Monday, February 16, 2009

DWI

That's a "Dog With Issues" for those of you not involved in the dog training world. And now, I have one (well, one in addition to Oreo-who's always been a challenge). It seems Legend's agility ghost has returned. I suspected it was always lurking since she tends to get off to a slow start and then speed up through the end of the course, but we just spent a miserable weekend at the AKC trial in Lawrence. She's fine until you approach the ring gate and then she gets worried, quits tugging and won't play or anything. She had to be called more than once to get off the start line, she was dragging around the course avoiding some of the obstacles, stopping to look around and just generally not acting like the fun, happy dog I usually know. Then she blasts through the last few obstacles like a champ and picks up her leash and starts tugging like nothing was ever wrong. Clearly my training has been lacking at some point and we will be continuing to work on transferring her drive and enthusiasm for toys to agility and developing her confidence working at a distance. And of course, maintaining that drive through the whole course and not just end. Easier said than done I'm sure but I'm trying to remain optimistic that we can work through this.

I did do a hip x-ray just to make sure she's not having any physical issues and her hips are actually quite good-better than the boys if I remember their films correctly. Here's a picture of the film...


In other news, Wiggles has only been eating veggies for quite some time now but currently he is not even eating much of that. If he doesn't perk up any soon I will probably have to put him to sleep.

6 comments:

Greg S said...

I'm no expert, but our border collie Rush is almost 8 weeks into recovering from hip replacement surgery. She was just over 1 year old when she had the surgery. (You can see before/after xrays on her blog http://friendshipacademy.com/rushlog/?p=348 ). Legend's hips look great in comparison to Rush's right one.

Does Legend like doing agility in a stress free/training environment? Have you ever tried to have someone else that she trusts run her and see if the attitude is different? How about attending Run-throughs, is she shut down there too? We've had some students that are still working through focus issues, and for some, its apparent that "mom" likes agility way more than "dog" likes it.

Sorry your AKC weekend wasn't any fun :(.

Sara said...

I laughed when I read your explanation of what DWI means in the dog training world! I never heard that before - but my Oreo definitely is a DWI!

Nicki said...

Greg-she appears to agility at home and at class. I have never tried letting someone else run her at a trial, just in class. She's always happier when toys are involved in training-I'm hoping to transfer that to trials if I can.

Katrina Hunt said...

DWI, yeah we are there! you saw the post about Jetson! Legend and you work so beautiful together...I always love watching you guys...you will get there...

Greg S said...

Maybe doing run-throughs or a fun match - something that is like a trial environment, but that "voila" after a couple obstacles, a toy comes out and we get to play, would show that trials are just as fun as training.
Also, I'll bet that if you talked to a DOCNA or NADAC judge ahead of time, they would let you pull out a toy and play halfway through a course. You'd get an "E" of course, but they are usually pretty accommodating that way.

One of the dogs that trains with us was shutting down, and the handler told the judge they would like to just run 6 jumps and then exit, and the judge had no problem with that - it was their run to blow if they wanted.

Nicki said...

I do have some NADAC trials coming up and was thinking of trying that-thanks