Training the Broad Jump

I've been working on Dustin's broad jump lately, as one of the Graduate Novice and Open exercises, partly because it's good for both our fitness levels and partly because he finds jumping to be fun. I like to be a couple of exercises ahead of our actual titles, so we'll go into the Novice ring pretty soon with some Open exercises already in progress. Besides, the broad jump is in the yard, nice and available, and we can work a couple of jumps a day.

We started with a couple of boards broad way out, so they didn't look like something to walk on, very narrow, so he could just hop over. We had a target in a straight line from his sit through the middle of the jump, and he went to the target, or I stood in that spot and had him come to me. He already has some idea that "jump" means "don't go around" from other work.

From there I started making the jump a little bigger and putting more of the boards in their flatter configuration. After a week or so, I now only have to put the leading board edge-up to remind him what to do, and he'll sail over the full distance very nicely.

If I put the leading board flat, though, he suddenly re-interprets the exercise. He's quite nimble and quite able to trot along with his feet neatly hitting the center of each board, and he's such a show-off he's very proud of being able to do this. I'm half-pleased. He knows where his back feet are, which is oddly rare in shepherds, and this means he spends a lot less time planting them on my toes. However, that's not a jump.

And I find myself saying things like, "On what planet is that a jump?" as I take him back around and put the lead board back up again. He, of course, has not answered me, and if he does, we have a whole new area of communication to explore.

Getting Motivated

Thanks to the German Shepherd Dog Club of Atlanta and its Versatility program (not to be confused with the AKC Versatile Companion Dog titles), I'm feeling motivated to get off the couch and work the dog now and again.

This copy is slightly out-of-date, I think. The copy for this year included the optional titles in Obedience. This turns Obedience into the great spot to get points, it looks like. It's not completely un-doable to charge in with the CGC, then pick up the full sweep of seven titles -- assuming, of course, that your dog can do all the exercises. It wouldn't hurt to throw in the Rally titles as an excellent place to practice heeling with lots of upbeat chitchat and fun.

Tracking and Herding are the big instinct outlets for German Shepherd Dogs, of course. Once upon a time, the forebears of the breed pushed the sheep out to pasture, kept them in line without fences all day, searched out and brought back any sneaky strays, then pushed them all home again and rounded up the children. Now we have to get formal. In an ideal world, C course herding (tending) would be easier to find, but we have to pretend our dogs are designed for chute-and-gate work instead. The other big outlet for shepherdy drives is Working Dog Sport, which involves tracking, obedience, and protection work. The national breed club still supports it, but the AKC does not.

The remaining AKC performance category is Agility, which most dogs love much as most children love a playground. It takes a solid, sound body, so it's a good idea to have the OFA certification on hips and elbows before getting too heavily involved. Puppies, though, are happy enough to learn the contacts and to step over a little jump. It's a good idea to teach as much precision as you can cram into your shepherd's head before you try to speed up, as most of them seem to want to run wild over every square foot of the equipment -- including parts that were never meant to contain a dog! Sunny, gonzo gal that she was, liked to jump between the tire jump and its supports rather than through the tire. You lose qualifying runs that way.

A huge portion of the Versatility program rewards health testing and responsible ownership. Microchipped? One point. Health test made public regardless of result? Point. Altering an animal you deem unlikely to improve the breed if it passes on its genes? Point. While getting the particular point profiles to match the club's title descriptions isn't easy, getting a decent point total isn't terribly hard if you actually do stuff with your dog. Your dog can even pick up a point by living past the age of ten. An altered ten-year old rescue with a microchip and a CGC qualifies for the club's Versatility Started certificate.

Dustin also qualified for a certificate, but I am feeling ambitious, or greedy, or motivated, or all three. I tell my husband titling the dog doesn't cost that much more than a gym membership. He tells me that he'd rather I had the gym membership, but I can carry the kid in a backpack while I lay and run tracks, or do obedience, or teach basic agility. He'd get squished if I did bench presses with him in there.

So, we're tracking. We're herding when possible. We're jumping at height, now that the hips and elbows are clear. And believe it or not, we're even working obedience, though the dog is in it for the cheese and it's not my favorite school subject either. My son is learning hand signals.

If you live in the area and have a shepherd, come join the club -- and me! We can get into a happy and productive title war.

The New Training Page

Hey, loyal readers! There is now a website for Sun Treader puppy training. It includes links to several other information sources, including Glendhenmere Kennels, the West Kentucky and Atlanta German Shepherd Dog clubs, and an informative article on dog breeding. On the Contact page is a link to Dekalb County Animal Services with a picture of one of their adoptable puppies. Enjoy!

Canine Nose Work

Dog News had an article, and I chased down the website after being prompted by a friend, so here it is: National Association of Canine Scent Work, inventors of the sport of K9 Nose Work.

It's an interesting sort of thing: training scent detection without having to use cadaver, which is icky and often requires some legal reason to have it, or drugs, which require a DEA certificate of some kind (I've asked, and had no answer, how one gets certified). Instead you go to your friendly local holistic-goods store, pick up a vial each of sweet birch and clove and a scattering of aniseeds, and you're good to go.

Of course, all three scents are quite penetrating, and my house now smells of birch beer. Luckily I like birch beer. I have a gauze pad saturated with all three odors sealed in a baggie, inside a box, inside another baggie which also contains the original bottles and seeds. The dogs are enjoying the find-the-pad game.

According to the Dog News article, the organization trainers teach the dogs to hunt for treats first, then pair the treats with the target scent (they start with just birch), then remove the treats. They say "On average, most teams train for at least one year prior to entering their first NACSW sanctioned trial."

I'm doing it differently, teaching my dogs that when they sniff the baggie, and they are curious sorts every one, they should sit. If they find the open baggie, they should sniff and sit. When they do, they get a treat. As I said, the baggie contains all three scents. My logic is, you can train a cadaver dog on as complete a sample as possible, then expect him to figure out that just bone, just fat, or just skin also all count. It may take longer to get the dogs to alert on birch alone than with their method, but they'll be doing aniseed every bit as soon.

So far, all of them, even the old geezer whose nose and ears are both getting iffy, are getting the hang of sniff-and-sit. Bruce even chased the baggie on a fling across the kitchen and poked his nose in, then sat wagging like mad and waiting for his goodie. This is, mind you, after three weeks of erratic training. I think they'll be able to do all three scents separately or together in a fairly short time, and then we can take the show on the road, into the cars, into the sheds, and everywhere else we can think to work. For now we're just working on go, sniff, sit as though this is an obedience combination.

Compulsive behavior

We own a tail-chasing dog.

Tasha spins on certain occasions, such as when her preferred person comes home and is mobbed by all and sundry instead of focusing exclusively on her. She spins when she wants her dinner prepared. She spins when she wishes to leave her boarding kennel, which leads to injuries when she's there for more than a couple of days.

However, the dinner preparation starts to look like a cargo cult. She sees me pick up the food dishes, goes into a back room, and spins like the washing machine on the wringer cycle. There is soon food; therefore the ritual has worked.

The past few meals, we've made her come and lie in the kitchen while we scoop kibble and dole out supplements. Her obedience is good enough for down-stay to be effective. I'm hoping her basic intelligence, which generally seems pretty good, will eventually twig to the idea that the food is made even when she is not wearing holes in the rug and her pads.

Productive Training Session

I laid two tracks at roughly 7:45 pm, one for Dustin and one for a puppy. I didn’t decide which puppy until later – the one I could get to lie down on hand signal/command with less fuss, which was Bruce, pictured.

At 8:30 (the earliest I could expect to have track scent stronger than trail scent) I took Dustin out to work, and he happily found the starting article by the flag to lie down on it. Though he seemed to need to think about his reward a little (cheddar cheese) and decide whether he liked it, he went on willingly from there. The turn I’d made went straight into the wind by the time we ran it, and Dustin indicted with a high head that he could find all the articles easily enough from there. I reminded him that “Track” meant “Work the line on the ground” anyway, and he obliged. Released from work at the end, he danced off, gave himself a play reward, and discovered the end of the puppy track. He scooped up the cloth glove, showed it to me just to prove he’d found it, danced in a crazy circle, and dropped it on the track again.

I love that he can tell when we’re not working anymore, and that he has such a tidy mind.

I took Bruce to his track next. This was his second. The first had been a mess; he forgot his down, panicked because he didn’t know what I wanted, and his sister ran over to take the rest of the game away from him. The object of the game at present is only to get him to equate discovering an article and lying down on it with reward. Last night, he discovered the first article and puzzled over it, then dropped readily when I asked him to. He sniffed out the second article on his own, natural line-follower that he is, and flopped. I was impressed.

We did both miss the fourth article of the five. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but could tell the scent was concentrated in the right sort of way, and fell all over the place, down here and there and everywhere, and I had a lesson in not using brown leather articles at twilight near brown leaves of similar size while working an inexpert tracker. Still, I expect the next time will be at least as good and possibly better.

Next time I’ll put another out for Wanda, just to see what she makes of it. She had an obedience lesson for steak scraps in place of a track this time. She’s become less grabby at long last, and so I can now get the basic positions (stand, sit, and down) and a passable heel, front, and finish. Of course, getting those without a handful of scraps would be something else again, but the patterns can be obtained and labeled. She’s clever enough.

Both of them are nimble for their age, possibly an effect of their wild first eight weeks. I’d love to start them on the safer bits of agility, ramps and step-over jumps, and they’d enjoy it. First, of course, I have to build the ramps. At present, they make up their own courses around the yard and over sleeping adult dogs.