a little stressed/frustrated and jumped up on me to give me kisses, so I pointed it out as a trick she clearly knew.

AKC Novice Trick Dog (TKN) review
So she did: balance beam "walkies", get in "box", get on "table", "jump" over a low jump, go into strange "kennel" and wait to be released, "kisses", paws up "hands", spin in a circle "turn", "touch" hand or target stick, and "tunnel". This completes her TKN title. This is title number 24; but who's bragging? Now all I have to do is send in the form and application to make it official.


For the afternoon we spent all the time on the stunt dog title. I really didn't think this would interest me, but I clearly didn't know anything about it. We did a run through for the novice stunt dog title. It's very different than I thought it would be and kinda fun with all the silly interaction stuff. We might try it. It won't require much training to get up to speed on the behaviors. The challenge is that it's done in person in small trials. I know if we go to this location for trials (Pawsabilities in Fife, where we train regularly), the set up is good so we don't have to deal with other dogs too much. But Gimme was also very distracted by the spectators. She found it very hard to work with all those new friends watching. I don't have any options to work on a larger group of people except at trials. Still it will be a good experience for her.


Stunt Dog Novice Run Through video - I think once we are really strong on the behaviors, then she'll be more confident. The clock starts running as soon as we enter the ring and time is limited, so we'll need to shorten our acclimation time -- 55 seconds is too long. I think we can use some of the time outside the ring during the transition from one dog to another for look-at-that. We used to do this at the startline at nosework trials and now don't need to, so I think it'll work here too. 


This posing and other strutting is part of stunt dog. It's designed as a sport to help prepare you for performing in public, so handler interaction with the audience is required. We are to interact during both perimeter walks (entrance [after acclimation] and exit) and every time you return to the pedestal. I was trying to get in touch with my inner-Vanna, though some might call it my inner-ham.

1. Perimeter Circle Entrance. Start at pedi "table" and then perimeter walk. I was focused on keeping Gimme's attention and forgot to interact, until someone reminded me. 
2. Mount pedestal. Done between every exercise. This is the only place you can reward the dog. Here we surrendered our leash for the off leash exercises.
3. 5-second stay while I backed away six feet. I noticed as I returned to Gimme the next person had entered the room with their dog and I asked to have them move before Gimme saw him, just to be safe. They responded so quickly it was really seamless, so you might not catch it on the video unless you are listening.
4. Stay while handler circles pedi at minimum 2 feet distance.
5. Trick on platform. We did the kisses, since Gimme had wanted reassurance prior. The drawback is that she tends to draw out the kissing a bit, wasting 10 seconds. When she's more confident, we'll switch to something else.
6. Send to Pedestal from 10 feet. Gimme knows to send 10 feet, but wasn't sure in this setting. Of course, turning it into "bacon" always works for her. On return, we have to walk counter-clockwise around the pedi.
7. Send to Target Mark from 6 feet. Gimme didn't know this target and my cue to "matt" with something which clearly wasn't a matt, didn't work, though she did go to check it out. It was easy to convince her to do it when we turn this into "bacon" as well. I have some yello scrap foam which I'll turn into a target for her.
8. Hoop Interactions, 4 behaviors. Surprisingly we've never done anything with a hoop, so she had no clue what I wanted. I thought she might do "hands" on the top of it, since she'll do it to a PVC bar when I hold it. Any four interactions will do and I'm sure we can work up a little sequence here.
9. Perimeter Circle Exit. Leash is brought to the handler and then we do a perimeter circle to the exit. I realized at the end, having the hand next to her up to wave an interaction with the audience was confusing Gimme and she interpreted it as an up-touch cue. She was clearly ready to be done with this foolishness.

It was a little bit stressful for her. Still, considering she'd never done any of this before or worked in front of an audience, I was very pleased with her efforts. This was also at the end of a long day, spent mostly in a hot car. I'm glad I invested in those aluminet screens last year, so she wasn't uncomfortable in the 92° heat.

I watched the last stunt dog run (we were second to last). Then we had a Q&A, followed by watching the rest of the people who wanted to have trick dog title reviews. We might have been able to pull off intermediate tricks with DMWYD, but I figured Gimme had done enough.