Good bye, July

Good bye, July. Don't take it personally, but this year, you sucked. I don't mind heat in the summer. It's the Midwest. That's normal. But three whole weeks of temps at 100 degrees or higher? And heat indexes up to 110? Really? Was that necessary? I set a personal record for number of showers in one day - 3.

Other July highlights: watching our county go from dry to moderate drought to severe drought to extreme drought; watching crops start to burn up in the fields; not mowing the lawn for nearly 7 weeks; open burning bans; water usage reduction requests from our rural water service (hmmm, too many people are taking 3 showers a day); training between 5:30 and 6 a.m. because it's still to hot to function outdoors in the evening.

Surely August has to be better. Right?

On the bright side, the Lily Lake at Amana is in full bloom. It's pretty much a dry lake bed at this point but the lilies (American lotus or great yellow water lily) are blooming anyway. They're cool.

Big tough malinois . . .

. . . enjoy chasing bubbles.

Phoenix gets a kick out of this. Last night wasn't the greatest for bubble chasing since by the time I got to it, the lovely breeze had died and the bubbles just hung in the air - fun but not as much fun as when they drift along on a breeze. I don't think Jamie can see them any more. He wanders around and wags his tail and looks at his brother like "What is wrong with you, dude?"

I have a visual! Target acquired!

I will sneak up on it . . . it will never see me coming.

OMG, they're everywhere, they're everywhere!

Take that!

My life goal as a photographer is to take an in-focus shot of my dog biting a bubble. Clearly, this is going to take more practice.

Baby pictures

When Jamie was a puppy, I made it a point to take several pictures of him each month for the first year. (Wish I'd done this with Phoenix but he was so busy eating my house, my clothing, my fingers, the cats, etc. apparently I didn't have time to pick up a camera.)

Since Jamie just turned 13, I thought it would be fun to post a couple of his early baby pics. The last one is on his first birthday.

In case you were wondering . . .

The stretch of Highway 6 between South Amana and Homestead in Iowa County has been renamed the Highway to Hell. At 104 degrees, I'm pretty sure we're IN Hell.

I so promise not to complain about cold weather this winter.

Sit. Stay.

The abyssmal weather continues. Yesterday the high was 104. Tomorrow is forecast to be 105. That's just air temperature. Tack on another 5-10 degrees for the heat index. This is not funny. I am not amused. Make it stop.

This weather has actually been good for Phoenix's training because it makes me pinpoint very specific things to work on in our 6 a.m. sessions. When the weather is lovely, it's easy to dawdle and mess around and let sessions become totally unfocused because it's just nice to be outdoors playing with my dog. When it's already close to 80 degrees and very humid at 6 a.m., it is not nice. We get down to business — work/play and get back in the AC.

Something we've been doing on hot summer nights is working stays, both indoors and out. Since stays will always be a weak link with Phoenix, they need constant maintenance. I will never take our stays for granted.

I have spent a lot of time proofing stays with some very creative and helpful friends. We've tossed food, bounced balls, squeaked toys, rolled around on the floor next to the dogs, picked up the dog's leash, clipped it on and asked them to come with us, we've pulled, pushed and revved them up with a game of 1-2-3-go!

It's all done with the goal of building understanding - don't  move. Distractions and proofs are low key until the dogs show they understand, then we ask for more effort at resisting temptation. Gone are the days of jerk and yank "corrections" for moving out of place. We're looking for that light bulb moment where the dog thinks about moving, then clearly decides, "No. Not gonna. I'm gonna sit right here."

At home, I'll get the vacuum out (just get it out, not even turn it on - oh what a test!) I might leave Phoenix on a stay in the living room and take Jamie outdoors. Or open the back door and call "Kitty, kitty!" He does sits on a balance disk, on the bed, in the recliner.

Nope. Not budging.

Once, I put Phoenix in a stay on the front porch, got in my van and drove down the lane. Then I turned around and drove back.

He didn't move. I could tell he thought I was totally out of my mind but he didn't move.

But what if . . .

. . . you just put your dog in a sit and do nothing?

Because this is the scenario that happens in the ring. The dog is left to his own devices for 1 or 3 minutes. To sit there. And look around. No flying food, no bouncing balls, no remote control rats (don't laugh - I have one) no people teasing or coaxing or otherwise keeping his brain engaged. Just sit there. And . . . sit there some more. Yawn.

So we've been practicing plain old sit/stays. Not excessively, because stays are poke-your-eyes-out boring. But enough that I feel comfortable that my dog understands he is expected to sit still when nothing else is going on. We spend so much time proofing stays that sometimes I think we overlook the obvious: can my dog just sit still for 3 minutes when nothing else is happening?

Proofing is good. It's builds understanding. So does occasionally presenting the exercise just as the dog is going to experience it in the ring. Fortunately, this is the perfect thing to train when the weather defies working anything energetic outdoors.

Jamie practices these stay sessions with Phoenix. He usually practices being the naughty dog who lays down. Good boy. Cookies for everyone.

Jamie is a teenager

Happy birthday, Jamie! 

He turns 13 tomorrow. 

Yeah, I'm a day early but I've got a bazillion things 

to do tomorrow so I'm  posting early.

So now I get to live with a teenager. 

He already pretty much does as he pleases, so that won't be anything new.

I suppose now he'll want to drive.

Love ya, Big Red Dog!

Making an effort

This is getting very old but Blogger seems determined that there shall be no paragraphs ever again. My sincere apologies for this glitch, especially on a fairly long post. Much of the emphasis of Phoenix’s training this summer revolves around asking him for effort. How much effort does he have to make before he gets a cookie? It’s so easy to pop our dogs a cookie after every little thing that in no time you can create a dog with a huge sense of entitlement. This soon turns into the all too familiar “no cookie, no workie” that many of us have encountered. I think I also managed to teach him that cookies were affirmation that he was doing what I wanted. From his point of view, the absence of cookies in the ring was a startling and sad situation. I had clearly not taught him to value the interaction with me (per Susan Garrett, become the cookie) but had relied on poking food at him as a suitable reward. The praise I thought I’d been giving was not enough. Something Denise Fenzi mentioned at her seminar was being “big” with your praise, especially in environments where the tendency may be to become very quiet and “small.” Having a handler who is acting “small” can cause a dog who is worried or depressed in a show environment to become even more so. Not unexpectedly, weaning ME off the cookie habit has been a bigger issue than I anticipated. I still want to feed him a lot but I’m getting much better at asking for genuine effort (making skills slightly more demanding, stringing multiple skills together) before the food and play come. Play is important. Play is effort. Playing tug is effort. Playing with me without any toy probably represents the most effort because there’s no THING that’s driving the play session. It’s just me and Phoenix. When he really turns on and plays with ME it’s a wonderful high. It has taken a lot of effort on my part to figure out how to ask him for more effort. Training for longer sessions or drilling over and over would certainly require more effort but that’s not the approach I wanted. Here are some examples of things we’re doing: • Articles: working a double set. I put out 20 articles instead of 8. At first he was convinced this was entirely too much work and did a couple of grab-and-goes. When that didn’t get him anywhere, he settled down and worked. You can also set a lawn chair in the middle of the pile or scatter some cardboard boxes around the article pile. Put the scented article under the chair, on the chair seat or in a box. Next time, put the scented article in the regular pile. • Heeling: this is our biggie. The dog who gave me 40 point heeling in Novice had deteriorated to just going through the motions. Clearly heeling was boring him half to death. Marching around a building doing forwards, halts, turns and speeds was not going to fix it. Now when we heel, I ask for leaps, spins, 180s, 360s, shove him backwards and run so he has to catch up and suddenly release him and have him chase his tail or roll over. It’s a bloody lot of effort on my part to break the marching habit. On the figure 8, we go right first (oh, the absolute YEARS of training I’ve had to overcome in order to not reflexively step off to the left!) A lot of time during this heelwork, Phoenix is not in perfect heel position. Do I care? Not really. This isn’t about perfect heel position - it’s about driving to stay with me and he’s doing that. When he gets there and everything is right with the world, then I release him. • Signals: doing unexpected things, like doing the signals out of order and asking for additional “tricks” while Phoenix is at a distance (chase your tail, roll over, back up, etc.) Not only does this require more physical effort than the mind-numbing monotony of down-sit-come, it also requires mental effort to stay engaged to see what comes next. • Dumbbell: I put Phoenix on a stay about 40 feet away with the dumbbell between us. When I tell him to get it, I run toward him. If I get to the dumbbell first (okay, this happened exactly once), I grab it and have a party. Of course now he thinks it’s a fun game (albeit kinda stupid cuz the slow human NEVER wins). • Gloves: turn to Glove #1 and mark Glove #2 or vice versa. Is he actually marking the correct glove or just taking whichever one is visually most appealing? • Drop on recall: after the initial drop, I ask him to drop again. This is a game he’s been taught. He’ll back up, still in the drop. I keep asking him to drop and he keeps backing up. At some point, he’ll start barking at me. I am not terribly concerned about the bark transferring to the ring. • Cue word: constantly, constantly, constantly making sure he’s in drive, up, bright, engaged, alert and maybe just a little pushy and bossy before we start any exercise.