Good Mimi...or Bad Mimi?

As I mentioned earlier, I knew I was going to pick Mimi to be my next agility puppy as soon as she popped out of her dam. Actually, she was going to be my first agility puppy because Iz was about 2 when I started training her, and Jack was more than 3 when I started working with him. I had my heart set on a puppy whose little brain I could mold from the very beginning.

(Mimi at 11 days old)

Little did I know what I was getting into.

(Mimi jumping at her reflection in the steel trash can, 4 weeks old)

Mimi has turned out to be everything I could want in an agility dog. She's fast, drivey, aggressive on the course, structurally sound, and just the tiniest bit crazy. Well, maybe a lot crazy, but she comes by it honestly as her sire is quite a clown. Mimi regularly humps the cat and would kill her sister Gracie in a matter of moments if given the chance. My friend Denise and I laugh about getting "drive at a price" but I think it is more than that. Mimi is a complex little creature, and I suspect the brain-molding has been going in both directions. She has presented me with unexpected challenges and opportunities.

(Mimi [rt] and her brother Elvis on the puppy tippy board, 4 weeks old)

The joke I started in one of her first agility classes is that I never know which Mimi I have: good Mimi...or bad Mimi. You can't tell them apart, you see, at least not at first. Everything looks the same until you ask for a sit at the start, leave her and move forward into position, look at her and give the release....and off she runs at top speed in the opposite direction, often to the far end of the field. That's bad Mimi. Sometimes bad Mimi even shows up in the middle of a sequence--a big swooping arc, jump, jump, ju...oops, there she goes, off to check out the obedience equipment for the third time that morning.

No, it wasn't entirely a stress behavior. That would have been too easy. It simply was Mimi deciding that the far end of the field was more interesting than whatever I was going to have her do.

This behavior was increasing in frequency this spring, and I felt we weren't making any progress. Our instructors Debbie and Linda kept insisting that small steps were happening but I was feeling frustrated. I kept tightening the requirements, asking her to focus on me 100% of the time, and getting less of her attention as a result.

All my dogs are operant, respond to a clicker, and I have free-shaped various behaviours with them. Because I crate them during the day, I've always made the crates a most fabulous place to be, associated with high rewards. I think I'm a good dog trainer, I think I know how to dispense rewards and define criteria for success. But I needed some new ideas.

I purchased Susan Garrett's Crate Games DVD and Leslie McDevitt's book Control Unleashed. Both completely changed the way I see Mimi. Both gave me new tools that I used to build an even more intense relationship with her.

Using the crate as a reward, toy, and training tool drove Mimi into hyperdrive. Not that she lacked drive, not at all, but these games channeled her drive into specific tasks. It taught her to turn the hyperdrive on and off. And that huge rewards (such as her meals) would come when she got enough control over that drive to listen to me. This is something that Crate Games and Control Unleashed have in common although it wasn't obvious to me right away: both of them help you show your dog that being able to control their hyperdrive results in fabulous rewards. Your dog doesn't become more introspective, exactly (she's still a dog, after all), but you can see the little wheels turning as she begins to understand how to put it together.

Control Unleashed showed me how I needed to change my own attitude, how I needed to relax a bit and trust her more. But more importantly, it gave me insight into how to reward Mimi with the things she finds most rewarding, and how to subtly shape her to start finding me and agility more rewarding than just about anything else. I never had to teach Iz this--she thought being with me and doing agility was just about the most perfect thing ever. Iz would tug with anything, any random thing I picked up off the ground. But Iz and Mimi, well, they are very different dogs.

I'm not one to fall for every fad that comes along. I give every training tool a critical review and think, how can this work for me and my dog? Because not all tools and methods work equally well for all dogs. So some of you reading this simply have no need for the training methods McDevitt presents in Control Unleashed. But then again, I don't follow her recipes blindly. I modify them for the moment, for how my dog and I play and train, for our particular training times and spaces. Take a look though--I'll bet you will be surprised to find new things in there.

This morning in class, it was good Mimi. Bad Mimi did try to poke her head up a couple of times, but in the end, my pup's desire to play with me was stronger than whatever she thought might be at the far end of the field. Waving the rabbit fur tug-n-treat about didn't hurt either. (Seriously, if you have a reluctant tugger, this darned thing is fabulous.)

I celebrate Mimi's totally awesome contacts--I enforce a two-on-two-off full stop, nose down. Her entire rear flies up in the air but those front feet stay glued to the ground every time.

I celebrate her totally awesome weave entry--jump to teeter to tire, nearly in a straight line, rear cross on the tire to an offside weave entry almost 180degrees from the tire--and she nailed it!! I was nowhere near that weave entry, I was still behind the tire, and she was perfect.

I celebrate learning how to make my dog happy. I thank her for being patient for so long until I figured it out.

I celebrate playing agility with my pup on a fine late summer morning.