Dog Sports: Part 1

Since I don't have any qualifications or enough experience to start teaching people about dog sports, I figured I could share my experiences over the last year as a dog sport novice.

While I never had a dog growing up, I was always someone that wanted to do things with my dogs. I knew about agility and obedience, but it wasn't until the last few years and a friendship with my dog-sports crazy roommate did I realize the sheer breadth of activities available to dogs and their owners. Agility, flyball, obedience, rally, earth dog, dock diving, herding... and the list goes on. When I got my dog in November, I was so excited to try a few of these things with him.

So far, Myles and I have tried three dog sports: flyball, agility, and rally obedience. For those of you not familiar: flyball is a relay race with four dogs on a team that run over four hurdles, grab a tennis ball out of a spring-loaded box, and run back over the hurdles. Team with the fastest time and no mistakes wins. Agility takes the dog over an obstacle course of jumps, tunnels, weave poles, a see saw, and other obstacles. Rally obedience is toned-down regular obedience. Handler and dogs walk around a course and perform maneuvers such as sits, downs, about turns, and walking around the dog while it stays.

Flyball course

Let's start with the sports we've tried and have kind of veered away from, for various reasons. We tried a flyball class over the winter, to introduce us to the sport without having to join a team. The class was taught members of a local flyball team, who competed often and had trained many dogs. First, you teach them how to run the hurdles. Since we had done some beginner agility, this wasn't a problem for Myles and he picked it up fast. We then started foundation work for teaching the dog a proper, efficient turn at the box. In a race that comes down to hundredths of a second, a fast turn can make all the difference. Myles could execute a turn fairly close to the box, but just wasn't interested in the tennis ball, which made getting him excited to do drills with the box pretty difficult. Any breed, pure or mixed, can do flyball, but it really helps to have a dog with very strong drive for the tennis ball and plenty of energy. While not too keen on the tennis ball, Myles loved running the hurdles, especially when there was a dog running in the lane next to him. He especially loved to go into herding mode and chase down the dog in the other lane, which is decidedly not allowed. That behavior had to be gotten rid of quickly! Somebody stood between the lanes and yelled whenever Myles seemed like he was veering into the other lane. That seemed to work.

The other student in my class was a big male boxer, who was not at all interested in Myles, not pleased with Myles' little herding game, and was very possessive of his tug toy (the humans bring tug toys to entice and play with the dog when it reaches the end of the hurdles). His human was actually the mother of the owner of the dog (or something) and was always keen to point out to me how her dog 'just needed to do a job' and was 'so focused, look he doesn't even care about your dog'. Needless to say, when Myles was racing down four hurdles, grabbing the tennis ball from the ground in front of the box and racing back over, her dog was still working on grabbing the ball and coming back over one hurdle. Focused, huh? :-P
To the delight of everyone involved, especially the instructors, the boxer was brought to class one morning with a fantastic, hacking cough, which culminated in him hacking up white foam all over the mats and everyone in the room freaking out and telling her to bring the dog outside. His cough was classic for kennel cough, which is SO contagious that even after we had disinfected the entire area I was tempted to just take Myles and go home. That dog should absolutely never have been brought to class that morning, and while Myles never came down with the cough, several of the dogs on the team, who practiced in the arena after class was over, had kennel cough by the next weekend. Class was cancelled for weeks. Ridiculous.

An excellent box turn

After a few classes, Myles seemed to be doing well, but just didn't seem excited about it. He had fun, but I could tell it just wasn't holding his attention. Additionally, if we really wanted to pursue flyball we would have had to find a team to join (which can be scary, and not entirely accessible to outsiders) and it would have been a time and money commitment that I just wouldn't be able to handle with school. Additionally, that specific environment (and I know teams differ, of course) was a little too intense for me. I decided flyball wasn't our thing. Not at this time, at least, and probably not with this dog.

Stay tuned for our adventures in rally and agility!

When People Are Harder to Train than Dogs

Over the course of this summer, I've had my first experience offering behavioral consultation, and the willing participants were my downstairs neighbors. While still an ongoing process, we finally made some excellent headway, and I learned just how frustrating training people, and not just their dogs, can be.

While owner compliance is an issue in all of veterinary medicine, compliance is especially important in behavioral medicine. Owners need to follow specific behavioral modification protocols, and it can often feel overwhelming if they are not given clear instructions with only a few things to do at a time. I've sat in on many behavioral consultations this summer and offered plenty of my own advice to clients, but had not had the opportunity to come up with a plan and follow the case through. My neighbors provided the perfect opportunity for me to test out my skills. They have an unruly little dog, and both needed and wanted my help, and were willing to listen.

The main issue we were facing with Mimi was her reactive barking. She was both territorial and fear aggressive, barking at me from inside the house whenever I was in the driveway, barking whenever I walked up and down the stairs to my apartment, barking at anything or anyone that moved around outside. Needless to say, the barking was annoying and disruptive, and she was very hard to distract or control when she was having a fit.

Communicating through our landlord, I determined that they did want my assistance and in fact were thrilled that I offered to help. We started out with some basics to help them gain more control over Mimi. They went to a basic obedience class and Mimi quickly learned to sit and down, and would respond quickly when not distracted. I offered several suggestions to help with the barking. I wanted them to use a Gentle Leader, but for whatever reason at that point in time they weren't very interested in that option. We tried things such as distracting Mimi from whatever stimulus would trigger her to bark with positive reinforcement, such as calling her to them to do a command, receive a treat, or play with a toy. This worked to a limited extent, but Mimi needed something a little stronger to discourage her. I filled a soda can with rocks and taped it shut, and this was to be used by throwing it on the ground and startling Mimi out of her intense focus. When she stopped barking, she was to be praised and rewarded. This also worked, but the soda can wasn't always handy, and distractions didn't always work. Her barking was better in the yard and when we went in an out of the house, but there was still a long way to go.

During this behavioral modification plateau, I complained to my boyfriend, 'If they would only just listen to me and get a Gentle Leader, we could fix all of these problems!'. I was very frustrated, but not just by them. Like so many clients seeking behavioral advice for their pets, they received some bad advice from other sources. They told me that upon a trip to Petco to purchase a Gentle Leader, they ran into the trainer from the class they had been taking there. When they told him what they were there to purchase, he then told them a Gentle Leader would be 'no help' for Mimi. Upon hearing this, my brain almost exploded and I'm sure I made a terrible face, since cases like Mimi's are practically number one on our list of cases for which we recommend a Gentle Leader. They had also been instructed incorrectly to use a clicker to interrupt Mimi while she was barking, which was not at all effective and was not the correct use of the clicker. But this is what they had been instructed to do by someone other than me. At this point, I'd pretty much given up, and was prepared to accept that I wasn't going to get the outcome I wanted and I just needed to grin and bear it. The end. Frustrating, but such is life. People only do what they want to do, and you cannot make them.

Then out of the blue the other week, my neighbor comes up to me and says they would like to buy a Gentle Leader and would very much like my help fitting it on Mimi and learning how to use it. Of course! I jumped at the opportunity. Victory was mine! Now we just had to get the head halter, and use it. They bought a Gentle Leader in the smallest size manufactured, and one afternoon in the yard we fit it on Mimi's tiny head. I attached the flat lead to the ring under her chin, and took her around the yard to see how she would deal with these contraption on her face. Like most dogs, she wanted to paw the strap off her nose and rub her face in the grass. To stop her from doing this, I simply gently pull upward on the leash, hold it until she stops, and then release the tension on the lead and praise her when she stops.

We had excellent timing, as I was expecting my boyfriend to arrive shortly, and this was an event that would normally trigger a flurry of incessant, reactive barking and lunging at the end of her leash. Normally, Mimi was impossible to control in this situation and you could not interrupt her frenzy. Right on cue, Jared pulled into the driveway. As soon as Mimi moved into her usual tirade, I put tension on the leash, told her calmly to 'stop it', and kept tension on the leash until she relaxed. This took what felt like a long time, maybe 30 seconds of just waiting her out, with much flailing on the end of the leash. It may look terrible, but the halter doesn't hurt the dog, and the dog quickly learns that you are in control, and they need to listen to you. After Mimi was able to calm down, she was allowed to greet Jared calmly. She knows him and likes him, but her instinct to react noisily always takes over first, and that is what we are hoping to control.

I handed the leash over to Mimi's owner, and after watching me work with Mimi, she had it down. Mimi would try to rub the halter off her face, her owner would calmly tell her to 'stop it', and pull up on the lead. Her timing was excellent, and she was not afraid to assert herself as the leader. After a little while, Mimi laid down calmly at her owner's feet, and we commented that this was the most relaxed we had seen Mimi outside in maybe forever. I told her this was a common effect of the Gentle Leader. When the dog realizes you have taken their 'six guns' away, they relax and defer to you. A dog like Mimi wants to take control of every situation, and using the Gentle Leader tells her that the humans are in charge and she does not have to be. Perfect.

They were thrilled, I was thrilled, we were ecstatic at how quiet Mimi was. A wonderful  side effect of the Gentle Leader is that it actually closes the dog's mouth, shutting down barking before it even begins. This was an excellent breakthrough for Mimi and her owner, and I could not have been happier. I had shown them how they can effectively and humanely take control of their dog, and they were incredibly grateful. We are now looking forward to a much quieter household, and Mimi was looking forward to a much more calm and collected existence, without the stress of feeling like she had to be in charge.

A very successful consultation, made all the more gratifying by Mimi's owner looking at me with the utmost respect, and saying, 'You are awesome'. Thank you.