[Amy Bergmann]

Yes, we allow Maddy to sniff on walks, but she often cares more about looking around (probably for squirrels) than sniffing. When she sniffs too hard, we are cautious because it usually means she has caught a whiff of a food item someone has thrown from their car. We’ve had to pry some pretty gross things out of her mouth (she has a great “leave it” at home, but not so much on walks).

We do also do lots of “find it” games around the house, hiding treats for her to find, etc. We do have a book on Super Sniffer Scent Games, but haven’t read it yet (hopefully soon). We do have a snuffle mat, and I see that is the next exercise…. 🙂

[Amy Bergmann]

Sorry for the delay — we were at a flyball tournament Friday-Sunday, then back to work for two days. Now we have five days off for Thanksgiving break, with big plans to catch up on dog stuff! 😉

Here are our responses to the questions for exercise #3:
•What have you discovered that you need to manage that you haven’t been?
-I don’t know that there is anything we haven’t been trying to manage at all, but the main thing we are working on managing is keeping her sub-threshold for flyball (the triggers being watching other dogs run, chase balls, and play with tugs). However, there are all sorts of triggers that get her excited in regular life that we try to manage as well. For example, she goes berserk when she sees squirrels. We mostly walk her at night, when they thankfully are not out, but walks during the day are challenging for this reason.

•How has your management improved?
-For her flyball triggers, we’ve been trying ‘relax on a mat,’ we have trained her to give her chin and rest it on our hand when she is flying high so that she calms a little, we have tried things that almost seem to force a calmness in her, such as licking peanut butter or frozen baby food (the constant licking puts her in a calmer zone). Through the books we’ve been reading and classes we’ve been taking, our management has improved (previously we had no idea what to do about this except physically hold her down from lunging or remove her from the area).

•At what distance from the trigger will your dog eat? Seem relaxed?
-Varies. During flyball, she will take a treat maybe 15 feet away from the lanes, but it has to be a pretty good treat. For her to relax it probably needs to be 25 feet. I’m not sure with squirrels whether we’ve tried treating her — the squirrel thing is mostly still a “leave it” and remove from the area because we aren’t trying to train her to be near squirrels the way we are trying to train her to be calm around flyball, but maybe we should be? I’m thinking of the article example of the dogs who bark out the window all day — maybe managing threshold in ALL circumstances is important, not just for flyball?

•Will your dog play with you? At what distance? (Remember, you can play with toys or food.)
-Yes, if at least the 15 feet away, we do tricks, which feels like play — spin left, spin right, wave left, wave right, weave through legs, sit/down/stand (dog push-ups), back up, etc. These both warm her up for flyball, but also distract her from the action in the lanes. She is given food rewards for doing the tricks.

•How have you increased the challenge for your dog to continue building his threshold? Can you move closer to the trigger? Can your dog feel less stressed around multiple triggers?
-This is a work in progress. Some flyball tournaments, such as the one we were at this weekend, are in smaller facilities, and there is very little space, forcing us to be close to the trigger. We are still trying to have a calm dog at the distance mentioned above. This past weekend there were two times I was holding Maddy where I could not physically get far enough from the lanes to have any hope of a calm dog, so I had to just hunker down where we were and hold her tight, as she wanted to lunge and bark. This was probably 8-10 feet away.

•Have you practiced and had success in different environments?•Have there been any incidents of reactivity?
-One thing we’ve tried once was to take her on a long line near a dog park (trigger) and work on both recall (calling her back from wanting to run to the dog park) and staying below threshold (keeping reactivity to a minimum) when she can see the other dogs running and playing with toys. We were discouraged by someone else from doing that again, but we still think it is a good exercise, so if you agree we might try that again over the break.

•Don’t forget to allow the dog to look at the trigger if he wants to. Are you doing this?
-Yes, we have tried the “Look at that!” game from Leslie McDevitt’s “Control Unleashed” book. We’ve rewarded with a marker (“yes!”) and food treat when she looks back at us after looking at a trigger. This is hopefully teaching her she can look and see the trigger, but then return her attention to us (we do not think her attention always needs to be on us, but “checking in” is good). We’ve only tried to block her view of the trigger when we are forced to be too close to the trigger for any hope of keeping her sub-threshold, such as this past weekend when forced to be closer to the lanes than desired.

[Amy Bergmann]

Thank you! Matt will continue to work with Maddy on relaxation (and p.s., regarding your comment about her name, we like it spelled either way).

Just read the article associated with assignment #3 but wanted to clarify whether the assignment is reading the article or should we also be answering the questions at the end of the article? If the latter, do we need to post the answers here in the Forum? Thank you!

Amy & Matt Bergmann

[Amy Bergmann]

Here is the video: https://youtu.be/1eGzyAv2_h8

[Amy Bergmann]

Thank you for your response. We have never heard of Solloquin, but looked it up. Read the relaxation assignment and thought we had it down, as we think Maddy does this well at home (less well at tournaments, but obviously that is a more challenging environment). However, after recording the clip (which I will try to figure out how to post), we re-read the exercise and see there are actually several things we could do better (for example, we kept food rewards coming even when she was looking at Matt rather than only when she was looking at or sniffing the mat). Something to work on!

[Amy Bergmann]

We don’t have a lot of current videos on our own iPad, so here is an old video uploaded to Vimeo that shows just a recall, but at the end you can see another dog run and Maddy doesn’t pay much mind because she has her tug already by the time the other dog goes: https://vimeo.com/374357676.

Here’s another oldie that shows Maddy take the jumps on her way up, but goes around a gate and skips all her jumps on the return, and you can see the distraction dog in the back: https://vimeo.com/374361761

Have asked our team captain to send a more current video from our most recent practice, where Maddy was actually running with another dog coming or going, but she drops the ball and has to be “stepped off” the box to keep her from skipping jumps. TBD on that.

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