Proofing your dogwalk contact-a primer.

All right. We're back and it is contact bootcamp week at my house. I feel mean and surly and like I have bad contacts and we are going to revisit EVERYBODY's and by the time dog shows start again for us in July, we will have sparkling clean contacts, all shiny like they've been bleached and dusted and waxed and vacuumed and look way better than the floors in my house.

So everyone has different dogwalk contacts in my family. I didn't plan this, it just happened. I believe it is evolution. Or devolution. Or disintegration? OK. They're not that bad, actually, our contacts are fairly decent but with, surprise, training holes in them sometimes. So we are going to actually practice all methodical like and see what happens. Let's start with Ruby.


She has a running contact. Did I teach it with years of careful practice, starting on the low board and clicking for millions of repetitions until we had a shiny happy and perfect contact? Of course not. It started as a 2o/2o and somewhere I fell in with a fast, dangerous crowd and I guess the peer pressure was too much and I started a quick release and it felt so good and I did it some more and before I knew it, a dicey, fly by night running contact. I was hooked. It was there. We tried to quit it here and there, contact rehab and cold turkey, but the monkey's there, on my back, and the monkey whispers, "fly like the wind ruby, down that yellow, fast as you can." We sometimes blow it, but I'm pretty good at holding it together, man. Except when that tunnel is there, staring me in the face, the mouth of god there, rolling it's big round lips into words, rolling off it's tunnel lips, "You should really have a totally consistent contact." And she's in, she may have bailed the yellow, but there was just no stopping her. Tunnel sucks her in and she's a goner but it feels so good.


So our little patch of a fixup is I throw food at the bottom of the dogwalk. I reward almost all contacts in practice. I click for feet in the yellow. It's a fine, thin line we walk on, this so-called running dogwalk contact. We are practicing clicking for feet in yellow during bootcamp. We'll see how it goes when the dog shows start up again. How do you like that turn to the tunnel? Inside hand, good thing I had a clicker there in my outside hand to keep it occupied. I believe that is good handling. Although I do need to stay near her dogwalk, is my tradition and voodoo belief.


You know, she's just a damn good dog and ran a whole heckuvalotta dogwalks today after a several week agility vacation and did not miss a contact out of the bunch. Or a turn to the tunnel or a straight ahead with the tunnel there. And never seemed sore and happy to run later in the evening at the beach. We believe her to be in good health and good spirits and will take that over maybe sometimes missing a dogwalk contact if that's what we have to do.


Otterpop started her contact career with a four on the floor. Which turned running on occasion when the judge was on her back and she was running down the dogwalk, looking over her shoulder trying to decide to jump, or perhaps fly off the handle at the judge, and we just decide to keep on running and get AWAY from that judge. So when she's slower, I just let her run down the bottom. So she practices sometimes running, sometimes stopping. Her cue is whether I call ok on the top or target. God knows if she gets this or not. I used to think she got it just fine until recently.


We have been practicing back with targets lately because she started leaping dogwalk contacts a couple months ago out of the clear blue sky. Always something. I believe I had said something to someone like, "Oh, Pop NEVER misses a dogwalk contact." Was struck down then and there. The agility commandment, Though Shall be HUMBLE re. your Contact Performance. Her four on the floor can be little haphazard and if it's too far out, creates too wide of a turn to the tunnel.


For some reason, I didn't really deal with the word turn with her so much as just say tunnel and point my claw and in she goes. But she is always speedy into that tunnel because frisbees lurk in the air outside of tunnels is her belief and speedy fast she goes hoping to be right. And Otterpop is always right.


Gustavo. Who is enough of a monkey we just stayed old school and 2o/2o on that dogwalk and it's staying like that until I receive some message from some mouth of god, saying, "You can Quick Release now." Like way far, down the line. Until then, he's staying put there. Too wiggly and giggly and fidgety and quick. Like maybe when he is 7 years old and has no giant wart on his snout.


We proof. He does ok. Feet are not supposed to be on the target and what am I doing about it? Yeah, that would be nothing. Sometimes I just really suck at dog training. Pick yer battles. He stopped, didn't he? He's staying put. A nose went down. Details, details, details.


So he doesn't have a turn exactly so to get him in the tunnel. And because we haven't formally met the whole concept of Turn-Tunnel, I am fully escorting him there and yes that is my outside hand and pointy finger. Special occasion. I swear we won't do many of these til I teach the turn. But the other dogs were practicing and it's just a couple and you know I won't get hooked. What's one or two tunnels? I promise, I promise, I promise I'll set up the baby tunnel by the contact trainer, maybe today and start teaching it the real way. One or two little ones, it won't hurt. Right? Right? You are NOT telling Susan Garrett on me. Or Greg Derrett. I know it's his system. Put down that phone. I knew you were his best friend. It's just one little outside hand turn, that was it. I swear. OK. We are going to practice right now, I promise, I promise, I promise.

This is sort of like a really quiet musical theater production but not really.

Well, since I said Ruby could be on vacation, it wasn't really fair to make her pose for pictures. And then, if I wanted to show you what we did on my day off, it wouldn't be fair to do that without Ruby. So I just hired actors to stand in for the whole team to show you and so I wouldn't be playing favorites between dogs. That's not good pack management. You can see how many training opportunities I have to work on good manners just in a basic day off around the house. See, I am a good dog training example! But, as a disclaimer to all those dog training students out there, I don't recommend always using hired stand-ins for training the real dogs. Just for special occasions.


So you know, they all eat breakfast together. Everyone has to wait patiently until all the food bowls are filled to eat.


Timmy has to get all his pills. He doesn't have to do any tricks or anything for them.


Ruby and Otterpop totally climb on the little foot stool and do tricks while I give Timmy his pills. They are operant dogs. Gustavo is somewhere else. Maybe not so operant.


Took a walk. It would be neat if everyone walked quietly on a leash and didn't pull.


Then Timmy just goes back to sleep for the most part.


Some of them like to hang out in the bathroom when I take a shower. I'm not sure if that is good or bad dog manners or not? Does Cesar Millan do that?


We had to do errands. They ride nicely in their crates. Thanks Susan Garrett's Crate Games!


I had a bunch of office work to do so the small dogs all just slept quietly on the couch. Until it was mailman time.


Otterpop has a total mailman fetish. She waits here like a stealth assassin.


And when he comes, she sounds like she is going in for the kill. I wish you could hear the barking.


Augh. This is a bad habit. Good dog trainers do not let their dogs bark at mailmen.


At some point during the day, I realized, wow, it SO MUCH EASIER to work with the actors than the real dogs! Like for stuff like toenails!


They spent a lot of the day outside. Hey is that their border collie pals Hobbes and Fate? Of course not. They live in Salinas and Otterpop hates border collies. Can't hire actors for every dog I know. Those are just fake deer.


Otterpop won't give anyone the tennis ball.


And they all start digging holes again. Bad, bad dogs.


For agility practice, I LOVED working with the actors. Like look at Ruby and Otterpop just sitting so quietly while Gustavo practices his contact!


Gustavo worked on his poles.


Everyone did some tables. And we called it a day.

Running a-frame the haul ass way-a primer.

So yesterday you saw how I'm teaching Gustavo his dogwalk. We patch it together on real dogwalks every time we see one (like how often do you just see a dogwalk?) or on my contract trainer of a wobbly patio table thing. A-frame though, is all about Hauling Ass. So we go practice on a real one every time we can. He gets a click when he hits the yellow paint (which so far is almost Every Single Time!) and then he runs out for the reward that I either throw or is waiting in his tupperware.


I can be pretty far away already, I always run really, really fast too. It is like a race.


I have to watch careful so I don't click if he misses it. But I think he's getting it. I think I'm going to raise it a bit soon.


He's the first dog I've trained all by myself. Without really asking for much advice, or having him in a class. Just doing things the way that I want to try and that I think will work for him. This isn't neccessarily a good thing. I don't have proven results to swear by and I'm not always the most disciplined trainer. I obsess on my canopy color and whether my shoes are ugly. My dogs screw up sometimes and I have never, ever won a Steeplechase Finals. Except with Hobbes. And I didn't train him so that doesn't really count. But I just have this feeling that this is all going to work. And it's just kind of funner this way.

Contact training in small spaces-a primer.

When you have a teensy space to train in, it does help to have small dogs. That is a fact I cannot deny. Team Small Dog might have included big dogs by now if we were living on a ranch with space. We patch together a driveway for the poles, make a tunnel out of a box, and have a modified contact trainer/table thing for contacts. You just do what you can do. I practice anywhere, and everywhere I can. What I would do for a big, flat yard...like one would have if one owned a ranch. A real estate story for another day.


We have dabbled in many contacts. My friends that for whatever freakish reason, don't do agility, you see, they have to run FAST over things made of wood and touch the yellow paint with their feet. Easier said than done. Ruby had a 2o/2o that I modified into a running dogwalk and a-frame, and she runs to the end of the teeter, stands for the ride down and runs off. Otterpop has a 4 on the floor that has been modified into a running dogwalk and a-frame, and she slides into a down on the end of the teeter and holds that til it hits. I'm Super Proud of Otterpop's contacts, and Ruby's do pretty good. Her dogwalk can be dicey when she's really fast. We practice it a lot. Gustavo is learning the same teeter as Otterpop, a 2o/2o dogwalk, and a pure running a-frame at speed. I would love to try teaching a Silvia Trkman dogwalk, but with no space to practice consistently, we're just going with the tried and true.


We only practice the a-frame at top speed, channeling Silvia, with it still super low to the ground. We do this not at my house, where there is just no room for a-frames. So I am like the a-frame slut. If you have an a-frame I can lower and practice on, I am there. I am shameless. As for his dogwalk, he's been over the whole thing a few times, but mostly he practices on running down from the top, or on my thing in our backyard. I want it fast, and a solid, quick set of brakes that release just as fast. I have a modified contact trainer wobbling on a patio table sort of wedged up against my house. Looks great! The game is run over there, up on the table, and down the dogwalk board and slam me a contact.


They all like to practice together. I let them do it. It might be bad agility, but it cracks me up to see them throwing out all their different contacts over and over to see if I'll toss anyone some food. Otterpop usually just shoves everyone else off the top of the dogwalk board like some crazy, drunken pirate. Gustavo is pretty serious about his contacts. He's usually like this little party dude, running around like he's on spring break in Mexico and the vodka slurpees are flowing and strippers are everywhere waving banners with his name on them and he would probably be listening to like, Justin Timberlake and texting EVERYONE! But for his dogwalk stop, he makes this great pause, hits his target, stays there for a cookie, like he is SO MATURE, until I release him off to get a stuffed squirrel or a tupperware and the party just starts all over again.

Training contacts-a primer.

All right. First you start with an operant dog. Your dog is operant right? Riiiiiggghhht. Ok. I sometimes say my dog isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Maybe he is a spoon! We need spoons. We eat Ben and Jerry's with spoons and cereal and peanut butter. Try pouring butterscotch schnaps over that whole mess and have THAT for dinner. Spoon! As dog trainers go, I am more of a spoon than knife or fork. But again, nothing wrong with a spoon, I am SORRY Susan Garrett.

Right. Operant. Click / treat. Then keep doing it, NOT running through fence to the neighbor's cat yard. Dog, not me. But dog should not get through the hole in fence. Put a brick there. Bastard small dogs. Operant dogs do not go through the fence for the cat. Good dogs stay there nose touching their targets. Operant dogs are offering you tons of behaviors. Not chasing the cat. Does not count as operant behavior. Please someone (knife, not spoon) come help me train my dogs.


We run up and over the contact trainer now for a Two On Two Off. That is 2o/2o in cool dog training shorthand fyi. Dog hits nose on a target, keeping his muddy little back paws on the yellow, and gets a treat for holding that position. Please reward with the hand CLOSEST to the dog. Keep your eyes on the dog please. Ham in a can.


I know you are doing this on your grassy dog agility field. Lucky you. Bitch. We just throw stuff under tarps around here because we are all SO Busy with dog training. Driveways are a great place for teaching dog agility except maybe not for jumping. Which is a large part of dog agility. We just do stuff like this. Gustavo excels in cat chasing and nose touching. Sort of.

Once we parked our junker truck here on the dog training field. Now we park it in front of the neighbor's house in the name of dog agility training! Sorry neighbor! We are the neighbors known as The-Ones-With-the-Wife-That-Has-All-Those-Little-black-Dogs AND The-Weird-Obstacle-course-In-the-Driveway-With-the-Goddamn-Truck parked out front. Which, let me point out, that we just have a small street and almost everyone on our street has a junker car or their bigwave jet skis or camper/vacation house/rental unit or something parked out front.



A quick tour of the closest junker cars to our house.


Can your dog stay there and keep hitting his nose on the target? While you dance around? I prefer House of Pain's Jump Around as a theme song for this. Would also accept OPP by Naughty by Nature or Hollywood Swinging by Kool and the Gang as an answer.


Get ready because now we're going to Throw the Toy to get Drive Off the Contact. Forward! Fast! Not to CAT!

My dog won't bring the toy back to tug. I should be going back to square one. He really, really wants another treat and runs back to the target. This drives me crazy and makes me feel like a bad dog trainer. Susan Garrett, just take me out and kill me now. I take him on the other side of the gate and he tugs there if it is away from the target. Only Otterpop loves toys more than food. Ruby and Gustavo really, really, really want to eat until their stomachs explode.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Millions of times.

If it's Sunday, it must be Test Day.

Today was going to be class day for the whole team. But it rained, so our lesson with Jim is off. But someone else still has to go to school.

Gustavo is going to be tested to see if he can become a Certified Therapy Dog.

He has to go to San Jose and take some tests and I don't know what else, and if he passes, I guess he's certified by this group called Furry Friends (and I am pretty sure these are not fetish people that put on giant furry animal costumes and do things not approved by baby Jesus, the Furry name frightens me) and we can start visiting old folks homes on the third Sunday of the month. When there's no agility trial that Sunday. With the whole thing of, you know, work, it's hard to go on a lot of the visit dates they offer. But third Sundays of the month, we can do that. Some of the time.

I'm not sure what he has to do to pass exactly.

I think it's sort of modeled in a Canine Good Citizen test, which has a lot of being well behaved walking and sitting and staying and letting others touch you, basic friendly and well behaved dog quiz. He's good at stuff like that. Pretty sure it doesn't include running like a demon for hours at a time at fast speed, which is the other thing he excels at. And tunnels. And chewing on glasses and address books. I am really sure it doesn't include that. I think I probably shouldn't tell them about that one.

Wish us luck!


He's been working on his training skilz too. Which by the way, is going smashingly, thanks for asking. We're making it easy and repeating lessons a lot and he gets it that way. He learns slowly but he learns it well. The weave poles are fast with rocking entrances with the channel still open. He has a great nose touch on a contact trainer or stairs or pretty much anywhere you throw a target out. Even though I'm not dead certain if he's going to be running or 2o/2o but we're starting with this. We're doing very little jumping or anything-especially since it rains like every 5 minutes so we haven't been going to our practice field. He's learning to run close to me, on each side. He's learning a couple cute tricks, rolling and commando raid crawl. They might sound like little things but they're important foundation things and take time, especially for Gustavo.

I'm making his training So Easy so he builds the Confidence of Kim Deal, which is a skill the other small dogs lack. They're more like her sister that once I ran into in a liquor store and I think she was trying to buy heroin. That was a long time ago. I hope you are better now Kelly Deal! We're trying to make agility like a thing that he thinks is So Easy and So Cool so he is So Confident as it starts to get harder. Like it is not like doing taxes or walking through a graveyard at night full of zombies. I'm not letting it get harder yet. He's in no hurry. It's weird to have a dog that learns so differently than my other dogs, but I can tell he's getting things now. Maybe he's just on island time.

Right now though, his agility is secondary to just having a cool little friendly dog that might be able to help some old people have an ok day when maybe the rest of their day maybe wasn't so hot.