Afternoon Sun

 Frankie is a very busy dog. She will not settle as long as a person is around who could be cajoled into throwing a ball or toy for her. When I am in the kitchen, she will forcefully push a toy into the back of my legs or repeatedly drop it on my feet. Oh, you think that just ignoring her will cause her to stop? She interprets that as you not liking that particular toy and will bring you another one in short order. She is relentless, confident that she will wear you down eventually.

She is quite good in pens and crates, however, and will settle quickly. Many calm evenings are spent with Frankie in her playpen in the living room and Archie stretched out next to me on the couch while I read or watch TV. At trials and during class, she waits calmly in her crate. 

With the arrival of cooler weather, I've been putting her in an expen in the backyard when I come home for lunch. This has several advantages: Archie gets to hang out with me, I am not constantly harassed to play, and she gets to sunbathe. 

 

I know the picture is blurry. There is a double-paned window, screen, deck railings, and expen between the camera and Frankie. But she's calm and relaxed, soaking up the afternoon sun.

 

Frankie and JWW--Out of Novice At Last

Frankie and I have been struggling to advance in AKC JWW (Jumpers With Weaves). She's been stuck in Novice since I started trialing with her. At first she knocked bars, oh so many bars. That problem fixed itself as she started to understand the game better and learned to balance her speed with better take offs.

At the Novice level, the dogs are allowed a couple of errors but knocked bars are always an elimination. Bars down lost us a lot of Qs. But in JWW, the dog also can't take any wrong obstacles. Frankie has a tendency to curl into me so even when I want her to take 4 jumps in a straight line, she usually turns towards me and takes an off course. 

That's what happened in the video I've attached here. The third jump she takes is not the correct one even though I was doing my best to keep her from turning into me. I stopped and chose to use the Fix-N-Go option where you can go back and correct that mistake. The run is no longer scored or timed. I turned her around and wrapped her around the first jump (backwards, but it didn't matter anymore) and on the second attempt, she ran the course correctly. She bobbled the weave entrance but that's allowed in Novice. She rarely misses weaves in practice on grass but on this fast turf, she comes into the weaves very hot and sometimes misses the entry. I lifted her up like Simba at the end because she stayed with me all the way to the leash. 

 

 I only needed one more Q to get her (and me) out of Novice. And we pulled it off the next day! She almost breaks at the start line--that scooting forward is a problem and I'm working on it. Notice how she curls into me as she comes out of the tunnel. That's partly because that's what she does and partly because I wasn't in the right position to get her over the next jump. She never took any obstacles and she never crossed the plane of the next jump so the judge didn't call any faults while I was fumbling around getting her lined back up. It was just time on the clock, not errors. She hit the weaves super hot but managed the entry this time for a nice clean finish back to the tunnel. 

 

 I've learned a few things while trialing with Frankie this summer. She is true to herself. She becomes extraordinarily overstimulated in a flash of a second but is still predictable and trainable. Frankie is not Archie--she isn't looking to please me. She is willing to go along with my rules, more or less, so she can get what she wants. And what she wants to do is move. I may never have clean start lines with her. She crouches down like a sprinter in the starting block (good). Her focus forward training means she doesn't look at me but at the course in front of her (good). She drools (eh). She creeps forward (not good). Clearly I can shape some of that but I can't change her fundamental nature. 

I'm making peace with that because she's starting to get good at this agility thing. People stay late to watch her run, and although smooth fox terriers are in general crowd pleasers, they are staying late to watch because she's doing great things in the ring. I lost count of how many people told me at the trial how much progress she has made this summer. And I agree.   

Frankie's Big Feelings

There are some skills that I never really had to train with Archie. I just did the handling, he read it correctly, and that was that, more or less. I mean, there still had to be some proofing and refining, but he has always been an easy dog to train.

For example, there is a handling move called tunnel threadle. When the dog is facing a curved tunnel, and their line is taking them to one opening of the tunnel but you need them to go into the other opening, you execute a tunnel threadle: raise the arm opposite the dog about waist high to pull the dog off their path, across your body, and scoop them into the correct tunnel entrance. The tunnel threadle usually has a verbal associated with it. I use "look look" with Archie. He sometimes makes a mistake when he's got a head of steam but he's pretty reliable. I've certainly not had to spend days or weeks training that particular thing.

Frankie knows what tunnels are. She has decent obstacle independence and will send to tunnels 20 or 30 feet away. But when I tried a tunnel threadle with her, her brain leaked out of her ears and she started spinning in place. I could be standing inches from the tunnel opening, and if I raised that opposite hand and said "look look", she started spinning. I could not get her in the tunnel. But if I stepped back, lined her up, and said "tunnel tunnel," she would shoot into the tunnel. 

This was such bizarre behavior that it made me think more about what was going on and how to fix it. When Frankie starts spinning like that, she is so far over her arousal threshold that she can't function anymore. She rockets into that state in a fraction of a second. She can't hear. She can't continue forward. She certainly can't learn. At that point, it's not even a matter of the timeliness of my commands. She literally can't do anything except spin in circles. I need to interrupt that behavior and help her move into a different, hopefully lower, state of arousal.  

I've been taking a lot of online training classes to learn how to use pattern games to help dogs change their state of arousal. I don't want to get into the weeds of that training here, but I can summarize it like this. Food releases endorphins. Executing a familiar pattern, essentially falling into autopilot, releases endorphins. Combine them and you have an exercise that can help lower a dog's level of arousal. I've been working through pattern exercises with Frankie for about 4 months but I wasn't really sure how to apply them to her specific problems in agility. 

 I finally put it together last weekend. In this short training video, she rockets into over-arousal twice. Both times I stopped moving and waited. In the most simple pattern game, the dog gets a treat for making eye contact. Notice how quickly she stops spinning and sits in front of me and looks at my face. I give her a treat or two then calmly line her up and ask her to continue, which she was able to do. 

 https://youtu.be/p1eTiTfVIRs 

Of course I can't give her treats like that in the competition ring. But I hope that I can help her learn that she can control her own emotions, and that when she does, she can keep on doing agility, which for Frankie is another type of reward.  

 

(Sorry, can't embed the video. Blogger isn't cooperating. The link should work.) 

Reminder

 I'm having some fairly big problems with Frankie in the agility ring right now. I'm still processing the issue and what to do about it. Until I work through it, I thought it would be nice to remind myself of how far she has come. 

 Here is a training video of her in the weaves, taken in my garage in December 2023. I use the 2x2 method to train weaves plus a remote treat dispenser to keep the dog's head down and facing forward. 

 

And here's a clip of her a year later (January 2024) performing 12 weaves off the table in an AKC Open Standard run.

 

 

She's fast! I didn't get quite far enough down the line for that front cross before the tunnel. You can see her little hop to the side as she turns to the tunnel because I'm in her path. 

I'm feeling frustrated with the backwards progress in her trialing. But she's healthy. She loves agility. She has drive. Oh, so much drive. And she is smart. We will get through this rough spot.  

 

The Cat

 The cat, who doesn't have an official name, is a dumb-as-a-rock ginger tabby. He's over 13 years old but doesn't look or act that old. 

 I've blogged before about his ability to start yowling at 3am, letting off once every second or so, and keep it up for HOURS. He sits in the most acoustically advantageous position, the middle of the staircase, to project his desperate cries for food to all corners of the house. If I or one of the dogs even twitches, he comes running into the bedroom screaming loudly, frantic that we somehow might be having a feast behind his back. 

He has full run of the house and for the most part stays out of trouble. His usual sleeping spot is in the upstairs storage room where he has two comfy beds to choose from. But occasionally he will show up in an unexpected spot. 

Last night, as I was winding down my evening, I carried Frankie into the living room to put her in her expen so I could sit on the couch and read for a while. This is our regular routine, and Frankie usually settles down and takes a break from being Frankie. I was surprised to find the cat curled up in Frankie's expen bed. He greeted us sleepily but didn't budge. I dropped her in there anyway and sat down to see what would happen. Science!

Frankie paced, circled, stood and gazed mournfully first at the cat then at me, and paced some more. The cat didn't budge. There was some sighing and a lot more pacing. I said nothing to either of them. With a final sad little sigh, Frankie curled up next to the bed on a bit of blanket. She didn't even get up when I went to refill my wine glass and grab my phone to take this picture.

 

Despite the fearsome prey drive and general pushiness of the terriers, I think it's clear who's in charge here.

 

Somebody Has To Grab Her!

 Frankie's end of run routine is a work in progress. She still isn't coming to me in the ring. 

But I know that I'm on the right track with the training. Training is the solution, and there are no short cuts to be had there.

I'm taking an online class in pattern games and am doing twice-daily sessions with her. Those aren't specific to the end of run but they may help her learn to manage her big feelings better. Dogs like Frankie struggle with transitions of all kinds, not just at the end of an agility run. Doorways, moving through an exciting space, exiting her crate--all of these are transitions with very big emotions attached to them.

I mentioned a post or two ago that I'm having her put her head in the martingale when I hold it out. I've now added motion to that. I move away from her while holding the collar out. This encourages her to chase me rather than me chase her. It's been working well in class.

She's been showing a lot more interest in the leash itself too. I am using the leash in class so that I make class as much like a trial as I can (Archie never uses a leash in class--he's a good boy). I take her to the start line on lead, remove it, and toss it away. If I don't have a hand on her collar, she will dart over and grab the leash then bring it to me for a game of tug. Her leash is a braided fleece affair designed for tugging. I always tug with her because I want to keep her value for the leash as high as I can. 

Progress is slow. I get frustrated because she will be 3 years old in a couple of weeks and, damn it, she should not be running away from me in the ring at that age and after a year of competition. But Frankie is on her own schedule. 

LEFT! I Mean, RIGHT!

 All of my fox terriers advanced through the levels of AKC agility in a relatively normal fashion: Novice, Open (ah, the purgatory of Open), Excellent, and in the case of Archie, Masters. But of course that isn't the case for Frankie. We can throw the rule book out for Frankie. She's following her own agenda.

 Last weekend, she ran an amazing Open Standard course with a single off-course error. She held her start line stay (barely--she's a creeper, but she did wait for my release), she blazed through the weaves (her signature obstacle), and she hit all the contacts including the table. However, I didn't realize she qualified until later that day, and then didn't realize until the next morning that she had earned her Open Standard title with that run! So she's now in Excellent Standard.

If Frankie were any of my other dogs, I'd be telling you that she was in Excellent or just a leg away from moving up to Excellent in the other courses too. But no, no, that's not Frankie's plan. 

A month ago, she set a FAST course on fire, earning 78 out of a possible 80 points and doing the Excellent/Master distance challenge as well as her own required Novice distance challenge. FAST is a game with two objectives: complete a distance handling challenge and accumulate points. Oh, and you have to do all of this within about 35 seconds. Obstacles are assigned point values on the map and handlers choose their own courses. The distance challenges are harder and the number of points required to qualify increase as you move up the ranks. You can't qualify without successfully completing the distance challenge.

Frankie has amazing distance performance so I wasn't surprised that she successfully navigated the more difficult Excellent/Master distance challenge. But even if I tried, even if that had been my plan, I could not have earned 78 points on that course with Archie. And he's an accomplished agility dog and a solid partner! That turned out to also be a titling run for Frankie, but I didn't realize it until I got the certificate in the mail from AKC a couple of weeks later. She's now in Open FAST.

Obviously there's a pattern here. With Frankie, it's more about the journey than the actual details of the runs. 

I haven't yet mentioned Jumpers With Weaves, also just called Jumpers. Sigh. That's Frankie's nemesis. She has one, just one, Jumpers leg, and many NQs. She is stuck quite firmly in Novice Jumpers. 

Something needs to change for us to succeed in Jumpers. 

Frankie has a skill that I never taught any of my other dogs: directionals. That means if I say (yell, repeatedly) LEFT, she will turn left over the jump in front of her. I use directionals with her all the time in practice at home but not too often in class. I certainly didn't think this skill was solid enough to use in an actual trial. But last weekend, I needed her to take a jump straight off the Aframe then turn right into a tunnel. With Archie, I would have handled that with a rear cross on the flat, which is a rear cross done after an interruption in the dog's flow, like stopping at the bottom of the Aframe. Frankie doesn't like that particular handling move and often jumps and crashes into me when I try it in class. Out of desperation, I decided to use her RIGHT directional. And it worked!

Directionals are tricky. They are always (always) relative to the dog's left and right and independent of the relative position and motion of dog and handler. It's easy to mix them up. It takes many repetitions to ensure they are a solid, learned behavior for both dog and handler. They are not a skill taught in a weekend. Frankie has a black head, a white body, and a large black patch on her left shoulder. That black patch is a great visual marker! So I put in the time and effort to train directionals with her. 

Now that I know she can perform them in a trial setting, I decided they were the missing piece of our Jumpers puzzle.  

This weekend, I set up two Jumper courses to test Frankie's directionals. The first one was relatively straightforward. RIGHT RIGHT out of the weaves worked very well to turn her to jump 3. She has such wonderful distance that I was able to send her to jumps 5 through 8 while I stayed in the middle of the course. I called her to me over 8 then told her RIGHT RIGHT again to turn her over 9. This is a rear cross on the flat. To turn her over 13 and keep her off that off course jump 5, I told her RIGHT RIGHT TUNNEL. Then one more rear cross on the flat with RIGHT RIGHT to turn her over 17 to the last jump at 18. She had several clean runs on this course. Archie did too although I handled him in a more traditional way.

Today, I set up this more challenging Jumpers course. Yeah, that crowded bit in the middle was really tricky. Frankie only had a single clean run, our last run of the morning after almost hours of practice. But what a clean run it was! My verbal timing was good, she listened and responded and kept all the bars up, and even had a beautiful GO ON at the end to finish the last two jumps way ahead of me. 

As you can see from the labels, both of these are Excellent/Masters level courses. 

We may not be in Novice Jumpers for too much longer!

Go, Speedracer! Go!

 Frankie had a pretty good weekend at our last trial. She got her first FAST Q and earned her Novice Standard title. She also had five out of six very good start line stays. She's holding her position until I release her, and looking forward at the obstacle, not at me.

Her failed start line on the sixth attempt was entirely my fault. 

AKC requires dogs to enter and exit the ring on lead. Archie wears a very loose martingale on a nylon leash. It is mostly decorative as he doesn't need it for restraint when we enter. Even when I slip the collar over his head and toss the leash to the leash runner, I know Archie will stick by my side until I put him in position, and he will stay there until I release him. He's a good boy that wants to please me. 

Frankie wears a martingale attached to a braided fleece tugging leash on top of the buckle collar she wears all the time. She does need that leash for restraint. I guess I got overconfident. We entered the ring for her first run in Open Standard (I of course moved her up after she earned her Novice title). She was over-aroused, as usual, and I was a bit tired and distracted. The first obstacle was the tire, with a straight approach to the dogwalk, which she could see through the tire. I slipped the collar off her head and started to stuff the leash into my pocket. My mistake was not holding on to her when I did this. I thought she'd stay by me, like my good boy Archie. Nope.

She took off, slamming into the tire and heading up the dogwalk. Hitting the tire like that was a fatal error, equivalent to knocking a bar from a jump. So the run was already lost. AKC has a new feature called Fix-N-Go in which you can go back and fix an error. You still lose the Q, and you can't go back to the beginning if the error occurred in the middle of the course, and you can't attempt the fix anything more than once. But we hadn't even started the run, so my Fix-N-Go could start at the tire.

I called her back to me. She came right back! I made her sit and led out only a few feet away from her to the tire. I knew I couldn't get any more distance than that. She was so excited that she was nearly levitating out of her skin. I released her and off we went. 

And she had a really great run! She didn't make the Aframe contact, and she missed a jump near the end of the course, but that didn't matter because we weren't running for the Q anyway. Her performance was better than I expected. She smoked the weaves! People were applauding!

The effort and time I put into her start lines did pay off. I saw a lot more control and focus from her throughout the weekend. She's right on the cusp of understanding that agility is a team sport. 

Our next training goal: running contacts. Even though I have taught and used stopped contacts with every other fox terrier I have done agility with, I don't think I can realistically and reliably get stopped contacts from Frankie in a competition setting. Rather than fight her, I want to use her natural talents to make our teamwork smoother. Top competitors train running contacts to shave precious hundredths and thousandths of seconds off their time. That's not my goal. We are not world team material, and she's plenty fast to earn top placements in her classes once we work out the teamwork thing. I think that running contacts will feel more natural to her, and that will improve our communication on the course.

T3i: Costco and GoDog

 It's been forever since I put up a T3i post! That's Terrier Toy Testing Institute for new readers. 

We have a handful of GoDog plushies. They are expensive but extremely well made. They usually get an 8 out of 10 score from T3i.

The embroidery detail on GoDog toys is always exquisite. Yes, that is intentionally targeted at us, the humans, because I promise you our dogs don't give a shit about that. But the hefty, nubbly material and well-placed squeakers make these toys great for tugging, throwing, and shaking.

Here's Archie with one of the limited stuffing dinos:

Throw it already!

And here's a bunny I picked up at a dog show earlier this year. 

You know he's well made because his ears are still attached.

Imagine my surprise when I was wandering around Costco last weekend and saw a bin of enormous GoDog plushies for $14 each. Of course I grabbed two!

They aren't as well made as the smaller toys, which can easily cost $25 or more. But they are much better constructed than most $14 stuffed dog toys.

 

Turquoise dragon for Archie

Big red dino for Frankie

They have nice embroidery detail, are made from thinner, but still colorful, nubbly material, and contain plenty of squeakers in head and feet, a honker in the body, and crinkly plastic in the tails. Frankie can just about lift her dino off the floor. Usually she drags it around by the neck frill. Sort of how she treats the cat, come to think of it.

Costco and GoDog for the T3i win! Still giving these a score of 8 out of 10. The dogs love them.

Oh, Frankie!

 So I'm trying to run Frankie at trials now. She's quite the handful. She is blazing fast, heedless of personal safety, and has some strong opinions about what she is supposed to do out there.

At our most recent, rather disastrous, attempt at trialing, a friend asked me, how's her start line? And I had to admit that it wasn't great. He replied, if you start a run with chaos, then the entire run will be chaos. 

I've been thinking about this every day for the past three weeks. It's a great example of how advanced handlers can readily see problems and solutions for other handlers and dogs but get a bit blind when it comes to our own situation. His comment spurred me to dig deeper into Frankie's training, and to go back and retrain a lot of her behaviors. 

She is unlike any other fox terrier I've worked with. She is astonishingly smart and relatively easy to train since she is both toy- and food-motivated, which gives me lots of options for rewards, but I'm having to learn how to work with unexpected minutiae of behavior that I never saw in my other dogs. 

Frankie has also made me rethink how I train, literally the mechanics of how I approach teaching, rewarding, and reinforcing behaviors. The most important change is that I can't fix problems in the moment. With Frankie, I need to keep going forward no matter what. If I stop, regroup and redirect her to fix something, like ask her to repeat a contact, she blows up. She becomes so over-aroused and so anxious that she can no longer perform at all. I can only note the problem so I can isolate it later in a separate training session. 

The second most important change is that I need to keep her training sessions very short. The longer she works, the more overstimulated she becomes, and our connection becomes very fragile. 

There are many, many dogs whose stress and anxiety produces the opposite: when they shut down, they disconnect, walk away, stop performing, sniff, leave the ring, etc. When Frankie tips into over-arousal, she doesn't want to leave but she's not able to actually do anything. She has big emotions and big energy but doesn't know what to do with them. It's my job to monitor her and manage her training so that we finish before she reaches that state. It doesn't take long, sometimes just 10 or 20 seconds.

And the third thing I've learned is that I need to stop micromanaging her and put the responsibility of self control onto her. There is no physical reason she can't easily clear the jumps, no physical reason she can't hold a start line stay, no physical reason she can't stop on the contacts. It's all mental control. I have gone back to the very basics of these behaviors and am retraining them with criteria that are more clear to both of us. 

Our journey is a bit rocky now but I know that I will be a much better trainer and handler with her as my partner.

Frankie

It's time to lay out some of Frankie's origin myth. 

Oh, who's Frankie, you ask? She is the smooth fox terrier puppy I picked up over the Fourth of July weekend in 2022. She was only 10 weeks old at the time, and the last of her litter. I had some reservations about both of those facts but decided to load up Archie and Azza and drive out to northwestern Arkansas to see her. Her breeder was registered with AKC, and told me this was her last litter of smooths. She and her husband were switching over to whippets. I met the sire and dam and both seemed in good health and good conformation. The sire was a finished champion. 

And there was the puppy, a scrap of a thing, by herself in an expen under the shade of a tree. She willingly tugged with a raccoon tail toy I brought with me and seemed quite feisty and healthy. She had a lazy left eye and the usual "carousel horse" planes to her head that you see in American-bred smooth fox terrier lines. 

I had really wanted another male puppy. Male smooth fox terriers tend to be more biddable and willing to please. The females tend to challenge everything, making them harder to train. Archie is a dream of a companion and agility partner, and I was sort of hoping that I could strike gold again with another male. 

But nope, that wasn't happening. This little pup was coming home with us: last of the litter, runt, lazy eye, female. So many things that weren't on my list. But she had a spark that drew me in right away.

I named her Frankie. 

She's still a tiny thing, 16 lb and about 15" at the shoulder. Her lazy eye mostly resolved on its own. It will show up now and then but casual observers would never notice it.

In the past year and a half, Frankie has proven herself over and over to be one of the most challenging fox terriers I've ever worked with. At every waking moment, she vibrates, levitates, with energy. She never stops moving. She wants to be touching me all the time. She is exceptionally bold and oblivious to personal safety. As a result, she and Archie have never been in the same space together, although they do interact across gates in doorways.  

Azza fell into the role of auntie after a couple of weeks of cautious observation. Azza didn't embrace Frankie as quickly as she did Archie, but she eventually came around. Amazingly, Frankie can regularly inspire a lot of play in my 12-year-old desert dog. 

 

 

Frankie is a foreign body surgery looking for a holiday weekend. She eats toys, bedding, sticks, acorns, small stones. She chewed the handle and snap off a 6-foot nylon leash and swallowed almost 3 feet of it. Following a panicked call to a vet school classmate, I dosed her twice with hydrogen peroxide. Once she began to gag, I reached in and pulled out the leash.

Once I realized that I could not monitor her every move outside nor could I train her to stop constantly hoovering up inappropriate things, I ordered a customized basket muzzle that she wears when she is running around the backyard. I had to add some additional strips of duct tape across the bottom because within days she learned she could slam the muzzle down on acorns and pop them into the muzzle so she could eat them. This morning, she still managed to pick up a tree branch (not a twig, a 2-foot long branch) that had fallen overnight by pushing a smaller branchlet sticking off of it into the muzzle.

When I had her spayed earlier this year, she destroyed two cones and the collars holding them, and started to dehisce her abdominal incision within hours of coming home from the clinic. I ended up getting two full-body vests, rotating them every 24 hours so I could wash one, and zoinking her to the moon with alternating trazadone and gabapentin every 4 hours (plus a short course of antibiotics). I had to take three days off work because I couldn't take my eyes off her for a second. 

Frankie is currently taking a novice rally obedience class at the dog training club. One of the other students in the class complimented Frankie on her nice conformation, then gently asked, so, do other smooth fox terriers have a ... similar temperament? I laughed and said, no, Frankie is definitely a unique chaos agent all her own. She is so spicy, so much MORE than I've seen in this breed before.

On the bright side, Frankie sleeps very soundly at night in a crate next to the bed. Goes in without a peep, sleeps a full 8 hours. I'm not surprised--she has to recharge her batteries for another day of mayhem. 

Her agility training has been quite a ride as well. She is comically fast. Think Roadrunner cartoon fast. It has been a challenge for me to learn how to handle her. She gets overstimulated/frustrated very quickly, spinning in circles and jumping up to bite my arm. I'm fortunate to have good training partners and instructors who help us work through these problems. 

Everyone keeps asking me when I will take her into the ring, and I say, she's not ready. Not even close. Archie started competing at 15 months. You could argue that he wasn't quite ready then, but he wasn't hell on wheels either. Frankie and I are still working on performing as a team. But progress is there--in the past 4-5 weeks, she went from only being able to complete 4-5 obstacles before melting down to completing 12-14 obstacles with some semblance of control and direction. I plan to debut her this coming summer when she is 2 years old. She needs a little more tempering.

 

Sniffing The Pole

 In AKC agility, there are several different kinds of faults. An off-course fault is somewhat obvious--the dog takes the wrong obstacle, or jumps a jump then jumps back over it. Elimination faults are more or less a failure to complete an obstacle--the dog knocks the bar off a jump, or fails to put a paw in the contact zone on one of the contact obstacles. AKC still uses the pause table in standard courses, so there are table faults too--the dog fails to stick the landing and slides off the table, or jumps on then jumps off before the 5-second count has finished.

Refusals are the most complicated fault type. There is a zone in which a refusal can be called for any obstacle that is based on distance between two obstacles, how close the dog is to the upcoming obstacle, and "refusal planes" defined by the edges of the obstacle and the angle of the dog's approach. Complicated. But some examples might help. A dog that runs up to a jump then stops will get a refusal fault. A dog that runs towards an obstacle but spins in circles instead of approaching the obstacle in a determined manner will get a refusal fault. A dog that runs around an obstacle will get a refusal. If that dog takes another obstacle before the handler can correct the refusal, the dog also gets an elimination fault. The faults can stack up fast! But a dog that runs up the Aframe, stops at the top to gaze around the arena, then continues down the other side will not get a refusal.

At the Masters level, where Archie competes, you can only qualify if you run clean, with no errors or faults. One error, no matter which type, means no Q, even if you finish the course.

At an agility trial this past weekend, I encountered a situation that I had never seen nor even heard about. Archie's run so far had been clean. We approached the weaves and in he went. His weaves are extremely solid, and he usually executes them quickly. Archie rarely makes errors in the weaves. Except that day, that day as he reached pole 8, he came to a screeching halt. Dust puffed up around his feet. He was stock still, every muscle engaged, sniffing the pole.

SNIFFING THE POLE.

I of course keep eye contact with Archie on the course so when he stopped, I screeched to a halt too. I stared at him, then started pleading, whining, c'mon, Arch, WEEEEEEEEAVE, WEEEEAVE! Arch! WEEEEEEAVE! Over and over. I tried to keep calm but I was starting to panic. ARCHIE! WEEAAVE! At the same time, my brain was endlessly looping, What is happening? What is happening! I was looking directly at Archie but the far peripheral vision of one eye was on the judge, trying to see if he raised his hand to call a refusal.

Archie just stood there, sniffing. He never moved his feet. It seemed like an eternity but it really was only about 8 or 9 seconds (actually, that is an eternity in agility). Finally he decided he had sniffed enough and finished the weaves without error. Somehow I managed to keep my plan together and we finished the course.

I ran out of the ring with Archie in my arms and people said, wow, that was incredible! I gasped, did the judge call a refusal? They said, no, he didn't!

A spirited debate ensued. Was that a refusal? Was that a failure to execute? He never left the weaves. He did all the poles correctly. We decided that although it was certainly unusual, Archie didn't incur any fault. The run was clean. Another Q.

I am so grateful for my crazy fox terrier. He never fails to amaze and amuse.

A Tired Dog Is A Good Dog

Earning all of these:

 

...resulted in this: 

The OKC-area trials tend to have a small but rather competitive 16" class. To qualify is great (yay Archie!) but to get a Q and a placement is a big deal for us. He worked hard for me all weekend, and I'm proud of those ribbons.

Nutrition, Disease, and Mimi

For years, Mimi has exhibited symptoms of "generalized tremor syndrome." She has nearly continuous tremors of parts or all of her body. The tremors get worse when she is excited or stressed. They are also present when she is sitting quietly and thus relatively relaxed and continue even when she is falling asleep. They disappear only when she is fully in REM sleep. This particular tremor syndrome is usually observed in smaller dogs like the small terrier breeds. The tremors showed up when Mimi was just a few years old, and have been slowly progressive since then. They are not painful and they do not affect her ability to run, eat, play, defecate, or engage in any other normal dog activities. All of these are typical characteristics for this disease.

This tremor syndrome has been fairly well studied. It can't be linked to any infectious agent or toxin. Some dogs have a mild increase of white blood cells in their cerebrospinal fluid, but that isn't observed in all cases. Thus it isn't strictly speaking an inflammatory disease, although it has been described as a type of meningoencephalitis (the -itis is used to describe inflammatory diseases). Instead, the syndrome is thought to be immune-mediated. That means that the immune system got its signals crossed at some point and began to attack a specific part of the body because the immune system thinks it is foreign.

When most dogs with this syndrome are given immune-suppressive doses of corticosteroids, they begin to improve, often within a few days. The tremors may be completely eliminated in some dogs and they can taper off the steroids. Sometimes the tremors return and then the dog has to begin the course of steroids all over again.

Steroids like prednisone are a powerful component of the vet med pharmacopia. But when they are given at immune-suppressive doses, they can have some unpleasant side effects. Heck, they can have unpleasant side effects at the lower anti-inflammatory doses. They are not to be prescribed lightly. Suppressing the immune system is not to be done lightly.

For some months now, I have been reading up on this generalized tremor syndrome and wondering if I should put Mimi on an immunosuppressive course of prednisone. She is much older than the typical dog that is treated for this syndrome, mainly because the tremors don't affect her life and I chose not to treat it earlier. Not all dogs who take prednisone achieve resolution of the tremors. I've been on the fence about this since I can't predict Mimi's response to treatment.

And because Mimi is an old girl (13 years now), I have also been thinking about age-related cognitive decline. Harry experienced a significant cognitive decline during his last two years. So when I ran across Purina's new prescription diet aimed specifically at slowing this kind of cognitive decline in dogs, I was quite interested. To be clear, once neurological damage and cognitive decline are present, they are not reversible. Purina intends for this diet to be fed prophylactically to dogs before they begin to show clinical signs. The diet, called Purina Proplan Neurocare, is only available by prescription. Purina, like Hills and a couple of other food companies, does actual feeding trials for their diets. This makes their claims for their diets much more compelling. They have published some good papers on the diet and it certainly seems to work as they claim it should.

What makes their Neurocare diet different? They increase the levels of omega-3 fatty acids, the vitamin B complex, and the antioxidants Vitamin E and Vitamin C. They also include medium-chain fatty acids (vegetable sourced). These fatty acids are processed by the body using slightly different metabolic pathways than longer chain fatty acids. It's not that long-chain fatty acids are bad. Quite the contrary, the long-chain fatty acids in the omega-3 family are extremely useful and are valuable additions to any diet, including yours. But the normal human and dog diet doesn't include much in the way of medium-chain fatty acids and far too much saturated fatty acids.

Purina, like Hills and Royal Canin and other companies that made veterinary diets, also make similar diets that you can buy without a prescription. In the case of Purina, the grocery-store version of their Neurocare diet is called Purina One Vibrant Maturity. Of course, it is not quite the same formulation as the prescription diet. It lacks the extra omega-3 fatty acids. But it has extra zinc, selenium, and Vitamin E. All three of these are important players in anti-oxidant metabolic pathways. And Vibrant Maturity includes those same medium-chain fatty acids and most of the Vitamin B complex. So there is considerable overlap between the diets.

Since I started working towards this new vet med career, I have been interested in how diet can be used to decrease incidence or susceptibility to disease, to decrease the use of drugs, and to improve performance. These concepts apply to old fox terriers as much as they apply to poultry houses with 120,000 broiler chicks.

On a bit of a whim, I decided to feed Mimi the Purina One Vibrant Maturity kibble just to see what would happen. I have now been feeding it for four weeks, which is generally the length of time we know we have to feed a new diet before we can expect to see changes in whatever clinical sign we are monitoring. I made no other changes to her diet or activities.

With respect to her cognition, all I can say is that she is no worse than she was four weeks ago, although that is a really subjective interpretation that has a high risk of owner confirmation bias. She wasn't exhibiting signs of cognitive decline before I started feeding her Vibrant Maturity, and Purina's claim is that their diet will delay these kinds of changes. So this part of my little experiment is a bit moot at this time.

But here is the amazing part: after four weeks, Mimi's tremors are notably reduced. Her head tremors have almost completely disappeared. Her body tremors are still present, although they are somewhat positional now (her hind legs will tremor more if she stands just so, and will tremor less if she stands another way). To make sure I wasn't seeing changes that I wanted to see, I had two other people look at her who have seen her tremors in the past. They saw the same changes that I saw.

This is the take-home lesson: I was apparently able to alter the course of her tremor syndrome using diet alone. I suspect that Purina is not aware that their diet could have this effect since their focus has been on the cognitive benefits.

These kinds of serendipitous observations are what drive me as a scientist and as a soon-to-be newly minted veterinarian. My mind is swirling with ideas for project designs and funding sources. I'm not likely to follow through with any of them, but you never know what future opportunities might appear!

CircusK9 Update, Long Overdue

During September, I will be traveling for two back-to-back, poultry-related preceptorships. I hope to be able to write more about them later, but for now, I wanted to put up a brief post about the dogs.  I've been so focused on vet school recently that I haven't written much about the general mental and physical state of the pack.

In the past couple of months, I've interviewed 8 or 9 people to see how they would work out for pet-sitting. And as I introduce the dogs to these new people, I am reminded of origin stories that I have sort of forgotten, that have become buried in my other quotidian concerns.

Azza will be 8 years old at the end of this year (she was born near the end of December, 2010). Azza still acts like a puppy for the most part: playful and joyful. In large part, I credit this to the fact that she lives with fox terriers. She is so much more resilient at facing the random events that life throws at her. Not quite a normal dog, but I worry about her much less than I used to.

Mimi is rounding the corner on 13 years, and has lost most of her upper teeth, yet will play fetch with a tennis ball until she drops. She is going deaf, and has started vocalizing nearly continuously, a sort of low moaning sound. Her Parkinsonian-like tremors have become quite extreme, present even when she is at rest, and often while she is sleeping (they only disappear when she is in REM sleep). Despite my advanced training, I can't explain what is wrong with her. She is not ataxic, she knows exactly where her body is in space, she has no muscle weakness, and she has no pain from this disease. She does have two lumps that I plan to have my vet poke (technically, collect a fine-needle aspirate from them). I am fairly sure they are lipomas, but it is better to be sure. They have nothing at all to do with her tremors.

From the day that I brought Archie home, Azza has been convinced that I did so for her. Whenever I go looking for them inside or outside the house, I invariably find them together, touching paws or laying side by side. They are true partners in crime, always looking for trouble.

Archie is a spoiled little monster, and I love every second of it. It was a bittersweet email that I got from AKC telling me he was ranked the #11 smooth fox terrier in AKC agility this year. He doesn't even have a single double-Q to his name! And this entire year will be a holiday from both training and trialing. A fourth-year vet student has some downtime, but not that much. It was clear from our last few trials that he needed a bit more maturing, so this "gap year" may not be the worst thing that could happen to his agility career. I am focusing instead on building my relationship with him. I must admit that I ignored some basic training in favor of driving him forward in agility. Time for re-collection.

Poor Mimi!

Mimi had ten teeth removed yesterday. Her face, tongue, and lips are so swollen I can't inspect the suture sites yet. She's groggy from the anesthesia. She looks pretty rough, like she is resurfacing after a week-long bender of booze and speed.

Most of the teeth on her upper left arcade are now gone and only a molar or two remain on the upper right side. She lost her last incisor. Fortunately, I took her to the dental specialist who taught us our dental unit in Small Animal Medicine, and she was able to save Mimi's lower canines by putting bone graft material around the roots. She still has her upper canines--they were apparently fine. Her canines are about all she has left!

Like most fox terriers, Mimi is a tough little dog. She is eating her canned food with gusto (never noticing the meds I drop in there--a long course of antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory). Once she started swallowing last night, she stopped drooling bloody saliva all over herself and her blankets so she looks a bit more presentable. She is not feeling much like playing but she is following me around the house like she usually does.

She lost all of her incisors but that one last year. And she lost a couple of premolars the year before. So what's up with her extremely ferocious dental disease this year? I brush Mimi's teeth regularly (I do this for all three dogs) but sometimes genetics and bad luck overcome our best intentions. I have recently changed to a different toothpaste although honestly that probably won't make much of a difference.

And in case you were wondering, dogs do just fine with few to no teeth. My dogs don't chew their kibble anyway, so that's not a problem. And once the incisions heal and the sutures resorb, dogs can still catch balls and retrieve toys. No more chewing on antlers, but Mimi never did much of that anyway. And we will still be able to play tug, gently, with fleece tugs.

A Lighter Note

Just look at this ridiculous dog.

I know that dropping to the ground and showing the belly is a submissive posture for dogs, and that's certainly part of why Azza does it, but she also loves belly rubs and has learned that this behavior can also serve as an invitation for that.

Archie in a second-floor windowsill. He knows there are many bunnies lurking in the garden below so he is taking advantage of his expanded view of the landscape.

Diary of a Third-Year Vet Student: My Study Group Plus Bonus Terriers

Last night my study group (dubbed "The Inclusion Bodies") gathered at my house to argue our way through three or four hours' worth of Large Animal Medicine lecture notes in preparation for an exam on Thursday. It's the way we work--each one of us catches a key bit, and by talking it all through, we can put together a bigger, more complete picture.

It's spring here, and we have had a couple of sunny days which makes everyone want to be outside as much as possible, so we decided to spend our first study hour sitting out in the backyard. Of course, since it's spring, it's still freakin' cold, so I ran around the house scooping up clean blankets for everyone. (With only a few exceptions, blankets in my house are used by both people and dogs.)

We are drinking Brad's home-brewed cider.

Shortly after this photo was taken, Archie peed on Brad's blanket (and his foot) so once I stopped laughing, I had to rustle up another blanket for him!

Later, Archie made up for being so naughty by wriggling his way onto Claudia's lap and being adorable. He loves belly rubs!

I'm Watching You

Our beloved canine companions have a job that they perform with amazing dedication: they watch us every single minute of every hour of every day. My fox terriers are particularly adept at this task, and as I noted years ago, I haven't peed alone since my first fox terrier joined my house (Harry in 1998). Mimi insists on accompanying me to the bathroom each morning when I shower and get ready for the day, so I just gave in and keep a small dog bed and blanket permanently installed there for her use. 

Archie is a relatively independent little dog but he is in no way aloof. He loves affection and attention. Even so, I really didn't understand the extraordinary depth of his attention to me and my actions.  

A few weekends ago, I was getting ready on a Sunday morning to head to campus for my weekly peer tutoring session in physiology. Physiology is a first-year course, and a very difficult one. Every year, two or three students drop out or fail because of physiology. I've been providing these tutoring sessions to two years' worth of first-year students. The college pays me a pittance for my time, so it's not about money for me. I do it because I enjoy it, and because review of fundamental principles is always helpful, no matter how much you think you know about a subject. Anyway, I was getting dressed that morning, and without giving it much thought, pulled on a pair of comfortable cotton pants. Archie immediately began to run from me to the closet where his agility training bag is stored, back and forth, back and forth. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. The pants I had chosen to wear that day were pants that I normally only wear to agility trials in the winter and spring. They are loose enough so that I can wear thermal underwear and my knee brace underneath them without constriction, and black in color so they can get as gross as I need with dog slobber, treat bits wiped off fingers, and dirt, and still be reasonably presentable. 

I had to pick my jaw off the floor when I figured this out. Archie watches me so carefully that even my selection of clothing gives important information to him. 

Just in case you think this is a fluke, I have a second example. Yesterday, a Wednesday, was our last junior surgery lab for this term. It was a long day, but with finals looming next week, my study group wanted to meet and we decided to meet at my house. I got home and was bustling around the house trying to straighten it a little bit when I noticed Archie again running back and forth between me and the closet containing his agility training bag. 

I figured it out quickly--it was Wednesday, one of the nights he goes to agility class. Really? Really, does my dog know what day of the week it is? I think that he does. While he doesn't know minutes or hours or days as specific things, he is able to track the passage of days to the next class. He knew that we should be getting ready for class on that day at that time, and was letting me know, hey, I'm ready, let's go!

Of course he was quite distracted when the study group arrived and snacks were being passed around the room. But these two events have made me think more deeply about the information that I am giving my dogs. Frankly, the unanticipated association that I created for Archie of specific clothing or days of the week with the excitement of agility is one that I want to preserve, not dilute with false promises.

CircusK9: File Under "Never A Dull Moment"

Hijinks and hilarity are the rule, not the exception, at CircusK9. I have two stories to illustrate and amuse. 

The first story is about Archie. He loves to play--he plays with the cat, with Azza, with his toys, with me. When I am studying, he brings me toys one by one, hoping that maybe this one will entice me to play since the one he brought me five minutes earlier did not. I've written before about looking up from my books and notes and computer to find myself surrounded by a sea of dog toys, so many that I have to move them out of the way to move my chair. 

Often when he is super stimulated during toy play, he carries his toys into Azza's or Mimi's crate, or to the two dog beds by my study area. He proceeds to ruck up the bedding, vigorously pulling it up and back with his front paws, with the general aim of burying his treasure within. He can completely turn over all of the bedding in the process, and in the case of the dog beds, move them several feet across the room. He will also bury his antlers like this. So every morning, while the dogs are eating breakfast, I go around to all the crates and dog beds to straighten out the bedding and remove all of Archie's stashed toys and antlers. 

The other morning while I was straightening up the dog things, I was completely taken aback to find this:

That is a picture of an antler and a plush toy carefully placed on the cat's scratching box. In case you are thinking, "pfft, carefully placed--that was just an accident", I will tell you that I removed them and a different antler and two different toys were on the scratching box the next morning. Archie deliberately stashed his treasure there.

There are several levels of silliness here. I have no idea why Archie gets so much pleasure out of burying his toys--he never retrieves them so I think it is the act of moving everything around that he likes. He never puts toys in his own crate. The terriers regularly take snoozes in any available crate or bed, but they absolutely know which crate is theirs. While the cat doesn't use a crate, Archie sees him use the scratch box every day. I can only assume that Archie logically translated this as "cat's special place, good for stashing treasure." Makes perfect sense.

The second story is about Archie and the cat. I don't free-feed Beast--every meal is measured out. Thus he is convinced that he will starve and blow away like a bit of fluff, and he is constantly, and loudly, on the lookout for things he can eat. The compost bucket is a regular stop on his rounds although I've learned to put the lid on it when I put things like eggshells in there. He will come to the kitchen and beg just like the dogs when I am preparing dinner, although I have a low tolerance for that behavior and chase them all out after a few minutes. 

Last night, I carved out an hour to make some real food. I sliced up half a sweet onion, peeled and cubed an eggplant, and cleaned, trimmed, and cut up three chicken thighs into thumb-sized chunks (when you are in vet school, you learn that when you manage to find time to cook, you cook big, enough for several meals, because you don't know when you'll have time again). I put all of that deliciousness into a saucepan with olive oil, salt, black pepper, and basil, gave it a bit of a stir, and turned on the burner. Suddenly, and now I can't even remember exactly why, I had to run back to the bedroom for something. It seemed necessary at the time. I was only gone for a few seconds. 

I returned to the kitchen just in time to see the cat leaping off the stove with a piece of raw chicken dangling from his mouth. A piece of raw chicken he pulled directly from the heating saucepan. Little fucker. Archie was waiting below, jaws open like a crocodile--he is a very alert terrier and knows when the cat is up to something. The cat leaped over his head, hit the floor, and the chase was on. The cat was so frantic to take his treasure into the bedroom and under the bed, and Archie was so equally frantic to take the raw chicken from the cat's mouth, that they were bouncing off each other, off walls, off corners, off furniture, like pinballs. Archie was growling, the cat was growling, I was laughing so hard I could barely stand up. 

I grabbed a flashlight, ran to the bedroom (yo, a nod to earthquake preparedness here, I have flashlights stashed all over the place), and dropped to the floor to watch it all play out. I sleep on a platform bed so Archie was not as maneuverable in that low space as the cat was but he sure gave it his all. In the end, the cat managed to choke down the piece of raw chicken before Archie could take it from him. Archie had to console himself with licking up drool and juice from the floor.

Never, ever a dull moment.