Seven Months

Wow, another month gone...if nothing else he continues to grow! Not sure that he's gotten a lot taller but he's muscled up and is really developing in the body. He's certainly one powerful boy. There is a lot to like about him. He's very sweet and loves his cuddles. He is fantastic with other dogs and loves everyone.  I just hope that once the testosterone starts kicking in fully his lovely temperament with other dogs remains.  He has really slotted into the routine at home and is so much easier to manage now. He still has a lot of restrictions on him and not sure when he'll settle down enough to be allowed loose in the house with the other dogs but one step at a time. One day I'm sure he'll graduate off the lead!   Although I'm not sure the other dogs are in a rush for that to happen.

Training is going OK. Inside sessions are normally spot on. Outside can go either way and he can be distracted by the environment.  Sometimes we have good sessions out there and other times not so good. He is learning some really cool stuff and tricks I've never tried with my other dogs before. His rear end awareness is fantastic.  I've been doing a lot of Recallers with him as well and I'm really happy with how hard he drives after me. He's not super fast driving into a tunnel at the moment but at seven months, who cares. The Recallers game push back and jam is definitely helping so I'll keep playing with that. I don't have any specific plans time wise with all of this. We've been doing some wraps to tunnels which have been fun. His understanding of wraps is going really well. I've started some very basic running contact work and I'll just see how it develops. I've been teaching him two on two off as well so I'll decide later on which one I'll go with. Really depends if he picks up the running contact skills relatively easily or if it all goes to crap once I start to put it on a dog walk. And of course depends on my ability to train it! Nothing will be on actual equipment for a while so I shouldn't be able to mess it up too badly for now...then everything else at the moment is tricks and games. 

Veto - 7 months

Things with Cassie aren't going nearly so well.  The "not getting any reinforcement in the competition ring" is hitting us hard.  Everything works for a couple of trials and then she figures out that she's not getting any rewards in the ring for that either so it all goes to crap.  The only way I figure I will ever be able to work through this is to either be able to do NFC runs so I can reward her in the ring for a significant period of time and then randomly reward from then on.  Or I go back and expand her understanding of never getting rewarded in the ring.  As part of the Denise Fenzi "Bridging the Gap" course, we worked on doing a whole series of exercises and then being released to her reward.  So at the moment my plan is to grow that at training so that she literally never gets rewarded on the agility field.  If she does something great, she'll get a cue and we'll run to her treat bag for a reward.  I've only tried it once at training and it worked really well because she already knows the game.  And she understands the concept of working with open food around and her getting it being contingent on her earning it.  So I'm happy that the foundation of the game is well ingrained in her.  It will really be how I can transfer it to the ring.  I think it will take quite a few NFC classes where I can do a few obstacles and then leave the ring for a reward.  Then if the judge allows me to, go back into the ring and do some more so I can develop the skill in that ring environment.  I would work on it over a period of time to build duration from doing a few obstacles to doing a whole course.  Then potentially randomly releasing her from the ring to her reward at trials so she never knows when she may get her reward.  Other than that I'm totally stuck and have no idea what to do!  It's been good to have a break from it all anyway.  Sometimes you really just get sick of thinking about it!!

Six Months

This month’s Veto update starts off on a sad note with the loss of his mother Waddy’s Liz.  From what I understand their neighbour put out 1080 baits and the end result is that it caused the death of Liz.  Such tragic news and I can imagine a huge loss for Angus and Sarah to lose one of their top working dogs. 

Getting High

The youngster is five months old today. He is starting to look more and more like a grown up. I measured him last week because it was obvious he had shot up a bit and he was about 48cm so still keeping up with what Sonic was at the same age. Surprisingly he hasn't really gone gangly at all. He's pretty much stayed in proportion the whole time. His registration papers arrived from the Queensland Working Cattle Dog Trial Association last week so now he is officially "Waddy's Velocity".

Training him is as usual, an up and down affair. Some days I find myself saying "wow, what a great session" and then the very next session I'm quite likely to be saying "wow...that was terrible". The success of any given training session is often contingent on my ability to keep him sub-threshold. Once the boy is over aroused I may as well find something else to do because training him is a waste of all of our time. So if I want to do some training outside with him it's best to control his activity leading up to it. Then I have separate sessions where we work on him being able to function with there are distractions going on around us. It's a slow process but he's getting better at bringing himself under control and re-focusing. It's not going to be a quick process though. Overall he is a really nice puppy. His main issue is controlling himself with his boisterousness a bit like a lethal weapon. I was worried that he wasn't getting enough of our time so now we have "Veto" time each day when all the other dogs are put outside and he gets to hang with us by himself. He's a very sweet boy but you often don't get a chance to see it because he's so busy leaping all over the place. At some point he needs to learn to co-exist with everyone minus the jumping on them, so he is also spending time on lead chilling out on a dog bed while we are watching TV.  But being only five months old, he has a fairly limited window for sitting quietly just yet... 

We aren't doing anything super exciting training wise. I'm working on teaching him directionals and to understand verbal cues. Directionals take ages (plus he's a boy) so I figure the earlier we start that the better. His retrieve is pretty good now but I am trying to improve the speed with which he brings it back. I want an out to get and straight back to me and that's not always what I get, so by incorporating SG's "Cookie in a corner" game it's starting to look how I want it. His body awareness is not bad and he is probably the best at doing some of the exercises out of all of my dogs. He finally gets how to wrap. I was really surprised how long he took to understand that. I tried lots of different things to help him to understand what I wanted and for a while I was wondering if he was every going to get it. But now that he has I can even get multi-wraps from him so that's fun. I very rarely see the shut down signals from him anymore which is a relief. I can't remember the last time he left work or started scratching during a session so that has also been great to see. There is hope for us yet! 

The Cassie pants is still giving me some interesting challenges. She is so amazing at training now and couldn't be more up and keen if she was a rocket. But still the lack of confidence in the trial situation. In between things not going hugely well she has managed a couple of Q's including finishing off her Excellent Agility title. Feels like it's been a long time coming but when you consider that she was out for six months of last year and when she was trialling I missed a lot of runs with her, it probably only took 6 months in all. Some runs she is good and seems confident and happy, then other runs she wants to be anywhere but in the ring. I actually feel like I'm at a point where I need to be able to reward her in the ring in order to move forward. I've entered an ADAA trial next weekend so I can just do a few jumps and then reward her. So will see if that helps. If she doesn't want to run we just leave and I don't make a big deal about it. There is no pressure at all on her to run if she is feeling overwhelmed. It's definitely frustrating but it is what it is so all I can do is manage it and try and keep her as happy as I can.

Learning Curve

It occurred to me that I have no video of Veto other than when he first arrived, playing outside with Fizz. So time to time to rectify that! It's so nice to have something to look back on when they are grown-ups and remember what they were like as babies because they grow up way too fast. Training is an up and down affair. Every time I think I've worked through something with him and give myself a pat on the back he throws something else at me that I have to work through. Plenty of times I've questioned my ability to train a dog like him. Sonic was full on as a pup but mostly just by being an over excitable dork. Veto is not quite as silly as Sonic was (and still is...) but what Ve throws at you is a lot of dog. We are at a point where he's no longer allowed free access in the house at all. While I'm not too bothered about him playing with Fizz he is way too boisterous for Cassie to handle. The problem is that Cassie is such a bossy madam and is more than happy to start a game, but was getting hurt once he got over the top. He doesn't mean to hurt her and there is nothing malicious in it, he's just too much dog for her right now and when he gets over aroused he totally loses control. In a way it's probably a good thing that I've restricted his access because of Cassie. Otherwise it's too easy to let him run around and play with Fizz constantly. I'm not sure that is what he really needs, so the enforced restrictions are probably for the best right now anyway. I also finally measured Veto the other day out of curiosity and he’s almost exactly the same as Sonic was at this age. So I’m guessing he will end up a similar height to Sonic when he’s fully grown.


Finally I'm having some good retrieve success. It's taken a few weeks but after following Silvia Trkman's method I worked on shaping him to pick up a variety of things and put them in a container. Sure enough once he was proficient at that I put my hand out and got a toy delivered to my hand. Good boy Ve :) We are still working up to high value toys because playing with the toy has more value to him than the food, but I'm relieved that even when we are playing tug with a tug toy he is now much more inclined to bring it back to me to restart a game of tug. I've ended up doing quite a bit of ST's stuff from her Puppy DVD. Lots of easy to teach fun games that have an emphasis on body awareness. Interestingly Ve does have a tendency to shut down on me through some of the shaping sessions not unlike To was for Silvia. He can lose focus and start sniffing if he’s unsure. So it's been challenging working through that and understanding what he needs to keep him engaged. Fortunately increasing value of rewards and increasing the rate of reinforcement if he finds something difficult has worked really well. Like To was in the DVD he would start out really strong and you'd think he was all over it, but then suddenly he'd disengage and leave. It's nice when you have enough knowledge to have a quick resolution to what you are presented with each time you have a training session!

Veto started his journey with us being very intense and focused on me. So part of the work I've been doing with him is bringing some balance in without it going too much the other way, as in him finding everything more exciting than me... I almost had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago when for the first time I decided to take them all for a run around the property with the weather cooling off. I stupidly put him on a harness and lived to regret it within two minutes of leaving the house. He literally stood on his hind legs while galloping, his front legs waving wildly in the air and screaming at the top of his lungs. I was barely able to physically hold him. Kind of scary when he had never gone for a run with the other dogs around the fire break before so no reinforcement history for it. In the end the best I could do was get all the other dogs to lie down quietly so I could work with him. It took a while to wait him out but he finally calmed down enough and started responding to basic commands. Once I got that I let him have a run. While we were walking, any time he came up to either Colin or I he got rewarded and we made no attempt to call his name or catch him. The rest of the walk was uneventful and he slept like a log afterwards which was a nice bonus. Since then he only goes out with his little Halti on that I bought just in case I had an issue like this and he has to do some work before he's allowed off lead. I'm pretty happy that he will do a little bit of heel work and respond to commands now even when the other dogs are free but it takes varying degrees of time for him to be able to get his brain to work. Then of course for something new, his latest is to run back towards us flat out and straight into Cassie's face. Managed to stop that one pretty quickly by throwing a treat on the ground in front of him just before he got to us. That turned into running to my hand for the treat. Then I couldn't get rid of the little sucker who wanted to hang around for another treat! So overall I'm pleased with his progress and that he is choosing to come back and check in rather than spending his whole time herding the other dogs. But as is the way I’m sure it will be an up and down process for a while yet. Next will be starting to take some of this stuff away from home and see how he goes. He still needs to spend a lot more time going to new places and socialising.



Last weekend was our annual State Agility Trial. I didn’t have any idea how it would go and in particular how Cassie would cope. It ended up being more challenging in an emotional sense than any other with the news of my Grandad passing away on the Saturday night. So my struggles with Cassie felt huge at the time but on reflection (and reviewing the video) things weren’t really that bad. I just felt a bit down in general. No clean runs which added to my sense of everything going wrong but overall Cassie ran really well. She is handling the ring entrances with confidence and is showing no signs of concern when the lead steward comes over. No yawning or lip licking to be seen. The only thing that worried me a bit was that for one of the runs she wasn’t releasing with as much keenness as I’d like to see. Given that any actual release work I’ve done has been minimal in comparison to all the ring entrances it’s not surprising that there is still some work to be done there. It just means that now I will start to put more emphasis on the release at training and less on the ring entrances. And not helping things was that Cassie was pretty flat on day two. I had made sure they all had a quiet night on Saturday so she should have been well rested but I just don’t think she wanted to be there. So something else to think about in preparing her for Nationals which always run over multiple days. One step at a time!

Growing Up

Puppies truly are exhausting!  Young Veto is keeping me very busy and our previously experienced calm evenings pe-Veto gone for the time being.  My cute little sleepy puppy has been replaced by a long legged, crazy eared adolescent who has taken over the house.  The boys still dislike him but fortunately the girls are happy to contribute to his entertainment.   

Veto has really got the hang of the whole shaping thing now and is learning really quickly.  Mostly we do body awareness games, go to mat games, and recallers games.  I don't really have anything specific I'm focusing on other than him learning to wait/be released and teaching him to retrieve.  At the moment his idea of a good time with a toy is having a game for one with it, but I must admit he has over the last few days started bringing it back, albeit intermittently.  I'm working on teaching him a formal retrieve to speed things up as bunking off with a toy is right up there on my list of most annoying thing your dog can do.  However I figure that if I can teach Cassie to bring her toy back Veto should be a push over... Overall he's a really lovely dog.  There is plenty of naughtiness in him and when he's amped it's a case of baton down the hatches but I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun with him.

 
Things are going really well with Cassie's ring rehab.  So far we have run in two classes and both have had very successful ring entries.  The first time back in the ring was at the Western Classic where I ended up scratching her from the Masters Jumping class (the course was just not right for her) but ran her in Excellent Agility.  She has an amazing run but thanks to my lazy handling she missed a tunnel entry which gave us a refusal and then DQ.  Her start line was superb and her confidence was high.  At the next trial she was flat as a tack earlier in the evening (for reasons only known to Cassie) and nothing I did could get her engaged for her Excellent Agility class so I scratched her.  I had made a decision after finishing the Ring Confidence course that unless she is 100% with me then I'm not running her.  So it was my commitment to that decision kicking in.  After having such a flat dog I had thought there was no way she was going to be OK for Masters Jumping.  Fortunately before she was due in that ring one of the other rings finished so I was able to use the ring ropes to work on happy ring entrances.  After two or three rewards she was fired up and happy as Larry so I decided that we would give the Masters course a try.  Thank goodness we did as she was fantastic and ended up going clear and winning the class, 12 seconds clear of second place.   It certainly confirmed that the decision to scratch her from the earlier class was the right one.


Such a relief to have some success back in the ring and have a dog who is happy and confident again.  She is still improving in leaps and bounds.  At training she is a different dog.  Not that she didn't work for me at training before doing the Fenzi School courses but it's a different attitude in her that I see now.  I never start training her until she asks me to so I have a dog who can't wait to get started and actually pushes me to get on with it.  And I never give her more energy than she gives me, so I'm not trying to "gee" her up anymore.  She isn't showing the same turn of speed in the ring that I'm getting at training but hopefully I'll start to see that soon.  I'm still working hard on our proofing exercises at training particularly with the lead steward.  Cassie seems totally non-phased by the judges presence but still needs to look when the lead steward comes to get her lead.  So at training, with the ring gates set up I've been getting people to follow us in nice and close and even leaning over Cassie to take the lead so that she is proofed against even the most obtrusive ring steward we could come across!

Our next trial is at Cloverdale next weekend.  Whether we go or not will depend on the weather as it's our first day trial for the year and at this time of year the weather could go either way.  Then after that is the States in mid-April.  I'm trying not to put too much pressure on myself with that one.  I would so dearly love for Cassie to do well and she deserves to be up there as she is such a talented little dog.  I just have to try and keep the pressure off and my mental game at the ready to make sure I continue to do a better job managing her and keeping her 100% happy!

Introducing Veto

Finally after what seems like a really, really long wait, my new border collie puppy has joined us.  I spent most of last year waiting for a litter that never eventuated after the bitch either never got pregnant or reabsorbed.  I was pretty disappointed as I am a huge fan of both the bitch and dog, however obviously it was just not meant to be.  It was fortunate that there were a few other options around with some very nice litters planned for the end of last year.  A pup from any of those litters would have been great but this time round I had my heart set on working lines with a more leggy type who was full on and ready for some fun.  And of course after waiting most of last year for a pup who never came I wasn't going to look at anything until a litter was on the ground!

Veto (8 weeks)

So on 19th February little Veto arrived.  He is a super sweet little guy who is full of life, loves people, a good cuddle.  He also loves papillon ears and tails...but can be convinced to play tug with toys instead.  He had a pretty crappy trip over from NSW between flights being cancelled and then delayed.  Note to self, next time go and get him myself!  He had a very upset tummy for days and his skin got all itchy.  So he had a trip tot he vet and came home with a months worth of antibiotics to sort things out.

Cassie and Veto (8 weeks)

The dogs have taken a bit of time to warm to him.  In fact Riot and Sonic still haven't warmed to him, but I did see Sonic wag his tail at him the other morning.  Before telling him to go away.  He's been good for Fizz and she loves playing with him.  When she's in the mood anyway!  Cassie was really not amused to begin with.  She'd prefer not to share me and my attentions.  But she does like playing with him, he just gets a little too rough for her so I have to step in every now and again to bring things to a stop.  She has enthusiastically introduced him to pappy zoomies.

Veto - ears going up (9 weeks)

 Overall he is everything I could have asked for in a puppy with all the attributes that I am looking for.  Health wise things are good from a DNA perspective with his father clear of all the standard border collie genetic problems.  I will at some point do all the DNA tests just to make sure he isn't a carrier of anything as his mum is untested.  But that doesn't really matter unless I want to breed from him.  He will be PenHipped at sixteen weeks so I can be confident that his hips are going to be OK.  I have no reason to think they won't be but after the frustration and disappointment of Sonic's hips dysplasia I want to be sure that Veto's is going to have a long and sound career with a lot less of the heartbreak.   

Cassie - apparently not amused...

For now his life is all about having fun and getting to know each other.  We have joined puppy class at the local vet to make sure he gets a nice rounded socialisation program which doesn't only involve going to agility training and trials.  I just want to make sure he can handle anything he may come across, not just the agility environment.  He has a great appetite so teaching him new stuff is easy and he tries really hard to earn his food and of course he loves his toys.  Over the years I've come to the realisation that acquiring a gifted agility dog is somewhat of a lottery.  All the planning and care taken to select a "super agility dog" when they are puppies is really all guess work and could likely make not one iota of difference.  So I'm just going to enjoy him for now and we'll see what happens!

Finding our Confidence

Three weeks into our ring confidence course and a week out from Christmas...where on earth did the last couple of months go??  In fact where has 2014 gone...

So I did manage to get a gold spot in the Ring Confidence course.  It really is a serious adrenaline rush waiting for the clock to hit the course opening time and then banging away on the refresh button!  Just unfortunately that it's always some ridiculous hour of the morning.  The course has been a lot of fun so far and everything is broken into itty bitty pieces that are really easy to manage.  In three weeks Cassie has gone from seeing ring ropes and shutting down/trying to avoid, to seeing ring ropes and dragging me into the ring.  It's hard to believe that she's the same dog.  I'm very fortunate that Cassie is so high drive and will do a lot of things for food and toys.  It has made it much less challenging.  But being given the right exercises broken down into the right pieces and then putting together is making all the difference.  With how well she is going, getting her back into the ring actually feels like it might happen. 

 

What I find even more exciting is that after working through the I'm Just Little and now the Confidence Building course Cassie is just different in general.  It's a bit hard to describe, but it's like she's lost the suspicion about what is about to happen.  Because the pressure is off she obviously feels less concerned and is far keener to engage.  She still takes her toy into the tunnel from time to time but as she learns that it doesn't matter and I'm not going to make her do anything she wants to come back and she wants to engage me.  She is now more often than not the one who is initiating the work.  I've had nights after work when I hadn't planned on doing any training with her and she has hassled me constantly until I've caved in and taken her out to do something.  I feel like I finally "get" my dog.

 

I can't imagine not doing more courses after this.  The whole thing becomes a bit addictive.  Having someone there at any time who you can ask questions of is just brilliant.  I'm learning so much I don't really want to stop.  I might not always do gold level but I think I'd like to find something at bronze that might be interesting.  I can't rave enough about Denise Fenzi.  She is like a miracle worker!  If she lived in Australia I'd find her and give her a bit kiss.   

I took Sonic to Murdoch last week for x-rays and a full going over.  Fortunately nothing we didn't already know about was found and it is still his hips that are causing all the problems.  The specialist basically told me that all I can do is modify my expectations and accept that he is going to get sore.  Doing the odd trial isn't out of the question but some level of discomfort is unavoidable so medication will become a way of life.  I guess it's about deciding for him how much he is allowed to do.  I want to give him the opportunity to do agility when he is feeling good but it will be a trial to trial proposition.  At least I can give him meds to make his day to day life more comfortable.  I'm glad I took him in to be fully checked out.  I feel a lot happier now that I know more about what I'm dealing with and how to look after him the right way.  With a lounge room that has become a fitness centre I'm certainly well prepared to keep him in the best possible physical condition.