January 28, 2018
Next weekend is the first trials of the year for Ribbon and I. In the first trial of the day I entered Open 18, the new Open class that includes the Change of Positions exercise and the Sit Stay Walk Around Dog and in the second trial I hedged my bets and by entering the regular Open class. I am also entered in Utility in all trials. I did this because I am planning to campaign Ribbon this year and we have encountered some difficulties in teaching the Change of Position exercises. So while I want to support the new Open class, which I really do like, I also realize that we may not be ready to pass this class yet. I want to give myself a chance at earning some points out of open and hopefully a shot at a GMOTCH leg. But after this afternoon’s training session I am feeling really optimistic.
Ribbon is almost 9 years old (I can’t believe it!) the Change of Positions exercise has proved problematic for us. This is for 2 reasons
- I have never taught her, or any other dog I’ve training to stand from a down. I’ve never needed that skill so it wasn’t on my radar. So to introduce this skill at this point in our training has been interesting.
- When Ribbon was a puppy I was teaching her to do a kick back stand and for fun around the house I was shaping her to back up. Well guess what…she put the two skills together! So when she would do a kick back stand she would back up a step or two. As her understanding of heel position grew she would only step back with one foot. So this was never a problem, in fact I appreciated this on a number of occasions because Ribbon would not forge on her stands in utility. However, it became a problem when I started training Change of Positions. Ribbon began to back up several steps when I asked for a stand. It got to the point that she was backing up about 4 feet. So while most people had a problem with the dog creeping forward I had the opposite problem. Furthermore because Ribbon thought I wanted her to back up, she wasn’t learning to stand, so we were having very little success.
- I decided that I wasn’t going to use a hand signal for the stand. I tried it for a while and it caused her to move forward. I have never had creeping problems with Ribbon, so I decided not to mess with it. She could learn to do this on a verbal only. I decided to use two short words “Stand up”. I also found out pretty quickly that she did better if I used a different tone of voice.
I had to come up with a plan. I was 7 weeks away from trying this exercise in a trial and I had no hope of passing this exercise and more importantly my dog was quite confused. I decided to use a platform. I have never used one before, but decided it would help us eliminate our back up problem. It absolutely did that! In one or two sessions the back up was gone. When I asked for a stand and she moved backwards as soon as she stepped off of the platform I said “no”. In all honestly that was all it took.
So now I still needed to teach her to stand from a down. I decided that I wanted to Ribbon to go directly from a down position into a stand, she wanted to quickly sit and kick up into a stand. I stuck with it for a week or so. Then Ribbon and I had a meeting while sitting together on the couch watching tv. We came to an agreement I agreed to stop being so anal and she agreed to try hard to learn this new exercise. This agreement served to be a turning point, we have made steady progress since then.
I would say we are getting consistent stands from a down about 75% of the time. We have been building on the various steps for all of the positions (sit, stand and down).
- holding the position for a few seconds
- building distance
- returning to heel position while she holds the same position (also without feed back)
- person standing behind
- off the platform
All of this is going really well. We are having lots of fun with it. Today we had the most success so far. I worked on position changes at the end of our training session. We trained both Utility and Open. We had been working for over an hour. This was a test of her focus. She did fantastic. I did routine B which is Stand —-Down, Sit, Stand. I went to the full distance and she responded quickly with a wagging tail and relaxed expression on her face. I couldn’t be more pleased. I also did it off the platform – no problem! I have included a video of one of our repetitions of routine B below.
I am so excited for next weekend. I promise to let you know how it goes
Update: Jan 30 , 2018
On Monday I decided to do two full training sessions with Ribbon. The first one was a full training session similar to what I had done on Sunday. I did the Change of Positions exercise at about the half way point of the session. AND…I got a stand for everything!!! Didn’t matter if it was a sit signal, down signal or any other combination – her response was to stand first and ask questions later.l. I clearly had build a tonne of value to standing. So that is the good news!!
When she was making her mistakes I told her in a monotone voice “Nope that is not it – Try again” I walked towards her and reset the exercise. She responded very nicely to this making few and fewer mistakes. I also rewarded with the same high value food for all three positions. I ended the session a good note and let it at that. I am pleased because I know anticipation is a sign of learning and understanding, so I knew where still making progress.
The second training session was during an OTCHX class, my good friend Susie Bell taught the class so I got to participate, which is rare for Ribbon and I to be in a class. It is so great to be able to work around 6 other dogs, doing go-outs, jumping, articles and gloves, Ribbon finds all of this very stimulating. When it came time to work on Change of Positions we were very inconsistent in response to many of the commands. But we worked through the problems and ended on lots of success. This was such great information for me heading into the trials. I am still feeling optimistic about how it will go on the weekend. I have one more at home training session on Thursday and then a match in the trial environment on Friday night. Ribbon has trialled there many time, so I am not expecting the environment to be much of a factor.
Wish us luck!
Happy Training