Clean Run - April 2018 - 8

and then took it outside-not near the
equipment, but in one of the horses'
paddocks, then in the garden, then in
the field, and finally by the equipment.
I asked my daughter Kris to watch me
and she pointed out all the times I let
Shady grab the toy when I was thinking
about something else. The devil is in the
details! I'd effectively trained Shady to
grab the toy any time he felt like it, as I
always played with him if he did. With
that in mind, if he grabbed a toy from
me before I said "Get it," I simply dropped
the toy and carried on with what I was
doing. I made sure that when I cued him
to take the toy, I was ready to play and
gave him a full game, not a half-hearted
one while I am thinking about something else. It has been very successful.
I've also started putting Shady in a down if
I'm moving a piece of equipment or placing rewards out, rather than letting him
amble around. Sloppy training indeed!
Next item to work on is the concept that
when I place a toy out Shady needs to
look to me to find out what he has to
do to earn it-don't touch it until I say

so. That sounds harsh, but it is time for
Shady to grow up a little, and I need to
stop babying him. Again, we started
back at the beginning: place a toy out,
reward a hand touch, do some heelwork, and then send him out to get the
toy. Next I ask for a sit, throw the toy over
his head so it lands behind him, and
then ask for something different-such
as weave in and out of my legs, down,
walk back-then "Get it" to tell him to go
get his toy! Over and over until I started
to see him looking to me as I placed or
threw a toy out. Poor Shady!
Dogs grabbing toys from my hand or
pocket makes me irritated, as does a
dog that mindlessly grabs a toy rather
than working for his toy, and that irritation was entirely of my own making. Video is a useful tool. Don't look at how big
your behind looks, look at the details.
Is your dog happy and confident, or is
he hesitant? Are you cheerleading, trying to make something rewarding that
clearly isn't? Is the dog running around
making his own decisions during a training session? Because if so, it won't be too

surprising that he continues to do so,
since that's the association you're allowing to build with the equipment.

Jumping Skills
I looked at Shady's jumping and decided
that he was doing it to please me, not because it was fun for him. He would send
out and take a jump 15ft. away, but he did
so deliberately. I decided that he needed
to be able to use all the power that comes
from that large frame. The big dogs are always power jumpers, but in today's agility you don't see it as much because the
jumps are low and the dogs have a much
flatter trajectory. For working trials Shady
will need to negotiate a 3ft. clear jump,
scale 9ft., and jump a 6ft. long jump-
and there his power will be critical.
Back to agility, I set up a send away exercise as shown in the diagram. I started
with the tunnel nice and close to the toy
as shown in A, and I backchained the sequence until he was confidently driving
out ahead of me to the target, without
turning to see where I was-I'm not fast

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Clean Run | April 18

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