*As of Feb 1, 2019 We’ve moved!*If you like this post please come on over to the new blog at https://www.maplewooddog.com/blog/Where you can find all the archives you’ve read here plus new posts nearly every week! Hope you’ll join me over at the Maplewood Dog Blog. Thanks!
Zora and I did a quick Fenzi TEAM level 3 attempt yesterday, as I knew snow was forecast for today and we’ve been working to clean up certain exercises and I felt we were ready to put them all together once more. I was overall pleased with this attempt! She was happy and working well.
I think we only place we’d be docked was her out of position front on the directed cone exercise. It kind of caught me off guard she did that as she’s been showing such improvement with consistently finding front, and I wavered in the moment whether to rework it or not and I really should have. Should have abandoned the trying to complete the series at that moment and reworked the front. Next time.
*As of Feb 1, 2019 We’ve moved!*If you like this post please come on over to the new blog at https://www.maplewooddog.com/blog/Where you can find all the archives you’ve read here plus new posts nearly every week! Hope you’ll join me over at the Maplewood Dog Blog. Thanks!
And Tom and Zora are sad. No walk for them today.
Tom with his pitiful face on
Zora looking bored in the living room
It’s raining. And icy. Everywhere is this thin sheet of ice you don’t know is there until Whoops! There go your feet.
We did some training and play early this morning in the 10min we had before the rain began. Zora and I did our first full run through of the Fenzi TEAM Level 3 test and overall I was very pleased. A number of handler errors on my part: forgetting what my cues were to send her over the jump and around the cone, holding a signal too long, and forgetting to shove a leash in my pocket for the last exercise, but Zora did great! As they say “Great dog, shame about the handler.” LOL
Tom and I played with his frog toy and we did some recall games in the cellar training room. And lots of petting as he supervised my making of the week’s chicken soup.
Tom and Zora lying together on a dog bed
Tomorrow’s weather is looking even worse, so the dogs and I shall have to create some indoor fun. A few days cooped up in the house and I start to get sad too! I have some games up my sleeve we all can play running around and being goofy, hopefully that takes the edge off our lack of walk realities.
*As of Feb 1, 2019 We’ve moved!*If you like this post please come on over to the new blog at https://www.maplewooddog.com/blog/Where you can find all the archives you’ve read here plus new posts nearly every week! Hope you’ll join me over at the Maplewood Dog Blog. Thanks!
The majority of our training has been on individual skills each session. We are now at the point where I’m starting to put them all together into the order they are tested. Here’s our run thru from this morning
I went and reread the rules (yet again) and think there are at least 2 things I did wrong because I misinterpreted the rules that would cause us to not qualify. On the marching exercise and on the final stay exercise. And I think we need to work on our focus forward to the treat dish exercise on cue some more as well as neither of us are on strong on that one.
Yay! I’m tickled pink! Zora and I passed our Fenzi TEAM Training Level 1 and Level 1+ evaluations!
Level 1 and 1+ are the same exercises, but must be done in 2 different environments. Level 1 we did in my basement training room, Level 1+ in our tiny living room. Yay Zora!
One of the things I’m appreciating about this program is the judges comments and critiques. Lots of really nice feedback. But my favorite comment came this morning on the email notifying me of our 1+ pass, the judge’s comments ended with,
“Your relationship with Zora is such a happy, respectful one. Your terms of endearment made me smile. Making observers smile is a good external measurement of what you are experiencing on the inside. Nice job, and CONGRATULATIONS!”
MAKES ME SO HAPPY!
Now to continue working on our level 2 skills! Standing on cue, that’s our focus at the moment.
Dog training is my happy place. Lately one of the few times I feel happy, so I’ve been doing it a lot. Few minutes here and there throughout the day can add up quickly. I just did a loose addition of the short (less than 10min, most more like 2-3min) sessions the dogs and I have had today and not including the time we were out on a walk, we’ve trained a total of closing in on 2 hours already today.
Waiting for the timer to tell me my lunch has cooked, we practice position changes.
Take the dogs out to toilet, and we end up practicing heeling games.
I need to use the restroom, I first to ask the dogs to hold a sit stay until I return.
Waiting for the plumber to arrive, we practice pivots.
Here and there I grab a handful of cookies and we play some training game. Fronts, finishes, dumbbell holds, stays, sits, stands, downs, pivots, recalls, go outs, targets.
The dogs rarely tell me they’d rather not. We’re all training junkies, the dogs and I.
2 minutes here. 10 cookies there. 5 minutes over there.
The moments add up.
Hmm, on further examination, maybe this explains my unplanned 3hr nap yesterday afternoon…
This video at 1:43 makes me (and the couple of people I’ve shown it to) laugh so hard. Damn she is cute!!
I love how training plans and breaking skills down into progressive bits makes training so much fun. Just a couple of weeks ago (for real, seriously, not making this up) out of the 10 exercises shown in that video Zora could do to that level 4 of them based on prior training and life- touch a vertical target, jump a jump, go around a cone and the stay with distraction one. Everything else, learned from scratch bare bones basics.
SO MUCH FUN!!! Damn I love training with this dog.
The tail. And that back up. Makes me laugh every time. So stinkin’ cute!
Thinking outside the box (or inside the sled) is fun!
Stock image of 3 plastic flying saucer sleds
One thing I have learned in my dog training journey is if I’m getting frustrated and the dog isn’t understanding, I’m doing it wrong. I train because it’s fun, enjoyable, rewarding for me and for the dogs. If it isn’t that, then what the hell?
So Zora and I have been working on our pivots. Me pivoting around her, we’ve got that. Makes sense to me. Makes sense to her. Can do it on a pivot front feet platform. Can do it without.
Her pivoting around me. Quite another story. After numerous “AHH! Why isn’t this making sense to you dog!!” attempts. “Other people seem to have dogs that understand using this approach or this one or this one, why isn’t this making sense to you?!” Until I had the epiphany to try the sled.
Eureka! Makes sense now. “OH you want me to move my rear feet? Why didn’t you say so earlier human!!”
For a few short sessions I stood on the sticker in the middle of the sled. Zora beside me. And we moved with the goal of her staying beside me while also keeping herself within the bounds of the sled. Which is impossible unless she actually moves her rear feet back. Which because of the contrast bright orange sled and black and white dog I could tell instantly when the feet moved, mark and reward it. Clarity! For us both.
Couple of times pivoting with the sled, we transferred to the floor. She can do it! She is excited! She goes, “This, right?” And I go, “YES! You are brilliant you little dog!” And we both smile and wag our tails.
Relief. Training is fun and exciting and rewarding. Yay!
And that is why it’s always good to keep a sled lying around. Because dog training. Of course.
With my winter goal of teaching Zora formal obedience heeling, during my research phase, I came across the Fenzi Team Titles Program.
This titling program is geared to progressively building skills required for formal competition obedience and is broken into 6 levels with 3 additional + levels, so really 9 levels total. After reviewing the program, I thought it would really help me to stay on track and focus on foundation while giving Zora and I a variety of skills to practice. If I decide to do the levels for scores, it is all done through video submissions and apparently the judges give various feed back and critiques, a practice I tend to find very helpful because I usually train alone. There is also a really supportive Facebook group, where the people are very knowledgeable and great about giving caring constructive feedback.
So far we have been working on elements required primarily in level 1 and some exercises from levels 2 and 3. It’s a lot of fun!
This morning I decided to do a complete run thru of the 10 exercises required for level 1 in order. Up to this point we have been practicing elements separately and in pieces. As we are getting more confidence with various pieces, I wanted to do a run thru to see where I need to focus our practice even more.
The run through showed me a lot and pointed out things we do indeed need to practice. A big one I saw repeated in various parts was cue stimulus control. For example when I cued “set up” at the pivot target she both times moved to the platform first. When we did the vertical target first, then I 2 exercises later asked her to go around the cone, she tried to nose touch the cone instead as she had the vertical target. Which ‘around’ the cone is a behavior she is regularly very consistent and strong on. But I’d never before asked her to go do a ‘touch’ then a short while later asked her to do an ‘around.’ Cue stimulus control is something I tend to struggle with training for behaviors on verbal cue only, I simply don’t do it enough and in real life and in dog agility I don’t find it necessary. I am good at it for hand signals and body language cues, but not verbals. But in obedience competition verbal stimulus control is very necessary, so a skill for me to really practice and improve upon.
We also need to work more on her position cues, which I knew. Her default is a down, and we haven’t had enough practice on sit cues in general. She also doesn’t do a tuck sit. Which I am at the moment on the fence about teaching her, as I’ve tried to teach it to her since she was a puppy and have been unsuccessful, hence why I basically stopped asking her to sit ever for the past 2+ years. She of course still sits on her own, I just don’t ask her to move into that position. I’ve tried various ways to teach it to her and none have made any sense to her. So we shall see what I end up doing.
I was super pleased with her scent articles though. Super super pleased! Especially because this was only the 2nd time practicing them in the basement. I taught her the scent game in our living room. And her fronts. Fronts are something I’ve struggled with teaching past dogs, and I’m really liking how Zora’s are coming out so far. Her back up, we are still using a channel, but WOW! Such an improvement from where she was. I feel like the rear foot target has made such a positive difference in her understanding of back up.
