Karma's first "title"

Karma competed in her third agility competition last weekend. She ran four events. I use the term "ran" loosely. She did run her Tunnelers event well, and "qualified". This is her third "Q" in Tunnelers and that means she has earned her first title. The agility career of a dog is marked by accumulating these titles.

During the other three events, she spent a fair amount of time sniffing the ground or loping casually along. It's puzzling to me why running the tunnels seems to her like something that should be done with great focus and drive, but she doesn't always have the same attitude with other events. She was not alone in having the sniffies; only about 1/3 of the dogs in our "novice" level qualified in most events.

It was a long day for Karma. This was the first time we stayed at a competition for a whole day. Check-in was at 7:00 am and we ran the final event at about 5:30. Between events, she must sit in her kennel which she does not like very much. I don't think she slept a wink all day. The environment, with dogs and people walking past, is just too stimulating. By mid-afternoon, she was exhausted. The mental and emotional demands are a big part of the sport and they may be the hardest thing for Karma.

Squirrel revenge

As K was walking through our back yard yesterday, an object fell out of a tree.  He looked into the tree and saw that a squirrel had dropped it.  K examined the object and identified it as one of Karma's bones.  That's right.  A squirrel stole Karma's bone and dragged it into the tree.

Since squirrels are vegetarians, I can only figure that the squirrel stole the bone to get back at Karma for killing its friends/relatives in the backyard.  She has caught and killed three squirrels in the back yard, and another two at the dog park, that I know of.

Agility training: Tracy Sklenar

I’ve now had two episodes of having my mind blown about dog training. The first was the first time I saw free-shaping demonstrated. (We’ve talked about free-shaping here several times.) The second was last weekend. I audited one day of a weekend course given by Tracy Sklenar on handling skills for agility. Tracy is a nationally-known expert who has competed with her own dogs at world championship levels.

Before I describe what I learned, though, you need a little background. Before I started agility training, the only agility competition I’d seen was the very high level competition that gets television coverage. I was amazed at two things: that a dog can be trained to weave in and out of poles and that a dog can be trained to run across a teeter totter. While these are the most challenging obstacles to master, teaching a dog these maneuvers is a piece of cake compared to what the core of the training is about. The real challenge is “handling” which is communicating to your dog where they’re supposed to go as they run the course and for this communication to be timed right and clear made clear so that the dog can run the course as fast as possible without making mistakes.

What I’ve been taught to do and what I’ve been doing to date has been pointing at obstacles and calling its name as I run the course (“Jump!” “Tunnel!” “Teeter!”). Tracy Sklenar teaches that you should instead only point and call out the names of obstacles in specific circumstances, and never point or name obstacles when the obstacles are on a line that you’re already running or a gentle arc. So that seems impossible, right? How will the dog know where to go if you don’t point at things or call out obstacles?

She teaches that your dog should have two modes when running a course: extension (running all out) and collection (wherein your dog slows, gathers its feet and gets its balance to be able to turn or jump). She teaches that you cue extension entirely through the way you move your own body. It needs to look to the dog like you are running all out. You should be in a leaning-forward posture and should pump your arms and take big steps. If you don’t have room to run all out, then fake it, taking high steps, rather than long ones. Your dog, partly as a result of practicing this but largely as a result of what he/she has observed about how humans run, will understand that this means “run as fast as possible along a generally straight or gently-curved line, taking any obstacles in this line. If I need you to turn, I will let you know.” By not using your arm when you’re running on straight lines your dog doesn’t have to turn his head to focus on your arm and can confidently run straight ahead.

To cue the dog to collect, you use a deceleration cue. The “decel” cue is to stand straight up and put out an arm or finger. At all times when running agility, you should be watching your dog, but you may need to be especially intense about it (i.e. turn your shoulders toward the dog, lower your chin to your shoulder or chest so that your face is square to them) during a decel cue.

I tried this with Karma at practice this week. Even though we’d never practiced running without pointing/naming, we didn’t have a single miscue when running in extension mode. This was completely amazing to me.

Lots more for another day.

Wanted: Secretary

Karma the Dog seeks to hire a full-time secretary to support her agility career. Responsibilities include:

• Maintaining Karma's calendar
• Keeping memberships and dog registrations current for all sanctioning bodies (NADAC, CPE, AKC, etc) by tracking deadlines for renewals, filling out forms, mailing checks
• Investigating upcoming events to identify appropriate competition opportunities
• Docketing due dates for entry registrations and for "move-up" registrations
• Preparing and submitting competition entry forms within deadlines
• Storing and being able to find Karma's permanent height cards for each sanctioning body; scan/print the right one to accompany each competition entry
• Verifying accuracy of and maintaining database of her competition results
• Staying abreast of competition rules for each sanctioning body
• Packing her tools and belongings for competition (DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT forget the water dish)
• Maintaining her website
• Broiling chicken and cutting the chicken, and lowfat hotdogs, into teeny-tiny pieces for training
• Ironing her ribbons and polishing her trophies

The successful candidate will be:

• Crazy
• Well-organized
• Dedicated to Karma's successful career and without any other interests or commitments
• Proficient in Word, Excel, Filemaker Pro, Google Sites, and Adobe Acrobat
• Type 60 wpm

Salary will be commensurate with experience and will be paid in slobbery doggy kisses.

Karma is amazing (in case I hadn't already mentioned that)

She "qualified" in the "Tunnelers" event yesterday. "Qualified" just means she passed, by completing the course within the requisite time and without faults (like me touching her or her running an obstacle out of order). She ran 144 yards -- almost 1.5 football fields -- in 33 seconds, through 12 tunnels.

Pretty much just want to spend the day telling people about her success. Now who can I tell? And thanks in advance to everyone who pretends to be interested.

Update 7/13/10: Here's a video of someone else's dog competing in the same Tunnelers event as Karma ran on Sunday.

NADAC Novice Regular

This is not Karma, but this is a comparable event to her second run today:  It is the same complexity level (Novice), the same event  ("Regular") at the same facility (Soccerblast, Burnseville, MN), at a NADAC-sanctioned event. The dog in this video makes it look easy:



This dog, Mira, makes it look more difficult:

Happy day at our house

Karma competed in her first agility trial today.  The world of agility competition is a complex thing, with many different sponsoring organizations (AKC, North American Dog Agility Council (NADAC), U.S. Dog Agility Association, Canine Performance Events), and with many different varieties of events at each competition at many different levels (i.e. courses vary in complexity/trickiness).  Not all of the organizations allow mixed breeds to compete.  Karma competed in a NADAC event at the least complex level (Novice).  She competed in two events today (regular and "touch-and-go") and will compete in another event tomorrow morning.  This event was indoors.

The whole experience was intensely stimulating for her:  dogs everywhere, her first exposure to Astroturf, strangers in the ring doing the judging, her fear of the unknown, the inexplicable (to her) schedule of sitting in a crate, then competing, then going back in the crate, then competing again.  Her doggy brain had a lot to process.

It's not at all uncommon for dogs new to competition to completely wig out and just zoom around the course paying no attention to the obstacles or their handler.  I had very low expectations going in, but Karma did amazingly well in her first run.  She ran fast and clean through the first 14 of the 16 obstacles (A-frame, tunnels, wickets that she's never seen before), but then she came upon the dog walk and froze.  The dogwalk is an elevated level plank with inclined planks on either end.  She's never had any issue with the dogwalk in practice.  I suspect that from her vantage point as she was getting on, it looked like a teeter-totter, something she hasn't completely conquered yet.  In class, she gets a chance to see all the equipment as we get warmed up before class, so she can tell where the teeter is and where the dogwalk is.

So she took two steps onto the dogwalk, got scared and jumped off.  That's a disqualification.  Also, at some point when I was trying to coax her back onto the dogwalk, I reached out to her and ruffled her neck, not to physically maneuver her onto the walk, but just to give her some encouragement.  That too, though, is a disqualification; there is no touching your dog during a run.  It's a habit I'll have to break.

I was very pleased with her performance for the first time out.  Lots of more experienced dogs ran around completely out of control.

We sat around for a couple hours before the next event, and by that time Karma was pretty much mentally exhausted.  She ran her second run poorly, running around the jumps and getting distracted by smells on the ground.

We'll compete in one more event tomorrow if I can get her out of bed in the morning.  She is one tired pup now.

Free shaping: crate training

When we first got Karma (age 6 months), I tried to confine her to a crate at night and when we left her alone.  I thought that was the safest place for her (and for everything else in the house).  She went into hysterical fits in the crate, though, shredding her bed and shrieking like a banshee.  I gave up on the crating and she magically behaves herself really well when she's alone.

When we started agility training, the instructors warned that by the third level (week 19) our dogs would need to be crated sometimes during class in crates along the side of the room.

I re-dedicated myself to the task of training her to accept being crated. I tried to lure her into the crate with the big guns of dog training: bacon, peanut butter, Velveeta. She would not put a paw in the crate to get to them, even when she was alone. When that didn't work, I figured our agility training would come to an end at week 18.

A few weeks before the deadline, it dawned on me to try free-shaping to get her into the crate. (The first behavior she learned by free-shaping was backing up onto an inclined plank. She's so pleased with learning that behavior that she does it all the time spontaneously during class.)

Step by step, over the course of days, in 5-10 minute sessions:

• I put the crate in the living room and stocked myself with treats (chicken, hotdogs, Velveeta).
  
• Stood in the living room.
  
• Karma started offering behaviors (rolling over, backing up, sitting...) which I ignored.
  
• When she looked in the direction of the crate, I marked (with a clicker) the behavior and gave her a treat.
  
• After treating her a few times for just looking in the direction of the crate, I withheld the click/treat until she took a step toward the crate.
• Then I waited for her to take two steps toward the crate before rewarding her.
• Then I waited for her to get right up to the crate.
• Then the big hurdle: I waited for her to put one paw in the crate. She did it!
  

Eventually (this is over the course of many days), she walked all the way into the crate.

Then I worked on increasing the amount of time she had to be in the crate before treating her.  I did this while leaving the crate door open.  I increased the time by one second at first, then later, when she was up to 15 seconds, I increased time in 5 second intervals. Then, I worked on stepping away from the crate. At first, just one step away, then two, then five, then turning my back and walking one step, etc. Eventually, I worked up to being able to turn my back, leave the room, go upstairs and come back down, while she stands quietly in the crate even though the door is open. Then I worked on incrementally closing the door. Voila! We did it! She can be crated!  Finally, we went through the same process (but much more quickly) at the training center.

I can't explain why she was willing to put a paw in the crate when we were free-shaping, but wouldn't do it when she was lured with bacon. Something about it was just fundamentally different to her. Free-shaping is a fun game to her.

Tonight we start Week 27 of agility training.

Buy Nestle today

Let's all buy some Nestle products today to make sure their conscientiousness pays. They inspected the facilities of the Peanut Corporation of America and chose not to buy peanuts from them. Kellogg and others didn't bother to do such an inspection and used PCA as a supplier.

On a related Nestle note, Karma the dog has had a couple bouts of pancreatitis. Diet plays a role in pancreatitis. Her first episode was clearly the result of a massive dose of fatty turkey leftovers during the holidays. But the second had no clear cause, so I have been trying to look into dog food nutrition. I am sure some dog foods are significantly more nutritious than others but good information on them is hard to find. The labels don't help much. For one thing, they give only guaranteed minimums for protein and fat, but no maximums, so if you set out to find a low fat food, you can't really. Sure, you can rely on their claim to be low fat, but there's no way to be sure one brand's low fat version is lower fat than some other brand's regular version. Price is no guarantee of quality. Vet recommendations are considered suspect by some because vets get a commission on the food they sell in their offices. What's a dog owner to do? I got a consultation with a vet at the University of Minnesota Veterinary Hospital, a research and teaching facility that doesn't sell dog food. She recommended Purina Dog Chow or Purina One, saying that Purina products are high quality because Purina comes at the pet food business from the world of prescription food for treating medical conditions. My own vet had said the same thing.

Purina is a Nestle brand.

And by the way, giving your dog fresh "people" food is fraught with dangers in achieving proper nutritional content. The vet said the only time they ever have to deal with malnourished dogs (excluding neglect) is when owners tried to cook for them.