Clean Run Magazine - January 2010 - 48

LB: How did you choose Ollie? DP: I was just surfing the net four years ago and saw a photo of Ollie; I wasn’t looking for a dog at the time. I contacted his foster home, and within a few days he’d found his new home with me. He was about nine months old when I adopted him. I could describe his breed mixture as “jackabeaglahua,” but the truth is I have no idea. I wanted a dog with lots of personality that was intelligent, playful, and friendly and that describes Ollie perfectly. I had no idea how he would respond to agility training. The adoption process was very brief, and he was an underweight string bean, all ribs, bony angles, and absolutely no muscle tone. He was reserved and low-key, since he had been through a lot and was a bit shell-shocked. I chose him with my heart. The fact that he excelled at agility later on was just gravy. I got very, very lucky. LB: What was easy about Ollie’s agility training? method worked great for Ollie, and he was weaving pretty consistently in no time. LB: Did you have any challenges along the way? Ollie By Lisa Barrett Ollie (a.k.a. Oliver Chew) ADCH, C-ATCH, SCH, JCH, SACH Humane Society of Parkersburg, West Virginia, via Castaway Critters, Middletown, Pennsylvania Dawn Peterson © www.pixofthelitter.com DP: Training the equipment and skills was relatively easy. Ollie has always been eager to learn new things, and he picked up everything quickly and retained it well. We’ve had some minor training slips occasionally that need to be fixed or adjusted, like breaking start-line stays, missing contacts or early on, getting a bit too friendly with the ring crew. I started focus training immediately after adopting him. I feel this is a central exercise when starting to build a team. The first thing I taught was both a Watch (look at me) and Look (focus on something in the distance). I made a target with a Styrofoam ball on a stick and a weighted base, and I taught him to run out and bop the ball with his nose. As a result, he was willing to work at a distance later on. We also did a lot of play training, especially clicker games, to build our bond. As for weave poles, I started Ollie on Weave-A-Matics because it was the method my instructors were using. But he would pop out when the poles were almost closed, so I switched methods. I bought a set of stick-in-the-ground weaves and used them as channel weaves. This also allowed me to train weave entries at the same time, since I could leave the ends a little more “open” while leaving the rest closed and then work on sending him into the weaves from various angles. This DP: When I got Ollie, he loved other dogs and had great social skills with dogs and people. Unfortunately, we had a scary experience during a basic obedience class just a few short weeks after I adopted him. As my little dog came flying toward me from the other side of the ring in a recall exercise, a large dog in the class slipped out of the owner’s grasp and went after him. Ollie wasn’t hurt, but he was extremely shaken up. As long as I live, I will never forget the look he gave me. He was terrified. I knew I had let him down by being unable to get in front of the other dog in time to intervene, and it still weighs on my soul. About a week after this incident, an off-leash dog of the same large breed came bounding up to him and jumped on him in an attempt to get him to play. That was the last straw; Ollie became dog reactive from that point on. When we started pre-agility class shortly after all this, it turned out to be a nightmare. The class was a poor match for him as it was full of mostly large, exuberant young dogs. Ollie learned agility skills quickly, but he was so reactive to the other dogs we both spent most of our energy being hypervigilant about other dogs. I focused on keeping him safe and protecting his personal safe space, which was about 20' at the time. We’d both go home extremely stressed and exhausted. That’s when I made the decision to pull him from future agility classes. It was disheartening because I knew he had a lot of raw talent. I decided to solve the problem. I split teaching the agility skills from working on his dog reactivity. After taking a couple of months off, we resumed agility training, but this time we took weekly private lessons instead of a group class. Taking the dog factor out of agility allowed him to concentrate on agility without constantly worrying about his surroundings. Separately, I worked on desensitizing him to the presence of other dogs. I took him to parks and pet supply store parking lots and other places where we could see leashed dogs at a safe distance. When he looked at the dog, then looked at me while remaining calm and not reacting, I would click and treat. As he got better, we would Clean Run | January 10 Call Name: Titles Earned: Adopted From: Handler:
http://www.pixofthelitter.com
Clean Run Magazine - January 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - January 2010
