Myst's Puppy Jump Foundation

Most dogs can jump so why do we need to teach jumping? Agility handlers spend much time training contact performance and weave pole entries yet is the same attention paid to jumping skills?

The agility dog today is asked to do more and more complex jumping involving extension, collection, tight turns, running forward with confidence and then collecting to a wrap around a jump, or running behind a jump. Slow motion video shows the impact that such jumping puts on the dogs when they are asked to run fast and then collect to a tight turn. Many dogs do this, but how many can jump correctly using good mechanical skills, maintaining jumping confidence and perhaps most importantly not getting injured. Far too many agility dogs today are injured jumping due to poor preparation of the tasks we ask them to do.

Having come from the sport of three-day eventing with horses, I value the work of Susan Salo. Susan has created a jumping program for puppies and dogs based on methods used for many years by top horseman and woman more specifically Gene Lewis who had horses on Olympic teams from five different countries. Lewis taught horses the mechanics of jumping without being encumbered by a rider. 

Susan teaches the dog to jump without handler interference building the dog’s confidence  and understanding of how to jump correctly. Her puppy jump foundation teaches these young puppies to drive to a target and begin to understand how to read distances that are constantly changing.

A very important part of all puppy work and advocated by Susan is that the work be short and FUN. Most puppy work is done with jump bumps  or very low bars for a set point exercise until the dog is at least one year of age.

As part of Myst’s body awareness I introduced trotting through a ladder. The ladder is excellent for helping the puppy use their body effectively and become conscious of where they are placing each paw. Puppies should trot through the ladder with head down. Having a target with a treat is an excellent way to help them focus forward with their head down.

We moved from the ladder to low cavalettis. Then onto Susan Salo’s puppy jump foundation work as shown in this video beginning with ladder work at 5 months old and then progressing through Susan’s program for puppies. 

Myst is now 11 months old and we do puppy jump grids once or twice a week with jumps at 8 inches max. Occasionally we do a set point exercise from 8 – 12 inches.

We are also doing jump foundation work using a jump with no bars for wrapping (Silvia’s Trkman’s CIK&CAP), Susan Garrett’s one jump work and looking for the next jump. 

Future agility bad ass or future brat?

Gemini and Shannon in Malibu!

Gemini is now 4.5 months old and her teeth seem to be falling out of her head.  Already her permanent central incisors are coming in and she is a chewing machine.  Luckily the butcher at Safeway cut up some marrow bones  into IG size rings so she enjoys frozen bones and I enjoy preserving my fingers and my sunglasses.  Last weekend Gemini went with Twig and I to our first out of town agility  fun match.  As she isn't soft crate proof, I set her up in her little ruggedized varikennel.  She was a great girl inside the crate.  She hung out and slept like a seasoned trial veteran.  However, once outside the crate, she found all of the people, dogs and whirl of activity to be an amusement park made just for her.  She jumped and raced around eager to be part of it all.  It would seem that walking calmly on lead would be an impossibility in that environment.  So I settled for simple sits and downs a midst the chaos.

I'm finding that right now although I'm happy with our progress in training, I'm also a bit scared/worried now and then.  I feel that there's lots of holes.  Lots of stuff we should be doing.  Lots of stuff we haven't done.  Lots of stuff "everybody else" seems to have done by 4 months of age.  Shouldn't a 4 month old puppy be able to walk around an agility trial and behave?  Maybe, maybe not.  I certainly haven't taught her "how to behave."  In fact, I've purposely allowed her to be exuberant and curious.  I've encouraged her to be bold and even a bit brash.  My thinking is that in 2 years, when she is racing around the agility ring, nothing will frighten her and she'll be able to do teeters in a thunderstorm! Or maybe she'll just be unruly.

I've always admired Silvia Trkman and her dogs.  It's so obvious she and her dogs run with heart.  From time to time I turned to her website to look at videos and read her training advice all the while wishing I could shrink the world and take lessons with her... as it turns out, the internet has shrunk the world and long distance classes are a possibility.  Twig and I audited the running contacts class and I really loved it, so when the opportunity came up to enroll Gemini into her puppy class I jumped on it.  Class has been great.  So far we've done 3 lessons and are working on the 4th.  Its given me a bit of an unconventional road map for puppy training and it includes things I never would have thought of  -- for example teaching Gemini to slam a cupboard door shut so she learns that she can initiate movement just like slamming a teeter down!  And it's fun too:-)  Most of these things I've never trained at all let alone doing it with shaping.  We certainly have our struggles but it's been fun to work through them.  Lesson 4 has all sorts of challenges for us, and it has some super duper fun things.  One of the exercises involves naming those moments our puppies have where they run about with insane speed and joy.  Just imagine how great that would be to have that speed and intensity on tap whenever I used the magic word.  Now to think of what I'd like to call it...

Below are some videos of Gemini's class homework.
Lesson 1 part 1                                                                   
Lesson 1 part 2
Lesson 2
Working 4 in and play time
Lesson 3 part 1

Puppy Goals

When Myst came home I had three goals: (1) allow her to be a puppy for as long as possible; (2) to provide many opportunities for building JOY and FUN into our relationship with play, toys, and having many fun new adventures together; and(3) lots of socialization and introducing her to as many new experiences as possible.

Myst arrived in December which was a perfect month for socialization. We seemed to have many people coming to the house that month with visits, work on the house and the holidays. It is always challenging to find ways to socialize before the puppies have received all their shots. Myst loved to meet and play with everyone – men, children, and even the UPS man.

Since it was quite cool in December and we do not have a large enclosed yard much of her early play was indoors. It seemed that every evening she became this “wild child” filled with boundless energy. We did a lot of play in the utility and bedroom. Soon Myst became known as the “soccer girl”. She loved her soccer ball and created a fun game of push the ball under the bed and the scramble under to try to get it out. 

  

Quite early I found that it was time to teach some crate manners. I have found that Susan Garret’s CRATE GAMES are brilliant. I have used them for two of my other dogs and even my Puli has an amazing sit in front of sheep waiting to be released. Crate games teaches a multitude of skills in addition to enjoying going into the crate and waiting quietly to be released. Dogs learn self control; the sit before release is excellent foundation for a perfect start line and sit stays. Once the dog learns to sit and wait to be released, the crate provides a wonderful opportunity to practice recalls. Susan has blended many games for building awesome recalls,  control and passion into training. It is hard for me to not go on and on to tell all of the positives my dogs have learned from crate games since this is one of the easiest and most fun way to train young dogs.

 

SOME OF OUR EARLIEST TRAINING was building BALANCE AND BODY AWARENESS having FUN.

Myst - The Journey Begins

On Tuesday November 30, 2010 I started my journey to pick up my new Border Collie puppy in Canada from Carolyn and Bob Lewis owners of Cedar Border Collies. Carolyn choose my puppy for me from a litter of 5. When the time came to let me know which puppy she had selected she wrote, “She is a live wire! I love her attitude and I love her personality. She is such a toy driven girl, and is very coordinated and fast on her feet for her age!  She started tugging on my pant leg when she was only 3 weeks old. She is SO happy and outgoing.”

Carolyn does such a wonderful job working with her puppies  before we get them and matching her puppies with their new owners…AND Carolyn was so right…she has the most amazing personality and attitude. AND Myst has never stopped tugging.  She came enjoying people and children and seemed to understand that a three year old needed her to be quieter and softer than adults.  I LOVED this darling little girl from the day I met her at her home in Ontario. 

Our journey was quite an experience. I arrived in Buffalo, New York at 2:00 a.m. and awoke to a raging snow storm. After hiring a cab, I arrived one hour later at Carolyn's. We had a wonderful visit with the other puppy owners and got to meet all of the Cedar Border Collies. It was so wonderful to see Myst's parents, Cipher and Reckon running in their lovely huge field. After a wonderful 2 day visit, we started our 12 hour journey home. 

Myst fit right into our family. Our Puli Ziggy became her giant tug toy. Ziggy was so patient with the new puppy and soon they became best friends.

My Border Collie, Kaffee would not look at Myst and he seemed to project that he hoped that when he returned home from our hikes that this new puppy would have left. Today, now that Myst is older, they too are best friends. 

My dog training journey has now come to a very new junction… perhaps it was  my second Border Collie, Kaffee that helped me to get here initially with seeing how play and joy could be built into very successful training and that the old style of negative reinforcement was not necessary for success. Getting my new puppy from Carolyn has also helped convince me that I now am committed to my paradigm shift of positive training. AND perhaps most importantly, I signed up for Susan Garrett’s recallers course this spring when my puppy, Myst was 5 months old.

The recallers course was one of the best training and learning experiences I have had while training my dogs. This course was not just about doing recalls and having your dog come when called. It was so much more. It was about building GREAT reinforcement for behaviors that we want; becoming our dogs most favorite “cookie”; learning how to train effectively through creativity and positive training. And, building a wonderful and happy relationship with our dogs to have not only as  an awesome pet to live with but a wonderful team partner for dog sports.

I now understand that it is often easier to fall back on negative training methods than to take the time to think creatively of how to solve the new problems and challenges that our dogs constantly present us with. I have learned and am committed to Susan’s philosophy that the criteria for our training is JOY.

I am looking forward to sharing my continuing journey with my young puppy, MYST.

Meet MYST…

She is now 10 months old.. but we will share highlights with our journey over the last 7 months. 

Gemini -- the Beginning

I first laid eyes on Gemini on June 17th, 2011.  I remember coming around a kitchen corner to see an X-pen  restraining 5 bouncing Italian Greyhound puppies.  My heart sang, and I think every muscle in my body was involved in my smile.  As the owner of 2 IGs who came to me as adult rescues, I'd never actually seen 10 week old iggy puppies so I wasn't prepared for that level of cuteness and energy.  Boing, boing, boing they leapt at the pen...

Gemini and her crew!

I have to give Debbie, Gemini's breeder, tons of credit.  She was able to assimilate all the info I gave her in countless emails and multiple phone calls and choose a puppy that would fit my needs.  She knows her lines, and she knows her puppies.  From the moment I began playing with her, I knew she was the right dog for me.  Gemini is bold, independent (more about that later), and confident.  She overflows with play drive.  She's a "Go Big or Go Home" kind of girl.  I met her about 1pm and by 6pm we were headed to the airport.  Surprisingly, the 2.5 hour flight was uneventful and she slept the entire time.  It was only during the drive home, when she found herself all alone in a great big crate, that she began to protest her situation.  It was a looong  90 minute drive home.

As I pulled up into my driveway--18 hours after I'd left it in the early am--I knew the fun was about to begin.  For the first night I'd arranged for the other IGs to stay with a friend so that Gemini could meet Voltaire without added distractions.  All I can say is that Voltaire saw her and instantly adored her, and in that moment Gemini  found the ultimate big brother -- a 135 pound mantle Great Dane.  Thirty minutes later he was laying on the floor as she was zipping around, doing laps around his body and generally using him like a jungle gym.  One of my friends who saw a video of this encounter said it looks like the scene with King Kong and the helicopters!

Gemini sleeps tucked under Voltaire's leg.

My friend dropped Ariel (aka The Queen) and Twig off at my house by noon.  Much to my surprise, Ariel who is on the cusp of turning 17, didn't really give Gemini much of a hard time.  As a matter of fact, she was more accepting of Gemini than she was of Twig who was added to the pack not quite 3 years ago.  Twig and Gemini became fast friends and the Italian Greyhound version of Wrestlemania meets NASCAR began.