Okay, my head is fixing to explode so I need to blog now, even though I have a ton of work to do today. So, I decided this weekend, while the weather was nice, that I would start training Deuce's dog walk. I videoed our work (posted via FB) and got lots of comments both good and bad. Some of the comments are driving me nuts and rather than try and respond to them on FB, I thought I would respond here and give a better background of what I am thinking and where I am going with his dog walk.
First of all, I do not have a dog walk. I use to have one that Tony made and some kids got on it and broke the middle ramp. Now all I have is the up ramp and down ramp. I had previously used the broken board to train "toes" on (i.e. front feet on ground, rear feet on contact obstacle). I want a stop on at least the dog walk and the teeter. I feel like these are two obstacles that need a stop on them, as a point of collection for the handler and the dog and for safety reasons. I was blessed with Miller to have a natural running a-frame and I pray that deuce will also have a running a-frame since he is so heavy, especially in the front end. Anyway, the latest rage in agility is the running contact. Everyone is teaching their dogs to do running contacts. I do admit, they give you a competitive edge but with this edge also comes some disadvantages as well. I feel like you pretty much need to train this behavior, which consists of muscle memory as well as shaping striding into the yellow, every day. For people like me who don't have obstacles, this is kind of hard. I can't drive every day out to my trainer's house and the weather isn't cooperative for training outside as it is. I feel like there is alot of maintenance to having a running contact. Some people disagree, but I think it is something that you have to train constantly. I do agree that all contact criteria has some sort of maintenance and training but I feel like running, even though it is natural to the dogs to run, is the hardest to train and maintain. I do not feel comfortable trying to train this in my dogs for these reasons. I can train a 2 on 2 off anywhere, using any type of change in surface and I can click for 2 feet on the obstacle and 2 feet off. It is black and white to me and black and white to the dog. I really don't feel like running is as black and white and for that reason, I choose not to train it. I don't need that competitive edge at all, especially if I can train a dog to drive down to position and then wait for my release. Someone commented that she didn't want to train a 2 on 2 off because she would release her dog early and thus degrade the behavior. How, if her dog is ahead of her, especially in a trial situation can she see if her dog correctly strided? How do you correct that if the dog didn't stride correctly? How does the dog every know that it is correct? Do you click for the dog hitting a specific spot or just anywhere in the yellow?
Okay so back to the current times. I decided since deuce has not really been on a dog walk and I am not 100% sure what exactly I am going to do that I would drag one of the dog walk planks out and just have him run back and forth on that. He needs to become more body aware anyway before he goes on a big dog walk and I guess I thought that would be a good idea for him. I also decided to tape his progress, more for me than anyone else. Well, as soon as we started running, he was jumping off it, pouncing off of it, and not paying attention to his feet at all. I decided to raise it up with two little bricks to try and make it more like an obstacle and less like just a plank on the ground. This did make him more aware of the board but made the pounce more pronounced. I had his food tube about 15 feet away and apparently he was focusing on the food tube and pouncing on it. After 10 or tries of this, I decided to stop and review the video and see what i needed to do. At the time, I was using the restrained recall and telling him "go walk it".
After review of the video and talking to my trainer, we decided to add a down ramp and make it more like a dog walk and less just like an elevated plank. I don't regret having one day of him jumping off because it showed me what I needed to do next. I hardly think 10 reps of something, even if it is wrong will hurt him mentally or physically. The next day, I added a down ramp and decided to experiment with asking for toes. The first few reps, I just let him run either with the restrained recall or asking for a wait and then a release to go walk it. The pouncing was still happening but not as bad so I decided at that point to add in the toes command. Of course the first couple of times he just kept on running, but withholding any type of reward, he got it and started stopping. I was getting a mix of him driving to the end and stopping and him driving to almost the end and then taking a couple of slow steps to the bottom. I do like the driving to the end, I don't like the slow steps.
At this point, it was day 2 and I wasn't using a clicker or rewards unless it was just the ideal performance, just trying to see what he would do in different situations. Things that I liked were i think it did show me that he would have a hard time doing a running contact and that at 7 months, he is capable of linking running and stopping at the end of the board no matter what I am doing. I am going to now back up a few steps and really start using the clicker for the exact performance I want (drive to the end of the board and stop no matter what the mom is doing and wait for a release). I will work on the behavior thinking of all aspects, me running, me behind, me in front but will start with what position gets the most success and build from there. It seems that he is the most comfortable with me ahead of him at this point but I am giving him no cues other than just the word toes. I am trying to refrain from adding any body movement, i.e. pointing or turning into him. I want a dog with a good two on two off and I don't think that is wrong to want that!
Here are the two videos. The left is day 1 and the right is day 2. I just finished day 3 but couldn't video because it was dark:(
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