Sunday, December 14, 2008

Project Mimi Continues

Mimi, Jack, and I returned to the trial today.

I spent the better part of three hours repeating what I did on Friday. I clicked and treated any loud noise as well as any positive body posture that Mimi showed. In addition to the vienna sausages and Bil Jac frozen dog food which are standard training fare these days, I also brought along some raw, lean beef stew meat that I had cut into very small pieces and put in the freezer. Over the course of the afternoon, Mimi consumed almost half a pound of stew beef!

As part of her new fear issues, Mimi now becomes very stressed in the gate area. At this trial, the two rings backed onto each other so the entrance and exit to each ring were along a long corridor between the two rings. This corridor was usually filled with people and dogs but there is an ebb and flow to trials. I waited for one of these ebbs, grabbed a handful of treats, and quickly walked Jack and Mimi together through the gate area. Mimi wasn't thrilled but didn't fall apart so I did this again about half an hour later. The third time I took Mimi by herself and had my instructor, who was sitting by one of the rings, give Mimi lots of praise and treats. She braved the gauntlet and survived!

Mimi appeared to be more relaxed today, even to the point that when the teeter banged to the ground, she didn't ear flick or flinch, but instead lay there staring at me waiting for her treat.

I took this as a positive sign.

Our Standard run was first. She played with her fur tug-n-treat while we were far outside the gate area, then when it was our turn I ran her into the ring and sat her down without giving her time to think about things. I was able to leave her and move out about six feet or so. Jump, jump, then a front cross to the weaves, but she was already getting worried and dropped her feet as I was crossing and knocked the bars on the second jump. She hit the weave entry but popped out. I just kept moving because forcing her do the weaves isn't important right now. Jump, Aframe, perfect 2o2o contact, then to the table. She was starting to freak out so I immediately left the table, swung around for a jump-jump-teeter pinwheel. Perfect teeter, then into the chute, another jump, rear cross on the double, into a tunnel. We had now completed seven obstacles in a row! After the tunnel it was the dogwalk and tire. She ran past the dogwalk so I kept going. She wouldn't do the tire either but no matter. It was over and she stayed in the ring, stayed with me, and really really tried to do her best.

My friend Denise got to hear the post mortem as I was driving home tonight and she suggested that things like the dogwalk and weaves require a lot of focus from the dog and that Mimi is afraid to take too much attention away from her nervous scanning of her environment to be able to do those obstacles. It makes a lot of sense based on what I saw today.

We managed to complete six jumps in Jumpers before she started her melt down. I dragged her through three more jumps, but it was clear she was done so we just ran to the exit. She did stay with me though, and no knocked bars.

I can tell that this is going to be a long process. I feel terribly frustrated because she is such a fantastic little athlete. She is totally working herself into this fearful state, playing some scary tape loop over and over in her head. But I have to believe that I can train her past this, that solid training techniques and careful application of them (she still will have to go to trials but I won't do as many and will always be ready to walk away if we need to) will help her find her joy in agility again.

Tonight she's sleeping like a savannah carnivore with a full belly of raw meat. Tomorrow's another day.

1 comment:

BC Insanity said...

OMG, that just plain sucks.
Whatever triggered that stuff?
Of all the dogs, I always thought she'd be the toughest one.
Too bad you can't rewire that little brain of hers and feed he some subliminal messages that 'it's all good, it's all OK'..

Many hugs.

G.