What the . . .

. . heck is going on here?

Sheryl McC. gave me a CD of pics she'd taken of my kids over the last couple of years, including the official photo shoot for my new Front and Finish column header back in the spring of '08. This is one of the outtakes from that session. I have NO IDEA what Phoenix is doing.

I think he's biting something. And I think Rilda is involved.

Rilda was the official ear-getter-upper that day. She had a whole bag of toys and she was VERY exciting. Connor was all about lap time. Jamie was all about being a pretty boy for his picture. Phoenix was all about GETTING THE TOYS NOW!

We got through it all fine, no one got hurt or arrested and Sheryl got some great shots.

Today, I am thankful for friends who take pics and video for me. The year's first agility trials are this weekend, now I just have to remember to give someone my camera before we run!

Teaching in the winter

I’m happy to report the class I’m currently teaching actually managed to meet last night. This is practically front page news. I was starting to get paranoid because I had to cancel two of the first three sessions due to horrible weather. Next year if I volunteer to teach in January, somebody please smack some sense into me. What was I thinking? When it started snowing yesterday, I was having visions of yet another cancellation, followed by visions of this class not wrapping up until July.

It’s an “Obedience For Agility” class, which follows neatly in the tracks of yesterday’s post. Thank you to everyone who responded and shared your thoughts. The dog training community in general is very supportive of each others’ interests and very little is served by perpetuating a negative stereotype about any particular discipline. Plus I had to laugh out loud last night when I collapsed, sweaty and out of breath, into my chair at the training building while working Phoenix, that anyone in their right mind could think obedience training is boring.

In a perfect world, we would all master obedience basics with our dogs before enrolling in agility classes, even if we had absolutely zero interest in ever showing in a formal obedience ring. It goes without saying you cannot teach a dog anything if you cannot control him and get him to interact with you in a reasonable fashion. In fact, some clubs require potential agility students and their dogs to take “Obedience 101” before they can participate in any kind of agility training. Kudos to them. But due to availability of time and classes - or more appropriately, lack thereof - many people end up taking obedience and agility classes at the same time or agility without the benefit of any obedience first.

No problem. It’s all dog training and you learn as you go. But frequently what happens, especially with beginning trainers, is they are drawn to teaching the more “glamorous” aspects of agility, like tunnels, weaves and those oh so impressive long and flowing jump sequences that simple skills like stays and recalls (did I actually call them "simple?" Smack me again.) are undervalued and neglected. Oh, the problems this can create in the long run.

Thus, “Obedience For Agility” was born. I’m sure it’s not an original concept. The idea for this class was spawned in my brain last fall, when my club stumbled into renting an absolutely beautiful training building for the winter. We don’t have a permanent training facility and honestly, we don’t need one for about six months of the year. Two club members have private buildings they let us use year around for teaching obedience classes and one has generously fenced a lovely flat field at her home for the club’s agility use.

But training outdoors in the Midwest from November through April is a total crap shoot, so we’ve bounced from one rental property to another every fall, always to pull out stakes and return to the great outdoors come spring. It’s going to be downright painful to leave our current home in the spring and who knows, maybe we won’t. But I digress.

The idea for this class popped into my head when a lot of my friends got puppies last year. How much fun would it be to teach a class for puppies that built skills they could use in two disciplines? So I volunteered, set a start date of Jan. 6, enrolled students and promptly forgot about it during the holidays. The first week of January rolled around, I made lesson plans, got psyched to start class and Mother Nature knocked us for a loop with a monster snow storm. We managed to meet the following week, only to cancel what should have been the third session due to a thick glaze of ice across the area.

So we’ve managed to meet twice. I’d hoped to be over half way done by now! The focus is on attention games, recalls and stays, plus a little walking with attention. Hopefully it will help these young guys and gal (seriously, the class is 7 boy puppies and 1 girl puppy) start to develop a good foundation for teamwork and make teaching the technical skills of agility a bit easier.

I’ll write more about some of the things we’re doing and why in a future post.

Today I am thankful for friends who let me play with their puppies, so I don’t have to get one.

Them's fightin' words!

I’m blowing off a little steam today, maybe because it’s snowing AGAIN and winter seems endless and cruel. Or maybe just because I’ve always wanted to write about this but never seemed to get my thoughts put together until now. And perhaps they still aren’t put together as well as they could be but here they are.

*****

“My dog hates obedience.”

“Obedience is boring.”

“We started in obedience but now we do agility because it’s so much more FUN!”

I cringe when I hear people say things like that. Unfortunately, for the people saying them, they are very true. I have no doubt the speakers and their dogs find obedience training very unrewarding.

Which is a total shame because obedience training is not only a blast, it’s a great way to improve your relationship with your dog. Agility training is, too. The difference - and herein lies the problem - is that obedience training takes more work (mental and physical) on the handler’s part to ensure the process is consistently fun and enjoyable, while also ensuring learning takes place. The learning process in agility provides natural fun for the dog (jumping, tunneling, etc.) that is not present in obedience, leaving a motivation/reward gap that has to be filled by - guess who? YOU the trainer.

What? You have to WORK to make obedience training fun? Really? That sounds like too much work for me. (Insert sarcasm here.)

At my club’s recent awards banquet, one of our members put together a fun photo show that played continuously during the evening. It featured pictures of members’ dogs in both the obedience and agility rings, as well as candid shots. It was a lot of fun to see the different expressions on human and canine faces and look at their body language.

Two photos in particular stood out to me and of course they were of Phoenix. The first showed the two of us during a heeling exercise in the Novice obedience ring at his very first trial. His head is up, eyes bright and ears are pinned back a little. He is trotting, his tail is carried slightly below level. It is a classic example of a dog concentrating fiercely on his job. I was very happy to see him working with that degree of focus.

Contrast that with the next photo: Phoenix airborne over a jump on an agility course. He has a totally wild look in his eye, his ears are forward and his tail is curved up and to one side for steering. He exudes energy and joy.

I heard someone comment, “There he’s doing what he REALLY likes.”

Ouch. That hurt.

Then, on second thought, the anonymous remark didn’t sting quite as much. Many casual observers of the obedience ring (or those who have become disillusioned with the sport and gone to the “more fun” allure of agility) fail to look beyond obedience’s veneer. Of course heelwork is not going to reflect the same body language as an agility run. Endurance runners do not have the same style as sprinters. But is one sport truly more “fun” than another?

Let’s look at this from another angle. Consider competitive barrel racers and Olympic-class dressage riders. One discipline is all about speed and maneuverability. The other, about precision, control and flexibility. Both require an incredible amount of physical and mental skill. Both require many hours of training and conditioning, as well as communication and understanding of animal nature. And the riders who excel in either sport are the ones who absolutely love what they are doing and transmit that delight to their horses not only during performances but during training. Two different disciplines. Two different performance styles. One thing in common: the riders find fun in the process as well as the performance.

Obedience got a bad rep back in the jerk and yank days of drilling and compulsion. Fortunately, the sport has changed tremendously since I got my first CD in 1977. Still, some folks are put off by a bad experience with an instructor or judge and flee to agility, claiming it’s more “fun” while dismissing obedience with a dramatic eye roll and “Boring!” I’ve seen lots of agility dogs who are scared of the equipment, who run amok in stress reaction and pay little attention to their owners. Is this the “fun” that was missing in "boring" obedience?

The point here is that training issues will plague every handler from time to time, no matter what discipline you chose, “fun” quotient not withstanding. Perhaps the trainers who dismiss obedience as unworthy of their time should look beyond the mere technical aspects of heeling and straight fronts and study the foundation of trust, respect and teamwork developed through regular, enjoyable traditional obedience work.

I work hard to make sure Phoenix's obedience training sessions are exciting, challenging, motivating and energizing for both of us. Yeah, it’s a lot of work because he’s a difficult dog to stay ahead of. My goal is for our obedience work to reflect joy, trust, teamwork, enthusiasm, drive, animation and precision. I'll do what it takes to make that become reality. That is never boring.

Humans, like dogs, move toward the area of highest reward. Those who find obedience training rewarding will continue to enjoy it. Those who don’t will either change their methods until it becomes more fun or leave it entirely to pursue a different venue they perceive as more rewarding. Whatever you do, do it with all your heart and have fun. It's okay if you truly don't enjoy one thing and prefer doing another thing instead. Just don't say the thing you don't enjoy is boring or stupid because you weren't willing to put out the energy to make it fun.

I have friends who do obedience only. I have friends who do agility only. I have friends who do both, plus Rally, Schutzhund, therapy work and other disciplines. The things you can learn from cross-training are invaluable.

Today I am thankful to have friends who show in a variety of performance venues and are always willing to share new training ideas.

Treadmill, lesson 1

Phoenix mastered walking on the treadmill in about 5 minutes last night. I was totally amazed.

Maybe this should not come as such a surprise. Phoenix loves to try new things. He is nosy, curious, pushy and impulsive, so jumping onto a moving treadmill was apparently no big deal. This is the dog who scrambled atop big round bales of hay stacked three high in the barn last summer before I put a stop to it (then went inside and took more heart medication). Honestly, I know why they use mals for police work: they are intelligent and crazy . . . or maybe just crazy.

After getting ideas from several friends whose dogs use treadmills, I decided to start with a click-and-treat approach. Phoenix understands this type of learning and is more than willing to experiment with new behaviors. He’d already sat and stood on the treadmill when it wasn’t running and gotten cookies for that and he’d laid in the doorway and watched both me and the Farmer walking on it. The noise didn’t bother him at all (unlike Jamie, who made it clear he wanted NOTHING to do with the whole idea.)

I decided, also, to start with the belt moving vs. having him stand on a stationary belt, then turning the motor on. That would be somewhat like having the rug pulled out from under you. And I wanted him to understand that he controlled the situation and if he wanted to get off for any reason, he could, so no leashes or cross-ties or anything like that.

Initially, Phoenix stood at the side and put only his front paws on the moving belt, with the predictable result that he flew off the back end. The treadmill was running at its lowest speed, 1 mph. This didn’t faze him.

It wasn’t long before he jumped on with all four feet, stood still and flew off the back end. “Flew” is perhaps too strong of a word. “Thumped” might be more appropriate.

He thought this was such a fun game I was starting to worry we would not get past that point. He thought it was like a reverse teeter-totter. You get on and instead of flipping it forward, it flips you backward. COOL!

But I could tell he was getting serious about problem solving. The cookies only came when his paws were on the moving belt. There were no cookies for thumping off the end, no matter how much fun it might be otherwise.

So he got himself back on (this was totally voluntary, by the way, I wasn’t telling him to do anything, just pointing at the belt) and managed to take a few wobbly strides. Click! Cookie! And he leaped off. Then leaped back on.

And so it went. After 5 minutes, he was willingly walking until verbally released. In fact, he HAD to be released since he wouldn’t get off by himself. We learned by trial and error that when I fed him, he stopped walking. Thump. That’s my dog, can’t walk and eat a cookie at the same time.

This morning we had another quick session which found him gaining confidence in jumping on and finding his stride. His top speed so far is 1.8 mph. I will slowly increase the speed until he’s trotting smoothly but don’t want to rush things until he’s confident and comfortable at lower speed.

Teaching behaviors by shaping is still a new experience for me. I’ve done a little with dogs in the past but am exploring it much more with Phoenix. Occasionally you get lost when you explore but you learn a lot of new things along the way.

Today I am thankful for my crazy dog who is willing to try new things.

Good Maligator!

Phoenix won the ICDOC Highest Scoring Dog of the Year award at our club banquet Saturday night. I’m very proud of my skinny little dog. He joins his brothers Jamie and Connor in having his name and score (199) engraved on the trophy.

I know it’s just a chunk of wood and metal that doesn’t have any real value but what it represents is priceless. It's part of our journey, reflecting all the hours of training, joy, frustration, success, disappointments, problem-solving, trainwrecks, teamwork and totally awesome WE DID IT moments. It’s fun to look at the names of my previous dogs on there and also to see the names of my friends who I have trained and shown and laughed with for years. I value them like family and in fact, the darn trophy is kind of like a family heirloom among the obedience folks in the club.

Plus the trophy itself looks super cool now since Joe L. refinished it and got rid of 20 years of scuffs and scratches. The finish is really pretty. Now the pressure is on - I have to return it in the same condition for next year’s winner!

Phoenix: I would rather have a big fat bone. Really.

The Farmer and I bought a treadmill this weekend, too, which is very exciting. I’ve wanted one for years and finally decided to just do it. Plus, if I ever needed incentive to get regular exercise in the winter, this weekend was it: I ate at Texas Road House Friday night, Taco John’s Saturday at noon, Brown Bottle Saturday night and Micky D’s Sunday noon. Moo-moo, buckaroo! Honestly, I do NOT eat like that on a regular basis but still there are days when I feel like I’ve developing my own gravitational pull.

I want to teach Phoenix to walk on it, as well. Several friends of mine have successfully taught their dogs to use their treadmills so I need to pick their brains. It would be great to be able to have him burn off some of that energy that builds up on icy winter days. Of course, all I’ll probably be doing is building endurance so he can be even crazier.

Today I am thankful to have garlic chicken and linguine leftovers from Saturday night's supper for today's lunch. See, here I go again.

Marengo, murder capitol of Iowa

There's been another murder involving a Marengo resident. Chris Vogt allegedly (they teach us in journalism school to always say allegedly, because he's innocent until proven guilty, only in this case I probably don't have to say it because he is dead now, too) shot and killed his former girlfriend on Friday, then shot and wounded her brother and another man in Cedar Rapids. Then he committed suicide.

I knew Chris briefly, in that small town way everyone knows everyone else. He worked at the auto service shop across the street from the newspaper office for a few years. His mom worked at one of the Amana wineries with my mother-in-law. Chris had served time in the correctional system several years ago, so was not allowed to own a firearm. There is much speculation where he got the gun.

This is the third murder in or near Marengo of current or former Marengo residents by Marengo residents since June 2009. Guess it's actually the fourth, since Chris killed himself. That's four people dead, all involving relationships gone wrong with spouses/ex-spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends in a town of barely 2,000 people.

That's the only saving grace. They were all domestic cases with very specific targets, not random shootings. At least there isn't a mass murderer running around Marengo.

But I'm not going to drink the water there anymore.

Mama said there'd be days like this . . .

When it comes to proper office etiquette and professional behavior, it is incorrect to shout obscenities in the workplace, even if you’re not shouting them directly at a co-worker or customer. Here at the newspaper office, we feel there are occasional exceptions. This morning from about 8 a.m. to noon was one of them.

The morning started out well enough but quickly deteriorated. I’d proofread a 20-page special section, found out the section had been “jumped” by 4 more pages at the last minute and guess who was responsible for its completion now? Had a quick council of war with the advertising and ad composition departments, generated more copy to fill the extra pages, laid out the copy, edited the copy and was nearly done - and then the power went out for no apparent reason.

I had no idea if I’d hit Command Save any time in the last few minutes and thought I’d lost the whole morning's work. (Turns out I HAD saved, it’s one of those things that has become so automatic over the years I do it without thinking about it, then can’t remember if I did it.)

Actually, I thought I showed a fair amount of restraint by yelling “SON OF A B*TCH!” as the office faded to black. What I really wanted to yell was a four-letter word that rhymes with duck. No, not truck, luck, stuck, buck, suck, muck or yuck.

But I didn’t. I’m not totally immature.

As it turned out, the office was plunged into instant chaos anyway (truly, the world comes to an end when computer screens go dark, no matter what department you’re in) and nobody even noticed my little hissy fit. Or maybe they did but were too scared of me to mention it. It’s not a good thing when the lifestyles editor starts acting bipolar.

And what was the topic of the special section that caused so much stress? Health and fitness. We called it “Fit For Life.”

I’ve since renamed it. It’s now called “Having A Fit.”

Today I’m thankful for co-workers who are polite enough to be occasionally deaf.