In this day and age of agility most all training articles, seminars, workshops etc, talk about which reward to use, treats, toys, or tugging.  Some trainers voice that you should only use treats, or you should only use toys; and some trainers advocate using both treats and toys depending on what exercise you are working on.

I personally use both treats and toys in my training. I change what i use depending on the dog, the exercise and what i am looking to get out of the exercise.

The one thing i am seeing most every where in the country though is the dependency on some kind of reward, whether it is treats or toys. Most all trainers do not work without their various rewards, which is not a bad thing, dogs need to be rewarded during training.

But what i am seeing now are dogs who work for the reward and not the handler.  I do train with rewards, especially when first teaching an exercise. But i also know i can go work both of my dogs with no reward whatsoever and they will work just as hard and just as happy for me.

Nargles and I last year

I think something that has gotten lost over the years is dogs working with the handlers, that teamwork between dog and handler, and the reward being that connection.

I work with my dogs right from the beginning that i am the reward, that getting a pet and a good girl from me is just as good or even better then playing with their toy or getting a treat.

When i go out to train with my dogs i will take a few treats in my pocket and they get a treat when they do something really great, but for the rest of the session it is petting and "good girls".

I want my dog's main priority first and foremost is that we play this game together as a team and not for a treat or a toy.

I use a lot of my TEAM training and ground work exercise to build that teamwork mentality between myself and my dog, i will use a lot of treats or toys when we are first learning an exercise and then i will gradually start using less and less (giving treats when she does something awesome) and petting for everything else.

I have found that not only does this increase the bond and teamwork between myself and my dog, but i also have greater freedom during my training sessions. I never worry about which toy i need to bring out or if i have a high enough value treat. Nor do i worry about having to bring higher value treats or different toys, because the dog has gotten bored of the current reward.

Agility is a team sport, and the dogs have to want to do it because of you the handler, and not a toy or treat to make that team run smoothly.

About ten years ago or so I decided that I wanted to practice canine massage along with some natural health stuff like herbal therapy and nutrition stuff. For the next 5 years i studied extremely hard, enrolling in multiple classes, both online and on-site. At one point i was enrolled in a massage class, herbal therapy class, homeobotanical class and a nutrition class. And i LOVED it! I love to study and learn new things, i love trying to figure out what combo of herbs/supplements/bodywork would help a dog. In the past 5 years, I slowed down my studying, I finished up all my herbal studies and homeobotanical studies and finished my canine massage classes.

2011 NADAC Championships

I still enrolled in various classes here and there, some nutrition stuff, reflexology stuff, things like that. In the past two years i really focused on canine nutrition, reading every book i could get my hands on, joining various lists and signing up for consults from other canine nutritionists.

I will let you into a little secret about my personality, I am a bit of a perfectionist, I don't want to offer advice to anyone until i know everything there is to know about the subject.

I always felt very comfortable with my bodywork studies, started offering massages after i finished my massage intro program, but even though I almost love my herbology/nutrition stuff more, I always kept pushing myself with it, never wanting to really offer it until i did this course, and then this one and then...... it was never ending, I wanted to be perfect at it before and know every little thing about it before i would start putting my name out there.

Which in the world of herbs/supplements/nutrition that is pretty dang impossible! There is always something new to learn, a new way of applying something.

I wouldn't feed my dogs homecooked meals because i wasn't 110% sure of every little thing i needed to do, I barely mixed my own herbal formulas or made my own tinctures because I needed to know everything about it before I took that step.

Enough though i mixed countless tincture for my classes, made enough different formulas to make my head spin, wild crafted my own herbs and formulated various diets all for school, ( i graduated with honors from all my herbal courses; my teacher loved my formulas and praised me as natural)  but before i took that step of offering it to the world i wanted to make sure i had every tiny little thing down.

But with the help of some very good friends who have really boosted my confidence in myself and made me realize, "hey i do know this!" I have started offering my herbal formulas, I am making my own dog food and offering some advice to others about nutrition and finally getting my name out there for something that i truly love with all my soul doing.

In order to learn everything, you have to do it. You can read and study till the cows come home, but putting it into practice is where the education happens.

People who know me, also know that i LOVE moving waits! Both my dogs Nargles and Try are taught moving waits right at the beginning of their agility career. I use them almost all the time, training and trialing both.

A moving wait is great for building confidence in dogs as well as working on impulse control for dogs who need that as well.

I play the wait game with both Nargles and Try all the time, when i first started it i train them alone first and then start working them together.

Before i start playing this game with them i want to make sure they both fully understand what "wait" means.

You will also see in the clip that i release both of the dogs with their names, i do this so that i don't end up with both the dogs releasing when i say "Okay".  They know to go get the toy when they hear their name.

I started teaching a moving wait to both Nargles and Try when they were puppies, along with the other TEAM training games, it started teaching them confidence skills as well as impulse control.

Currently in the works at Fluid Motion Agility is a mini series covering how i teach the moving wait, the mini series will be available to everyone through the Fluid Motion Youtube channel.

In the meantime i have uploaded a clip talking about a game that i use in my TEAM Training program and is also one of the ways i use my moving wait to teach impulse control.

Try 2011

The NADAC Championships are over, I just finished my last seminar and judging assignment for the year, its official,  Winter Break has started! :-D

Nargles and Try Winter 2010

Each year after champs i usually have one or two miscellaneous judging assignments or a seminar and then my calendar is pretty much empty until around March or April. I may have a stray trial in Jan if the snow isn't to deep, but i am pretty much all done for a solid 4 months.  And I love it!

Champs this year was amazing, Try was so awesome and blew me away with some of the things she did. One of them being she never missed one set of weave poles all week long. And that is something i have been struggling with her over, so that alone was so amazing i can't even put it into words.  One of the runs (i can't remember what day, its all a blur lol) there were three sets of 6 poles and one set of 12, and the set of 12 had her weaving toward me which she truly hates doing.  And she did all of them.... I was so happy my mind just went to mush for the rest of the run, i was ready to go home right then and there, that for us was awesome and i will never forget it.


About a week before i left for champs i took Try and Nargles into the vet for a routine blood work and check up, during that my vet found a murmur, so we did some x-rays and her heart looks slightly enlarged and some fluid buildup. My vet thought it was mild and she would have no problem competing at champs, when i returned home i would need to take her in for an echo and various tests to really see everything that is going on.

I pretty much lost it, i was freaked out the whole drive there wondering if she would really be okay, should i run, shouldn't I.... it was a long drive....

In the end after much thought and talking with my boyfriend we decided to watch her carefully and if she even so much as looked slightly funny i would pull her.

The first run of the first day of champs was an absolute disaster, i spent much of the run staring at her to see if she was running or breathing funny, which in turn made her stare at me with this " what the hell are you doing look?", so we pretty much took a header that whole first run.

After that, i swear she knew i wasn't "all there" and she covered for me, she truly became my rock, she was calm and just seemed to take charge with this look of "don't worry, i got this".

Try

In the end she placed 2nd Overall in Superstakes, Highest Number of Bonus Points in Superstakes and at the Pre-trial on Tuesday she finished her MOD SQUAD.  An amazing week, and i couldn't ask for more from her, she is so much more then a teammate, she is my best friend.

Nargles also got to play in champs, one of the teams needed a replacement dog, so she got to fill in. Needless to say Nargles had a great time! Nargles has a great time no matter what she is doing, she is the definition of happy. lol

So begins my winter break, and like i said; i love it.  I get a chance to just relax, play World of Warcraft and hang out. My dogs also get time to just be dogs, they get to be lazy and hang out. We still go out for walks and throw toys but training wise they are off until at least mid January 

Does it set me back a bit and i will have to "tune them up" before trial season?  Yep, it does, but i think they need the break, not only physically but mentally as well.

Physically, they need to let their muscles, tendons and ligaments rest. Mentally they need to just be dogs, to just get treats without having to work for them and let their little brains get a break.

Honestly i do the same thing before champs as well, generally the champs are held mid to late September and the last trial i do is Labor Day at the first of September. Then i just let them sit for those 1-2 weeks, it lets their brains re-group, lets their bodies have a rest and honestly my dogs fire so much harder and they are so much more "on" when i let them have a break before a big competition. And in all honestly if there is some bug or something that i haven't fixed 1-2 weeks before champs, it isn't going to get fixed last minute, so i let them have a break.

Try ran so hard and so on this year at champs and because the champs were in Oct she had a solid 3 weeks off before she went to champs. And she fired and ran better this year then she ever has and i really give credit to that time off.

So from now until around the end of January when i start doing a little training, they get to just hang out, eat treats, get a little soft around the middle and be dogs.

Nargles and Try in Springfield, IL NADAC Championships 2011 Photo taken by Pris Warnock

Mardi

Over this past weekend i had a bit of an realization, somewhere along the line during this past year i stopped being fun. 


For most all of my agility career i always had fun at trials, i joked, laughed (always quite loudly) an agility trial was my weekend of BS'ing with all my friends and hanging out.
 But i realized over the weekend (more like it hit me like a brick)  that i have become so focused on each and every run, each and every Q, that i stopped being fun.
 I walk every course trying to pick out every tiny little thing that could go wrong and  how will i handle each little sequence.
 I have always just walked courses and let my gut tell me where i should be and how i should handle it. But now i seem to analyze everything and break it down into tiny parts.
 Its not me, just so not me.


Alot of things happened over this past year and i think i got so caught up in all my goals that i lost sight of what really matters, my dogs. My Dad told me once about Chance  "She runs her heart out for you and thats all that matters"   and i know he would say the same about Try and now Nargles..... 


So my goal for the remainder of this year is to not give a S*** .  (i should make that into a shirt....lol) 
My goal is to run my dog, and what happens, happens. Nothing more, nothing less. 


 And i know that Try and Nargles will thank me for it. 


So get out your earplugs world, me and my loud laugh are making a comeback!!!! 

For the past few days I have been starting Nargles on her weave poles,  i had trained Try using sets of four poles with wires on them, so that is how i started with Nargles.  As i was watching my video clips of her weaving i wasn't liking the way she kept following the panels instead of focusing on the poles, as i started to move the wires away i found she was getting frustrated and confused because she was more focused on the wires then the poles themselves.

So i spent the day staring at my set of weave poles,  willing them to tell me what i should be doing with them.  I love clicker work and love watching the dogs learn so i decided i want to free shape Nargles through the poles.  I started her with just two poles and at this stage she is just running through two poles. As i progress i will bring in another two poles, what i am planning on doing will be a variation of Susan Garrett's 2x2 method with my own spin that will work for my dogs.

I think i will also run Try through the steps with Nargles as well,  she already has pretty decent poles but it never hurts for an older dog to run through the basics and have some fun. (and lots of treats!)

So after i finally made up my mind (which can be quite an event...)  i thought to myself  "is it okay to change your mind?"   It seemed really hard for me to change mid stream so to speak, like it was against some unspoken rule.  But i knew deep down that using the wires with Nargles was not going to work like i wanted it to, that doesn't make the wires a bad training tool, just not the right one for her.
So even though i changed pretty early for her, she had only done the weave poles with the wires perhaps 3 times, what if it had been more? What if i had done it for months? Would it still be okay to change?  Yes. absolutely, whole heartedly, beyond a shadow of a doubt. YES.
 I see many dogs who struggle with a training method or a certain performance on equipment (like contacts)  that would love to have their owners change mid stream. Not all training methods work for all dogs, and not the exact steps to a training method works for every dog.  modify it, change it and make it yours, make it work for you and your dog as a team.

So i am off to do some more free shaping with Nargles and my mind now knows after many hours of talking to itself, it really is okay to change.

Amanda