Train 'Em Tutorials - AKC Rally Obedience Signs #7 and #8

The next installment of the Train 'Em Tasks Tutorials are the #7 and #8 signs in AKC Rally Novice. These two signs are the straight forward about turns - one to the right and the other to the left. I do talk about some troubleshooting where people can run into issues with the Left About Turn, like if your dog sits or has problems moving to the left because they don't have good rear end awareness.

Sign #7: About Right Turn - While heeling, the team makes a 180° about turn to the handler’s right. 

Sign #8: About "U" Turn - While heeling, the team makes a 180° turn to the handler’s left.

Train 'Em Tasks Shop updates to make life easier for all...

Okay....I am laughing so hard at myself. For 3 months, I have been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to do drop down menus in the shop so finding stuff for you guys is easier. I just could not figure it out.

This morning? By sheer accident...discovered how drop down menus work. ROFLMAO!!!! So, now there's no more digging around the site to find what you're looking for!

And...I'm branching out into something fun: Train 'Em Gear you can wear!!! This will end up leap frogging into something else I have kicking around in my head that will come later this year.

Anyway, please come and check out the WAAAAAAYYYYYY easier to navigate website.
www.trainemtasks.com

From the Agility Obstacle Task Pack - A-frame!

The agility grab bag gods knew exactly what we need last Friday morning, right before our last agility trial for July. Ocean's a-frame contact behavior goes between 2 on and 2 off at home and at class to running at shows. Sometimes that running ends up being striding just above that much needed yellow zone. So I sat with this card for a couple of hours and thought about what my plan of attack would be.

I ended up opting for this little course out of Clean Run's Exercise Sourcebook Volume 1. I swapped out the tunnel for my a-frame and kept the teeter as bonus contact training. I ran the black circles for our session. Since we would be showing for two days right after this session, I also swapped out the jumps for my hoops and jumps with no bars. For two trials in a row, I had jumped Ocean for three days straight...I wanted to give him and his body a little bit of a break from that. I really like working handling at home with those hoops because it's essentially working flat work with an obstacle.

 

This video is of our entire training session and it's nine minutes long. But, at least you can see how the hoops work and I wanted a visual for anyone who might want to use the impulse control exercise I worked with O at the bottom of the a-frame.  In class last Wednesday, we worked on getting O to hold his 2 on, 2 off and not self-release to something very high value (a tug toy.) For him, running agility is very self rewarding and his "running contact" is him quickly self-releasing from the a-frame. I used this same exercise here at home...and will continue to when we have an A-frame in practice. The exercise itself is pretty simple. I place the tug toy on the ground about 4 to 5 feet away from the bottom of the a-frame. If you're training with a friend, you can have them place the high value reward for you. The high value reward can be anything your dog loves...it could be really yummy food/treats or their favorite toy. Tugs and balls are much more valuable to Ocean than food is. When Ocean runs to the bottom of the a-frame and holds his 2 on, 2 off....I release him to the toy and we play as his reward. The first attempt he does self-release and grabs the tug which is what he shouldn't do. But he figured it out the next and following attempts. Another thing I like to do which you will see closer to the end of the video is to play tug with Ocean while he is in the correct position on the a-frame. I'm more or less rewarding for position like how you would feed your dog a treat in the correct a-frame criteria position. This idea would work for any pieces of the contact equipment and the table. If the dog moves out of position off the equipment....the play stops. If the dog moves back into position...play more. If your dog is very tug play motivated, they will really enjoy this sort of game and reward.

Welcome to Excellent Agility Ocean!! New Open FAST title

Yes!! I am so happy to announce...I FINALLY HAVE AN AKC EXCELLENT AGILITY DOG!!!!! Little Mr. Ocean earned his Open FAST title Saturday!! Ocean is my first AKC Excellent dog despite me playing in agility for a bunch of years now. Lars has always been very challenging in agility....so the Kidd-O at the age of 3 got farther than his genius brother ever did in AKC agility.

Going back to my earlier post this week about spiritual gangstering...I can't tell you how much of mind game it was to me that I struggled and struggled to get a dog to Excellent levels in AKC. I was convinced that I was that limited of a handler that AXP's and MXP's were something that would always just be out of my reach. I didn't step back and say, my dog's (meaning Lars)  strength wasn't agility. It wasn't me as a handler...I had challenges facing me that even most very experience handlers would have struggled with. My work on my inner self has allowed me to step back and get some clarity that it would come. That my dog (meaning Ocean) and I were getting a little bit better each time we stepped into an agility ring. And...it did finally come when I let go and just enjoyed the journey with Ocean. How about that shiznit??

I have some video of some of the awesome NQ's we had the rest of the weekend. This Open JWW had two bars down in the closing line. And the Open Standard here was an NQ because Ocean leapt just over the yellow on the dogwalk. I crowded him on the weave pole entrance. But....this was identical to the Ex/Masters Standard run. It was only missing two jumps at the very end. :)

Train 'Em Tutorials - AKC Rally Obedience signs #5 and #6

Even though I hadn't been blogging regularly, I had been doing the Train 'Em Tasks Tutorials for rally off and on. This video features signs 5 and 6 which are the left and right turns. Like with the other videos, I have the sign graphic and exercise description featured at the end of the video in case you're one of those types of people who need to see a how to in words too. Enjoy!!

Spiritual gangsters and dog training

So, I will fully admit, the Tasks blog has been put on the back burner this spring while developing new products and working on a myriad of other things with the boys and even on myself.

That is where the title of today's blog post comes from...the hard work I have been doing on the inside. Long story short, I started to see a mental health professional almost a year ago now because there was a lot in my life that wasn't working for me. At the time, I thought it was burnout from my former day job with an undercurrent of depression. It infiltrated everything...work, personal life, and even the journey I walked with the boys. It wasn't until about 4 - 5 months into the sessions that we had a big break through...I wasn't burned out or clinically depressed. I was Codependent. What that means in a nutshell, I learned a lot of self defeating mental survival skills as a kid growing up in a dysfunctional household that I carried into and cling to as an adult. To quote Codependent No More, the book that has more or less redefined my life - "Codependency involves a habitual system of thinking, feeling, and behaving towards ourselves and others that cause us pain. These habits are self destructive." Codependent people worry about, obsess over, and try to control other people and events that are not our business to worry about, obsess over, and try to control. We enmesh ourselves in external things and people and detach from ourselves. Codependent people also have low self worth. We don't feel good about ourselves and we don't like ourselves very much. We tie our self worth to accomplishments and external things/events.

That has been my operating system for 40 or so years and removing that virus from my operating system is going to take some time. It's been slow going and I have had moments where its easier for me to fall back on familiar, old habits. But, it is getting better every day and I am putting one foot in front of the other on the path of codependency recovery. I'm working hard on detaching from everything that isn't my direct responsibility. The only thing I'm responsible for is me (isn't that a radical thought!) I'm working very hard on placing my own needs first and practicing self care (physically and emotionally.) I'm working very hard on developing the idea that what other people think of me is really none of my business. I'm letting go of all things that I can't control (which is everything but my own actions, feelings, and thoughts.) I'm becoming a spiritual gangster.

 

So....what does all of  have to do with dog training?? Actually, quite a bit. I know that I was taking dog training and the end goal of getting titles way too seriously for my own good. I see a lot of people who are in dog sports who also take dog training and getting those scores/titles way too seriously for their own good too. A dear friend of mine asked why I was driven by the need to be perfect...why was I so scared to fail or even make small mistakes? I would get defensive with instructors or friends who were trying to give me constructive criticism. They were trying to help me...but I took their input as attacks against my fragile self image. I couldn't process what they were trying to tell me in a healthy way. I couldn't process much of the world in a healthy way.

 With my new self awareness in place, I started to question why that was with me and speculated why that was with others too. I was basing my self worth on getting a Q or a title, or a great score. I worried way too much about what others thought about me as a person if I didn't Q, get that title, or that great score. Last year, agility caused me an incredible amount of angst because I could not Q with Ocean at 24" to save my life. Towards the end of the summer, I broke down at a trial and sobbed to friends saying "Why is this so hard?" My self worth took a huge tumble...I couldn't get my dog out of novice and I had been listening to advice from people. I wasn't listening to my own voice because of that poor self worth...I had detached from my own wisdom. It wasn't long after that agility break down that I moved Ocean back down to 20" to where he should have been. Wouldn't you know it, we're back to getting those Q's on a regular basis.

My new favorite dog sport shirt!!

Over these past couple of months with this new self awareness, I've learned where we are in our own head-space massively impacts training and working our dogs. We hear so much about the psychology side of sports and I don't think the obedience world has really looked at how that can impact their performance. The agility world's more competitive teams are aware of the mental game....but does the average agility team struggle with it? I surely didn't think that my everyday undercurrent of mental crap impacted how I trained or showed. But it did...and did a lot. I wasn't ready until now to really come out and talk about this recovery I'm working on. Now that I am ready, I'm probably going to write about it as it pertains to dog training.

If you see yourself in anything I wrote above, you're not alone. Codependency is a common issue for people who have lived/grew up with family dysfunction, alcoholism, mental illness, or abuse. Codependent No More by Melody Beattie is a life changing and validating book. I highly recommend it to anyone who knows or thinks codependency is part of their life.