Impulse Control (and dock diving pictures)

I purchased some pictures from the photographer who was at the dock diving competition on Saturday, so I figured I should save them here for posterity. Saturday was the crummy day that rained most of the day, so I was happy to have any shots that turned out. I really love the shot of Jedi swimming with the bumper. The head-on shot of him launching off the dock is my next favorite. In addition to thinking pre-trial rest days (or "save your energy" days) are a load of crap, Jedi also doesn't believe in post-trial quiet days. Nope, he was totally raring to go yesterday. Sleeping is for suckers.

Tonight I opted for some impulse control games worked into our play time. I've introduced the idea of leaving a toy on the ground and asking Jedi to do something before he's released to it, but it's been a while since I've asked him to do this. In the few times I did give this a go it was a struggle for Jedi and we didn't get very far. I'm happy to say we made a lot of progress tonight! It wasn't instant success, that's for sure, but we worked our way through it and I think it really clicked for Jedi. I think impulse control is hugely important for a dog with as much "drive" as Jedi, but I always want there to be a balance and don't want to squash any of his enthusiasm. I think that would be hard to do in Jedi's case, but I'm still mindful of it.

The first challenge was simply to get Jedi to walk away from the toy on the ground. We were playing with the Holee Roller tonight, so this was very, very hard. I had to lead him away by the collar a few times to get him further than two feet away. I asked for a simple behavior like sit and immediately released him to the toy. He started to figure the game out pretty quickly. We worked up to leaving the toy at the end of 3 hoops/standards, walking to the first obstacle, sitting, and then releasing to the toy. Jedi was very proud of himself and took a great number of victory laps upon retrieving his prize.

Once Jedi was able to walk with me away from the toy to set up at the other end, I moved to setting the toy lateral to him and having him go up 3 obstacles and then down the middle back to his toy (I have 3 rows of 3 hoops/standards set in the yard right now | | | ). We did this in all directions and with me standing in the middle for a post turn and with me on the outside for a rear cross. I was feeling a little crazy, so I decided to finish with a full on sequence of up the line, down the middle, up the other side (so, a big S). We left the toy in the upper left and walked to the lower right to start. Jedi went super wide on that first turn and started to run to his toy, but he came back, only missing the top center jump standards, and finished the sequence before flying to his toy. He did it even better the next time and got all 9 "jumps" in the sequence! We had a big party and ended there. That is a phenomenal level of control for a puppy Jedi's age and with his insane love of toys. It was fun to watch him make that dive for the toy -- he'll be one who really flies down that last line of jumps on a course. :o)

First Dock Diving Competition (NADD)

Jedi's first dock diving competition has come and gone. I don't even know what to say aside from that he completely blew me away this weekend and performed better than I think anyone could have ever anticipated. For a puppy who just turned 6 months old two weeks ago and was just starting to hit the 15' mark at practice, I was thinking we'd be doing really well to rack up some jumps and maybe a title in the Junior division (10' - 14'11"). Imagine my surprise, then, when every single one of Jedi's jumps landed him in the Senior division (15' - 19'11"), earning his Senior Dock title. Wow! Then he went into finals and WON! What?!

I'm getting ahead of myself. Yesterday we were signed up in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th waves at the North American Diving Dogs (NADD) competition at The Dog Tank (the place where we've been training). I opted to skip the first wave to let us sleep in and not leave home until 8:00. I figured 3 waves was enough per day and worried it might be colder earlier in the morning anyhow. Yesterday ended up being a pretty crummy day, weather-wise. We left home in the rain, but drove out of it. We stayed dry through our first wave, but then the rain started and lasted until right before our last one. It was light rain, it could have been worse. Jedi certainly didn't care -- about the rain or the cool temperatures.

During Jedi's first trip on the dock he had a very nice jump of 15'2". Well, so much for Juniors! His he totally biffed his second jump in that wave with a distance of 12' something, but thankfully they just take your best of the two jumps. In the second wave I think Jedi had a 16' something (I totally failed to write anything down after jumps yesterday) and his best jump of the day at 18'2"! Wow! For our final wave of the day Jedi's best jump was 17'7". I'm pretty sure his other jump was 16' something. I was so proud of my super puppy and how well he did on his first day!

Behavior-wise, Jedi did pretty well. Most people were opting to crate out of vehicles for the day, so this is what I ended up doing as well (I brought my tent, but it's been so long since I've used it that I didn't feel like figuring out how to put it together). On Saturday my van was parked towards the back of the lot. Even with the doors open, Jedi couldn't see the pool. He stayed nice and quiet for the most part, and I even caught him sleeping when I went by once. Today I had to cover his crate with a towel when the vehicle parked next to us left and gave Jedi a straight line of sight to the dock. Way too much stimulation for his brain. He was a manageable level of excited every time I took the dogs out to stretch their legs and potty -- he would get the job done and then alternate between barking at me and trying to drag me towards the dock. Waiting at the dock for his turn.... Well, he was berserk. I often opted to hold him and deal with his claws digging into me. He was going to bark and scream regardless, but at least then he wasn't also gagging himself and spinning circles at the end of his leash.

Today we were signed up for all three waves, which meant getting there before 9:00. It was probably about 68 degrees this morning, so it wasn't too bad -- but again, not like Jedi cared. He was ready to go this morning with jumps of 16'8" and 18'7" in the first wave! Wow, already a new personal best to start the day! Our second wave fell a little flat with 16' and 16'4" jumps, but they were still solidly within the Senior division and Jedi earned his Senior Dock title! The crazy jumper was back for the third wave, with jumps of 18'6" (I think, couldn't hear this one on video and can't remember, but it was 18' something) and a final jump of 19'10"! It was a nice, nice jump off the dock and my first reaction (well, after WOW MY PUPPY IS AWESOME) was, "please don't be over 20'....." A jump of 20' or more would have pushed Jedi up into the Master division for the weekend and taken him out of finals. Instead, though, his 19'10" jump had him seeded in first place for the Senior division finals!

It had been a long weekend and I had no idea what to expect. While we were waiting for the finals round to be announced I took the dogs for a walk and he sure seemed to have plenty of energy left, but I wouldn't have been surprised if he started to fall flat a bit. It seemed to be the running theme in most of the divisions, with many dogs falling short of their best jumps. Jedi was all like, whatever, let me at it! His first jump in finals was an amazing 20'3"! Hooray! My throw was a bit off on the second jump, but he still managed a 19'2" to end the weekend. Wow, just wow. I was glad that Jedi was able to finish his Senior title this weekend, because I don't expect he'll be sticking around in that division. I would imagine he will only continue to jump better as he grows into his body.  :o)

With Jedi's win in Senior finals today, he actually earns an invite to the Eukanuba national finals in Florida in December! Secret also picked up an invite by winning the Juniors final (that's a long story....) so I actually have two dogs qualified to jump. Florida in December sounds awesome, but I can't see it happening. Odds that Secret would travel and jump in a new place are probably about 10% (based on the fact that this weekend she didn't even want to jump in the place she has been training for 2 months and normally hits 19-20'). As for Jedi, I really don't expect him to stick around in the Senior division, but come December I don't believe he'd yet have the ability to be competitive in the Master division. Also, we will lose our ability to practice likely by October. So when the invites come we will take our pictures with them and be extremely thankful for the opportunity, but I'm sure that will be it.

Jedi Goes to Daycare!

Jedi had a fun new experience today -- he went to doggy daycare for the first time! This is something I had in the back of my mind to include in Jedi's first 100 days, but I never really found a reason or need to send him. I also have attachment issues and don't like having other people take care of my dogs.  :o)  Today I had several meetings scheduled at work, with a couple of them in the afternoon being ones better attended in person. My 1-on-1 meeting with my boss first thing in the morning meant a full day in the office. Rather than just asking my dad to come let Jedi out midday, I figured we may as well go ahead and try that daycare thing.

I'll admit, I've never really been a big fan of daycare or group boarding scenarios. While I want all of my dogs to be okay around other dogs (like they would be in a trial), I can't say I care if they enjoy playing with other dogs or not. Jedi absolutely has what I call the "daycare personality," though, in that he really does love all dogs and he has that happy-go-lucky personality. I thought he'd have a lot more fun running around at Marcie's Pet Spa today versus spending ten hours in a crate. They do have a policy of not having intact animals over 6 months of age, but Jedi is so close to the cutoff that they allowed it. If we need to use the facility again I'll need to clear it through an owner. I don't worry about Jedi, but sometimes other dogs react poorly to the intact males.

I dropped Jedi off at 8:00 this morning. He is familiar with the location because this is where I teach classes (in the basement). I took him over to go potty in the grass area since that's our routine. He met a couple of dogs in the lobby and when they took him back he didn't even glance back at me. I'm friends with the facility's owners on Facebook and really appreciated it when one of them sent me a few videos around lunch time to let me know that Jedi was doing great. No surprise, he totally glommed on to a fluffy little Pomeranian and they hung out for most of the day. Pretty sure Jedi thinks that he, himself, is small and fluffy.

One of the things I love about this place is that they always share lots of pictures on their Facebook page every day. It's nice to see what your dog is up to each day when you leave them. I think my biggest surprise was that they caught evidence of Jedi resting! I honestly didn't expect that at all. When I dropped Jedi off this morning I asked that they not play fetch with him due to his propensity to hurt himself. I know how it is for employees in places like this -- playing with dogs is fun, so they love getting in dogs that will play. Well, Jedi will play. And play. And play some more. His sprained foot finally seems healed, so the last thing I wanted was for him to hurt something else (heck, he could do that just with his normal running around in that environment). Thankfully they were very receptive to this and the woman up front paged my request back to the workers right away.

My meetings were scheduled until 4:00, so I didn't think I'd be much later than 4:30 picking Jedi up. As it turned out, I didn't get out of the office until almost 5:00, so it was closer to 5:30 when I finally got there (even happier that he wasn't stuck at home in a crate). When they brought him out our reunion was about as much of a non-event as you can imagine. His initial reaction was more of a, "And you are....?" Then he jumped on me and was ready to leave. He crashed soon after we hit the road and wandered around the yard in a bit of a stooper while I picked up poo. Then we came inside where he crashed flat out on the floor for about an hour until I got up to feed the dogs. He had a really brief rebound after dinner (with about a quarter of the energy that he usually has) but then quickly crashed again. I have never seen Jedi this tired ever!

Jedi has been doing great with his training the last couple of days. The night before last I set up another configuration with the hoops to work on crosses and sending. Sometimes he locks into what he thinks is up next and there isn't much you can do to pull him off it, but hey, I appreciate the independence and the fact that he feels comfortable driving 30-40' away from me. We can work on steering over the next year before he's ready to compete.  :o)  Last night I set up a serpentine of 3 winged jumps with a tunnel at the end. I didn't follow my usual plan of gradually flattening the jumps and instead broke down individual elements. We didn't actually get to all three jumps because we had enough to work on with two. Big takeaways from the session were an improvement in Jedi's "jump" commitment when calling him through at an angle, and also that we need to work on understanding a "push" through something that isn't directly in front of us. It's much easier to run straight into the tunnel, don't you know! Nevertheless, Jedi had fun. He always does.

We're going to lay low the next couple of days in preparation for Jedi's big weekend of dock diving. There is rain forecast for Saturday. Fingers crossed that they are wrong, or that it won't be all day.

Catch-up post - Training & Walks

We haven't done anything exceptionally exciting since Jedi graduated from his agility class on Tuesday, but that doesn't mean we've been sitting around doing nothing! We've had a lot of rain lately, which means the rivers are really high right now and probably not the best for swimming. We've had to keep ourselves busy at home in ways that Jedi can't hurt himself (or is less likely to, at least). I still have no faith in his ability to play fetch without breaking something, so that means he's been getting structured play time and working on his sequencing skills.

While I don't do much with NADAC these days, I still follow the forum. In the last week things have blown up regarding the "hoop circle" that NADAC has. Long story short, for various reasons I decided to set this up in my backyard. I don't own the gates or x-pens that are typically used to enclose the circle, so I put down jump bars to define the circle -- but obviously the dogs were free to enter and exit the circle at will. Some say the barriers actually help the dogs with this exercise, but I don't have any so this is what we did.

The circle is lauded as an exercise that helps dogs with directional skills. Seeing as Jedi has recently learned the rear cross, I figured it couldn't hurt to work him through the circle. He has an impressive understanding of the switch cue already and I'm very pleased with his progress to date. He's getting better at targeting and going through the hoops, but he still goes wide occasionally and shoots around them. The only part of the various hoop circle patterns that Jedi wasn't able to do is the send across the back. He doesn't know what "out" is yet.

We did that exercise Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday I was pretty much just looking to run the dogs safely, so I set up a speed circle in the yard with six hoops and three jump standards. It's what it sounds like, just a giant circle that takes up pretty much the entire yard. I've always found it good for speed and motivation, but it's also pretty handy for building confidence with some distance. Jedi thought this was pretty awesome. Jedi also has absolutely no problems with distance. I was able to send him through the circle standing a good 30+ feet away from him. He did an impressively good job at finding all of the hoops in this configuration. I also tossed in some random wraps so that he wasn't just running blindly and taking whatever was in front of him.

Yesterday was a cold, rainy day. We spent much of the day napping. When the rain broke in the afternoon the yard was still far too wet to do anything that involved running. It was pretty nice out, though, so I figured we needed to get out of the house. I bit the bullet and finally took the four dogs (Secret, Jedi, Kizzy, Kaiser) out for a walk together in the neighborhood. Before Jedi came home we were a walking family. We walked before work and we often walked at night, too. A puppy makes that a bit more difficult, though, and then I just got lazy.

Jedi did great for his first time out as part of the group. He started out a bit crazy and pulling. He also insisted on walking on the right, which is where Kizzy & Kaiser walk. I brought him in next to my left side for a bit to remind him how to walk on leash and then he started to settle down and walk nicely. He got stepped on once when he tried to cross in front of me and stayed in his spot after that (quick learner). We only encountered one dog on our walk and Jedi was more or less oblivious to it. We ended up doing about 2 miles and calling it good. Now that fall is coming maybe I'll be better about getting us out more.

Today ended up being another quiet day. I was hoping to get up to the Dog Tank once more to play before our competition next weekend, but it was really cold this morning. I like to leave by 8:00 to beat the afternoon rush at the pool, but it was only 50-something degrees and getting wet just didn't sound appealing at all. It ended up being a really nice day, but I figured with the rain-out yesterday the pool would likely be packed today. Instead Jedi got stuck in a crate while I went to Kornfest, and then I came home and mowed. Jedi seems to be over his mower issues. This is probably largely due to the fact that he has now realized that the mower provides an endless buffet of clipped grass on which to gorge himself like the rest of the dogs. Let's hope that all passes through easily enough.

Agility Foundations 2 - Week 6 - Graduation!

Jedi was the energizer bunny this morning. Napping is for suckers, he says. The good news is that he generally self-entertained while I worked from home -- and by that I mean he didn't spent a huge amount of time dropping toys on my keyboard to get my attention. Jedi has embraced the wonder of the window seats and is spending a lot more time there these days. He will join in to see what the fuss is if someone else sees something, but he also is starting to spend time up there on his own -- often with a toy hanging from his mouth, watching the world go by.

Tonight was Jedi's final night of Agility Foundations 2 at Canine Sports Zone. While we have both enjoyed our 12 weeks of fun during these two sessions of classes, I have to admit that I look forward to driving 225 fewer miles each week and not driving home 2 hours in the dark. It was worth it, though, for the great experience that it gave Jedi of working around other dogs in a charged environment. His ability to focus is remarkable and he's even managed to work through the struggles of other people using squeakers! That was by far the most difficult thing when we first started.

Our class wasn't terribly structured tonight. There was a sequence on one side that people took turns on one by one. The rest of the time we were pretty much on our own to do whatever we wanted. The instructors have pretty much just turned me loose to do my thing while they help the other students, and this is totally fine by me. We started with a few simple tricks so that Jedi could get part of his dinner in him, and then we went over to the turf arena to play.

There was a PVC table frame off to the side not far from the teeter, so I drug both of those out and used the frame to prop the teeter up about 6" off the ground. We worked on teeter slams in both directions. It's a pretty noisy teeter, but Jedi has never seemed to mind that. After some bangs I set up some of the jump standards in a shallow serpentine pattern. I worked on running Jedi through this and gradually flattened it a bit. He did well, but did run past the middle or last jump standard on occasion. I also worked on adding a rear cross into the last jump and he did super.

When it was our turn over on the sequence side the trainer pretty much just stood back and said to do whatever I wanted. The sequence was a simple two jumps into a curved tunnel followed by another jump and the table. Thankfully Jedi didn't have any issues with the dark curved tunnel this week, so that was just an oddity from last week. He drove nicely through everything with great speed and enthusiasm. He overshot the table most of the time, but he did try to grab it (it's just paint/sand and has no base, so he hits it and just slides off it). We wrapped standards and did rear cross wraps back into the tunnel, and we did rear crosses at the tunnel. I pretty much did what I could with the simple sequence and Jedi surely enjoyed himself.

He was panting quite heavily from all of the running, so we took a little break from running and playing for a bit. We spent some time playing on the wobble board and used up the rest of his dinner playing with paw pods. Eventually I took him back into the turf arena and did a few more teeter slams, and then ran him through the serpentine a few more times. I ended with a few stays/recalls across the big arena. His stay is so good these days that it's just like doing a restrained recall for as excited as he gets. I figure if he can stay on a dock in front of a pool then he can stay about anywhere.

So that's that, class is done. We had the option of doing one more sequence on the other side, but they'd replaced a couple of jumps with a broad jump board and the tire, neither of which I'm a fan of running Jedi through at this stage (the training tire has a raised bar on the bottom that absolutely terrifies me with the way Jedi runs) -- so I passed on that turn since it was already 8:30 anyhow. We drove home through a magnificent lightening storm and hit a monsoon about 15 miles from home. It was fun getting the dogs outside when we got home, between the lightening, thunder, and rain -- but Jedi was completely oblivious to it all. He's going to miss class, but imagine how excited he'll be the next time we go to a trial at CSZ!

Vet Clinic Field Trip (27 lbs) and Training Night

I took Jedi up to the vet clinic at lunch time to get an official six-month weight on him. It's so much easier to go borrow their big scale than to try to do it at home. Thankfully we hit the clinic at a quiet time and weren't too much of an inconvenience. Jedi sat on the scale nicely, but I still made him do it twice because I didn't really believe the number in front of me. He was 27 lbs on the nose the first time, and the second time it actually registered 26.9 lbs. I looked up my records on this blog and see that he was 27.3 lbs on our visit 7/27, so that's even more surprising.

My guess is that it stems from the bag of Instinct that I added to the food bin a couple of weeks ago. I think it's a bit too high octane for Jedi (even cut with whatever else was already in the bin, I think it was the fish Canidae Pure) because he's had some runny poo for several days (I've been giving him pumpkin to help). I just started to do 1/2 cup out of the mixed bin and 1/2 cup out of Luke's lamb TOTW bin to bring it down a notch and this appears to have done the trick. I would expect to see his weight start to bump up again. I think he looks great and I'm not worried about where he's at physically, but I definitely wouldn't want him to get any skinnier.

Tonight after work I set up a course to train all of the dogs. I had a Happy Hurdle Day course that I wanted to play on, but I was feeling super lazy and was finding it hard to talk myself into the whole thing. I compromised and set up the bottom half of the course, which really was the entire course minus three obstacles (one being the weaves, so Jedi couldn't do that anyhow). The first section of the course was beyond Jedi's current skill set, so we focused on the close. Jedi did a super job at not going around stuff tonight. It was kind of remarkable, really! The biggest struggle was a slice from the backside to the tunnel. He missed the call through a couple of times and ran straight for the tunnel. He got it right plenty of times, though, and he did every run with gusto. He is so fantastically fun to run. And thank heavens that his sending skills are coming right along because I can't keep up with him!