What Would I Do Differently?

I continue to be very happy with Justine’s handling system in agility. Weird that I became a ‘system’ girl, but there you go. It works for me and I think trained skills are hugely beneficial to my students, even if they don’t train the more complex threadle/backside skills. I really admire some other handling styles, I love watching Jenny Damm and similar styles – I admire it, but find it too hard for me to get the timing right. For me, the trained cues make more sense, but I always love agility done well, no matter what style.

I believe I’ve taken every online class Justine has offered through the years. We have done every skill drill she has offered. It taught me so much about handling and about what each specific dog needed. It’s challenging in a really fun way, though, admittedly, not really useful at all. American style agility doesn’t really have a need for the more international skills.

Justine’s most recent class was ‘Tryout Prep’, basically following along with her preparation to get ready to try out for some sort of overseas world team event. They seem to have more events of that nature up there in Canada, or maybe it just seems like it. I have not gone through all the exercises she presented in the first class yet, there were A LOT! It does make me wistful though, I love the idea of actually getting ready to go to a big event that you need a lot of advanced skills for – what fun! We do have FCI tryouts here, that’s pretty much as far as you can go in agility in the US. Maybe UKI nationals? You know, that never moves out of Florida – the farthest state from Oregon possible. I have zero interest in flying my dog to europe, or even across the country. So, yeah, not super motivated to actually be prepared to ‘prep’ for anything. Good thing I still like agility for agility.

Did just a short bit of herding with Haku to test him out, he did okay, but still looked a little off in front after. So he’s been continuing to rest, but I’m hopeful he’ll get to play at the trial this weekend. Well, mostly it’s me that wants to play, as it’s our last local trial until May – unless I want to travel. Safe to say, I don’t want to travel. We’ll still have plenty of herding practice though, so I can always just assume by May we’ll just be fricken awesome. As for this trial … well, maybe a little less awesome. I’m hoping we can get around the course, we CAN do it, but maybe it won’t happen – maybe the sheep won’t cooperate, maybe Haku will blow through everything, maybe we’ll lose sheep. We shall see.

Navarre got to fill in for Haku today with Dave, which doesn’t work super well. Navarre doesn’t have much mental stamina, so we we didn’t go very long. I don’t think it’s a physical stamina issue, as that’s never been a problem in general, but mental work like that kind of blows is brain. The good news, he is trying VERY HARD to take the handler into consideration these days. And you can tell sometimes he thinks the commands are stupid and I swear I can see him rolling his eyes before he very reluctantly goes into a down when he clearly feels he already knew what needed to be done. But he’s doing it, and not just completely blowing off the handler. A whole new world.

This was Navarre’s first time in the big field at Dave’s, which is still a much smaller field than Ian’s, so, as expected, it wasn’t an issue. He didn’t lose any sheep, though he was, as Dave said, using an excessive amount of eye for just about everything, for whatever reason. He was much more responsive than he was earlier in the week though. He did some driving, where he’s getting very confident with that with distance. He wasn’t doing great with his outruns, at least, how Dave would like to see them. I could be wrong, as I often am in the world of herding, but I think that’s one place that Ian and Dave differ, how they want outruns to look like. Navarre is very good at gently turning sheep without having to go way out to do it, it seems much more efficient than Haku.

Dave’s theory in why Navarre is way pushier for me in herding is because we do play training in all other aspects of his life. Can’t really deny this, it is how I prefer to train my dogs and has given me very reliable behaviors in everything else we do. Yes, I certainly have a lot of party in my training, and maybe that does influence how Navarre reacts when working with me. Dave was talking about how he doesn’t care if dogs like him, as he said, he can always use ‘stockholm syndrome’ to get that. Ah, herding. Definitely a different world. And kind of creepy.

However, I don’t use play training to get my dogs to like me – I use it because I want a dog that is actively involved in the training process, and is pushing me to play/work. I find it way more effective and easy to train a dog that actively wants to be part of the process, the behaviors I’m training will be hell of a lot of stronger if the dog chooses to work rather than me forcing or bribing them to.

I think herding trainers never have to worry about actively involving their dogs because they only keep dogs that are so highly driven for sheep that they won’t turn off of them no matter how much pressure and negatives are used. Navarre might have been tired, he may have been lying in the water while we talked, but he never, ever took his eyes off the sheep and waiting for an opportunity to get back to it. Herding people like Navarre a lot.

I don’t know enough about herding to reinvent the wheel here, but I’m definitely not sold on the concept that dogs need this much pressure to learn herding correctly. I have had no end of old school obedience people tell me there is no way around it, you must make sure your dog knows they don’t have a choice but to bring back the dumbbell on the retrieve or they will one day decide they’re not going to do it. Many people have told me this and similar firmly held beliefs on training obedience. They say maybe you can train positively for agility, but for obedience, you MUST teach your dog that they HAVE to do it. And I don’t agree, I don’t care what breed you’re training, living beings will work better if they choose to, rather than forced to. Is herding really that different? Hard to say, I’m going to continue to follow the advice of people that know a lot more than me on the subject, but I have an open mind. About a lot of things.

So the question would be, when I do get another dog – would I change how I raise them? I don’t see the benefit. Herding, much like everything else I do with my dogs, is something we do for fun. And sometimes it’s also challenging and frustrating – but most things worth doing are. Assuming my next dog does herding, I hope to have a much broader picture of what the end game is supposed to look like and the steps to get there. With that in mind, I would certainly hope I will be a better trainer for my next dog – in all things. However, life rarely goes according to plan – dogs are all individuals, and that’s what you can’t really understand until that particular dog is in front of you.

Just randomly thinking about it, what would I do differently with my next dog? Every dog teaches me so much, and hindsight is always an issue.

Things I would do different with my next dog:

• Insurance?: I’m still up in the air on this one, probably only because I haven’t had a major issue in many years. I’m probably due a blown knee or something crazy. But is it worth paying the insurance, or just saving up? And, of course, as soon as I got insurance for the puppy one of the adult dogs will have something horribly expensive come up.

• Come to Hand: For agility, Navarre has taught me the value of this one – our bypass is good, but a good come to hand really is … handy

• Multiple Threadle Cues: While I don’t want to end up with ten thousand verbal cues, I think my dogs get confused with threadle vs threadle rears enough that this would be worthwhile

• Reward From Hand: I don’t know what it is, but I have such a hard time doing this. Not that rewarding ahead is bad, but having a dog that actually chases you is actually a good thing

• Value for the Manners Minder: It does make training contacts easier, and it was a huge pain that I had to use it as a no-reward marker for Navarre. Teaching this to a puppy would much easier. Assuming the puppy likes food …

• Platform and Mat Sends: I’ve been teaching these in my foundation classes these days and they are so much fun for baby dogs to put together sequences with these and tunnels. I like them a lot more than wraps for teaching foundation handling

Things I would do the same:

• Body Awareness: I did a ton more body awareness with Navarre than my previous dogs and it shows, he is crazy good at knowing where his body is and moving each part individually. So easy to work on conditioning and strengthening

• Hold Positions: Again, Navarre was the first dog I really focused on holding whatever position he was in – so super helpful!

• Justine Handling: I like it, it works, we’ll stick with it for new puppy and agility

• Running Contacts: Once you go running, you just can’t go back – though I do actually like having both

• Hugging: I really feel this has helped my dogs learn to deal in a positive way with other dogs in their space, I will now teach all my dogs from the start about hugging and being hugged – and that it’s a good thing

• Swimming: I love me a swimming dog – as a puppy is the time to teach it

• Obedience: I do like having these behaviors, even if I never use them – and puppyhood is a good time to teach the basics of all the exercises

Well, and there are a lot of things I would do the same – most of the things! But what I have learned by having the opportunity to do a lot of puppy raising, just let the dog tell you when they’re ready. You can have all the plans in the world, but just enjoy the ride and let your dog discover the world as you go along. You’ll get there eventually. I don’t really have anything I would change OR do different with herding and my next dog, assuming they even do herding – I just don’t have enough of a frame of reference to say.

In the meantime, tomorrow is our OFFICIAL herding trial debut (our previous was just our ‘dry run’) – I wish I felt more positive about it, but we still get points for trying in my book. Old herding dog with limited time for the win! Actually being prepared is for sissies.