Dog Training 101 Seminar Homework

I’m doing a simple but fun seminar for In Contact Dog Training in Springfield, Illinois, October 18^th and 19^th. In this past couple years I’ve experimented with giving homework assignments in advance to give participants an opportunity to hit the ground running.

Okay, Dog Training 101 doesn’t sound very agility-like. But it would be intimidating to call this something grandiose like Teaching Independent Performance for Amazing Distance Handling. So, Dog Training 101 it is.

We want to get away from the proposition that agility is a sport for young long-legged kids who Velcro the dog to their butts and race through a numbered sequence scraping the dog off on obstacles as they go. I suppose most agility organizations favor exactly that narrow vision of the game.

Let us instead explore the possibility that we are in a contest of training our special canine friend. The dog is a clever and biddable. Let’s have a little fun with is.

Our training homework begins here:

The Back Pass

I want to teach my dog to come around my body. This is a “no handling” movement. It is, instead, a performance.

For this, I would like a command that asks the dog to circle me clockwise, and another that asks the dog to circle me counter-clockwise. If you have any experience with competitive obedience you’ll recognize that the clockwise Back Pass is a method used by some handlers to have the dog finish on heel-side.

But we’re doing agility, so we don’t want the dog to finish with a sit, but finish by exploding away from us in a new direction. And, in agility, we aim to be ambidextrous. So we want Back Pass to left and Back Pass to right.

Simple! Right?

I will share with you some YouTube recordings of me teaching my dog Cedar the Back Pass. This is your homework.

Working in the basement with Cedar, intro to the Back Pass.

You can see in this recording that the I have a distinctive hand signal to ask Cedar to come around me. Ultimately, I want to fade the hand signal land rely on verbal only.

I even turn my body a bit to pass her behind me. Obviously, I want that to go away as well.

This is a slightly more advanced workout that incorporates the Back Pass. In this training I begin to release her to performance of another agility obstacle out of the Back Pass.

** ** **

Okay, that’s enough homework for how. It might take two or three days to team your dog this simple skill. Later, we will discuss how the Back Pass is an important (but very rare) skill for dog agility.

More tomorrow or the next.

Closing Thoughts

My mind is like my internet browser. 19 tabs open, 3 of them are frozen and I have no idea where the music is coming from.

BLOG1340 HOME

Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston Houston.Bud@gmail.com. Visit our web store: www.dogagility.org/newstore. You’ll find in the web store The Book of Agility Games, a comprehensive reference to all manner of agility games played for competition and fun around the world.

Tweeterverse

This is a different kind of blog post, I think. I am today learning to use Twitter and I will share with you almost as stream of conscious kind of a step-by-step of my morning adventures. As I go I’ll attempt to understand # (hashtags) and @ (mentions).

Also, I’ll try to understand relationships between Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and my blogging on WordPress. It’s more complicated than it sounds.

I Begin

Trumph as Tweety Bird

I tawt I taw a Demaquat!

I DID! I DID taw a Demaquat!!

First try

Let’s agree that Twitter is a stupid means of communication that defies reasonability and fosters insanity. The 140-character limitation defies any meaningful development of an idea. Everything I know about modern rhetoric is out the window. Baby with the bathwater, as it were.

#LearningTwitter

-17

So the Twitter entry screen will mark over-limit characters in red, and tell you how many characters if you need a number. I’ll rewrite the paragraph and get rid of the baby, maybe.

Edited text

Let’s agree that Twitter is a stupid means of communication that defies reasonability. The 140-character limitation defies any meaningful development of an idea. Everything I know about modern rhetoric is out the window. Baby with the bathwater, as it were.

#LearningTwitter

Something new

Most Saturdays I go down to the Dems office on Putnam street and spend an hour or so making phone calls to recruit volunteers who might do door-to-door canvassing or make phone calls for the Dems. I had a chat with Jake the Coordinator (from Athens) and suggested that we are using 1970’s technology in a nearly 2020 world.

#LearningTwitter

Edited

On Saturdays I go to the Dems office & spend an hour making phone calls to recruit volunteers to do canvassing or phone calls for the Dems. I chatted with Jake the Coordinator (from Athens) and suggested that we are using 1970’s technology in a nearly 2020 world. #LearningTwitter

Nightmares

Yeah, I woke up last night having a bad dream about things. The Twitter thing has been bugging me. Writing has structure and development. You start with a premise; you develop and argue for it; and you summarize. That’s nearly impossible to do in 140-chars. #LearningTwitter

[I got it under 140-characters on the first try.]

Fostering Insanity

I removed the expression “fostering insanity” from my gut impression of Twitter above. In 140-chars you can’t have James Joyce… an amazing fabulous writer. You get @realDonaldTrump a shallow fool instead. Am I right Judith? @larson78207 #Learning Twitter

The stupid thing, I can’t resist writing as though I’m constructing a paper with continuity. I said that I “removed the expression… from above.” In twitter there is no above. There is no structure. And I scarcely yet understand the continuity and connectivity.

A Bone to Pick with Chuck Todd

Just before the last election Chuck Todd @MeetThePress said Democrats believe that the election of president will have dire and terrible consequences if it goes wrong. Chuck was dismissive and condescending, explaining that this hysteria has gone on since the election of Lincoln. #LearningTwitter #MTP

Trying Again

Before the last election Chuck Todd @MeetThePress said Democrats believe the election will have dire and terrible consequences if it goes wrong. Chuck was dismissive and condescending, explaining that this hysteria has gone on since the election of Lincoln. #LearningTwitter #MTP

And a follow-up

Chuck Todd @MeetThePress you should have to admit that if Lincoln had not won his election, there would have been no 13th Amendment; and slavery would have likely spread through South and Central Americas; and very likely be a fact of life today. #LearningTwitter #MTP

Dog Training on YouTube

Pip & Cedar get their breakfast doing “Named Obstacle” training in the basement. YouTube belongs to the social media mix. I trying to discover how it does mix. #2MinuteDogTrainer #LearningTwitter

Notation

When adding a YouTube link in Twitter, you get neither a picture link to the video or a link of any kind. If someone wants to watch the YouTube recording, they’ll have to copy the link text and paste it into the browser. Twitter allows uploading a video, but supports only MP4 format. It’s a bit awkward and unaccommodating.

Enough for Now

Let’s call that a workout. I have other, more important work to do and will return to my Twitter self-tutorial on the morrow.

BLOG1339 HOME

Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston Houston.Bud@gmail.com. Visit our web store: www.dogagility.org/newstore. You’ll find in the web store The Book of Agility Games, a comprehensive reference to all manner of agility games played for competition and fun around the world.