Starting Training

Oddjob loves being involved in everything. He also loves climbing on top of things. I have added to this love by rewarding him for getting onto a box as part of the foundation training I do. 



You can not put anything down without him climbing onto the top of it, looking very proud and waiting for a reward.



Moving a chest of drawers from the garage to upstairs was challenging as I'd turn round to see he had climbed onto a drawer I had put down. I absentmindedly placed a pile of 3 drawers on top of each other only to hear a clatter and turn round to see Oddjob valiantly standing on top of the fallen pile :)

We are still working through some basic foundation training - mainly circlework, waiting and playing (specifically tug).

Circlework is where I want him to stay in a heel position while I go round a 5m circle. He is fine on the right hand side. He struggles on the left as he wants to circle himself. Mark thinks he needs to do it to tighten up his tail curl. On that side I can only walk and reward every single step at the moment to keep his position. Like a pug I have my stubborn moments so I will continue to work on this.

Waiting is great in a crate and if I do it's your choice type games dropping treats in front on him so I know he has some understanding of it. What we haven't got understanding of yet is if I walk away. The will to be close enough in case I have a reward for him is too great. Slowly slowly is going to be the key. I am going to extend the length of time I ask him to wait more before I go back to trying to walk away. 5 seconds close by seems nothing but if every second takes me further away you can see why it gets harder. I will aim for 20 seconds before I try distance. I have been told that it may not be worth getting him to wait on the start line in agility. that may become the case but I would like to crack the behaviour away from agility first. If I don't need it thats fine but if I do it is easier for the dog to know the behaviour away from the equipment first.

Playing has always been a struggle I have with my dogs. I seem to turn them off the behaviour then have to do loads of work to get it back so it is not because of him being a different breed. What I have to keep reminding myself is that when I get the play it is with me - not with the toy. Torro and Rhyme will turn and jump up at me immediately they get a toy and want me to tug rather than running off to enjoy the toy for its own worth. 

Kodi loved all toys and would run off to play on his own. Getting the toy back took up valuable training time and discouraged us from using toy rewards as much I we would have like to.

Treats make for such quick turn over of training. Action treat treat eaten in a second action again etc. This may work in some environments. In Agility we need our dogs to be fired up and wanting to have fun with us. It is a game. The more we include play the more we will be able to get out of our dogs.

Play is usually interpreted as tug as it takes 2 and brings in natural instincts. Don't forget any physical interaction can be play. For agility relationships the key is the interaction needs to be between the dog and handler.

Well I will continue to teach Oddjob to tug for those very reason. 

Meanwhile like many people I am tempted to progress to some agility equipment training. So being a bit impatient and wanting to keep physical interaction I devised a cunning plan on the straight line jump grids. 

As mentioned Oddjob loves climbing onto things. He also likes jumping into things. The previous owner left a low feed bucket which is ideal for pug jumping into. I rewarded any time he jumped in the bucket for a few days. Then put it at the end of a jump grid. We started with the last jump and into the bucket and back chained to doing 5 jumps now. Once in the bucket he immediately looks to me for a reward so although it is a little cheat he is still working for me. 

I am not watching his jump action as my focus is the bucket ready to verbally praise once he is there but Mark has seen him and says he bounces beautifully.

We have only done this a couple of times and I will leave this now for a while as he doesn't need to do too much jumping. I'm disappointed I didn't get Mark to video though.

I did get Oddjob to pose in his new coat though

Empowering the Pug

Oddjob is a great little dog and we are so glad we got him.

With all the moving, Olympia, Christmas and then concentrating on the Wag and Tone eBook it suddenly dawned on me that he just lives with us. By that I mean he doesn't have a relationship with us. Well not the kind of relationship that we normally have with our dogs.

Our other dogs were brought up with a strong working relationship. We spent time developing a strong foundation built on great a positive reward based structure. This structure created the work ethic as it is known within all the Border Collies.

The work ethic of doing something right in order to earn a reward creates a life where we work on avoiding situations that involve any correction. This means simple basics like understanding go to your bed are actually taught and rewarded so although they may have preferred not to go they will as they had been rewarded enough. This paid huge dividends in helping them (and us) cope with living in other houses.

I have spent time re rewarding this behaviour in their new house where the beds are in a different place. I have also rewarded sitting in gate ways on the way to the field to help them calm down and not crash racing through gates.

Torro Devo and Rhyme waiting to be called through the gate

You'll notice Oddjob wasn't there. He would just not understand that behaviour and until he learns how to "work" he is almost entirely likely to fail any attempt I made to teach it.

Being small and calmer he is not likely to harm himself racing through gateways and he generally just hangs around so doesn't need to know the behaviour. But he does so much want to.

Oddjob trying to work out what to do

Without going right back to basics he will never be able to acheive exactly what I want. There is no way I easily explain it to him.

So I called in reinforcements our friends Greg and Laura Derrett International Instructors, Handlers and owners of UKA and UKI. Luckily they have also managed to make time to create Ultimate Agility. This gives access to their knowledge and help through online courses. Again luckily for me (and Oddjob) they have just started one on Reinforcement.

www.ultimateagility.com

How perfect is that.

I know I love the way Greg and Laura look at dog training - how important it is to them to use positive reinforcement over any other training and how well they put information across. It will be a lot of focus on Oddjob and myself and it will be uncomfortable for me at times facing up to the things I could do better.

It will also be the best thing we ever could have done together and I am very confident that Oddjob will come out as a dog many people envy and I will be a much better dog trainer.

If you are at a point when you notice you are spending more time saying no to your dog than praising it then I would thoroughly recommend spending the money on this great course.

Mud Pies

I totally mistimed my dog walk on Wednesday and despite blue skies and a bit blowy when I left the car 10 minutes later we had torential rain. As Sandrine would say il pleut comme vache qui pisse.

The Collies continued to have a blast running around. Myself not having the correct clothing on and Oddjob were not so keen.

We bravely carried on albeit a bit of a shortened route and as the rain got worse even a couple of the collies started looking at me for ideas of where to shelter. Oddjob was sorted walking directly behind me using me as cover.

My initial idea on the walk was to work on Oddjobs unhappiness with mud. Not far from where we park there are quite a few molehills. Ideal not too muddy but dirty and weird when stood on.

On the way out before the rain we stopped and Oddjob was given his precious chicken in exchnage for putting his feet on the molehills and due to clever plavement of reward was enjoying eating as his feet sunk into the molehill.

As we hurried back towards the van in the pouring rain I glanced at the molehills and was delighted although surprised to see Oddjob look up at me and deliberately plant his front feet onto the molehill and await his reward :)

Very pleased with this as he demonstrated that he was happy to work in such miserable weather and that he was liking the molehill game. What I wasn't so pleased about was that as I bent over to reward him a gap opened between my relatively waterproof coat and my not waterproof at all and already soaking trousers revealing an area of skin that created a lovely watercourse for the rain down - well I'll say no more LOL.

Last night I took Oddjob along to UpAndOver Dog Agility Club foundation class for his first taste of an agility class and so we can list that he started his agility career with them as it may be a long drive to take him to classes once we move. He isn't really ready for full on classes yet as he is still learning about learning and having fun with us. He wasn't overwelled or noisy and paid attention when called. He climbed on the wobbleboard and walked on a seesaw plank, He got in and out of various boxes and go on to the stools. He even did a recall over a pole on the ground to me and then back to give Dee a puggle. He did the boxes, stools, wobbleboard and seesaw quite happily with a great attitude but was not rushing to get to me over the pole on the ground. I do not want him to learn to do anything slowly so will work on recall speed before revisiting any obstacles. It was great to have a chance to have a taster though and helps steer our training for the next thing.

As it is quite dirty at the equestrian centre I didn't take his brand new favourite tugging toy instead opting for one of Rhyme's similar to another that he plays happily with. It was not a sucess with him so I also have to add playing around distractions to his list of things to do.

Acid Mud

Well with things moving quickly on the moving, not moving front for us Oddjob's training and blogging about it has taken a bit of a back seat.

He has adjusted really well to living with the collies and him and Rhyme are best pals.

So the last training I did was a basic - sitting.

I have since been informed that sit is not a basic exercise for Pugs and it doesn't come naturally to them either mentally or physically.

That explains it. I know he isn't unwilling to try to do things and I know he isn't daft so I did wonder if my training skills were letting me down as he was not quick to learn this behaviour.

Luckily I was told about them not liking the sitting before I had cracked it and he will now sit either for a treat, a toy, to be let in along side the others (staying there once the door is opened is next on the list) and randomly at my feet when I am near the fridge where the chicken treats are kept LOL.

We have now find exactly the right house and so all should go through ok now. We may have to spend time in a small holiday let and I mean small. I don't think it has internet so I may not be able to write for a while.

When we had looked at the house the owner told us of a nice walk nearby. A 3 hour car journey meant we wanted to ensure the dogs were walked before we went back again.

It was a lovely walk, along a track, through some woods and along an old disused railway track.

Well it was a lovely walk for people with boots and Border Collies. However due to the acid mud it was the most miserable walk Oddjob had ever had. He was so very unhappy about this and could not understand why on earth we would expect him to walk through it.

I say acid mud as the look on his face as he stared down at where his foot nearly touched it was one of pure distaste. Poor Oddjob.

I had been told that Pugs don't like rain but he has been out quite a few times in the rain and run about with the boys ok. This was another matter altogether.

Just avoiding mud or picking him up is not a brilliant option so my next mission is to see if I can get him to be comfortable with his feet in mud.

When I was just starting out at work I started in a bank with a few other recruits. We did those newbie jobs on a rota. The worst of all tasks was the post. It was the lowest of low, the acid mud of banking jobs. for some reason I decided to be the best post clerk there was. I labelled the baskets clearly so it was easier to sort, I activiely went round asking if I could take anything extra to the post office for the staff (just take my club order back etc). Eventually I actually began to look forward to doing the post and suddenly my colleagues became the same.

So I know that with the right attitude and lots of positive feelings even acid mud could be fun to be in :)

Initially I am getting Oddjob to just put his foot in water in a bowl for he best reward - chicken.

Out and about I am rewarding him for putting his foot on the edge of the mud, on a mole hill and in a puddle. I want him to enjoy his walks with us and not to be unhappy about anything as he is such a bubbly boy. I do need to take care I don't overdo this as having a pug sat in by the fridge is one thing trying to dry a muddy wiggly pug every time we go out will be another matter :)

Goodjob Oddjob

Just a very quick blog today as we are busy house hunting (again).

Oddjob has settled in so well with all our dogs except Kodi. When at shows Kodi has always been fascinated by Papillons and we used to joke and say when he got to agility champsionship status we would get him one. Clearly a pug is a long way from a papillon so Kodi is not impressed. He isn't nasty to Oddjob as Kodi hasn't got a mean bone in his body - he just is not interested.

It is a totally different story with Rhyme, they would romp and play all day given the oppoertunity and Rhyme is so gentle.

Having had just one breed for a long time it is special to see such different looking dogs have such a closeness :)

Training is coming along great. At the moment I have no new video footage to prove it though.

There is still a time delay from treat rewarding to swapping to play. I'm timing it and at the moment it is not on a steadily decreasing amount or even a consistant amount - sometimes it is instant, other times a few seconds to a few minutes to oh I need to go outside for a poo. I haven't decided what the key is yet but will keep exploring it.

The 2 focuses for this week was sit and settle down. I wasn't sure if he didn't find it easy to sit, if sitting wasn't an option previously or if he just hadn't been taught it but decided we'd done some fun stuff so let us try a basic.

As with other training it didn't take too long but still needs some work before it is solid.

Now settle is a different matter. I do have to remmeber that he is only 11 months old and can remember sitting on our floor helping the collies to settle quietly in the evening whilst we watch TV. It is never easy but I kind of thought that a toy breed would find it much more natural. Not Oddjob he always wants to be doing something LOL.