Basics Skills for training any dog sports

Basics in dog training - building up a team

I have done dog training for about 14 years. I have trained in many different ways and found my way
to clicker training. During my journey I have learned that training techniques can help you to succeed in your goals but there are few fundamental skills that every dog team should learn before starting any sport training. Basic training is sometimes boring but gives you a rock solid base to built on. Basic skills I see important to learn in first year is socialization, calming down, impulse control, motivation and rewarding. All this basic work leads to a good solid relationship and gives basic tools to do anything the team wants.

Socialization

First thing the puppy must learn is to be with its new family. This time should be peaceful time and time to relax from the stress that comes from separating from the mother and the siblings. Little by little the puppy can explore the outside and see new things but safely. It is important to observe the puppies character and see how much new things it can handle. This is time to teach the puppy recalls and walking on leash. Puppy should also meet safe adult dogs and other puppies of same age and size. Also taking the puppy to new environment is important so it learns different surfaces, smells, sound, traffic, meeting different dressed (man wearing a hat, big coat etc.) and moving people (wheelchair, babies, old) etc. All this need to be done in the puppies terms. Shyer puppy might handle few short visits to new places per weeks and more bold puppy can visit new places more often. You just need to watch your puppies reactions and how recovers from the stress. 

Calming down

Calming down is skill that can be the hardest teach at first but pays off in a long run. It means that you teach your dog a routine that leads to calm lying down. First you train this at home. First time might take 15-30 min if you have already a older puppy. Make sure you have something calm to do like watching a TV show. You can use a mat as spot to lying down so that you can take it with anywhere and it can be save spot for the dog in the future. You can have collar or harness to help the keep the dog close to you and then you start making long strokes from head to the end of hind leg. Remember you need calm down too. In this exercise you don't need treat the dog. Dog just need to learn calm down. At first time exercise end when the dogs has calmed down in lying down position. Dog will start calming down faster and faster as practice this routine. Then you can go and try this same routine in new more busier place. This can lead to longer calming down time but more work on it more faster it gets and the dogs learn to take it relax stage in anywhere. In longer run this helps reduce stress in new places and competition trips.

Motivation and rewards

Motivation can be from internal like hunger, thirst and reproductive needs or it could from outside smell, social interaction, car ( takes to forest run), ball (change for game). Every behavior have some kind of motivational drive. Every time you train and your dog does something out of the ordinary you should think what motivated to do it. Finding our the motivation to each behavior can be the key to solve it or route to find away to train for your liking. Behavior has always reason why it happens. Dogs don't have ability to be nasty or try to trick us. We just have see what motivates them to do it differently or have we have our training lead to the seen outcome.

In training we need different things to make the dog work for us. Usually we use rewards like toys, treat, social reward or environmental rewards ( like permission to play with other dogs). The most important thing is that THE DOG get choose what is rewarding and what is not. Playing can mean a lot things to different dogs. One might want to chase something or chew the toy or just do the tugging. In the end its the dog choice and as handler it is our job to find out which things our dogs like. Some dogs like treat but you give them in many ways to make it more interesting: like chasing treat hand, tossed treat, treat ball etc. You can also built up value to toys or treats with using the preferable reward to enhance to the other. Treating games can be built but always watch how you dog reacts and does it really feel that reward is rewarding. Some dog might like tugging but other might feel most rewarded when they can run around with toy in their mouth.

It is important to find things that your dog thinks is valuable. This gives you motivation tool to teach the dog to things you like. Different situations might need different rewards. At home your dog might work for a kibble and in the busy dog training arena you might need treat likes chicken heart to get as good as motivation to work with you. More games you teach more tools you have in the future. I try to teach my dog to play with anything from piece of grass to fallen leaf in the autumn. I want the any surroundings to be a change to play with me.

Impulse Control  

Impulse control is one the most important skills when it comes to dogs sports. The dog need to learn to give up from distractions and give the attention to the handler. Basic exercise is given up the treat. This is one the first trick I teach puppies when they been at the house for awhile. First you have treat in your hand and when the dog tries to get it you close hand as soon as the dog moves away from the treat hand you treat the dog with your other hand. This trick advances to a stage where the dog takes an eye contact to get the treat. Later on you can play with the open treat hand near the dog and it needs keep the eye contact to you. This is same thing you can do with food bowl. Dog need to sit and give eye contact before it gets cue to get the food. This kind of work helps the dog to built up self control.

Next game can be done with a toy. If dog tugs well, you can do impulse control game. You start with playing with the dog and then you stop playing and freeze your hands. At this point you wait that dogs lets go of the toy and takes default position. Then you move the toy a bit and if the dog hold its ground you give it release cue to start tugging again. First time you do can release the dog to play as soon as it gives up toy and then increase the distraction. Before you do this it good have done tugging games so that you dogs feel confident and has good drive to play with you. Remember to let the dog win the toy a lot to built up a strong playing mode with you. Some manuals say not let the dog win but that isn't right. Winning helps the dog built confidence and playing drive, also it gives the dog reason keep playing with you because it can win and feel awesome. Impulse control games are just part the game and gives playing some rules.

Here is video of Freya doing some impulse control play:




That my thoughts for today!!!

MPF


  

Planning the training year

Training year

I have read a lot about how to build up your training season. You need to have training, competition and rest period during your year program. In sports training people spend lots of time to build up their training year so that they could be at their best in the most important competitions. This is also something we need think with dogs. Especially in agility dog to high performance work that ask a lot from their whole body. As dog trainers we should also build up training and rest routine for our dogs. Did you know that you could roughly say that 1 year old dog needs at least one day to recover and 5 year old dog 5 days to recover from hard competition day? To me this was a little surprise how fast the recovery time rises. This would actually mean I could safely push Pixies limits only once a week and other times keep the training and competition work to minimal. With her it is pretty easy because she knows her stuff.

For whole year I make rough plan how I keep my training and rest periods. My plans evolve with how my dogs are doing and how I my own training is going. I usually keep a longer brake during Christmas time. At least 3 weeks without training. This is a recovery time for all of us. Other bigger brake is kept after tryout season. Then we usually keep at least 2-3 week brake enjoy the summer. I think, it’s important watch your dogs’ behavior and condition to make fast changes to your plan if needed. I have only seen improvement after our brakes. Learning goes forward and movement also becomes better.

During training season we work with three different areas. Body balance, muscle work and of course specific sport training. I think it is important to build up your dogs’ body as good as possible. Going to walks and run is part of it but one important piece is core work. More stable the body less injuries you get. We do core work three times a week with balance pillow, different platform and trick. At the same practice I also do stretching exercises. This helps to keep the body working smoothly. Usually training session last about 5-10 min. I have also thought my dogs to stretch with cue and I always praise long stretching. Muscle work includes hill work and also lactic acid training during walks just build up my dogs’ durance. I do lactic acid training only if I’m not doing hard agility training because agility is always anaerobic training because its high speed. Little things can sometimes make difference. Listen to your dog. Help it become balanced in body and in mind.

For everyday work

In everyday training it important to remember warm up work and cooling walks. Warm up are as important to us as it is to dog. You can try to run full speed 100 m run or do 20-40 tendon jumps without warming up. Next day you can feel how the dog feels if you do agility training without warming up. Cooling down is as important because it help body recover from anaerobic training with causes lactic acid to build up in muscles. Lactic acid is one the reasons our muscles get stiff and painful. I do usually warming up walks that last about 30 minutes and rise speed and stamina all the way of the warming up routine. Cooling down routine I do in two steps. 20-30 minute walk right after agility run /competition and second round two hours after when I do trot run about 45-60 minutes. With these routines I hope give my dogs the best treatment to keep them in good shape. Of course these routines make my body recover too.

Agility hype

We had a nice competition last weekend. First course we took one bar, even though we had a change to do it again. Other it felt very easy and smooth ride. On the second course I handled Pixie to a wrong tunnel so no stories from there. Last we had a jumping course. It was very fast and straight lined. We might have our most perfect run. Pixie worked like a charm. I waited on the right spots and Pixie turned really tight. The reward was a winning run (1./69!!!!!!). I really felt like million dollars! Here are some photos taken by Jukka Pätynen (Koirakuvat)

Freya has also done agility and she getting better and better. Sometimes she still little unsure but when she get the point she goes with will speed. In running dog-walk she just discovered jumping from high over the contact zone. So we have had little conversation about that but after a few tries without reward she started to get the point- it better run all the way down. :D Here is some video of our and also some work with Louise.

OB

Freya had her first group training in ob. She did really good even though we had problems with her social behavior. She just wanted to meet everybody so I had to reward her a lot to keep her focus on me even though she went by another dog team. She did really nice training with "box" and Freya is starting find the right spot. Soon she can start doing the box from longer distance. She also did some nice heal work and recall training. Laying down is still a little hard task for her. Why should anyone be 2 min in one place?? There we have a big job to make it reliable. This time she was also heard two different gun shots and she was fine with them so at this point I could say she ok with shooting.

Pixie also did some working dog trial ob. Sending forward started to work but she still turn only side ways and not straight back to me when she goes down. I have used to toys, one in the end, one as a reward from turning. I guess I just have to do little bit more to make her turn back at me on a straight line.

Her retrieve has been successfully change to coming back in front of me. Also recall has been changed so that she come first in front of me. I have just used clicker to make this new place a super place. I have train everything ready in my living room and after this I have use these new cues in open field training. This change have been pretty easy but I know that old things might come up when she gets little unsure. So more work in different places and situations should do the trick.

Living room ob and search work at fake ruins

I got a autumn flu last week. So I needed get dogs some activity without wearing me out. So we got a change go to fake ruins to train search. This was Freyas 2nd time at this place. She had two persons that in the hiding at the first round. First person was pretty easy. She was hidden in a concrete tunnel. Freya needed to enter it from a little hatch. She did just brilliant.

Second person was hidden in a wooden maze on a open field. First she got a scent but couldn't find a right pile. When she located the right pile she needed to find right route to target person. It took a while but didn't give up and found a way in from the roof the maze. Freya has really got a talent to searching. I have really started warm up to a idea that this would be one our sports. She loves to run and find people.

After this training I really got sick and I needed to do even more quiet training. So it was time to enter our living room to a special carpet training. Big pile of treats and clicker only thing you need to make dogs days super as ever. My plan was to teach some basic stuff. I ended up training more one thing together.

Freya trained her sit, down and stay while healing. I can only say that she was super good. I got finally stop fast and accurate. I did this with turning strait back at her few times and after that she got the idea. I did find out that she got little depend on the hand movement so needed also train healing while my arm was moving in different directions. But in the end we got it all together. Now I just have take this all to different places and make it work as well it did at home.



Second thing Freya work on was backing up a figure 8 between my legs. It took only one little finger target help to make her go backwards and rest just went like a charm. Circle round my right leg was much easier than the circle round my left leg. We are now at a point that she can make the whole figure 8 with few rewards. It will take just a little bit more training and we will have it. I o'boy she does it fast!! :D

Third thing we worked on was object retrieve. I used gloves, phone cover and wooden stick. I wanted Freya to learn to return any item I wanted. This is one part for SAR work where she need to find object left by humans and bring them to me from marked area. She has done already research part but our retrieve hasn't been good enough that Freya would return the items to me straight away.

Pixie worked on a working dog trial recall and retrieve. The difference from ob is that she need to come in front of first before she goes to healing position. This actually worked really well. I did first just position in front of me and then I did recall from few meters. Retrieve training I started from the front position and gave her the dumbbell and moved few cm just to make come to me again. After few of these session I did the whole retrieve chain and to my surprise Pixie just did it right!! Smart girl!! Now we just need to take it to bigger scale and get few more session. I think that will it.

So even when you can do lots of things in your living room. Even if you train for competition level work.

That's for now!!!

MLPF