The Patricia McConnell seminar was awesome. She is really great! Not sure I learned anything new, but I was reminded I need to maintain my work with Roscoe. More treats when visitors come to the house. Reminding him how great it is to have visitors. He would much rather bark and bite, but if I am shoving treats in his face, that bark and bite is long forgotten. He can't, after all, bite and bark while eating yummy treats. And the more I do that the more he thinks people invading his home land mean yummy treats appear for no other reason! That's a good thing and I have gotten away from it lately.
Today we had some good and some bad at the trial. It POURED rain for our morning runs and MinPins don't like the rain too, too much. They would rather be snuggled under some faux fur, listening to it through the window, maybe even with a nice woodstove going. But, NO, these are performance dogs and perform they WILL, rain or shine! It isn't cheap entering dog shows, so unless it is thunder and lightening or maybe snow, we run! Roscoe slipped and missed his weaves, then worried about them in his next run and missed them there, too. He did, however, get a nice FAST run in regardless of having to jump through puddles up to his wrists! Good little guy!! FAST is a new AKC class sort of like gambles in USDAA. We just started doing them. Amazing that tiny little guy ran in puddles two inches deep. They ended up moving the ring later in the morning to dryer ground!! Some dogs and people were slipping in the mud.
Colby ran clean and steady in both runs. She takes care of herself in slippery conditions and ran nicely, cleanly and in good form. Running her outside, even in rain, is like wrapping yourself in faux fur! She doesn't complain, does exactly what you tell her, gives it a good effort without being crazy. She's SUCH a good girl. She turns 10 in three days!! I love that little girlie!!
Here she is enjoying a DOUBLE FAUX FUR bed, with Spur bugging her to play!!!
Go Colby!! I've been anxious to hear how she did. I thought about you all when it was raining. They are good Min Pins to run in the rain. It wasn't very warm out either.
ReplyDeleteI want to hear more about the seminar. Putting in my reading/writing hours today, until 3 pm.
Here is what I wrote to Cindy and Judy Kay -
ReplyDeleteNow too much fresh stuff, but she is a GREAT speaker and very bright and informative. I think many people there learned a lot of new stuff. A lot of it was stuff I have seen or heard before.
For all you instructors she stressed the value of jackpots. And how frustrating it is as an instructor when students do not reward ENOUGH. I know you two both complain about that. Patricia suggested that you explain a jackpot, then actually COUNT to fifteen while the student is feeding. She says that makes it a little clearer to students and gets them utilizing the jackpot more often.
She stressed that with aggression it is never "fixed". One must always maintain. That hit home to me as I have gotten away from rapid fire treat feeding of Roscoe when people come into the house. She said it is something to continue and not let go, maintaining the thought process in him that people entering his home mean yummy treats appear in full!!
She also mentioned that with aggression the cortisol levels can take hours or a day to go down, so an incident that occurs in the morning could trigger another incident in the afternoon and to be aware of that. She also stressed that for some bitches pre-estrus can be MUCH worse than the worse case of PMS a human has ever had, so be aware of that with pre-estrus bitches.
She is definitely one to try Chinese herbs and drugs with aggression. Not so much as Jean Donaldson is, but definitely not against that.
She felt that "aggression" should be classified a bit more than it is normally. She says true aggression is "action with intent to harm". Many times it is just reactivity and not true aggression. That should be distinguished, she feels.
She went on a bit about the discussion of "alpha" dog or dominant dog, or whatever. She feels that pack structure is "fluid" and who really knows what is going on in a dog pack anyway? Supporting the alpha dog can bring more trouble, so don't focus on that. Truly alpha dogs do not show any aggression. They don't need to. "Wannabees" are usually the problem dogs. Middle of the pack dogs. Nothing new there, really.
Anyway, it was good, lots of people there. Nothing really new or eye opening.