Dr. Christine Zink seminar

This weekend I attended a seminar called "Coaching the Canine Athlete" with Dr. Christine Zink. Dr. Zink is a veterinarian who is boarded in canine sports medicine and rehabilitation. There were quite a few people in the veterinary profession at this seminar (I saw 2 other vets from my school, one a year ahead of me and one a classmate, and there were several technicians and chiropractors) but also just dog sport enthusiasts.

I learned A LOT. If you ever have an opportunity to attend this seminar I highly recommend you do so. It was a 3 day event, but unfortunately I had to miss the last day because we had agility class... oh and because I'm broke! But on the days that I went we discussed nutrition, vaccination protocols, spaying and neutering, conditioning the healthy athlete and rehabilitating the injured, and we also discussed structure and gaiting. There are so many things I am now going to be incorporating into Kili's routine, and that I also want to try to do with Summit as well to help him live a long and mobile life. Luckily, some of those things I have already started with Kili without realizing exactly how wonderful they are for her. For example, I have been teaching her to sit pretty and to wave. Both of those "tricks" are conditioning exercises for strengthening the core, hind legs, and front legs. We will be working on that more from now on!

I also got to get Kili up on a FitPaws Egg and Peanut. I would very much like to get one after we move. I do not have the space to exercise her on one of these right now, but hopefully at our next house we will. It's going to be great for her strength!

There were also some really great victories at this seminar. This was the first time Kili had been to a canine event since her last conformation show (remember that was a small disaster). Although she did have difficulties with letting me stack her (necessary for the structure portion of the demonstration) she did manage to let me. She was also quite squirrely about people coming up and putting their hands on her, similar to the way she would balk in the conformation ring when the judge would try to touch her. But she was okay, and I didn't feel like she was completely overwhelmed. We also had some great tugging! In fact, she was almost in hyper tugging mode. If we were just sitting around watching other dogs demonstrate or listening to Dr. Zink explain something she would be grabbing her toy and wanting to tug. Now, I'll take it because I love to see a strong tug drive from her, but I also know that it was probably her way of blowing off a bit of stress or adrenaline.

What I learned is that greyhounds are pretty disproportionate and are really not built for agility. They have a lot of hind end angulation which makes turning difficult. They also tend to have very straight shoulders which puts extra stress on the shoulder joint during jumping. I guess a lot of warm up, cool down, and conditioning is going to be important! Interestingly, she had remarked on the first day that she liked Kili's build better than the racing type dogs, yet after doing structure on the second day I am curious why. Summit has a more typical build for a racer and after looking at him at home... he is a lot less extreme. He has moderate hind angulation and he has a much nicer shoulder than Kili (not as straight). I am thinking about e-mailing her to ask her about it.

We also analyzed the dogs' gaits. Dogs that have a lot of hind end angulation tend to have more difficult gaits. Basically, in a trot the hind foot is supposed to step directly into the footprint of the front paw on that same side. If the hind leg is longer relative to the front leg then it takes longer to get it around and the front leg needs to do something. Some dogs flick their front paw in front of them, others high step, but most end of having "bypassing" or "crabbing". You can see bypassing as the hind leg crossing the front leg when they come together in the trot. Pretty much all German Shepherds bypass because of the huge amount of hind end angulation they have. Kili wasn't bad. She did see some bypassing as we sped the trot up but (and unfortunately this didn't make it onto the video) she did say that even if you watch wild canids (wolves, foxes, coyotes, etc.) that you would see bypassing at the faster paced trots... so it might be normal.

It was also our first opportunity to try out Kili's new crate. Her wire one was just a tad too small now that she is full grown. Unfortunately the next size up in the wire crate is just too heavy and builky to be very portable. She wasn't tolerating the soft crate either. Besides, I use the soft crate for Summit if I ever take both dogs somewhere. I had a heck of a time finding this plastic crate. As you get into the larger sizes it becomes harder and harder to find a crate that snaps together... most have the screws for airline travel which is not very convenient when you want to put it together quickly. Finally, I found one and Jarrett gets brownie points for being a good boyfriend and buying it for me for my birthday. Here was our set up for the weekend:

Handling - Blind Crosses

We've been working a lot on handling in agility class. Something that I have recently started with both Summit and Kili is the blind cross. This is basically a front cross (changing sides in front of your dog) but with your back to your dog. Generally speaking you don't turn your back to your dog because you will lose your connection to them. However, it is sometimes advantageous to do the blind cross.

The way our instructor explains the motion of this move is as if you are a small child pretending to be an airplane (we all remember how much fun that was!). I'm still working on trying to get my airplane to make a smooth pass with no quick whipping my head around to see where the dog is. We're getting there.

Happy Gotcha Days!

October is a special month at our house as we celebrate both dogs' "gotcha" days!

Summit has been home 3 years as of October 20.

Kili passed the one year mark on the 15th. Tomorrow is also Kili's 14 month birthday.

With so many milestones in one month I thought we'd better celebrate with a photoshoot. One of the Humane Society's foster parents is a professional photographer and she was holding a fundraiser to pay off the bill at our clinic. For such a worthwhile cause and a momentous month... how could I resist?

I have very few photos with my dogs, mainly because I tend to be the one on the other side of the camera. And while I tend to dislike photos of myself (especially awkward ones when I'm running and making weird faces) I really did need some with them. One day I'm going to want them!

Since the dogs do not trial (yet!) I also wanted some pictures of them working, so I brought my jumps out to the park with us. Summit warmed up over some low jumps and then I moved him up to the 26" height so we could get some more impressive shots. I rarely ever ask him to jump 26".

I was very impressed with Kili at this photoshoot. When I was working with Summit of course there was no one around. As soon as I went to get Kili for her turn people kept walking past to go down to the water or back to their vehicles. It was endless. Finally I thought I had a break in the traffic and got her out to start working with her, and then a group of people came walking by. Kili never even acknowledged that she noticed they were there. She tugged like a little pro, was on the jumps when I asked, held her sit stays, and was just generally very focused.

 

I'm so proud of my little family.

 

 

Your dog will always surprise you

No matter how much you think you know about your dog, no matter how long you have had your dog, your dog will always surprise you. Always. Never assume anything about your dog because that is a dangerous thing to do. At work I continually hear "Oh, he would never bite you" sometimes followed by "I've never heard him growl before!". The nicest dog can and will bite out of pain or fear. Doesn't mean the dog has a mean streak.

Your dog may also surprise you in pleasant ways, and assuming something may just be shutting out possibilities. Recently Summit decided to surprise my pleasantly.

I have never used toys when training Summit. When we first got him, you may remember that I had to use a click to painfully shape the retrieve starting with just touching the toy with his nose. While I have seen his interest in toys grow to the point that he plays with them on his own and gets excited if we play fetch, he always released toys instantly upon feeling pressure upon them, so tugging was out. Which was fine by me. He's plenty food motivated for training.

I don't know if he learned through annoyance with Kili or by watching her have fun tugging with me, but the other day out of the blue he was tugging with Kili. I do have ONE video of him and Kili both holding the same rope toy when she was a tiny baby. But Kili always snatches toys right out of Summit's mouth when he is retrieving them in the backyard for me. So maybe he just got annoyed and thought "hey, twerp, this is my toy, give it back" but there he was tugging with Kili. I thought, I wonder what will happen if I go over there. Well, this is what happens:

What? Where did this tugging fool come from! So excited to work on this more and see if I can use it as a reward or a game in agility.Summit is coming up to his 3 year anniversary with us and I never thought I'd see him play tug with me. Wrong yet again!

So remember: your dog will always surprise you. Always.

Woodville Demo

We had the opportunity to participate in another demo with our trainer. I love demos. It exposes the dogs to a new location with new distractions and challenges. This one was particularly distracting since it was being held at a fair. There were rides and food vendors, a musical talent show was happening at the same time, and an audience. I thought all the dogs did a great job. No one was afraid and no one was terribly distracted... not even Kili!

Both dogs got two turns in the ring plus a warm up. For some reason my boyfriend missed Kili's second turn.

On Summit's first turn he did a couple of tunnels, a couple of jumps (including a double jump which is new to him just this week), the table, and the chute. The entrance to the chute was quite awkward because it was a 90 degree angle which is not something we have ever seen before. It also did not help that I forgot to do a rear cross and was on the wrong side of my dog.

Summit's second turn included a jump sequence to a tunnel where he really did have to discriminate between which entrance I wanted him to take. We had some trouble with that but again, this was the first time we've had something like that. We also worked on weave poles with the channel technique. In class Summit actually does these a fair bit closer together, in fact he actually has to carefully pick his way through. We dumbed it down a bit for him since we were at a new location.

As for Kili, I was THRILLED with her at this demo. She crated well while I was busy with Summit. She was not afraid at all of the crazy rides, all the people, the new dogs, the loud noises. And she was actually quite focused on me in the ring. You'll see in the video that a couple of times she gets away from me or goes to do something I didn't ask for, but she comes when I call her which is a mighty improvement over her first class. Mind you, her favourite piece of equipment, the A-frame, was not in the ring!

I included Summit's little intro by our trainer because I thought it was quite nice, even if it wasn't entirely true. So far as we can tell our boy flunked out of racing without a single race. There is a little exchange at the end of his first run that you may not be able to totally hear so I subtitled it as best as I could. I guess someone in the audience probably commented on Summit's weight.

I love these demo events. I get free food, free training, and a free agility course. Of course, I often end up helping to move the equipment since I have a truck... so maybe I end up paying more in gas money for the demo than I do for my classes!

Demo dog

Summit and I had the opportunity to perform as a "demo dog" with our trainer at the local humane society's annual "walk-a-thon" event. We attended last year when we just moved to this area and watched the dogs showing off their agility training. This year we got asked to participate!

The walk-a-thon takes place at a local conservation park. The last event of the day is always the agility demonstration. Since I now have a truck I actually helped to haul our equipment to the park and then the whole crew helped to set everything up. Due to how short the demo would be (we ran about 8 dogs) we did not bring any contact equipment.

Kili got to practice waiting her turn. I put her in her ex-pen to wait while I first warmed Summit up and then took him into the ring for his turn. When I came back I switched them out and had Kili work on some Rally in the distracting environment.

I was super happy with Summit. We had some handling mistakes and some general distraction, but I was very happy with how he performed considering this was his first time outside in over a year and a half, and his first time ever with an audience. I even put Kili through the tunnel a couple of times before we packed up and was super pleased with how willing and confident she was. We will get another chance to practice in 2 weeks when our trainer holds their Open House event. Summit will be running agility and Kili will be doing Rally.

Here's Summit's run. I put in annotations for you so you can sort of follow my thoughts through the run.

Beginner no more

Summit finished his beginner agility course last week. I think he could have easily been in intermediate instead as this was fairly easy for him, however it was good for us to spend some one-on-one time together working off the rust. However, it was frustrating at times because the equipment constantly had to be adjusted for him, mostly the teeter, since none of the other dogs were at the same level as him. On the other hand it's always fun when your dog is the best in class!

Summit finds the teeter tough to balance on when it hits the ground, however I would say that weaves are definitely his weakest obstacle. Summit is that greyhound that is very confident about most things but very skittish about some very strange things. He does not like it when things fall off counters. He does NOT like narrow spaces. If I leave a door ajar he will not walk through it. This is probably why weaves are tough for him.

The last segment of video shows a full course put together on graduation day. Unfortunately the only run that I managed to get someone to film was also the worst. First of all the teeter was set for all the other dogs. Summit easily handles the teeter at knee height so this was kind of ridiculous for him. You see him go for the touch and me totally forgetting about it (because the teeter was so low and my trainer had said not to treat him on this run until we got to the table... but I should have still asked for the touch at the end of the contact). Then he comes off the table on my left side so he is on the wrong side for the jump. Worst run of the day. Oh well, it was still pretty good otherwise!

On to Intermediate!

(I am not sure why my usual video method is not working. Blogger keeps telling me that it cannot find any of my youtube videos. Hopefully this is a glitch in the system that will resolve so I can use my old video posting method soon! Since there were issues with this video not showing up, I am re-posting this. It was originally posted May 19, 2013.)

Urban Agility

Since I do not have my own equipment I often find ways to work agility into our every day lives when I see an opportunity. This makes for what I like to call "urban agility". Usually we're talking about kids playgrounds. Check it out!

Back to Basics

Summit has been feeling a little left out of the blog action lately. He's been a little left out of training recently as well. To remedy that I decided to put him into a beginner agility class so we could have some one on one time together. I decided to put him in beginner instead of intermediate because he hasn't done any agility in a year and a half, and I wanted something relatively easy for him so we could mostly just work on having fun together and so I could see how my new trainer introduces all the obstacles so I'll be prepared when it is Kili's turn at the end of the summer.

Here is Summit doing some obstacles. He's a little rusty. We both are. My handling is not the best but that's why we went with beginners! In general his first time back on a piece of equipment he's not 100% sure, but the confidence comes quickly and you can see his tail is always going. As long as he's happy, so am I. In this class we did the tire, table, chute, weaves, A-frame, and teeter. I didn't get weaves or A-frame on video, but here's the rest!

Back to school

It is back to the grind stone. Final year of vet school. The hours are absolutely nuts. Which makes taking dog classes nearly impossible. Some days I'm at school until 7:30 PM, other nights I'm done at 5:30 but have to go back to look in on my patients at about 8PM. On top of that I'm studying for my board exam in November.

It's back to school for Summit too. Because of my crazy schedule, Summit and I decided (okay, I made the decision) to join an agility club so that we can be more flexible about when we practice.

I'm super excited that I might actually have Summit ready to trial next summer. A little ambitious maybe, but totally do-able now that we'll be able to work through the winter. Unfortunately, we're really going to have to put some time into working on his gun shyness. We had a great first half of class this evening until someone started shooting off a shotgun. Turns out it's goose or duck season or something. Of course, Summit turned into a puddle. I plan to start doing some desensitization with him this winter. I hate seeing him reduced to an incapacitated, quivering wreck. And it's obviously a little disappointing when we were having such a great session.

Doggone Sons of Guns

Summit and I had our first agility class last night and it was hugely disappointing and frustrating. As soon as we arrived and stepped out of the car we could hear the guns. Turns out there's a gun club down the road somewhere. It wasn't loud, but given Summit's fear of fireworks I was very happy that he seemed unperturbed by the guns. Even so I was giving lots of treats when particularly loud ones went off, just to be sure. I don't know if it wore him down over time or if the one freaked out dog in the class sent him into a downward spiral but he turned into a complete quivering wreck. I just don't understand how the first 15 minutes were great and then a switch flipped and he was like "OMG SCARY NOISE!". At first he was still grudgingly obeying commands, and even still taking very high value treats, but he deteriorated to not doing anything he was asked and refusing all food, even hot dogs and cheese. So we left early. I saw no point in staying as it had become completely counter productive by then. I was so disappointed. Not in him because it's not his fault he's gun shy, but I'd been looking forward to this course all summer. Our trainer is going to talk to the gun club about changing their shooting days or times. I will see if she was able to get them to do that, otherwise we may have to drop out of the course. I can't afford to pay for a class we're really not doing. At least the freaked out border collie was still doing obstacles. Summit turned into the famous greyhound statue. I do have to say though that his recall was still reliable. The border collie kept bolting for the exit to the ring. The entire property is fenced so the dogs are safe from traffic, but they do have some areas that are wooded.

I came home cursing about guns and how stupid they are to my poor boyfriend who happens to love guns. He just got his gun license and will probably bring his gun back from his parents' house soon. I wish I knew how to help Summit with this but I really don't beyond what we've already been doing. Maybe next week we'll take his Thundershirt with us and see if that helps.

Happy birthday!

Summit turned 6 today! He's got the easiest birthday to remember. 05/05/05.

First we went to the pet store to get some delicious birthday goodies.

Then we went for a long hike at the dog park... long as in 2 hours. When we got home Summit passed out in bed and stayed there until it was time to go to agility class. In class this week we worked on the teeter with the table removed but the coach still controlling the drop for those that needed it. Summit always gets some sort of left over meat for the teeter and has now graduated to just regular treats for all other obstacles. He jumps right onto the teeter and offers to of his own accord, up to halfway, once it starts tipping he becomes nervous and wants to jump off. It takes a lot of encouragement and lots of meaty treats to convince him to keep walking the rest of the way, even after the teeter is down and stopped moving.

We also did a course at the end. We got two tries. The first was a practice run. The second was timed. We also removed the teeter for the second run. Summit won in a time of 38 seconds. That's right, he's already a winner. Of course, if the teeter had been left in place he probably wouldn't have won, but shhhh!

After class Summit got to eat his goodies.

Mini agility course

Today was our third agility class. We introduced a curve to the tunnel, a small drop on the teeter and the weave poles. Summit doesn't like the teeter. It took about 4 attempts to get him to walk all the way out to the end and not jump off part way. But we got him there. It still has to be done slowly and with constant treats as well as someone controlling how quickly the teeter drops, but we'll get there.

He had no trouble with the curve in the tunnel which surprised me pleasantly. He had a bit of an issue the first few attempts trying to go through the weave poles but once he got the idea he did well. Jumps are no longer an issue.

I had my friend film Summit's turn on the full course. Note how slowly we do the teeter and that the instructor is controlling the teeter drop. He did jump onto the teeter on his own before I asked him though. He also normally does the tunnel on first attempt, not sure why he decided to pretend not to know how on this run. You'll notice that his jumping problems have resolved completely. Last is the chute which we didn't get an opportunity to practice before doing the full course, hence Summit not seeming to know what to do about it (remember we were only introduced to the chute for the first time last week).

Look mom! I'm a real agility greyhound!

School has been insane. I want to keel over and die I'm so exhausted and frustrated. The weather hasn't been helping either. It's mid April and there's still the odd day where it snows! And when it's not snowing it's rainy, windy, and COLD. Not good weather for working on agility. I did take a couple of slightly nicer days to work with Summit in the backyard, and I've been working with him on our morning walks to the park. There's a couple of playgrounds with platforms to use as tables as well as some big logs (for the kids to walk on?) that have some good height that I've been asking him to jump.

Finally got some videos yesterday in the backyard. I set up a makeshift jump out of a stool and some buckets and one of my broken hockey sticks (I knew I kept that thing for a reason). I started off pretty low, asked him to jump that a few times, and then made one side of the jump a fair bit higher. He still had the option of taking the low end, but as you can see he could easily clear the high end if he wanted. I've got him on his harness and long lead because he's associated the backyard with zoomies. The harness seems to keep him focused, so we will continue with that until the backyard comes to be associated with working.

There's also a big piece of plywood in the backyard (I think it's left over from the backyard rink that was there in the winter) and I pulled that over top of a rock. It doesn't work exactly like a teeter but it'll get Summit used to walking on a surface that moves. The point was more just to get him on and off of it comfortably as opposed to really walking from one side to the other and tipping it.

We also had our second agility class last night. We learned the chute which was no problem for Summit. I was quite surprised. After how much he balked at the tunnel at first I was expecting some sort of resistance, but not a problem. We started it out short and almost open, then slowly made the chute longer and started collapsing it down. In a few tries it was full length and completely collapsed. No problem. We also started working on the A-frame with a target at the end, and finally we worked on the teeter. It was set up with one end on the table so it was basically just a plank that didn't move. Summit was a little unsure about this at first but he's definitely getting better. I had my agility instructer take a quick video at the very end of class. Unfortunately she missed the jump, but you can see him go up the teeter. She also told me that next week if I want more videos she can take some during the class, so hopefully there will be many more next week!

First agility class!

Sorry for the long gap between posts. Vet school finals are on and they're brutal. I've been getting up at 7:30, going to bed at 11:30 and taking very few breaks in between. But tonight we had a study break for our first agility class!

I apologize that there are no pictures or videos. My friend is also in our class with her German Shepherd, and her boyfriend was supposed to be coming as well, so I was hoping to ask him to take a couple of videos of Summit and I. Unfortunately they ran into car trouble so I gave her and Dax a lift, but two big dogs in the backseat and one passenger are all I have room for. So no videos. You're not missing much though.

We started with backing up and looking left and right exercises. Then we got into bar jumps. Summit had already been introduced to these in his obedience class, so he did fairly well until I tried to raise the height of the jump. At the height it's at right now he's not really jumping... he's just stepping. As soon as I raise the height he refuses and goes around. I think I'm going to set up a makeshift jump in the backyard tomorrow as a study break. I intend to find some buckets and I've got a mop or something for the bar. I'm hoping as he becomes comfortable with going over the little jump it'll allow us to start getting more of a running start (right now if I give him too much distance he opts to go around) which should help him to feel he can clear a higher jump. The class is indoors and the room isn't that big, so there's not much space for him to get a good run going. Greyhounds are the best jumpers from a stand still.

We also worked on a series of obstacles. The first one was a bar jump and a table. Both set very low. What I discovered is that the table is not very big at all. You put a big greyhound on there and ask for a down... well, he barely fits! Summit was very good though and had no problems jumping up on it and laying down for a 5 second wait.

The second series was a bar jump followed by a tunnel. After his initial introduction to the tunnel he has no qualms about it whatsoever. It's the only obstacle at this point that he's pretty reliable about not skipping.

The final series was a tire, tunnel, bar jump. Need to work on that tire some more as well as he likes to try to go around. It was set higher than it has been in the past when he's seen it, so I wonder if again he found it awkward.

All in all it was a pretty good session. I found myself having to explain about greyhounds. Seems like I'm always training the trainer when it comes to training a greyhound. She was very understanding though so that was good. She had wanted us to ask our dogs to sit, then stand behind them and use food lures to get them to turn their heads left and right, this is supposed to be the beginning of teaching them how to take direction for which way to go. I opted to leave Summit in a stand and straddle him (he's tall, I'm not, so it's pretty close to being awkward) and she came over and told me that he should be in a sit. Well, I explained that that wouldn't work very well because there was no way he was going to stay in a sit for any length of time. I haven't worked on his sit stays very much because aside from obedience I don't see much point. We'll cross that bridge if we ever want to do more serious obedience. Once she understood she was very understanding about it. Definitely a good sign!

Agility beginnings

Summit has finished his level 2 obedience and is starting level 1 agility the first week of April! I am so excited! In obedience we did 15 minutes of agility at the end of every class, and Summit has done very well! He does the tunnel, tire, jump, and A-frame (not even close to full height of course) and can do them off leash when asked/directed. We are working on the height of the jump, but considering he couldn't jump before we started I think he's doing quite well. He's jumping about 2 ft right now. After an initial difficult beginning to the tunnel he now offers to run through without being asked. In fact, after class last week I was playing fetch with him, and as he came back to me one time he decided to run through the tunnel. Go figure. Right now apparently the answer is "tunnel".