The Chuck-It is BY FAR the greatest dog invention in the history of dog inventions. Little did I know what I’ve been missing out on, but today marks the first day we try out our new Chuck-It. Initially I thought they were dumb and huge and horribly awkward to use, but once I found the Chuck-It JR. (in bright yellow!!!) at the natural pet food store in Harlingen, I had to have one. Best $8.99 I ever spent.
Every week, (unless one of the dogs is sick with a rash, infection, allergies, vomiting, and any other random ailment my dogs get just to make me worry) we go out to this elementary school park near my house and meet one of my clients/friends and her Aussie Matilda. Usually we just bring the frisbee(s) and toss that around for Spence while Matilda watches and Mackenzie gets into trouble. Today I brought the frisbee AND the chuck-it and I was going to allow Spencer to choose which one he would rather play with. When he insisted on carrying his frisbee all the way to the car, and then getting it down all by himself at the park, I thought he had already chosen. I got the chuck-it down anyway and when he realized OMG ITS A BALL!!! all hell broke loose. This boy is OBSESSED with balls.
My first attempt at throwing left Spencer panting and waiting for me to actually do something even though the ball was several thousand feet away (yes, several thousand feet away). It took him two throws to understand that the yellow stick-thing isn’t actually part of the fun (which of course didn’t stop him from carrying the whole stick + ball all over the park when I told him to carry it).
He has such intense ball drive which comes from how we raised Spencer as a puppy. A professor friend of my Dad’s had a litter of Scottish Terriers that he needed to “get rid of”. Dad and I have always wanted a Scottie so me Dad and Matt went over to look at them. They were the absolute definition of Farm dogs. The mother dog, Maggie I think was her name, was totally scruffy and had probably never seen a pair of clippers much less gotten a proper “Scottie trim”. The pups were probably about 4-5wks old.
Needless to say, we came home with a fat jet black (with a white beard and tie) wiry terrier puppy who we would soon name Spencer. From the day we brought him home my brother kept saying “I hope he likes balls. I want to play catch with him”. Now Mackenzie is no master of catch and fetch, but she does at least try. It’s just that her mouth is too small. So my brother was hoping for a dog who would actually be able to catch a ball in his mouth. Shortly after we brought him home we introduced him to a ball. At this point he’s so ball crazy that we only ever let him see any balls when we take him out to the park.
If he were a Border Collie, we would absolutely be at the top of the flyball and disc dog world. But instead I’ve got Border Collie drive in a Scottish Terrier shaped package.
Tonight’s training session:
Mackenzie: We worked mainly on fronts ’cause DAMN that girl’s crooked when she comes in for a front. I guess it doesn’t help to have such a damn long body. Her head is usually in the right position, but then she swings her little bum all chueca (‘crooked’ in Spanish [slang] for you non-Spanish-speaking folks). I got out her target stick and extended it all the way. So essentially I could remain standing up relatively straight and still have her targeting the right position (instead of targeting my hand between my legs). Oh the trials and tribulations of having a short dog.
We made some pretty good progress even with my brother coming out of his room to tell me that the way I was saying “Front” was annoying him. Generally with “come” and “front”-type commands my voice raises significantly in pitch, which apparently really annoys my brother. We quit on that and did a couple long stays. Which she hates, no surprise.
We ended the session with some position changes (sit/down/stand + random short stays). I’m thinking of switching to German for ’stay’ = blieb (damn this blog is gettin’ all kinds of multi-lingual). She confuses STAND and STAY a lot and I don’t blame her. So maybe it would be easier to switch ’stay’? We use ‘fuss’ for her right finish, and occasionally ‘platz’ and ‘giblaut’ because people are all impressed when I say she understands English, German, Spanish, and sign language. We also reviewed some of her fun tricks and I taught her to “take a bow”.
Spencer: This boy literally go SO EXCITED and worked up when he knew he was having a clicker training session that his red rocket came out (ie: he got a hard on, boner, woody, etc.) Yes, of course he’s neutered, but clearly clicker training is REALLY REALLY EXCITING. Worked on “sit up (and beg)”. He made very good progress and is learning to balance on this big butt of his. Tugged on the leash for a little while as a reward, and then I brought out he hula hoop. Started off with some low hops, but then he was giving me some good solid jumps. We ended his session when he started panting.
April: We worked some position changes (sit/down/stand). Nothing makes me happier than baiting my little Rescue girl pretending she’s in a dog show. She learned that after she’s stacked into a stand/stay she has to look intensely at my hand (with the treats). She looks damn good to me. Even though we’ve got no idea where she came from, except for the glaring fact that she is 100% purebred, maybe she could have been a show dog. Oh wait, no. My dog has ZERO breathing problems because her snout isn’t so far pushed into her face that she looks like a horribly disfigured “show-quality” Boston Terrier. She doesn’t snore, or have trouble breathing, or need expensive surgery to have her airways widened. Anyway, after a few minutes of that we ran through her fun tricks, shake, roll-over, sit up/beg, BANG!, and crawl.
Then I brought out the hoop. HOLY GOD. I was literally holding the hoop probably 3 or 4 feet off the ground and she was clearing it NO problem. She jumps SOOOO HIGH, I can’t even describe how high. Dad was watching and he said that we could probably tie the hoop to the ceiling and she could clear it. She’s so amazing. She jumps like a little horsie doing dressage. Once she started panting (and Spencer got all hot and bothered to join her training session and eating her dropped treats) we quit. All in all, it was a pretty successful training night for all three dogs.
Quite possibly the scariest thing to do in dog training is to videotape yourself performing what you thought was a pretty good heel sequence. Little did I know what I was going to see on the video.
I put the camera on the ground at the beginning of the driveway and got Mackenzie into position and pressed Record. What followed was a wonderful effort at heeling by Mackenzie and a horrifying performance from ME. As it turns out, many of you may already know this, but I am a large girl and Mackenzie is a small dog. What that looks like on video is that Mackenzie is responding to EVERY slight movement of my feet and my body in the fear that any sudden movement and I may fall right on top of her.
I took a few more after that, and they all were increasingly easier to watch. Except for the glaring fact that the more we work in the video, the lower my shorts fall (from holding such a heavy bait bag) and the more likely we are to see my ass or my bright pink underwear as I lean over to drop Mackenzie a treat.
All in all, she’s got a beautiful heel. I just need to work on myself and my body language so that I don’t throw her off. Dad played judge for a little while and gave us a heel sequence complete with running us into the street when he forget to give us a halt, and heeling straight into the back of my car when he forgot to give us a turn. It was fun and she actually did quite well even with the added distraction of April being tied to the basketball hoop pole and having her whine and whimper every time she heard a command and then start quivering every time she heard a click.
The goal right now is August. Corpus Christi. Obedience Novice A/Rally Novice A.
Our first time in the ring. Hell, our first time at a dog show.
Mom and I like to make a snack of bread + butter pickle slices and cheese on whole wheat crackers. Whenever Spence knows someone is snacking he will shuffle his short little body into the kitchen to see what’s up. Mom is a sucker and will almost ALWAYS give him a taste of what she’s got unless it’s on the ABSOLUTELY NEVER GIVE TO THE DOGS list (nuts, grapes, chocolate, etc.) Anyway so we’re in the kitchen preparing the snack and I see Spence is already chomping on something. “What did you give him?” I asked Mom and she replies of course, “A cracker…” A whole damn cracker for doing nothing.
So instead of just giving away freebies, I used one small cracker to get several spins, even a few jumping-spins in BOTH directions out of him. Since I was so impressed (we’ve only practiced spins with food -and not the disc- a few times) I decided to bring out the hoop. Now keep in mind this is only the 2nd time EVER Spence has seen the hoop. And here he goes jumping (like, actually jumping) without me luring him with a treat. I was just saying “Spence Hoop!” and he would give me a solid hop and I would praise and treat.
It’s like magic.
Originally I had intended for this to be a journal that would track my day to day thoughts and experiences. But that is damn lame. For now it will serve as my dog training journal. After all, the title of this journal “Fire and Control”, is straight from the AKC breed standard for the Scottish Terrier.
So let’s talk about my dogs. And how damn smart they are. Sometimes I wonder is it really me or them. Am I *that* good of a trainer? Is it clicker training? Are they geniuses? Are they so starved that they will do anything for food?
For example we’ll do a recap of last night’s and tonight’s training session:
Last night:
Mackenzie: Last night I decided to bust out her new leather obedience leash (that I got on sale for $7 down from like $20) since she didn’t have any attachments to it yet. I clipped it on and we started a free session (she gets clicked for any new or interesting behavior) . She of course went to the leash to sniff and I would click. Since usually I let her set the mood of our training sessions I decided we would try to start work on her task training. Like a service dog, I would like for her to be able to retrieve whatever object I drop. This is not for me, since I’m perfectly capable of picking up things I drop, but it would be extremely useful for my Dad who just had major knee surgery.
So I thought we could work on her learning to pick up her leash. She got several rapid fire c/t for nosing the handle of the leash but we’ve yet to get it actually in her mouth. This dog is sure going to be a handful when we start dumbbell/retrieve work.
We then moved on to putting the handle of the leash on her nose and I wanted her to paw it off. I really want her to get some sort of variation of “Are you Ashamed?” where she covers her face with her paw. Instead (probably my mistake) she thought she was getting a c/t for placing her nose IN the handle of the leash, which I must admit, was quite funny. So we quit on that for a while. I didn’t want to have to resort to using the tape trick (you put tape on the dog’s nose and c/t when they try to paw it off). BUT we did.
And we made tremendous progress. I will put the tape on her nose and she will repeatedly throw herself on the ground and put her paws over her eyes when I say “Are you ashamed?” The problem is that she hasn’t progressed to doing it without the tape on her nose!
Spencer: Last night Spencer worked on SPIN. The main issue we were facing is that he WILL do it for a frisbee, but had a hard time understanding what to do for a treat. The training session for Spence usually starts with treats (otherwise known as KIBBLE but shhhh! don’t tell them they are working for dog food) and ends with either his Tug leash as his reward or a toy/frisbee. So in this case we were working backwards. Because when we are working with the disc he will spin and spin and spin like nobody’s business (when I give the command “spin” not like one of those crazy tail-chasing dogs). We worked for a little while with food and then progressed to working with the disc inside the house. He knows “spin”, “around”, and we’re hopefully going to move onto spin + leg weaves with the disc as reward.
Tonight’s training session:
*This is where I toot my own horn. *
[Mackenzie sat this one out so I could work with April]
April: This afternoon at the Dollar Tree I found a medium sized hula hoop. One of my clients who happens to have a registered therapy dog brought up the issue of getting her dog to jump through a hoop. She complained to me that she had tried for two years to get her dog to jump through a hoop but that she couldn’t. Once I heard this I was determined to show her how to get her dog to jump through a hoop.
It took me less than 2 mins.
Tonight it took maybe 1 minute with April. At the end of our training session she was jumping a hoop that was probably 2-3 feet off the ground. She kicks out her back feet like a little horsie, it’s incredibly cute. That girl can really JUMP.
Spencer: Now to those of you who know me, you’ve heard me talk about my Spencer. “He’s not the smartest cookie in the bakery, not the brightest crayon in the box”, but sometimes I’ll take it all back. That boy responds better to clicker training than ANY dog I’ve ever trained. He took a little bit longer to figure out I didn’t one him to just walk through the hoop, but by the end of our session we were getting some nice little hops going on.
