The Rip Van Wrinkler, XVII, Issue 2, May 2013

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Training Conversation

NoseWork, Agility, Racing, Lure Coursing, Skateboarding

Quote of the year!
Bob Kamen, watching Scarlet being miserable running a Jumpers course at an agility trial :
"You should take her lure coursing & have her do something that doesn't make her genes hurt".


A Nose Work Game – Spring Egg Hunt/by Lisa Voss

Sophie Nose Work game

Spring is here and it is not just children who can enjoy a good spring egg hunt.  My dogs thoroughly enjoy putting their noses to work to find their own colorful hidden plastic eggs.  What I love about the game is that there are so many ways to make it fun and different for the handler and the dog so that it works for all levels of dog/handler teams. 

First of all you will need to buy some plastic Easter eggs.  Many of the eggs sold now have predrilled holes in them which makes them perfect hide containers for the game since the odor of the treat or the scented q-tips will easily escape through the holes. 

For Those Just Starting:   If you are new to nose work with your dog, then you will want to place the food your dog is working for in the eggs.  If yours are still just in boxes, hide the treat filled eggs in the boxes and leave a piece or two of treat in the box with the egg so the dog can self-reward at first.  Once the dog gets the hang of the treat in the egg, you don’t have to put the extra treats in but be sure your dog isn’t going to try to eat the egg to get to the treats.    As your dog advances you can start hiding the eggs near the boxes but not inside of them.  Again, you can start with a piece of treat next to the egg so the dog can self reward at the beginning.   You can increase the difficulty by increasing the search area and moving away from hard surfaces to more porous surfaces.  As your dog continues to advance, start making it so only some eggs have treats, so the dog has to find the “right” eggs. 

For Those on Odor:  If your dog has already begun odor then you can use the eggs as a hide container.  I love that the eggs come in so many colors because I can use that to remind myself how many q-tips are in the eggs or make only one color have the odor.  I like to hide many eggs in a large area and then see how many we can find in given time.  If you are part of a training group, this makes for a fun, friendly competition to see what dog/handler team can collect the most eggs in the allotted time.  If you have made it so the eggs have different numbers of q-tips you can even give bonus points for the teams that find the most 1 q-tip eggs.

My dogs find these games quite fun and I have teased Sam that when our daughter is old enough for us to do egg hunts for we may have to pair them with Birch so we can have the dogs check the yard for any she misses.  That way we don’t have to have a good memory for where we hid them all. 


AGILITY

LISA MARSHALL: Nothing at the agility trial at Oshkosh today. Miranda fell in love with the heating/AC ductwork on the wall near the weaves and had to check it out. She also ran over to the judge, probably to say thanks for the nice courses on Friday, and she ran over to a bar setter in a chair in her Ex St. Then when I came back later in the afternoon for Open JWW, he wasn't there and the chair was empty so she hightailed it over to the empty chair like, where did he go? Anyway, I just tried to run and laugh at the same time. She is still my Panda-monium.

COLLEEN A. FALCONER: Your experience with Miranda reminds me of something that happened with my very first basenji years ago. I enrolled her in a basic manners clicker training class and she did perfectly throughout the entire 8 weeks. We had a very small class of 4 people and we got lots of positive feedback from the trainer and other students on Tia's behavior every week because I practiced religiously at home between class sessions and Tia loved working and was a star in class. Come "graduation day", Tia did terribly on our "graduation test" and acted as though she'd never heard of any of the behaviors I cued her to do which included Sit, Down, STAND(!!!) (she was a finished Champion before I got her and when cued to Stand she plopped her butt on the ground. LOL!), Leave It, Wait, Go to Mat - all of them she "flunked" and I may as well have been speaking French to her. Our "grand finale" of demonstrating heeling made the entire class laugh uproariously, myself included - when I cued her to heel, Tia jumped up on a blue bench that ran the entire length of the room and she chose to heel down IT instead heeling on the floor next to me - I went along with her on that, because we'd already failed so miserably on the literally everything else. Oh, how I miss that dog!!!!  J

LISA MARSHALL: They are so smart and the thing for me is to work on maintaining that focus and attention in the agility ring. Work in progress.


RACING

Lisa Stewart Gambit is pretty sure someone has electrified the finish line. A little too much agility practice last week, every time she saw the line she jumped it.

Susan Kamen Marsicano My dogs all hurdle the line. People stand there & say the dogs can't see the line, - ha!

Lisa Stewart the judges were laughing every time Gambit did this.

Susan Kamen Marsicano I got a lot of phshahs.


LURE COURSING/Yvonne 't Mannetje


Photo: just arrived in Amsterdam for the lure coursing training, last Saturday. Moyo joined the "BLF" = Basenji Liberation Force, meaning "if Kees and Yvonne don't let you join the lure coursing, I will bite you to freedom".


SKATEBOARDING/Kim McNeill & the dogs with the tell-tale tails

" Zest! has decided she would like to take up skateboarding. I know nothing
about these things, but was hoping someone here would have some advice on
what to look for in getting a skateboard for a basenji. Cheaper is better,
but she would like something with some (lots) of bling. (She does have a
MAJOR princess complex) Also, do you think she needs a helmet? or is that
just for wimpy humans? Also, does anyone know if it's okay for dogs to
practice skateboarding in the walmart parking lot? I live on a gravel
road and have a gravel driveway. And I don't beleive kids should
skateboard in the house."

Instructional video on teaching Tiggy the Basenji to skateboard.

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