Can I Bring the Dog?

This afternoon Chico and I had our first crack at a top level USDAA Jumpers course. And if I do say so myself, we did great.
The course map looked sort of icky, so I decided to just walk it and make a plan based on how it felt, and live with it. I certainly didn’t pressure myself with any expectations. Everyone called it “hard” and I conjured up Julie’s voice, giving advice years ago, telling me to “just get out there and muck around,” I ignored the handler saying “Oh my god; oh my god; oh my god” as she walked behind me (OK, maybe I told her to take a deep breath because she was freaking herself out).
I got my dog, I petted him and played with him; we went in the ring and nailed it.
And now he has a belly full of tripe and is snoozing on the hotel room bed next to me.
Two days of trial, seven classes, three clean runs and some good stuff in the other runs. Works for me.

People say I have worked wonders with Chico, that’s very nice of them. He is a very different guy than when he came to live with me, and I did it with a lot of help and positive reinforcement techniques. Getting a cookie or a pet or playing tug are all things that Chico likes – positive things that are used as positive reinforcers for good behavior. I think of it as +P.

It is also possible to influence behavior by taking away something the dog likes. Think of it as -P. I found a very nice explanation of the principle at the UC Davis Vet School blog, which says it better than I can manage today, so here’s a link:

The Pet Perspective December 26.

This isn’t adding a negative (+N) – that would be yelling, leash jerking, hitting – the stuff we don’t do to dogs anymore. This is saying to the dog, without words, when you do that I don’t like it and I will only acknowledge you when you do the good thing. Many people with trained dogs have Sit as a default behavior. If the dog wants attention, food, play -whatever, they “say please” by sitting quietly.

If more dogs had that default behavior, I bet fewer of them would end up in shelters.

I have these videos, it helps me to watch them so I can describe what happened to us to you – the reader. That seems to help me process the run, at least seeing the errors it is too late to correct can help me improve future performance. And I say me because almost everything that goes wrong on course can be attributed to “operator error” – a mis-step or mis-direction on my part.

Obstacle 2, the tire, Chico looks committed, but then he runs out on it. I think I looked away too soon? There’s our common issue with the weave poles, but once we get into them, my little steppy-thing does motivate Chico to go faster and faster. Then, after the dog walk, he missed my pickup, ignored my deceleration and request to “wait” so we could make a turn, and went charging straight ahead for the last jump. Then he hopped onto the see-saw without going through the yellow part at the bottom – which can be dangerous for the dog and thus a fault. From there, the whole closing, is very nice.