Recently I decided to focus more on my own dogs. With dealing with chronic illness issues, I've let go of some of my focus on my own dogs. They are still doing their service dog work, though Malcolm hasn't been working quite so often with me not leaving the house very often lately. I sat down and thought about what sports my dogs might be interested in and what I might be capable of doing with my current physical limitations. I came up with two things for now and one thing for possibly later this year. I decided to give Treibball (or urban ball herding) and walking Canicross (technically cross country running with your dog, though I'll be walking or maybe even hiking, hopefully) a try. Both I can start working on at home. Later in the year I may give Nosework a try, which I think both dogs may also enjoy.
Whole Dog Journal Treibball Article
About Canicross
Canicross for Agility Conditioning Part 1
Canicross for Agility Conditioning Part 2
(while I don't participate in Agility, I thought these articles had some great points)
For Treibball all you need are the balls, typically exercise balls, and some kind of way to indicate a "goal" area (like cones or goal posts). For Canicross, you need a waist belt and good shoes for yourself and a harness and tugline for your dog. I have the waist belt (I have the Omnijore belt from Ruffwear), dog harnesses (I have a few to choose from, so I'll see which work the best for each dog), and tuglines (Ruffwear Roamer leashes from Ruffwear, though I can get the Ruffwear tugline if I need to) for the dogs for Canicross. I'll be buying some new, lighter walking shoes for myself soon. I needed to buy some balls for the Treibball. I decided to start with a jolly ball as I was worried that my dogs' enthusiasm with their paws and mouths may pop exercise balls. Jolly balls (I got one without the handle) remain functional even when punctured (and won't pop in a way that might scare your dog) and they are quite thick, though still somewhat soft. I thought that would be good to prevent any mishaps with teeth or nails in the beginning until they get the techniques down. Once they have the nose nudge/shoulder bump techniques down I'll buy a few exercise balls.
Today I decided to try starting Treibball with the dogs, since I got the jolly ball yesterday (from Chewy.com, which I absolutely love for their excellent prices and customer service). I started with Penny, as she tends to be the more excited dog. I put Malcolm in Penny's crate to keep him out of the way. I originally planned on trying to start and follow the basic method I found in Donna Hill's Treibball video. I'm having trouble getting a good link for the video. I'll put one in as soon as I can, but in the meantime you can search youtube with "Donna Hill Treibball" to find it.
Of course, Penny being the dog she is, she can't "follow the rules" and just let me use an established method to train her. :-) Penny has always been an over-enthusiastic nose bumper. It's part of the herding dog in her (we think Australian Cattle Dog). It took us quite a while to get her to quit nose bumping us in the back of our knees after we first got her. So I have avoided teaching her a nose touch so as not to encourage that behavior in her. Donna Hill, and others, suggests teaching a nose touch to hand and then using some assorted methods to transfer that to nose touching and nose bumping the ball.
Well, Penny put two and two together VERY quickly and realized that she was getting rewarded for nose bumping my hand. That progressed (degenerated) fairly quickly to nose bumping me in a variety of places trying to get the click and treat. Yeah, not so good. I realized that I absolutely did NOT want to encourage this and I needed to get her touching the ball only FAST. So using a sort of haphazard combo of luring, shaping, and capturing I started working on getting that nose touch/bump focus on the ball. I sat in a chair and held the ball between my feet so it wouldn't roll. She's starting to get it, but I have to be SUPER careful with my clicking. Penny is incredibly smart. She puts things together VERY quickly. So my timing with the clicker has to be pretty precise or she starts chaining together behaviors that I didn't intend. She started chaining laying down and nose bumping the ball, which sort of defeats the purpose. I used my no reward mark "nope" to let her know I didn't want her pawing/clawing the ball.
She started getting frustrated, so I knew I needed to change things up. I decided to work while standing and using body language and cues to move her back away from the ball that was slightly in front of me. I encouraged her to come forward and nose touch the ball, still not using an actual verbal cue yet. She started doing it, even bumping the ball a bit towards me. Lots of rewards and a party for doing that. She got a little frustrated with me asking her to back up a bit so she wasn't crowding the ball, but she responded. She started to get a bit frustrated so I got one last decent nose touch to the ball and we quit. We trained for longer than I planned because I needed to figure out what would work for her as an individual. We're all learning this together. It may not be exactly how to train it, but I just want to do this at home for now, not taking a class. It's just supposed to be something new and fun for us to do at home. I'm trying to keep things relatively simple.
Now it was Malcolm's turn. I let him out of the crate and put Penny in to keep her out of the way. I started with a hand touch for Malcolm. I quickly realized that for him, instead of an open hand (as is usual for most touch training) I needed to use a closed fist. Malcolm is very well trained to give paw and do a paw touch to an open hand. He was getting confused by me trying to use an open hand for a nose touch, so we switched to a nose touch to my closed fist. That worked very well. Using the clicker he got that very quickly.
After playing around with having him nose touch my fist in a variety of places and heights I started to switch to the "close the door" step explained in Donna Hill's video. Well, using a paper target, all he wanted to do was grab the target with his mouth and tear the paper. We were both getting frustrated with that, so I decided to try working with him like I worked with Penny. I used the nose fist touch to target the ball more than I did with Penny. He started to understand that so I eased off of using the fist every time. He'd nose touch the ball a few times and then need the fist touch target to "remind" him.
Then he too started to get bored and frustrated with me just holding the ball between my feet. I decided to again follow what I did with Penny and got up and encouraged him to nose touch and push the ball toward me a bit with it a little in front of my feet. He started doing that fairly well with a little bit of luring and capturing. Then my husband came home so Malcolm had to go bark at the sound of the garage door opening, so the session was over. :-)
All in all, I feel it was a good start for both dogs. We'll see how they progress as we continue. I realized that I need to continue to be flexible on method, though I'm keeping things very positive right now with using the clicker and treats and just a verbal no reward mark for communication. I also need to get a new treat pouch. The one I have is small and can be a pain in the butt to get treats out of. I'm leaning towards getting the Dog Gone Good one, but I'll take a look. I also need to make a training treats "trail mix." I went through nearly an entire bag of soft training treats today between the two dogs. That's just not healthy or affordable. So I'll be mixing the soft training treats with some small crunchy treats and maybe some kibble to increase the quantity of treats available while still being more affordable.
I hope you'll join me here next time as I continue to share our adventures in Treibball training. I'm hoping to start the walking Canicross next week some time. Look for our Canicross adventures in the near future.
What new thing(s) have you been working on recently with your dog(s)? Let me know in the comments! :-)
Ruffwear Outdoor Dog Gear
Jolly Pet Bounce and Play Ball
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