Observations

So agility went pretty well on tuesday. Suki actually played with a tug briefly a couple of times, and even played with Michael. She did follow that up with a fair amount of barking, just to let Michael know he shouldn't get used to that sort of thing, but it was a step in the right direction.

Suki is always on the verge of being able to let herself go and have fun. My trainers wife pointed out that animals and humans out of abuse situations are often hyper sensitive when it comes to reading the emotions of others. So a little dismay on my part goes a long way to shutting Suki down. This is true, more than any dog I've owned Suki's performance is tied into my mood.

So to counter this I've tried using a bouncy, silly high voice. Well when I was running the course in class Michael observed that when I use the high pitched voice Suki isn't that responsive, when I switch to a more gruff let's get 'er done voice Suki snaps to and goes to work. Things learned:

1. The dog isn't fooled by your voice she thinks you sounds as dumb as you think you do.

2. Suki wants a confident leader and does better when she thinks someone knows what's going on.

Suki is the first dog I've encountered that's just afraid to let go. It's like she cant quite cope with the sensation of all that unbridled joy. She always on the edge of being awesome. Suki slinks through life like a mexican street dog waiting for the next foot to fly out at her. I just have to be consistent and safe and maybe Suki will see that really there's not that much to be afraid of.

Suki gets spooky

The last 3 days training were devoted to trying to get some footage for an annual halloween disc dog video contest. The majority of the footage I used actually came from day three, so I was really pleased that Suki was still excited to play. To stack the deck in our favor I made Suki watch Kess play from behind the fence before each session.

Aglity class had once high point, Suki ran a brief hoops couse and was really tuned in. I focused on going slow and keeping her ahead of me, and she responded well to pressure and body cues. Of course I had skipped warm-up and she faded on the 3rd run as the new students arrived, but I did manage to get her to pep up a bit at the end and she finished happy, so all in all a good night.

Here's Suki's video

lazy weekend

Well aside from a little toss and catch disc play on sat we took the weekend off. We disc some disc freestyle both mon, and tues to get some footage for the pawsitive vybe spooky jam video contest. Hope to have the final edited product for viewing tomorrow. Tonight it's off to agility, I'm not expecting much sine Suki already played disc today, but I hope to work on 2-3 obstacle combos with a ball for motivation.

Circle Work Day 2

Focus today was to keep the energy high and if Suki was moving nicely and ahead of me I wanted to throw in some rear crosses. Short session again, around 1 min. The video camera wasn't angled quite right, but you get the idea. At 50sec she stops and self rewards by throwing the ball around instead of retrieving to me. I did get her to re-engage, but decided no to throw the ball again and instead offered praise for her enthusiasm and headed in. Not sure if she's not retrieving because I've gone to long or if she just doesn't understand the rules of the game yet. I hope to do one more 1-2min session later this afternoon. Still not exercising Suki other than our quick sessions, and I'm working my other dog before Suki each time to further increase her energy level.

Circle work

This blog as really just a way to force me to re-examine my training goals and to stick to them, or else be shamed for all eternity on the internet. I'd like to transfer Suki to a toy for agility and increase her drive so it's back to basics. I'm starting with very short 90-120sec of circle work per day with a ball. The goal is to keep the excitement level high and to get Suki working with me, she often will not bring the toy back when doing circle work. I'm not sure why as she always brings it right back to my hand when doing standard retrieves, but hopefully I can convince her that the game stops if she doesn't bring it back. I'm not really going to worry to much about that right now though as the main focus is to keep Suki excited and end on that note. Nothing fancy here on day one. Hope to start widening the circle and adding some "s" shaped running in over the next few days.

Suki: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Suki is a mixed breed, believed to be border collie and jack russel or rat terrier. I adopted her off of craigslist at 14months old. It wasn't love at first sight, but I could tell her current owners didn't want her and felt that at the very least I could re-home her responsibly. I was her 4th owner by that time. The first day it became clear that Suki had received little to no exercise in her life time. She wasn't over weight, but had no muscle definition and still ran in a similar fashion to a puppy. She is also quite fearful, particularly of men and other dogs, her strategy is to bark loud, look tough, and put your hackles up to fend off unwanted advances. Suki also got very car sick earning the title Pukey Suki. I initially adopted Suki to be a flyball dog, but it soon became apparent due to her various behaioral quirks that flyball was not the sport for Suki.

Fast forward to almost 4 years later and Suki is still with us, and has been trained in canine disc and agility. Our continuing struggle is overcoming Suki's apparent ambivalence to physical activity. Suki is usually good for about 90 seconds of strenuous activity and if you're lucky you can get 10 minutes of training time in before she completely quits.

The good:
Suki LOVES food, she clicker shapes well and she likes to offer novel behaviors in the hopes of getting a treat. She is also very clever and has a very good memory (which also has it's pitfalls).
The bad:
Suki is timid, doesn't like to be touched, and she barks a lot.
The ugly:
Suki bites, and hard. While in my care Suki has bit and drawn blood on 3 men, all attmpting to handle her in some way.

During the winter off-season I will be working on increasing Suki's drive for both agility and disc.

Our specific goals for disc are to get Suki to the point that she will go through out 90sec routine 2 times in one day with a 2 hour break in between. This is prep for competition, if she ever qualifies for the finals she will need to compete 2x in one day.

Our specific goal for agility is to make it fun. Currently Suki plods through the course and occasionally stops at a jump and walks under it if she feels it's to much of a bother to go over it. I'd like to transistion her from food to toys, but as of yet I've not been able to get her to work much for toys. The ideal end result would be Suki smiling and running through an entire 20 obstacle course.