The Mental Game

Todays post is part of

Dog Agility Blog Events

Please visit http://dogagilityblogevents.wordpress.com/the-mental-game/ to see all the other blogs who have posted on this subject as well.

Quite alot I am getting comments from my pupils about how on earth you can remember a course of up to 21 obstacles for you and your dog to get round.

Now I know at shows in many countries you get course diagrams to be able to read and think out in your head where you are going. In Scottish shows that is not the case. I do love looking at course diagrams from other places and imagining in my head where I am going to go, what type of crosses and what position I will be in

Although when you get things on the ground it sometimes really changes what you think as you can possibly see different lines or there is more or less room than you imagined.

In Scotland we get to walk the courses once they are built, and actually last year I had the crazy moment where 3 rings opened up at almost exactly the same time, I walked 2 in a row and had to try and keep they both in my mind - then on the 3rd I didnt even get the chance to walk it, I had to try and learn it from watching others run it.

Have I got a super memory?? Very much not! In the past I have been stuck in the middle of courses trying to remember where to go (even had a couple of judges giving me a sneaky point in the right direction)

What has changed

Over time my memory has improved - thats right - agility improves your memory :) there is a benefit I never expected! And the other thing is you get to learn patterns

Have a look at some of the course diagrams posted here.

There are setups that repeat themselves straight lines to obstacles and recognisable shapes.

So instead of remembering 20 things remember a pattern

Look at the course to the left

From jump one slalom 3 jumps, up the centre to the tunnel , down 2 round the star, up 2, in the tunnel bottom, outside ark till before the weaves, loop round then jump weave jump

OK it may sound daft but that is the thoughts that are going round my head - instead of 20 obstacles to remember there are about 6 points to remember.

Yes you get more difficult courses sometimes with more things to remember, but your memory has improved by the time you get there and you recognise the patterns more

Thats not to say you will never see me in the middle of the course with a blank look on my face :D but hopefully that happens much less now.

Thankyou for reading - now get back and support all the other blogs out there

Needle felting - quick fix - Oh no! The ears are too big

 Every had a felting disaster? Actually the great thing about needle felting is you can save just about anything
Here is my quick fix for a common issue I have
My cat is almost done but I just dont like the ears, I have pretty much reached the limit of how much smaller I can felt them and for me they are just too big.

I could take them off and make new ones, I could cut them off and remove some from the bottom - but let me share with you a quick trick I discovered to shrink them and still retain the shape

 Carefully cut a V shape into the tip of each ear so the centre is now lower than the edges
(poor thing, he looks a little odd now!)

 Pinch the edges together and CAREFULLY (dont stab your fingers) felt the edges together

Occasionally if you have felted VERY firmly you might find you need to add a tiny bit of fluffed up fleece over the top to get the edges to bond but usually with ears I dont find I need this

Repeat for the other ear and hopefully your ears are now shrunk how you like them
















Of course you can always just buy yourself some ready made custom felt animals from my shop - check out my sale section for some amazing discounts!

The fuzzies are taking over the madhouse!

Last week the horrible happened. My computer hard drive died along with everything from the past 3 years.

All them images of my fuzzies! Thankfully most of my real life fotos are saved due to me sharing them on photobucket and facebook

 A very good lesson to me to back up things.









So now I am sorting through my drawers of fuzzies trying to figure out which ones I need a new photoshoot for
(not the best now we are heading for winter and the light is rubbish for photographs)








Pulling out everything I see just how many fuzzies I have made in the past 5 years!
Many have gone to loving homes all over the world but I also have quite a lot still with me

They really need a home somewhere where they can see the light of day





and I really need less clutter in my house

So I have decided to have the biggest sale I have ever had!!!

check out my sale section,
It is like the biggest ever spring clean in autumn :)








 Many of these items have been in my shop for a while and have had some amazing views, likes and been in many treasuries, this is why I have been resistant to selling them off cheep, but now is the time!! Lots of there are way less than 1/2 price

So if you have loved needle felted sculptures but been a little weary to start your collection there has never been a better time
Have a look and see, everyone tells me how much better these wee guys are in real life
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/BenMcfuzzylugs?section_id=11175199

That dont impress me much!

Oh an earworm and a ranty post all at once - its a twofer Wednesday

Take a wee look at this video

Some of you will look at that and think 'Amazing' 'What control to have so many dogs under control offlead beside a busy road'
And I suppose in some respects if you are struggling with your dog pulling you all over the place and not listening to you this can look pretty impressive.
But
A few questions to ask yourself there.
Whos benefit is a walk for? Would you like to be those dogs? What is being gained by them being offlead there?
Have a look at the dogs body language, see how their bodies are all curled in on themselves - this is not just the conformation of the dogs, they are keeping their heads and tails down, making themselves look small and unimportant so as to not draw attention to themselves. Notice how they are doing their best not to look at anything as they walk about, their entire focus is making sure they stick to their position.
Dogs need mental and physical exercise every day - walking like this without looking and sniffing is only physical exercise, they might as well be on a treadmill
Notice how they dont want to look at their owner at all and he dosent want to look at them either, I love walking WITH my dogs, smiling at each other, spotting what they have seen, seeing their happy faces when we take the turn to the park, watching the different shapes their waggy tails make when they sniff different smells (I can even tell by the wag if one of their friends has just gone into the park)
Could I walk my dogs offlead to the park? Yes I am sure I could - BUT - it is risking my dogs for the sake of my ego - betting their lives on my training - and all for the time it takes to stick a lead on.

If you are having a bad day and stressed that your dog is pulling a bit - look down at them - smile and be rewarded with that waggy tail - a little bit naughty for me is 100 times better than a depressed robot

Old Mill dogs

Thought I would share with you all my lovely pupils who have been training with us at Old Mill Dogs
The agility classes and at the end the lovely puppies making a start on agility equipment (note - they only do equipment suitable to their age and breed, there are plenty of exercises you can do with a puppy before you start agility with them)
Most of these dogs have been training with us for 6 months or less and they are doing amazing :)

Im ready for my close-up

I feel my photography skills have been really holding me back with my fuzzies, so I decided on a real photoshoot for them
I love the results

What do you think?

Mias first agility show

Forgot I haddnt shared this here yet
Many of you have followed Mias story, starting off with her being scared of about everything, hating all other dogs and trying to run off whenever offlead.
Well Im not saying she is 'fixed' but the other weekend she did something I never thought
She competed at a fun agility show in a public park with dogs all around her!!
First run I was even brave enough to let her off the lead

Myths about positive trainers #2 Treat training makes dogs fat

Reeeealy??

Fat is caused by consuming more energy than you burn

Its as simple as that.

So yes if you give your dogs lots of treats and dont reduce their meals or exercise them more then your dog will gain weight.

But many pet owners give their dog some kind of treat, I know lots of people who will give their dog a dentistick or boneo or something in the evening to keep them occupied. This is WAY more than my dogs get for training, I give my dogs lots of treats when training that is true - but - they are tiny treats. For example something the size of a cocktail sausage gives my dogs up to about 25 treats or I use tiny slivers of dried liver 1/2 the size of my pinky nail.

Mental exercise uses energy as well - so learning things IS exercise

Also if you train your dog to walk nicely with you or be happy in different situations then you are able to take them more places and walk them for longer walks so they are less likely to get overweight.

Myth busted - overfeeding/under exercising dogs makes them fat

Myths about positive trainers - 1 Positive trainers just advise difficult dogs are put to sleep

I honestly dont know when this myth started. I know lots of followers of a certain TV celeb seem to strongly believe he is the last chance for many aggressive dogs because other trainers would just have the dogs put to sleep.

This is as far from the truth as is possible. But before I go into that lets look at the fact that yes, many dogs are put to sleep

In the world today we have more dogs than we have homes for and so it is a sad fact that in some rescues some people have to make the difficult decision to put dogs to sleep.
That is not a failing of the rescues - and it has nothing to do with any trainers - positive or otherwise. The blame there is firmly on the heads of the people producing too many dogs.

Yes often it will be aggressive dogs or dogs of a certain type who are put to sleep, there are two reasons for this, it is harder to find good homes for these dogs, there are plenty of homes for small fluffy puppies so it makes sense when you have to free up space to go for the dogs that are unlikely to find a home anyway. Also if a dog has bitten in the past many re-homing centres have policies of not rehoming these dogs incase they bite again, not only would the people in the centre feel responsible they also may end up being sued and that will have a cost impact on how many dogs they can help in the future.

Some trainers may refuse to work with aggressive dogs, that does not mean they are saying the dogs need to be put to sleep, just that they either do not have the experience to work with this type of dog or their insurance does not cover them for this type of work.
That is fair enough, there are specialists in every walk of life, you dont go to a pet dog trainer to teach your dog to be an obedience champ, dont expect all dog trainers to be aggression specialists.

Referring you to someone else is NOT  saying the dog needs put to sleep.

For a behavioural issue you need a behaviourist (try the APBC in the UK, these people have to be qualified to a high level with lots of experience in the field as well - remember anyone can call themselves a behaviourist but not everyone has any qualifications in the subject)
A GOOD behaviourist wont even see you till you have seen a vet to rule out any medical issues.

So do behaviourists tell people to get their dogs PTS?
Lets think about this - someone whos job is to help dogs with behavioural issues telling people to put the dogs to sleep - do you think these people would actually be in a job long if they killed off all their clients?
When talking about options they may well mention it as an option - IF the owners dont feel they are willing or able to do the work required to help their dog. Even using punishment methods to 'fix' a dog takes time, the TV celeb often takes 'difficult' cases away with him to work with them over weeks or even months.

Issues like seen on TV shows are bread and butter to good positive behaviourists, you dont see thousands of films of them helping because it is actually very dull to watch, no man v beast fight, the dogs are kept calm and taught how to not only act calm but to BE calm around the thing that they used to be aggressive about.

If you still doubt positive trainers help aggressive dogs then have a look at all the literature that is out there to help people with problem dogs - I will link a few below

Control Unleashed
Click to calm
Feisty Fido
Calming signals
Scaredy dog
Stress in dogs 

Thousands of  positive dog owners quietly rescue and help difficult dogs all over the world, just get chatting to people ringside at an agility show or have a look at the many forums and facebook pages for positive training and you will see what an amazing supportive community there is for people helping others with difficult dogs

Myth BUSTED
  

What is positive training to you - PDBAD

http://benmcfuzzylugs.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/pdbad-what-is-positive-training-to-you.html
Check out the link above for other posts in this day

So for the first post in the positive dog bloggers action day I thought we should talk about what positive actually means to us
There is a whole lot of confusion about what 'positive training' actually is

For me personally it does not mean I only use positive reinforcements in my training (see the post on quadrants below) Yes I try and focus on them, but I dont need to get involved in arguments about if witholding a click is punishment or not

For me positive training is more about a state of mind. Traditional training sets up a dog to do the wrong thing and punishes them for that.
In my mind that is very negative, it is negative in that you are always seeing the bad in your dog, it is negative for your dog as working with you becomes stressful, always waiting to see if they have done wrong, and it actually has a negative effect on your dogs mental development, they actually use their brains less because doing things is punished

In positive training you are looking for your dog doing the right thing and finding ways to teach him to do things that you want. If you look for the positive you see exactly how often your dogs are actually good. For the past couple of hours my dogs have been napping and quietly pottering around the house.
At one point they barked at a noise outside for about 30s
I could focus on that negative and think how bad it is my dogs were barking - but really in 120 min my dogs did something I didnt like for 30s of that. Thats pretty good odds

And here is the extra good thing - positive dosent mean that I let them away with things I dont like. If a behaviour is something that I dont like rather than punishing them for it I can see it as a training exercise, I could desensitise my dogs to noise outside the house, I could teach them something else to do to alert me to noises outside, or, I could manage the situation and have the radio on so they are less bothered by noises outside - or of course if I liked being warned of people outside I could leave the behaviour and just ignore it or even reward it.

At no point do I actually have to punish my dogs for a natural behaviour that I may not like.

So to me a positive trainer is one who
Looks for the good in their dog and rewards that to make it more likely to happen and who trains the dogs alternative behaviours when they do something they dont like.
They train focusing on positive reinforcement, minimise negative punishment and avoid positive punishment and negative reinforcement.

Please remember and support the other posts on todays PDBAD