2003-11-14
This summer Kim has been introduced to the fun and speedy sport of AGILITY by Louise Eriksson. She is "old" in the game and are competing with two Belgian Shepherds and two crosses in the classes small and large. Since Kim is a little too big for a Sheltie, he is placed in the large group, meeting Border Collies and GSDs, and by that, Louise has five dogs to compete with!
We began our training on June 3:rd, but since the summer has been really hot, the more intense training couldn't start until late August. I will here tell you a little about how Louise have been teaching Kim the jumps using a clicker:
We put emphasize on speed and willingness to take every jump that gets in the dogs way. This is confidence building. Obedience and handling comes later. First we placed treats in a jar to send Kim to, teaching him the "go"-command. Since he is clicker-trained during his entire life, we used the clicker when he left the side, getting a quick learning. Using backward chaining, we put a jump in his way. When that worked, two jumps, then three and so on. I must say, that he is a clever little dog, trying the easiest way to get to the treat (i.e. running around the jumps and saving a little energy) but then I was there to stop him from getting to the treat.
Using the clicker and the trial and error-method, Kim learned the tire in 5 minutes! During this time, Louise and Kim advanced from looking at the tire (= click + treat), touch it with the nose (C/T), put the head through (C/T), jump (C/T) all the way to adding the cue! OK, this perhaps was a little fast, because he was really stubborn the next time to try and jump the frame and not the tire. But when that didn't pay off, he soon realized that the only thing that would give him the C/T was to jump through the tire. One thing with Kim, who is a lot obedience trained: he jumped the frame a lot more frequent when on the left of Louise. He tried to get close into heel-position... ;-)
Many are the handlers that struggle to get their dogs to step on the contact field on the balance, the A and the seesaw. This is important, or the dog will get 5 faults in competition. The rule is preventing the dogs to jump too soon, causing injury. From the very beginning, Kim has learned proper behaviour when going down: he gets clicked for placing one paw directly on the ground as close as possible to the balance. His position doesn't matter, he has tried both to sit and lay down, and also to wave his paw to get the C/T. Sometimes he stops long before the contacts, but with consistent training, he has realized that it is when the paw touches the ground under severe control that he gets his C/T. Leaving the balance too fast will not give him anything but to redo!
Using the cue "down", you can eventually get the same control on the contacts, even when you are not there yourself. When introducing the A, we had to be very careful, because it is so steep that Kim has to use a lot of muscles to stay on and by that get tired quickly. Three repetitions at a time is enough.
Louise uses the "old" way by showing with the hand to teach the weave poles, but with a new techique. Moving backwards, you easily see what the dog does. Instead of putting the hands around the poles, pushing the dog away, she puts her hands between every second pole and gets to "draw" the dog back to her instead. It's very difficult to describe, and I didn't understand until I had seen it several times and then tried it myself. The result is a dog that jumps quickly through the poles:
Pretty soon, she made the handmovement less obvious and soon Kim started to notice the poles and thinking by himself. This makes the speed go down for a while, but that's OK - one thing at a time! The poles are the jump that is the most time-consuming to teach the dog, and there are no shortcuts. But with this technique, and the fact that Kim is used to figure out stuff by himself because of the earlier clicker (operant) training, this learning has been incredibly fast. I'm impressed! :-)
We started with only 4 poles, adding 4 and 4 until there was 12 (full). When Kim was to do the thinking by himself, we reduced to only 4 poles again. We also put up a little course for him consisting of 4 poles, a jump, 4 poles, a tire, 4 poles and then a tunnel.
As soon as Kim got familiar with a jump, we put it together with other familiar jumps to do short combinations. The Sheltie is very attentive to the handler, and seeks contact for new directions after every jump. This can cause a lot of undesired and time-consuming spinning on the course, the dog might even start barking in frustration of not getting a new task fast enough. To prevent this, Louise lets Kim do many combinations where he is to jump whatever gets in his way, not trying to stop or stear him. As mentioned above, obedience and handling comes later, when the dog is confident and draws to the jumps as a magnet... Talking about that: the tunnels are Kims favourites and so far nothing can stop him from taking them! 
When we had had only 5 trainingsessions, Kim and Louise was in the agilityshow at "Dog's day" on August 16 here in Varberg. This was the first time he faced an entire course with all jumps, and with that an audience! Louise had to be close and show him a lot, and they skipped the seesaw and the flat tunnel, which Kim hadn't tried yet. But over all it was a nice debute for Kim.
We have also worked on Kims attraction to the jumps, by clicking and treating every effort to move towards any jump. Since the tunnels are Kims favourites, we thought that the flat tunnel would be no problem, but oh, it was. The first training session was promising, because we only had to lift the clothe twice. When he found the treat in a jar on the other side, he started to force the clothe all by himself. But we had to start all over with every new flat tunnel... Causing trouble in competition. But this will solve it self with experience. Kim actually found this so "macho" when he finally got over his hesitation, that he ran over and through the flat tunnel several times, when he wasn't supposed to...
The first time he went up on the seesaw, Kim thought it was the balance... Guess if he was surprised when it went over and hit the ground! But it didn't scare him until he was on the ground again and the seesaw went back into position with a little noise. THAT was scary!! Nonetheless, he rushes to it, tail wagging when he's on the middle and it goes over ;-)
Some combinations:
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These three jumps were set close to train the turn, and also to prevent Kim from going over the captures instead of the bar. He was very stubborn about this in the beginning. It was quite obvious that it was natural for him, since the captures were more visible than the bar. As he got more and more secure, we moved the jumps apart.
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The first time he had an alternative jump to choose from. We still put emphasize on jumping whatever is in front of his nose, but with this combination, there was no jump directly in front of him. The main thing we teached here, was the handler changing position behind Kims back.
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Going forward. If he jumped the frame on the tire, he wasn't allowed to continue to the broad jump. That was "punishment" enough, and he learned quickly what we asked for.
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Backward chaining = first the last jump to the plate of treats, the the poles and the jump, later the jump, weaves, jump. Focus was on the weave poles. By not having treats in her hand, Louise got Kim to think "forward" even in the poles. OK, this caused him to fail a couple of times, but since the treats were taken away if he didn't do it correctly, he soon "got it".
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Now we have come far in the training, Kim is targeted to take the jumps in front of him. Time for some handling: this combination of 8 jumps invites to many different ways and handling techniques. Since Louise hav entered Kim to a competition(!) we had to do this already. But as much obedience and turns, equally forward - forward - forward!
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