The bumper stickers are here. If you’d like to adorn your car, truck, moped, other mode of transport, or refrigerator with one, please send a self-addressed, stamped, envelope to
Annie Riecken, PO Box 51, South Tamworth, NH, 03883.
Update: There’s still plenty of stickers if you want one!
For the last two weeks Chico and I have been with my siblings and their significant others, helping unpack boxes of family possessions. Boring days for a dog, and mildly upsetting to this one when the moving boxes come out. We lived through it.
Chico and I sneaked in a couple of AKC trials – one on each of the last two Sundays. At the Excellent level we have yet to complete a course as the judge designed it to be run. Fear not, that is not stopping us from having loads of fun. I’m more relaxed, not spooked by the big walk throughs anymore, able to remember courses better, and that – of course – shows in our performance. I was able to look at courses last Sunday and say, “Well, if it was at Julie’e, on home turf, I know we could do it.” It’s not the courses anymore that give us trouble, it’s the “taking it on the road” part.
I have for you a video from last Sunday, our Standard run. You’ll see me crack up laughing early in the course after I over-steer Chico. Obstacle 3 is the A-frame. There’s an entry to a tunnel right next to the up side of the A-frame and it pulled some dogs in. I was so worried about getting Chico to the left to go up the ramp that I pulled him so far left that he went past the ramp and into the far end of the tunnel. That’s a place that had absolutely no draw, was not in front of him at all, until I over-steered. Oops. I’m pretty sure I saw the judge suppressing a smile. I mishandled the two jumps after the table and before the tunnel. If I’d made my change of side between the two jumps instead of at the table, I most likely would have gotten the second jump. The first try at the weave poles Chico has an incorrect entry and when we turn back to try again, he shows that he’d really rather not weave thanks very much because he interprets my movement as directing him to go to the tire obstacle. But he comes back, muffs the entry again and we keep going, and he does all the rest of the poles. Thank you very much, I’m quite happy with that! It’s really a very nice run, even if it isn’t a run that gets a team a ribbon. Happy dog, laughing handler – what’s not to like?
I’ll put the Jumpers run up in the next few days, it’s also amusing.
Let’s start with a picture. A lovely dog and a lovely dogwood on Eva’s road.
Friday was day one of the Cape Cod Kennel Club agility trial. We played FAST and Time 2 Beat. It rained. It didn’t rain. I won something in the worker raffle. I learned how to do the volunteer position called gate steward. In fact, I soloed. I asked to shadow someone, and after about five minutes, she had a conflict and needed to go walk the course in the other ring. She asked if I’d be OK, and I said yes (after all, how do we learn but by doing?), and I was. Or if anyone complained, it wasn’t to me.
In the morning, for FAST the official score was really different from the exhibitor copy of the score sheet, but I’m not looking for Qs so I didn’t question it. AND, I didn’t question it because after the class two, yes, TWO, complete strangers told me how happy Chico looked on course. Qs, shmoos – my main agility goal is a happy dog.
In the afternoon it started to rain like crazy right after they finished building the course for Time 2 Beat. When it was our turn, it wasn’t raining anymore, but there was standing water on the course. Chico probably thought I was nuts, but he went out there and gave it the old college try for me. The second obstacle was our trialing nemesis, the weave poles. And, sssllloooowwwlllyyy, through puddles, Chico did all twelve of them. That’s the first time in ages, simply ages, that he’s been able to do the weaves the first time at them, all the way through, in a trial setting. Go figure, huh? There was one other refusal, and we went over allotted time – none of that matters even the tiniest bit to me because in addition to getting the poles . . . after the class, the assistant scribe stopped to tell me how happy my dog looked on course.
Meanwhile, back at Eva’s Garden, the farm produce is now part of an FDA food certification program, and dogs are no longer allowed in the gardens or green houses. Lots of chances to practice down-stay for long duration and at good distances.
And Dogger is in residence. Dogger is crazy about Chico. Dogger, they say, usually ignores other dogs if they aren’t interested in him. And there’s one dog, Livingston, who comes to work here with his human and he simply cannot be near Dogger. Dogger apparently hates Livingston as much as he loves Chico.
That’s Dogger outside.
Dogger wants nothing more in the world than to play with Chico. He invites Chico to play about six ways from Sunday. Fake left, go right. Stick butt in Chico’s face. Play bow. Cocked head whining. Giant smile and wagging tail. And when Chico says he doesn’t want to play, Dogger backs off. He tries again, he backs off, he tries again. And when Dogger didn’t back off far enough or fast enough, Chico went at him in what I thought was a pretty serious way, saying, I imagined, pretty awful things. And Dogger did not rise to the occasion with violence. On the contrary, Doggers reaction seemed to be closer to “Oh, OK, friend – so this is you play. I can work with that.” Chico, of course, wasn’t offering to play, quite the contrary in fact. But Dogger doggedly refuses to believe that Chico has bad intent. Dogger’s no pacifist, his reaction to Livingston shows that. What is it about Chico that has Dogger working so hard for approval/affection/whatever it is he wants from Chico?
I’m going to try to get some video of the two of them together.
Today Chico and I are headed for one of our favorite early summer events: the Cape Cod Kennel Club sponsored AKC agility trial at the Barnstable County Fairgrounds and a multi-day visit to my cousin Eva.
We always have fun at Eva’s* and the Cape Cod trial has been loads of fun for the last two years. Back when I was sure that I could resist the agility-addiction and had a rule against traveling for trials, I tried Cape Cod because we could also visit Eva. It was the furthest we’d been from home for a trial, it was the biggest trial we’d been to, and Chico and I did great, people were nice, I won several prizes in the worker raffle, the weather was nice . . . I was hooked on the event.
So, off we go. I signed us up for two classes Friday (FAST and Time 2 Beat) and three on Sunday (Standard, Jumpers, and Time 2 Beat). I’m hoping to remember courses at the excellent level, and whether I do or not, I’m hoping that Chico can get his weave poles away from home. And I know that at Eva’s we’ll eat wonderful food, work in the gardens, and do at least ten things we’ve never done before because it’s always like that when one goes to visit Eva.
* Some past posts about Eva’s include
Last week Chico and Dakota and I went for a ride. It was the day that I discovered that the Lady Slippers are blooming.
I show you the above image because the Lady Slipper pic I took from atop Dakota looks like this:
No, really, that pink smear just left of center is the flower shown above. Sometimes Dakota isn’t very good at standing still.
We rode to the top of Bunker Hill Road, and past the Red Horse Hill horse farm, where the resident dog, MJ, joined us.
There’s MJ. She’s a now-very-grey Lab.
MJ will go with any horse, and her owner has asked me to shut the dog in a stall in the barn if she tries to follow me. On this day, we got permission for MJ to join us. Her owner was working outside and promised to keep MJ home when we passed by on our way back to the barn.
Chico, Mister Not the King of Social, did great. MJ made no moves to make friends or investigate Chico’s personal space. She trotted along next to or behind the horse. Chico did his thing.
Which mostly meant staying out ahead of us.
But not always. Here he’s looking at me while he runs around MJ (who’s tail end you can just see. She’s busy sniffing something).
I’d say that this is as close as the two dogs got. And Chico is clearly nervous about either the horse or the dog behind him. Look at his eyes, and the way his ears are listening to what’s happening behind him.
I love the way Chico chose to avoid interaction with MJ. For him, that’s huge.
This blog started because I thought Chico’s story was pretty interesting, and my writing improved by regular practice, and I wanted to share the story in hopes of inspiring others to work cooperatively with their canine companion(s). If I could do what I learned to do with Chico, anyone who applies them self a bit can develop almost any dog into one that is well mannered enough to go to the park, the hardware store, a picnic in the park.
As I drove cross-country I kept thinking a “CAN I BRING THE DOG?” bumper sticker might be an effective way to spread the word. This week, I realized the design and ordered the printing.
They’ll be delivered in a couple weeks and I’ll slap one on the Mazda and see who else I can get to “wear” one on their car.
I’ve been wondering about Chico’s reactivity to other dogs. It’s gotten a lot better over the years, but he’s not yet exactly what you’d call the king of social, especially when other dogs are bigger than he is. I’d started to think that Chico has some history of bad interactions with a larger dog or dogs. Maybe he got run over in rough play, maybe something happened when he was a puppy … it’s all speculation, and on one level, it doesn’t really matter why he’s the way he is, he just is that way. But I think about it often, hoping that if I can identify the origin, maybe I can find a fix.
Then the unit on canine body language in my dog trainer course pointed out that some dogs, by the nature of their body structure, communicate aggression to other dogs. For example, Husky-type dogs like this Samoyed.
*
Big. Fluffy. High set, curled tail and pricked ears.
Or these sled dogs:
**
Look at the dog on the left of the pair, the grey one. It is happy and relaxed, doing what it does best, and loving it. The ears are pricked forward, the tail is high and curled. That’s the natural position for those body parts on that dog.
When Chico is standing like that, he’s on full alert status. He expects trouble at any moment and he is in hyper-vigilant mode.
When we got back from the big winter trip, a giant, fluffy, Malamute named Sam had joined our Monday class in our absence. And Chico started to be nervous in class. That’s nuts, Julie’s arena is home turf for Chico. Normally, he can do things there that he can’t manage under the pressure of a new environment. Last week I went to American K9 Country to one of Julie’s Wednesday classes. Again, AK9C is home-away-from-home for Chico. He’s been there dozens of times: with Julie when she’s had him for board and train, with me for many agility trials and to a couple of other Julie classes. Last week he was a nervous wreck – not tuned in to me, wandering the arena instead of settling on the start line, panting inappropriately for the amount of work and the temperature. And there was a Samoyed in that class.
This weekend, I was talking to one of Chico’s human friends about this thought forming in my head … that Chico is especially nervous around dogs of that Husky body-type. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I had a couple of huskies once and they freaked out other dogs all the time. The tail carriage, the ears, the forward facing, and (in my dog’s case) one blue and one brown, eyes – my dogs just wanted to be friendly and other dogs completely lost it.”
That backs up what I learned in class with a practical example from a thinking dog person. So this isn’t anyone’s fault, and it may not even be correctable, but understanding it can help me manage it.
I’m pretty sure that Chico is resistant to active play with bigger dogs because he once ended up at the bottom of a pile up like this:
***
But, again, that’s pure speculation and maybe over-thinking on my part, I wasn’t there when (and if) such a thing happened.
My next homework is to observe dogs in action and make as many notes as possible about their body-language. I hear the dog park is busiest between 8 and 10 in the morning. So, I suppose, that’s what I’ll be writing about next.
* From K&S’s Flickr photos.
**From Luca Renoldi’s Flickr photos.
*** From Tim Wu’s Flickr photos
Recently I started an introductory dog training course from the Karen Pryor Clicker Training Academy. It’s an on-line course for “aspiring” clicker trainers. Since I have only trained Chico, and with a lot of help, I decided to start at the beginning.
It’s a good review of the basic skills that I’ve picked up over time, and it challenges me to figure out how to do some of the exercises because they are designed to train skills that Chico already has. I try to think of something else that allows me to use the skills the unit is teaching.
I’ve signed us up for trials three weekends in a row in June, and I’m starting to eye July and August’s schedules.
Here’s Chico and the garage sale rasta banana back in Santa Cruz, because it’s hard to be the trainer AND take pictures.
Chico, Dakota (the horse I ride), and I have gone for a couple rides this year, just short ones to get us all back in condition. It’s beautiful right now, trillium and violets flowering, and a couple different shrubs in the woods, that I don’t know the name of, blooming white.
Though it doesn’t need to, my phone’s camera makes a pronounced click when it takes an image. That sound got Dakota pretty excited, thus, there are no other pictures from this ride.
Last year I worked pretty hard to get Chico to go to the side of the road when a car was coming during a horse ride. My efforts seemed to meet with minimal success. But on both our outings this spring, Chico seemed to know exactly what I wanted from him when I asked him to go ‘Side, go side for the car’ and he complied perfectly. Needless to say, I paid him well for his efforts. Something about not doing this “trick” all winter seems to have made it work much better. That’s so counter-intuitive.
If we really have this mastered, it will make our rides much easier on all three of us, and the drivers passing by too.
Here’s a nice, if not new, video on dog body language. It’s one of my favorite things to learn more about and valuable knowledge for anyone who’s around dogs at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bstvG_SUzMo&feature=youtu.be
Since Chico is a dog who very often needs space, I’ve had to learn to read him and that’s made me curious about learning to read other dogs too.
Can I Bring the Dog? 