Admittedly, Harley is a very clingy dog by nature. She's not clingy in the regular kind of way. She's quite independent, and is completely happy doing her own thing. However, when you're doing anything WITH her, she wants us to be close. As a rescue dog, I can understand where she comes from. She's shy, and doesn't like strangers to approach. When she's near us, she's in her comfort zone. Agility has been a sport where she can come out of her shell - most people we train and trial with don't believe us when we tell her she's shy.
That is what makes distance work so hard for her. Thankfully, tonight's lesson gave us a crash course on how to motivate her to send out to jumps.
For those of you who might not know what I mean by distance work, here's a short summary: While running a course, a handler's job is to try and pick the most efficient route for both dog and self. Most of the time this is pretty straight forward, but if you have a fast dog, it's challenging. Practicing distance work allows you to put more distance between you and your dog while maintaining control of their direction through verbal commands and body language. By adding distance, you can make your route shorter, which helps keep pace with a fast dog.
There are classes in most venues that require distance work: USDAA has Gamblers, AKC has the FAST class, NADAC requires distance tests in some of it's standard courses, and there are probably several others in other venues I haven't come across. Since we primarily run USDAA, we are most familiar with the game Gamblers. Simplified, a Gamblers run consists of 2 parts: opening and closing. In the opening, you have x number of seconds to get as many points as possible (each type of obstacle is designated a point value). At the end of this time, a buzzer sounds and you have y number of seconds to complete a closing sequence. This sequence is numbered, must be taken in order, and the handler must remain on the opposite side of a line on the ground, about 5-10 feet in Starter/PIs. Failure to complete the obstacles or stepping over the line results in a fault, and a non-qualifying score. As you progress from Starters/PI to Masters/PIII, the distance between the line and the obstacles increases. You can see now how valuable distance work becomes!
Kristen, Harley and I have progressed in Gamblers to PIII, the highest competitive level, admittedly by mostly sheer luck of the course designs. Harley's distance work has been inconsistent at best, and getting better at this has been a training goal of ours for quite some time.
Deb setup a very nice course to gradually get our dogs to learn the 'out' command. When handling at a distance, using a word to tell the dog to leave you is a must. This word, like all the agility obstacle commands, needs to be consistent every time you say it. In Deb's course, she set up a tight double-pinwheel with 7 jumps (shown below). The dog would complete the pinwheels in a figure-8, while the handler attempted to stay on one half of the course while using their 'out' command to send the dog to the outer jumps before turning back towards the handler. The handler's objective was to not cross over the red line draw below. After a few repetitions to pattern the dogs to the course, the pinwheel would become larger. More repetitions, and then larger more.
Harley's first go at it was a bit embarrassing. She just didn't know what we were asking her to do. She'd start the pinwheel, and at the 'out' command, she'd just stop running and start casually walking towards us. After I admitted failure, Kristen tried with similar results. Finally after supporting her a bit more, blocking her return route with a wing fence, and breaking out the ultimate motivator (the blue racquetball), the course sunk in. This then allowed us to start moving the jumpers further apart. Using our out command, she got better and better. I was surprised at how fast she was catching on! By the end of class, she was reliably sending out to jumps on a full-blown course that incorporated the double pinwheel at the center.
There was a magic moment near the end of class when Harley started to come back to me and I yelled 'OUT!' while pointing to a jump. Harley then altered her course and took the jump. Why do I think this was a magic moment? Because she thought about coming toward me, recognized the command, and changed her direction accordingly. This told me that she didn't merely memorize the course, but she was learning and recognizing the command.
Training Pop Quiz: Does this mean mission accomplished? Harley is now an expert? NO! While she is beginning to learn the out command, there's a lot of work to be done to hone and maintain this skill. Harley now knows what to do on that specific course. The hard work comes in generalizing the command so Harley can apply it in a variety of different courses and obstacles (Gamblers course designers frequently like to put contact obstacles in their closing sequences).
Looks like I'll need to start building some more jumps so we can do our homework!
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