Tracking – Week 2, Day 9
December 27th, 2011 § 3 Comments
Tracks today were 20, 40 & 80 yards long and aged 10 minutes.
Slate had no problem with them. Grey, on the other hand, is having some difficulties at the start. I’m not sure why this is, but she ends up standing there, eating grass and admiring the view.
Adam waits a while, since obviously we can’t force her to track. Encouragement doesn’t seem to work: He runs his hand through the grass at the starting post and says ‘What’s this?’, but Grey just munches on grass and daydreams.
There is a ‘trouble-shooting’ section at the back of the book and there is some help on this issue, there – but I’ve left the book back home…. No matter, since we’ve now reached about as much as we can do here, in the small Jersey fields!
Jumping at dusk
December 26th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Some jumping practice in the garden, before night fell:
These are now tiny baby jumps, the size of caveletti.
I also put the target stick at the end. I worked back, a jump at a time, waiting for 5 successful touches of the target, before I moved one more jump away from the target stick.
Slate managed to get right to the end of the row, but Grey got no more than two jumps away – although it was quite dark by then!
Tracking – Week 2, Day 8
December 24th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Tracks today were still baby tracks of 10, 20 & 40 yards and aged 8 minutes.
Grey again seemed to have no idea what she was doing on the first track and then suddenly seemed to remember. Slate was great throughout.
One thing I’ve noticed, since we’ve been ageing the tracks these past couple of days, is that the dogs are tracking much more footstep-to-footstep, and are much less likely to want to use the wind to help.
I’m assuming this is because body scent dissipates quickly, but is easier to follow, whereas track scent sticks around a lot longer, but needs more work. So I’m understanding this development as a good one, indicating that the body scent has dissipated somewhat and they are now starting to follow track scent.
We won’t be doing any tracking on Xmas Day (!) so it might be a couple of days before we continue now!
Hope you all have a great Xmas!
Slate’s been in the wars
December 23rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Caution: Poo details are contained in this post.
So, since Slate came off the metronidazole, she had runny yellow poos. There was no mucous or blood, but they were the consistency of a thick milkshake (!). I had been giving her probiotics and also kaolin, to no avail. She seemed to be bursting with energy and very well, in herself.
After googling around, one possibility was pancreatitis – essentially, inflammation of the pancreas. Apparently this can be caused after a course of antibiotics – by the antibiotics and their effect on the pancreas. It seemed that one thing to try before going to the vet was no food for 24 hrs and then an easily digestible food which is low in fat and high in fibre, to give the pancreas time to heal itself.
So, we stopped off at the pet shop and I checked out all the packs of Nature Diet and found that the Fish variety was the lowest in fat and had reasonable fibre levels. We picked up a week’s worth to give it a go.
Slate’s poos have been much better and are a normal consistency, although there is still a yellowness to them – much less than before, though. So, more Nature Diet for the time being…
Obviously this has also affected the training treats we can use, keeping those also low fat and as natural as possible. At the moment, I’m using the new Bob and Lush Venison Sausages and Livers, since I was sent some to trial by Bob and Lush.
As if all this weren’t enough, Slate’s had another bout of her eczema under each thigh, where the leg meets the body. This has been simmering away for a while, gradually getting worse again, and has now reached the point where it is angry and bright red and she wants to lick it all the time (which is what often causes it, in the first place).
So we stopped off at our Jersey vet today, New Era Vets, to pick up a no-bite collar/Elizabethan collar for her. I hope that this, with some aloe Vera gel, will be enough.
Poor Slate! I do think a lot of her various symptoms, from swollen, itchy eyes, to eczema, to digestive problems, might all be allergy-related. Once we’ve got her ok again, I’m going to look into this a bit more.
Tracking – Week 2, Day 7
December 23rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
It looks like the point of Week 2 is to repeat the distances of Week 1, but with the tracks being aged more.
So today we tracked 5, 10 & 20 yards – which felt like nothing, after the 400 yards we were doing at the end of the first week. Since we’re back down to these distances, we can track both dogs on the same day.
The crucial differences from last week are: The track-layer lays all 3 tracks, before the dog tracks them. The 3 tracks are still repeated 3 times, but they are laid all at once, each time.
The other (related) difference is that the tracks are aged. Today only by 5 minutes. We start the timer from the moment the track layer steps out on the first track.
Yet again, this tracking programme shows a really good knowledge of learning theory: We are making one criteria harder (age of track – and potentially the scent which the dog is tracking, since the older the track gets, the more likely it is that the dog will have to follow ‘track scent’ instead of body odour) – but we are simultaneously making another element easier – length of track and frequency of rewards (by way of finding articles).
Both the dogs did well, although it’s always hard to tell if they’ve ‘got it’ on tracks this short, because no sooner have they started then they’ve come across an article and finished it: There’s no time for them to get into their stride.
Grey had no idea what she was supposed to be doing on her first track, and stood there eating grass. (I think both dogs were a bit confused by our being in Jersey, as we’ve never done tracking in Jersey before.). But after finding the first article at 5 yards, she realised it was the same thing we’d been doing in the UK, and was great.
Walk on the beach with Mokey
December 22nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
We met up with a friend, Hannah, who owns Slate’s sister (Mokey), for a walk on the beach today.
Mokey is from a repeat mating, so she is Slate’s full sister, but 18mnths younger and not Slate’s litter mate.
We looked after Mokey for 3 weeks when she was 14-16wks old: We had just Slate at the time. It was really good to trial having 2 dogs before we had Grey.
Slate and Mokey had a few disagreements today, when we first met, then they decided to do their own separate things.
Ladders & Teaching Your Dog to Soar by Christine Zink
December 21st, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Working trials has an agility section to it, which involves 3 jumps. These are completed as 3 separate exercises:
- A ‘hurdle’ (straight-forward jump) – 3ft high.
- A ‘long jump’ – 9ft long.
- A ‘scale’ (vertical wooden ‘wall’) – 6ft high.
The hurdle and long jump must be completed in one direction only. The scale must be completed in both directions (away from and back to the handler), with the dog waiting for a command before returning. The dog must also wait in a position of your choice, which you’ve told the judge of, beforehand. (I think most competitors use the Down.).
Unlike ‘agility’ agility, speed is not really a consideration: Obedience and precision are. I guess it’s a bit like the jumping in some obedience competitions, except there’s no retrieve over a jump.
Slate has done a term or two of basic agility classes, and was showing promise. I stopped taking her because I couldn’t deal with the amount of barking going on from dogs waiting to take their turn & the sport didn’t appeal to me. Grey hasn’t done any agility.
So I decided to start from scratch and to try to see that the dogs get a good grounding in jumping. I was recommended a good book for this purpose, called ‘Jumping from A to Z: Teach Your Dog to Soar’ by Christine Zink. For the purposes of obedience jumping (which is essentially what working trials is about), she recommends following the first two of the three training sections in her book. (The last section is more agility-agility specific.)
The first exercise of section one involves using a ladder, laid flat on the ground, and luring the dog up and down a ladder for treats. This (allegedly) helps the dog to become aware of what all limbs are doing, and where they are.
We did this exercise once in our house last week, and once today, here in Jersey: I’ve put my dad’s ladder on the grass.
The dogs are doing great with this & I think we’ll be ready to move on soon.
CAP3 Criteria 3 & 4
December 19th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Slate and I have been steadily working on our CAP3, and here is the next instalment. The previous instalment (Criteria 1 & 2) can be found here.
Here are Criteria 3&4. For those of you subscribed by email, you can view it here on YouTube.
tracking with Grey – Day 6
December 18th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
We did it!!! Yeah!!! Ok, we cut one track out of the last repetition, so we did 8 out of the 9 planned tracks. We thought Grey was getting tired and we didn’t want to push it.
We were completing the same tracks Slate did yesterday. Grey was great: She had a terrible first track (160yards), whereby she appeared to have forgotten absolutely everything and to have no idea what she was doing – but from then on, she was great. Perhaps she just needed a warm-up.
She wasn’t even moving side-on to the tracks, like she did on Day 5, but was right on the track.
Weird event of the day: Whilst I was laying the 400yard track, and Adam was waiting with Grey at the starting post, some crazy woman came up to him and said, aggressively: ”What are you doing?”. She then went on with things like: ”But you’re not hunting are you?”… Eventually Adam refused to speak to her and kept repeating “have a nice Sunday”. (He didn’t say that, no, we weren’t hunting at that moment, but we do at other times!!) She was a raving anti-hunt campaigner – and we could have been anyone – we could even have been the farmer, hunting on our own land and getting accosted by her.
Anyway, in a more relaxed fashion, we’re onto Week 2. Considering it’s taken us about a month to complete Week 1, we will probably be finished with the programme in around 5 years…
