Archive for the 'travelling' Category

At the airport

Published
by
Fanny
on January 5, 2009
in travelling
. 1 Comment

More cold, sunny days in Norway. Yesterday, Squid and I visited the local airport. We will be flying to Bergen next week, where we will join Thomas for two days of teaching. I’m looking forward to bringing the puppy to new places and new experiences (like living in a hotel), but I am also nervous about her firs flight in cargo. All my experiences with flying dogs have been good (and we’ve been flying a lot the last couple of years), but I’ve never flew with such a young puppy. I tell myself that a lot of puppies fly every day and they are usually not as confident and not as well socialized and crate gamed and experienced with the world as my puppy. She’ll be fine!

We’re preparing by going to the airport, playing crate games and having fun. I’ve also done more training on being alone in the crate than I have done before (she’s pretty much around me all of the time). I left her for short periods of time at the airport when she had settled in her crate and I have also left her alone in the crate at home just for training. She is a fast learner and relaxes in her crate. I have also worked on lifting the crate off and onto baggage carts etc. with her in it. That wasn’t her favourite thing (after too many, she was hesitant to jump into the crate on the baggage cart) so we’ll work some more on that at home.

We also did some obedience and trick training at the airport and she did great. She has great focus even with distractions and in a new environment. She was also really good at giving me attention when people came up to us to say hi. And then, when I gave her the cue “go see”, she spun around and said hi in her usuall, happy way.


Playing with her tail at home

It’s good to be home

Published
by
Fanny
on August 28, 2008
in Agility, Work Shops and Seminars and travelling
. 0 Comments

I had a very good time teaching in Edmonton, but it sure is nice to be back home and able to train my own dogs. I have trained a lot with both Shejpa and Missy today. We went to a new club i the morning to try our running dogwalks on a new kind of equipment (aluminium frame with carpet). My dogs have only done their running dogwalks on our wooden dogwalk at home. I was surprised with how it didn’t really seem to matter. Even Missy, who usually isn’t very confident, ran it fast and consistent right from the second attempt. Shejpa was even better and showed great understanding even when she slowed down a little (she is always best when she is really fast). Shejpa also got to try a new seesaw. She isn’t doing the whole seesaw yet, but she is learning fast and we should be able to do the whole thing in a couple of days. She shows great speed, weigh shift and targeting.

We did some more training later in the afternoon. Both dogs got to do some jump grids. I introduced Shejpa to the long jump and put it into her distance grid later. She had no problems with it, so I will put it into sequencing pretty soon. I also introduced a pole in the ground to help her turn after her running contacts. It might clarify things for her, so I will give it a shot. Justine had tried it with Preston and it looked great. I might try it with Missy too, although she seems to have more understanding of the turns and will think more than Shejpa. I did some shaping with both dogs in the house as well. Missy now knows how to jump into my arms when I stand up (Thanks J!) and both dogs did shaping sessions on the theraball. They have amazing balance and strenght!

Thanks to Justine and all the nice people I met in Edmonton. I had a great time and it was really interesting to see dog training from new perspectives. It was fun teaching european style obedience to an enthusiastic crowd of dogs and owners. I hope that they will keep up with the tugging and high speed training that we did. It was also fun to do a puppy day and I am looking forward to getting my next puppy. Handling is always one of my favourite things to teach and I was happy to see so many that were dedicated to doing agility within Greg Derrett’s system of handling.

Canada in a short summary

Published
by
Fanny
on April 26, 2008
in Agility, Work Shops and Seminars and travelling
. 1 Comment

We’re back home after ten intense days in Canada. We learned a lot and made new friends. Shejpa is a great dog to travel with. The vet at the airport in Norway even asked if she was on calming drugs, because she was just sleeping in her crate while we were waiting. I guess a lot of dogs are more worried about flying and waiting at airports.

The first two days was Greg Derrett’s master camp and I was just watching. It was very interesting, but you get more confused the more you learn, that’s for sure. Greg and Susan does not agree on everything and that leaves me in a spot where I have to make some descisions… I left Greg, Susan and the rest of them on their own on the third day, because Shejpa and I got a spot at Laura Derrett’s work shop. It was fun to run, but Shejpa got tired very quickly in the hot weather. It doesn’t look too bad when I watch the videos, but some runs felt like she was jogging. I think I did a pretty good job though, and sometimes it’s better to be slow and correct (as a handler learning) than to do it fast and sloppy.

Greg and Laura went back to England and we carried on for four more days with Tweener Camp. We did a lot of things and Shejpa was mostly a good dog with quite a lot of drive. She liked the sheep skin tug toy and we bought a few nice toys to bring back home. I tried them on Pi today and she was thrilled. We did quite a lot of work on the nose touches, but we didn’t come as far as I had hoped. I realized that we weren’t quite finished with fading the target and worked a lot on that. She’s generally good when I take the target away after one or two repetitions, but when we start with no target, she’s uncertain on where to put her nose touches and tends to curl into me on the stairs. We made great progress and one of the things we did was to place lots of targets around the stairs, but out of her reach, to proof that she was targeting straight anyway.

Shejpa relaxing in her crate
Shejpa relaxing in her crate

We also worked a lot on a hot target discrimination (much like the one you do at chicken camp). I chose quite difficult objects that rolled away if she wasn’t thoughtful and controlled. I liked that idea, but I guess it slowed us down a bit. She indicated the hot target (chapstick tube) by laying down with the target between her front legs. I thought the discrimination part would be easy, but Shejpa behaved much like the chicken at chicken camp - throwing themselves at a target that you drop or peck at. We did work through it and I think it was a great experience for both of us. Shejpa really needs a lot of shaping (wich I have neglected with her) and challenges that forces her to be more thoughtful. Some people will tell you that shaping makes dogs frantic and stressed, but I would say it’s the other way around if you do it right. Shejpa is getting more and more calm and thoughtful for every session of shaping.

Susan and DeCaff
Susan and DeCaff

Bob Bailey came to Say Yes on the last day. We were eight people (mostly Susan’s instructors and Susan her self) working our dogs and talking (a lot of talking, really) with Bob helping out. It was a great experience and I’m very thankful for being invited! I also drove Bob to the airport and got a chance to really talk to him about the 80% rule that has been kind of misunderstood in Scandinavia. I got great information from him. This is my own summary of what he said (and I hope I got it all right):

- When the animal is successfull 80% of the time, you should raise your criteria.
- It’s a common misstake to not challenge the animal enough in training
- 90% success is definatly a misstake
- You need to re-think and make a new plan if you’re not progressing (not getting a higher percentage of correct responses) in three consecutive sessions.
- You need to re-think and make a new plan if you’re getting worse (getting a lower percentage of correct responses) in two consecutive sessions.
- You shouldn’t worry about not getting 80% success as long as it’s getting better and better, but don’t raise your criteria until you’re getting closer to 80%.
- How low your success rate can be is dependent on if the animal still thinks it’s worthwhile to keep trying. Bob thought that 50% was kind of a limit for a lot of animals.
- These principles are worked out by gathering data from a lot of training sessions with a lot of different animals and it worked great for Bob and his trainers.

You can fins lots of pictures from our trip in the gallery (click on “photos” above). I’d like to thank Susan for another fun trip across the Atlantic and Justine for being a great room mate. Also, congratulations to Justine, Lynda and Susan for making the FCI world team!