Spicy

I’ve been working through some training issues with Frankie in the past few months. If I am honest, these are things I should have been addressing when she was a puppy. I had no idea that she would turn out to be such a spicy little speed demon.

Her performance in the competition ring is quite different from what she does when we are training. The biggest problem, and there are several, is that she won’t come to me at the end of a run.

I’ve done pattern games. I’ve worked on building value for the leash. I’ve dropped leashes all over the training field and interrupted her runs to ask her to run to a leash for a reward. No problem! But in a trial, her brain leaks right out of her ears. I can usually (but not always) get a full run out of her but we rarely finish the course together.  After she clears the last obstacle, she takes off and runs around the ring, refusing all recalls and attempts to catch her. She’s even become wise to people holding out food. She doesn’t take any obstacles, just runs around at top speed. I’ve been complimented many times on how fast she is … while she is running around like a feral beast. Not her finest moments. 

My interpretation of this behavior is that she is so overstimulated that she simply can’t stop at the end of the course. She still has energy to burn.

So what’s the solution? Her drive is off the charts on a normal day. She can ramp up in seconds. I want to use that drive, not squash it. Since I don’t think I can bring her arousal down in any substantial way, I need to try to plane off the spikes. 

On recommendation from friends, I consulted with a local trainer who has a reputation for working with spicy dogs like Frankie. She said, “Look, you aren’t going to wear this dog out by throwing a ball at the trial.” I agreed. Besides, playing with balls and tugs ramps her up even more. Then she dropped this: “But wearing her out shouldn’t be your goal.”

What a revelation! Of course. I need to find ways to shape her drive and help her with impulse control. Trying to make her tired doesn’t address either of those things.

This trainer recommended sniff walks before every run. Those are 10- to 15-minute walks in which I ask nothing of the dog. Frankie sets the pace. If she wants to sniff one spot for 5 minutes, that’s fine. The only requirement is that she not pull on the leash. Sniffing releases endorphins. Walking and sniffing are gentle, steady stimulation, not rapid jerks and spikes like play brings.

I tried this at the last trial in February. It was a challenging task with morning temperatures in the teens, but I managed to pull it off four times each day. The time management was exhausting. But I did see a small difference even though it was the very first time I tried this. Frankie’s focus was better at the start of each run. But she was still running off at the end, especially on the second day. While sniff walks are an important addition to our trial routine, they won’t solve everything. There’s still some training to do!

Since early December, I’ve been training Frankie in contact heeling and its related movements. I will try to remember to film one of our training sessions, but you can check out videos of this online. It’s used to train dogs who do bite and protection work. It’s also used for reactive dogs.

 It’s not just about heeling but about positioning the dog in space. What sets it apart from old-school obedience training is that the dog remains in close physical contact with the handler. Plus, a lot of the contact heeling trainers use positive training methods, even for dogs training for bite work, and I’m all about that. No leash corrections or e-collars for us. Once I learned about contact heeling, I realized it was a missing piece for Frankie! I had already noticed that she likes to be touching me. I realized I could use this training to build more value for being with me, build routines that include movement (Frankie wants to go go go all the time), keep up a high rate of reward, and be able to take all of this on the road, that is, use it at trials, not just at home.

We are by no means experts, and I have no intention of training her up to competition level, but I am seeing a shift in her focus and attention. I’ve added contact heeling moves to our gate and start line routines for agility. Instead of trying to distract her with treats before we go in the ring, which only ramp her up, I ask her to calmly and smoothly move around with me in coordinated, set patterns that she knows and has been rewarded for many, many times.

Frankie will be a life-long project. But I am grateful to be learning so many new things with her.

 

Invite to the Agility Invitational

Archie got his third invite to the AKC Agility Invitational! He is the second-ranked Smooth Fox Terrier in the Preferred class. That's pretty good for my old man--he will be 10 years old in September. He's had a decent run of successes in the past few months and the invite is evidence of that.

 This is my fourth invite to the Invitational. My first was with Iz back in 2006, at the very first Agility Invitational event. 

Big events are not my thing. I don't like the crowds. I really don't like the Orlando venue. That's a lot of money and leave time to set aside for an event I don't want to attend. And Archie of course doesn't care. So I'm going to decline, opening up a spot for the next Preferred SFT in the rankings.  

 

Cicada

I was smacked in the head by a cicada heading for the backyard deck floodlights one early morning last week when I was taking Frankie out to potty. I gave a bit of a shriek and swatted it to the ground.

 Frankie was on that cicada like, well, like a terrier on a bug.

I let her chase it around for a while. It was probably near the end of its life anyway since it didn't seem to be able to fly well, but Frankie certainly didn't help. She isn't a gentle dog and all of the pawing and nosing disabled it further until it could only fly a foot or two. At last it lay buzzing on the ground and I figured that was enough cicada torture. It was time for Frankie to pee so we could get back inside.

As soon as I stepped towards her, she grabbed that damned cicada and took off trotting. I could hear it buzzing inside her mouth and I could see one of its wings sticking outside her muzzle. Fox terriers get this weird pooch to their face when they are trying to hide something in their mouths. It's terribly obvious what they are doing, which makes it funny. But it is summer in central Arkansas and the weather even at 5am is hot and humid. I wasn't all that amused. I just wanted to go back inside and get on with my morning.

I followed Frankie as she did the grand tour of the backyard, cicada buzzing away in her mouth. Her recall is a thousand times better than it used to be but I didn't bother. I just trailed after her, stumbling over rocks and tree roots in the dark areas in the back forty (what I call the lower end of the yard). Finally she made her way back up to the house. I grabbed her and pried her jaws open. The cicada, stunned, dropped to the ground. It was still alive but I decided Frankie was done. I picked her up and carried her up the stairs. 

I gave her a treat anyway when we got back in the house. She wasn't naughty. She was just being a normal fox terrier.

  

Frankie: A Work in Progress

 Training Frankie in agility is a challenge. Well, it's a challenge no matter what dog you have, but Frankie poses some unusually challenging challenges. She's very fast, and outpaces me quickly. I started her on distance training early. I spent last summer working on a beginning distance class using Frankie and three agility friends and their dogs as test subjects. She hates to be drilled, and more than a couple of repetitions of a skill will frustrate her. She is heedless of personal safety and has taken out jump wings more than once. She drops bars, but I think that I'm the biggest problem there with late commands and getting in her way. She's a little dog but she needs a lot of room!

Because she is so resistant to drilling, I try not to spend too much time correcting mistakes. It works better for Frankie if I keep moving and circle back to the place where she had a mistake. I'd rather keep the speed and enthusiasm and focus on teamwork. 

Her start line stay was initially nonexistent. She'd stand up and walk or creep up to the obstacle, and she would break her stay if I took too long to get into position, moved, or even just took a breath. That's getting better in part because I have been working this behavior into our daily routine. But honestly, as Frankie gets older, she is showing a better understanding of her job. 

Frankie and I took two sessions of Rally Novice taught by another instructor at the club. Rally allows the handler to verbally praise their dog and use a lot more hand and body motion (with some limits) than formal obedience. Dogs and handlers navigate courses with stations. At each station, a sign indicates some sort of skill, like "dog down, handler walks around" or "270 turn to the left" or "about turn." Dogs are on lead for the Novice level. And it's like formal obedience in that the dog is worked from the handler's left.

 Frankie came into her first Rally class with no loose lead (that means she pulls on lead), no heeling (she forges ahead of me and often turns into my path), and no down. She's still not really got those things even now after two 8-week sessions, but she's getting better. And she has her moments of brilliance. Her left turns (dog on the inside of the turn) are just lovely. Seeing her excited to work with me for the full hour of class, and putting all of her energy and focus into this very non-agility activity, is a lot of fun.

Like most smooth fox terriers, Frankie went through a final growth spurt at about 18 months old. She got very lean and muscled almost overnight. She also got a little taller. She's lean, fast, agile, far too smart for her own good, opinionated...in short, the perfect smooth fox terrier.

Despite having significant reservations about whether Frankie was ready and concerns about her leaving the ring, I entered her in a trial a couple of weekends ago. One run, one day. This particular class could be run as FEO, for exhibition only. I could take a toy into the ring with me. I have 60 seconds to do what I want--run part of the course, all of the course, one obstacle over and over, you get the idea. FEO runs don't count for anything. It's an opportunity to train in the ring. Everyone kept asking me what I was going to do with her. I said, well, that depends on what happens at the start line. If she holds her start line stay, I will run the course. 

 First things first, however. Frankie got measured for the first time. At home, I had measured her as 15 1/2 inches at the shoulder. But now she had to be measured by a judge with a wicket. She did great! And measured out exactly at 15 1/2 inches. This puts her in the 16 inch jump height class as I had expected.

So how did Frankie do at her agility debut? She was magnificent. She exceeded all expectations. Her start line stay was amazing, never took her eyes off me despite the commotion in the gate area just feet behind her. She was a little worried about the new teeter but got right back on and performed it perfectly twice! Her weaves were blazing fast. Not one knocked bar. I could not be more pleased with her performance.

Video? Why of course, I have video. It's still on my iPad. It's enormous. I'll figure out how to get it dumbed down enough to slap up on the blog. 

In the meantime, I've got some agility training to do.

Archie Update: Going to the Invitational

Archie and I have been working on our agility teamwork and handling these past few months. He is on his way to a MACH--he has 14 of the 20 double Qs required, and more than enough points. We stalled out this summer because I was pushing him too hard. I took a long break from trialing and spent the past couple of months focusing on training.

I'm not sure we will get that MACH. It will be a big accomplishment if we do. There are not many smooth fox terriers with that agility title. 

Our next big adventure is coming up in just a couple of weeks. We are off to Orlando for the AKC Agility Invitational. Going to the Invitational was definitely on my bucket list for Archie. After he advanced to the number 2 position in his breed this summer, I decided this was the year to go. Three years ago he was in the number 11 spot, and last year he was number 5. I didn't go last year but now that I'm vaccinated to the eyeballs and he's moved up so quickly in the rankings, I decided this was the year. He may qualify again in future years but I will only take him once. It's an expensive dog show and it eats up a lot of my paid leave. 

I went to the Invitational with Iz back in 2006. It was in San Diego that year. Boy, things have changed a lot in the past 15 years! For starters, there will be a lot more dogs there. As a result, there are many more rules and organizational fiddly bits that I have to keep track of. It was a big dog show back in 2006, and it's even bigger now in 2021. 

The Invitational is an interesting event. Only the top 5 dogs in each AKC recognized breed who are actively competing in AKC agility are invited. If any of those dogs decline, AKC moves down the list. To qualify for the AKC Agility Nationals, you have to be the best in your height class. Archie jumps 16" so he competes against small border collies and other fast dog breeds. Still, he's quite good and he qualified for Nationals this year (I didn't go). To qualify for the Invitational, you have to be the best in your breed. So "best" is somewhat relative. If there are only three of your breed doing AKC agility, you can be quite shitty at agility and still get an invite to the Invitational. 

As a result, the Invitational can be a mixed bag. You will see Basset Hounds, Elk Hounds, teacup Chihuahuas, Saint Bernards, and all manner of tiny mop dogs who somehow, somehow, still manage to knock down bars that are only 4 inches from the ground. You will see living examples of dogs that you've only seen before in books. And I can assure you, some of these dogs, both breed and individual, should not be doing agility in any form. But they will be there. 

One of the benefits of attending such a ginormous dog show is the vendoring. It should be magnificent! I've got some specialty items on my shopping list already. Bulk bags of freeze-dried lamb lung? Check. Real fur tugs in a thousand different permutations? Check. German steel thinning shears? Check. Hand-made leather collars? Check.

I have an "agility trial packing list" that I print out about a week before each trial we attend. I meticulously cross off each item when it is completed and/or packed into the van. Trim toenails. Take out the trash. Dog bedding for trial crates, car crates, and hotel. Bathe and groom the dog. 

The last bit may seem odd, but Archie stands out. He's got striking markings, and he's an unusual breed. Archie gets noticed. It would not reflect well on me (or his breeder) if I showed up to a trial with a scruffy, dirty terrier. As a result, he gets a bath 4 days before any trial, and is thoroughly groomed from nose to asshole 2 days before any trial. That schedule will have to be adjusted this time since we will be on the road for two days just to get to Orlando.

Lots of planning and packing. Always more training to be done. It's going to be an adventure.

Archie and The Purgatory of Open

Open is what AKC calls the intermediate agility level. As a friend remarked to me, Open courses aren't really designed, they are what is left over after you take away an obstacle or two from the Excellent/Masters class. Sadly, this is very true.

Open classes in this part of the US are usually quite small, often no more than 12 or 15 dogs from all height classes combined. Archie was the only dog in his height class for most of the weekend.

Some dogs zoom through Open, advancing in just a trial or two to Excellent. After all, to successfully complete Open courses, a dog has to already have Excellent-level performance skills. But because you don't have to many skills at all to get there, other dogs spend quite a bit of time at the Open level. Open has a bit of a reputation for accumulating dogs who just aren't going to do well in agility. On Friday, the judge welcomed us to the "purgatory of Open"--and she wasn't really joking. There are many reasons that a dog may need to stay in Open for a while: dogs may be physically structured such that agility will never be a good fit for them, some dogs just don't like the game and their handlers haven't figured that out yet, handlers and dogs may not yet have the skills they need to succeed, and so forth.

Given how well Archie performs in class, I assumed his time in Open would be brief. But we've now been in Open for four trials and only had four Qs out of a total of 14 runs at this level; this weekend we were 0 for 6.

I was feeling quite frustrated yesterday. But I realized today that I was missing something very important. It wasn't really the heat, although that may have been a factor. Archie simply isn't ready to advance to Excellent yet. His head is not yet in the game.

Ironically, I started the weekend worrying about something completely different. This was our first time at this particular venue. It is an open, dirt-floored horse arena. The fencing is even less complete than at most other places, and the arena itself doesn't even have walls all the way around. There were places where there was nothing more than horse railings separating the dogs from the enormous and exciting world outside. Horse railings with the lowermost bar almost 18" from the ground, hardly a barrier at all to a dog the size of Archie. He already demonstrated that he could get through the usual plastic fencing. I was sure he'd take one look at that horse railing and dive under it and be gone.

Yes, I have a young terrier who I don't trust off-leash. Judge away. I'm sure some of my agility-savvy readers are thinking, then why are you doing agility with him? Well, I don't like to stereotype breeds but...I'm going to revert to a stereotype: terriers are really difficult dogs to manage off-leash. The thought of unhooking my dog from a leash is terrifying. It's like Pandora's box--I have no idea what might happen, although all that I imagine is pretty horrible.

The irony is this: Archie never even glanced at the horse railing. I don't think he even noticed they were there. What he did notice was the hot dogs that a competitor left on a dolly outside the ring. He could barely function inside the ring, pulled magnetically toward those hot dogs after every obstacle. I gave up fighting him halfway through that run and carried him out of the ring. Today, he noticed that someone had eaten takeaway pizza and had left the box outside the ring on the ground. I literally forced him to complete that run. He had so many refusals and other errors while trying to figure out if he could leave the ring to get to the pizza box that we lost the Q quite early on. Our standard run earlier today was so bad that at one point the judge said "I don't know what errors I am supposed to call now!" (Archie had just gotten on the teeter, immediately turned around and did a perfect two-on-two-off contact on the entrance to the teeter, thus failing to execute the teeter and calling the "four-paw rule" into play. It was a clusterfuck.)

So I learned some hard lessons this weekend. The good news is that my pup will come back to me when I call. The bad news is that he will run off if he smells even a molecule of something delicious that he thinks he might be able to get to. Agility itself is not yet enough of a reward that he will choose that first.

I told Archie that I will be ready when he is ready. And I have some plans to help him along. He will be running agility with an increasing number of distractions (think plastic containers with food that he can't get to). He won't get high-value treats on course anymore--those will only come after he is leashed and we return together to his crate. I love my fabulous puppy very much, and am frustrated that he is so young and naughty. But I am glad that I was able to take a step back and recognize that we need some more training.

As a friend remarked this afternoon, when he's on, he's brilliant. Yes, but his moments of brilliance are not yet course-length in duration. We'll get there. I'm sure of it.

Doggy Day Spa

(all that white stuff on the ground is hair...)

Today was grooming day for the fox terriers.

Smooth fox terriers have a short, stiff outer coat and they are supposed to have a soft undercoat as well. Harry and Dyna, my black and whites, have almost no undercoat at all. Jack could double as a yeti--both his outer and undercoats are insanely thick and fluffy. Gracie got her lovely coat from her dam--very nice, very correct. Mimi, Gracie's sister, has some weird, old fashioned, throwback-to-ur-terrier coat. The outer coat is strongly waved, almost like a jheri curl.

The outer coat is dense and the hairs pack together tightly because as working farm and hunting dogs, the breed needed protection from brush and moisture. Because of their tight outer coats, it is extremely difficult to wet the tan and whites to the skin.

Anyway, for fox terriers to look their best, they need regular grooming, something more involved than just a bath or a brush.

All dogs need their nails clipped, their teeth cleaned, and their ears swabbed on a regular basis. I do this every couple of weeks.

But today, in addition to the usual, they all got the doggy day spa special. When you groom a smooth fox, you remove the fur on their butts and necks with electric clippers and thinning shears, you trim off the flaggy hairs from their tails, and you strip their necks and backs. Stripping removes the loose outer hairs and pulls out the undercoat and moves the oils from their skin out along the hair, keeping their skin and coat healthy.

The doggy day spa special takes about half an hour per dog. So I invested almost three hours in grooming my dogs today, including setting up all my equipment, then cleaning it and putting it away afterward. That's nothing, really. I used to show Jack in conformation and it would take about 8 hours over a couple of days to get him ready for the show ring. I used more products on him than I used on myself.


But no longer. These days I go for a basic strip and clip and call it good.

I have all kinds of expensive grooming tools but the most fabulous one of all is the one I acquired after I stopped showing in conformation: the Furminator. This is a stripping knife for Everyman. No show ring snob would be caught dead with one, but it is so easy to use, so incredibly functional. I can pull what seems like a pound of hair off each dog in minutes. And best of all, the dogs just love this thing! A professional stripping knife is extremely sharp and if not pulled through the coat at the correct angle, can cut the coat and even the dog's skin. Instead, the dogs line up at the foot of the grooming table for their turn to be Furminated.

And on a nice day like today, I move the entire affair outside so the dogs lounge around in the sun waiting their turn on the table. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon.

FOX TERRIER!

I bought this print at the Reliant Dog Show in July. Jody Whitsell, the artist, had a booth there and my friend Denise Lodge and I simply couldn't walk past without stopping. Fortunately, Jody had this print--the original was twice this size and ten times the price! Figuring out how to frame this was quite a task--it's such a magnificent, imposing work, and the colors! Wow. But a local frame shop that I've been patronizing lately really came through. I wish the photos showed more detail on the frame. The print is now hanging in my office.