I must say, there's nothing that makes me feel sorrier for people that don't have pets than staying home sick and laying in bed with Taz all day. What do they do without a dog (or cat) to cuddle with?! Likewise, I feel sorry for those that never do anything with their dogs, and those canines that never have anything to do other than chase the occassional ball. I look at my brother's family, and their dog that spends most of it's time either locked in the kitchen or outside. As a result, they have a dog that is so over-stimulated by being around other people and dogs, you can't stand to be around him.
What does all this have to do with freestyle? Simply that, it all reminds me how lucky I am to have this kind of relationship with my dog. Our time together truly does revolve around each other. For him, the place to be is at my side or at my feet. The time apart is spent waiting for me to return. Likewise for me, there is little time that I spend at home in which Taz is not an integral part. Even when I am on the computer, he is there at my feet, or enticing me to play a game as I type. It gives me great comfort at night to wake up and feel him on my feet. And if he or my older dog are sick in the night, Taz always lets me know and wakes me up immediately.
As a single person that spends a lot of time with her dogs, this kind of relationship is not all that new to me. But the fun part with Taz is that he is the first dog I've had that truly excels in most of what he does. Whether it's flyball or obedience or agility or herding, he's the best dog I've ever had, and it's always encouraged me to keep going out and finding new things for us to do. While certainly a lot of that has to do with training, I feel less the pride of a teacher, and more the pride that a parent would feel for a child when people admire what he can do. It's a never ending source of amazement to me, that *this* is the dog I get to spend time with, the one that would rather be with me than anyone else. How truly blessed I am.
No matter what else I do in freestyle, that's the most important thing to me...it's another thing we get to do together, another way to strengthen that bond. And no matter what, I'm going to do my best to see that's it's a rewarding experience for both of us. Taz would probably much rather be out doing agility, and I know he'd rather not be doing a routine in front of a whole crowd of people. If I'm going to ask him to do that, I'd darn well better make sure he is rewarded for it, and that I appreciate what he gives me. Because in the end, what it's really all about is this relationship, and what we both bring to it.
The nice thing about practicing at home is that I am not really constrained by what I might not want to do in front of other people. Somewhere along the line, Taz and I came up with this little "ritual" that we do after he's done a really good job in training. I get down on hands and knees, and he weaves around my arms and then sits in front of me between them, leans his head back and licks my face. All the time he makes these little sheltie noises that are uniquely Taz. They're sort of between grunts and woofs. It's also probably the only time he really likes to kiss me (usually I have to ask him for a kiss).
There's no doubt in *my* mind that dogs can feel pride in a job well-done. My older dog Tosh, was the most serious and dignified dog I've ever owned (I really couldn't imagine doing freestyle with HIM, he never really showed enthusiasm for much of anything) but once the job was done, and if it was a particularly tough task, he too would go into raptures of joy (or his semblance of it) at having pleased me so much.
People often ask me how I get my dogs to do some of the things they do....all my shelties take great pride in retrieving anything they can get to, for instance. You haven't seen anything until you've seen Taz retrieve my winter coat! He'll also get the remote control, TV Guide, close doors, etc. I think one of the main reasons I'm so successful training so many different tricks is that I *do* have so much time to spend with them at home...and no one to look at me strange when I go crazy over some small thing I've convinced them to do. It doesn't take the dogs long to want to do more and more. By the time we do it in public, they've learned how much it pleases me, without my having to act like a total idiot.
Likewise, the freestyle training we do at home can bring similar results. Not only am I going to have more time to train at home, I can really lavish on the praise and make my dog go nuts over having completed some difficult skill. It's so easy these days when food training is more accepted to overlook the joy and fun of REALLY praising your dog. I don't mean just verbally, I get on the ground and hug and kiss and just throw a party when he really pulls it together for me. I let him know that he is just the smartest, most special dog in the whole world. Usually AFTER I've done all this, I'll head for the treats and reward him with something edible...but the praise should be the number one thing for your dog...you can't possibly overdo it as far as they are concerned.
What a fun time we had training last night! We arrived at the building while 3 other people were still there training, so had to wait until they were gone to actually do freestyle work. So in the meantime, we just played around in the empty ring doing some regular obedience. Now that Taz has his UD, I haven't done much obedience, both of us preferring other sports. But he certainly hasn't forgotten what to do. He did a lovely drop on recall, perfect broad jump and some nice heelwork. But nothing compares to his go-outs. I originally trained him in the building and he still does the best go-outs there. Rather than a baby gate, we do them into the wall, and the game is for him to go full speed and at the last second I give the sit command, and he turns and sort of slams into the wall sideways as he sits. He's learned not to do this with baby gates after knocking them down a few times, but with a wall...well, the game is on! So, by the time we got to the freestyle, he was pretty pumped.
I've sort of given up hope of ever getting his ears up as he was definitely having a good time last night, but they were plastered back on his head most of the time. But the routine is otherwise really coming together. It was one of those nights, where afterwards you felt you had it together enough to actually do in public. Well, not sure we're quite there yet, but I am confident that we'll be ready for Uptempo. We've gotten to the point that Taz is enjoying the routine enough to do it for me well even when he's tired...that's the best barometer I have of how motivated his is at any one time. Last night, we did two run-throughs of the entire thing, and both were really great.
What's become obvious for me, though, is that I can do a fairly limited amount of dancing in this routine. Besides the fact that I am not capable of much dancing to begin with, the routine itself is complicated enough that much of my concentration has to go to directing and placing Taz. I envy people that have perfect control of their dog verbally, but it's not been a part of how I train up to now, and there's a limited amount of what I can change in the time I have. Taz is used to me using my arms and hands to direct him, both in freestyle and agility, and if I add too much upper body movement, I start losing him. So my goal is to find the places where I *can* add stuff without it putting him off, and keep the routine as flowing and interesting as possible otherwise.
We're definitely at the point now that I start to worry about how the routine will look to others. I'd like to get someone to videotape it for me, perhaps I will bring a camera out next week and have one of the folks that shows up early tape me before they leave. There's no doubt my program is very strong technically, that's always been our strong point, doing a great number of optional moves, and most of them done fairly well. This routine is the most packed of any I have done, and has the greatest risk of disaster in it. So I have no concerns on that front.
But artistically? That remains to be seen. I will never be able to do a routine that is as artistic as some of these more talented dancers. Even were I able to do some more complicated steps and moves, it really goes against the grain of my own natural inclination to not draw attention to myself. The one thing that has always drawn me to dog sports is that I felt that the attention was on the dog, not me, so I didn't have to worry too much about people looking at me. It was one thing I liked about the CFF approach to freestyle. This is new territory for me, that people are supposed to watch and judge *me* as well, and I don't know that I will ever be entirely comfortable with that. So, I will just do the best I can, pack my routine with as much difficulty as I can to make up for it, and hope for the best. But it reminds me of the discussion of certain breeds not being built for certain moves and speed and agility...the same can be said of the people!
Well, yesterday sure didn't go as planned. I had promised to go over to my parent's house to cook dinner for my Mom's birthday, and the plan was to go shopping and get everything I needed, drive to the training building and do some freestyle, and then drive to their house, hopefully getting there around 3 pm.
Unfortunately, I just didn't get on the road soon enough, and had to forget about training. Once I figured out how much extra time it would take to drive to the building, practice, and then drive back, it was obviously not going to happen. And even with leaving that out, I didn't get to my parent's house until just after 3.
Well, no problem I thought. I'd bring stuff to stay overnight, go by the building early in the day and then head out to do herding. That's when we started to get the predictions of snow and ice, and so I ended up going home that night. And sure enough, it's Sunday morning and the snow is coming down. So once again, no freestyle practice, unless the weather clears up later today. I'm glad we had a good practice on Friday night, or I'd be really frustrated. As it is, I don't think it will make much difference.
Well, one reason I was willing to give up my Sunday evening for my Mom, was so that I could talk her into helping me sew Taz's ruffle before she and my Dad went out of the country for 2 weeks. When I brought out the fabric last night, she said "Oh, I was hoping you had forgot about it!" but being a good mom, she was willing to give it a shot.
Now, neither one of us really had much idea of what we were doing. We just sort of guesttimated what width and length to make it, and I had two different fabrics that I wanted to use, and we weren't sure how to do that either. I had thought to put the checkerboard on the back and the other fabric on the front, but she suggested to just have the checkerboard sticking out on the bottom of the other, so that's what we did. The finished ruffle was not quite as "ruffly" as I had wanted, and is a big wider as well, but it turned out VERY cute, and I'm very happy with it. As long as it doesn't bother Taz or get in the way of his feet on jumps, it's good enough, and it certainly *doesn't* seem to bother him (other than when I first put it on him, he always makes a face).
So, now I just need to finish my own costume, a bit more difficult of a task. The main problem is that as a heavy woman, I would normally wear a skirt when I am trying to look nice, it covers the hips better than pants. But Taz is the perfect height to get wacked in the face by a skirt, so that is definitely out. With pants, I'm generally going to want a fairly long top that comes over the hips, but I can't come up with something that I think will fit the theme of the routine. The shirt that I am trying to buy is not one that will come down, but will need to be tucked in. So, I can either live with that, or perhaps but a jacket of some sort over that. A black leather jacket would probably go well with the routine, but I don't own one, and that would be not only expensive, but hard to find in my size. I do however, know a place that sells jean jackets, with very nice breed portraits on them. I've been wanting to get one anyway, so perhaps will break down and go that way. But I have a hard time envisioning how that will look, and getting it in time may be a problem. It's funny, who would have guessed that the costume would be the toughest thing to get together in time?!
Well, it's easy to feel guilty about not going out and practicing yesterday when I probably could have. I just remind myself about a little thing in training called "latent learning". This is the phenomenon that occurs when you come back to training after a layoff and find that your dog seems to perform even better than when you last worked him. It refers to that learning that occurs when no active teaching is happening. It can be your best friend if you know how to use it...it's the reason we often say "quit while you're ahead!"
Having had such a great practice Friday night, I'm going to trust latent learning to do its job and see the rest of the weekend off as a great way for what we did to sort of "seep" its way into my doggie's little brain. Hopefully, we've seen the last of the bad weather so I can get two more good weekends of practice in before the competition. I mean, really, spring is only 5 days away, enough with the snow already!!
One of the hardest things about practicing indoors for me are the columns that our building has. What I wouldn't give for a practice area that doesn't have these! There aren't many of them, but it's amazing how much 2 or 3 columns can get in your way when practicing. I thought doing agility around those columns was bad, but freestyle is even worse!
I was interested by someone's comment about an agility instructor being surprised that freestyle would require practice. I find that particularly funny in a way, since agility is often disparaged by some obedience competitors as not requiring as much work, flyball and Frisbee are disparaged by some agility and obedience trainers both, etc. etc. The fact is that almost every canine sport, you can dabble in with a relatively small amount of work, but there's not a dog in the world you can just do them without putting some amount of effort into it. And if you aspire to do well in any sport, doesn't matter what it is, it requires a LOT of work. And often lots of time and money as well.
I have a dog that I feel I can safely say is one of the best in the country in agility. Were I to dedicate all my time and energy and money to agility exclusively, we could conceivably be National Champions or even make the World Cup Team. Instead, I am often making choices like doing freestyle or herding; last year I skipped several large agility trials to complete Taz's UD in time to earn a Dog World award. This year, I will probably miss some events to do herding trials.
Some people prefer to devote themselves to one sport, and to put all their energy and drive into excelling in it. While I certainly go through periods where I am mostly working on one area, I personally have gotten the most satisfaction and feelings of accomplishment by meeting certain goals in different sports at once. Someday, I may decide to drop everything else, and shoot for that agility Championship, but for now, well, I just enjoy the other things we do too much.
Are my accomplishments any less or any easier than those that focus on just one area? I'd say I've probably put more work into training Taz in the last couple years than I have with any other dog I've ever trained. And certainly he has accomplished more in his 3 years than many dogs do in their entire lives. Perhaps we will never be a "household" name in any of the sports we do, but when I look back at all the things we did last year, and all the success we had, well, I can never be sorry for the choices I made.
The toughest thing about putting a routine together at the last minute is to resist the temptation to make last minute changes. When you are spending those last few weeks practicing, I guarantee you will think of things that would work better than what you had planned. It's easy to find yourself in a position of very seldom having the exact same routine from week to week. I personally have never gotten a routine to a point that I didn't feel it needed some work, even when I've been doing it for months!
A routine that is fairly new is always likely to have some rough spots. When you are actively choreographing, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees...you focus so much on these individual elements, that those transitions from one to the next can be real bumpy. Often once you are no longer focusing on the elements, but rather on the routine as a whole, solutions to these little "bumps" come much easier.
I'm still at the point where revelations like this come to me fairly regularly. In some cases, the improvement to the routine is too great to ignore, and I'll put the change in. However, I try to resist those changes that are vastly different from what I already have. This close to a competition, I would never fuss with the major elements of the routine. The biggest ally you have when performing is for both you and the dog to be so comfortable with the music and the routine that you almost don't have to think about what you are doing. Particularly if your dog starts "improvising" or is moving faster or slower than normal, you need to be able to go with it and keep things in place, and this is easiest when you both know the routine well. Those last minute changes can be deadly to a coherent program.
It's funny to see the change in Taz's attitude as the routine progresses. I don't know if it's the fact that he likes to get to the end because of the praise and treats, or if it's the fact that I tend to start out with the more "boring" moves and end on the exciting stuff (again, wanting that to be the last impression I leave with the judges). In either case, it makes for a very upbeat finish; the challenge is just making sure Taz waits for it to get there!
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