Categories
Clicker training

Chicken Clicker Workshop

In July 2012 a group of dedicated clicker trainers got together in a workshop to train chickens. Why chickens? It has been proven that with chickens, what you train is what you get. What you reinforce, they repeat. Can you think of a better, more fun way of learning the basic skills needed to train an animal? i.e. mechanical, observational, timing and hand/eye coordination? I have trained chickens in the past, so was quite confident that this workshop would be a roaring success, and would assist the attendees to better their skills. My previous chickens learnt within a very short space of time to offer behaviours such as a down stay, spin, jump, follow a target stick, colour discrimination, walk at heel, recall, go into a crate, retrieve, etc.

So I decided to put together a workshop in which folk could hone their skills whilst having a fun day, and on top of it, teach chickens to perform behaviours which they had never learnt before. Chickens are also a good choice of animal because they come with no emotional baggage. The handlers had no preconceived ideas about what their chicken would be able to achieve, so were open-minded and eager to experiment.

These particular chickens were hatched in an incubator and especially hand-reared for this event. They had not been clicker conditioned, so the workshop attendees had to start off with the very basics. They soon learnt that the chickens quickly learnt what they were reinforced for and not necessarily what the handlers were aiming to train them! Much laughter and enjoyment ensued, but by the end of the day, the chickens were offering (in varying degrees of success) the behaviours they had been trained to perform.

Categories
Travel

Incredible India

Last year two of my friends, Peter A and Peter P emigrated to Puttaparthi, India. From time to time they send updates on their life out there. Here is one of their wonderful stories about life out there, with vague relevance to animals in the story about the donkey. I’m sure you’ll enjoy their sense of joie de vivre. This is about their trip to the Himalayas. Enjoy!

The Himalayas.

The heat of Puttaparthi was becoming a bit onerous so we decided to do what all the ex pats and the British of the Raj did and head for the mountains where it is said to be cooler.

Now this is easier said than done. This being India……

We had done a lot of research and enquiring around and had a fair idea of where we should go, and armed with a map and a purse full of money we headed for the travel agent. We had great ideas of travelling by train to Delhi. They have a wonderful luxury train that runs between Bangalore and Delhi. We would spoil ourselves and take the train and really see and experience India and its fantastic rail system first hand.

Man proposes but god disposes. The train was booked up months ahead so we had to settle for air travel and, shudder, a bus trip again from Delhi to Dharamsala – 12 hours !!!.The area being far too mountainous to lay railroad tracks.

To catch our flight we had to leave home at 5.30am. Arrived at Delhi 1.30pm. We had four hours to kill so we took a taxi and did a tour of a few sights. What we saw of the town was lovely. It was clean and the avenues were tree lined. A nice change from what you normally encounter.

If you remember we had vowed never to go on a bus trip again – well here went and broke this vow. The ticket said the bus departs from some petrol station at six. Now we found this a bit strange but we had asked people who knew Delhi and they said yes it is a well known spot. Well the taxi driver hadn’t a clue and had to ask around. We were getting agitated because we seemed to be going into a very grotty area and it was getting dark. Then a sand storm blew up. Have not seen the likes of this before. You could not see more than three feet ahead. With that it started to rain mud. Eventually the station was found: an empty stand down some funny little alley. Very disturbed, we got out and found our way to a spot under a tree and by asking the people hanging around we were assured that this definitely was the spot. Just be patient we were told.

Here you have two hungry souls standing in the drizzle looking very unhappy and decidedly worried that we were being taken for a ride and not in a Volvo bus to Dharamsala. More and more people started to trickle in and they looked very Tibetan so we felt progressively better. Six buses arrived but no sign of a Volvo. Suddenly an angel appeared by the name of Sarah, an Australian girl (very pretty) who lives in Dharamsala and who frequently travels this route. She put us at ease and just told us the routine etc. The routine is firstly; the bus is always late. Secondly; the bus stops once for a pit stop; thirdly don’t eat anything until you get to your destination twelve hours away!!!

Now having a weak bladder I was rather concerned and emptied a bottle I was carrying to use in case of emergency. It was night and I had a rug to cover myself so propriety would be maintained. Thank God there was more than one pit stop and I did not have to resort to this plan.

Eventually the Volvo arrived and we were surprised to find that they were organised and had our names and seats all booked. Wonderful. I must at this juncture explain why the emphasis on a Volvo bus. Here it is considered the height of luxury having air suspension, air conditioning and reclining seats. It is called a semi-sleeper. If you had to see what is termed a luxury bus you would shudder and wonder if the bodywork would hold together. Anyway you pay for what you get and each bus has a different price range.

Our driver was practicing to become a formula one driver, tailgating whatever was in front of him and slamming on the brakes causing the air suspension to react as if we were a ship in a storm. What turned our hair grey was that we were sitting directly behind the driver and could see what was happening on the road. Tip – don’t ever sit behind the driver again. Somebody, whose name shall not be mentioned, became a back seat driver giving a running commentary on all that was happening and going to happen.

We proceeded merrily along in this manner until about midnight when we came to the mountain passes. These were corkscrew bends, steep as hell going up one side and then down the “backside” as they say here. This guy continued flat out without lifting his foot off the peddle and doing his damnedest to overturn the bus. Hats off to Volvo, try as he might to roll the bus it still held the road although the passengers were clinging to their seats in terror. We eventually reached our destination Dharamsala and disembarked very happily. Our little angel, Sarah, confirmed that this driving was normal.

A couple of days later going up to McLead Ganj we realised why the trip was only done at night!! The passes are so steep and the drops so precipitous that if that ride was done in that fashion in daylight the drivers would be lynched. At the bottom of all the passes lay an overturned bus or car.

Peter A and Peter P (better known as “The Hunks”) at the Gate of India

Took a taxi to our hotel which turned out to be charming. The most wonderful thing was, as we stopped the rain clouds lifted and exposed a view so beautiful it was breathtaking. My first and lasting impression of the Himalayas. Behind the foot hills rose this snow covered peak with clouds just skimming the top. Peter A has a million photos of it. From that moment on everything went better and it was fun.

The rest of the time was spent visiting temples and monasteries, so beautiful. We also did a lot of walking through the forests and one very long walk through the valley of wheat fields. This was actually very lovely but after a while it felt like 28 kms. As the path turned into a riverbed going uphill and convinced we were lost. When we asked the way we were kindly informed with a great big smile that we were on the right road and had only one kilometre to go. However after what we assumed was a kilometre we enquired again to be told one more kilometre, and so it went on until we eventually got to the village. I will never forget its name: Bir. We took a taxi back.

One of the pics attached you will see a donkey. It was so cute. The Dalai Llama saved its life. Evidently it had broken its two front legs and the owner had cast it out to fend for itself as it was of no use to him. The D. Llama was driving past and saw this, stopped and gave instructions for it to be taken to a monastery and to be cared for. It has become something of a pet and is spoiled by all and sundry. It manages to get up and down stairs as they find him all over the grounds.

It was at this monastery that Sarah had arranged for us to have an audience with the Karmapa. Unfortunately this was cancelled at the last minute. The Dalai Llama was out of town. We got the distinct impression that we were definitely not in favour!!

The Greek will soon be sending you a link to view the rest of the pictures. God help you. Greek time is the same as Indian time.

Namasté
Peter X2

Categories
dog training Dogs

Dane dog down

Some dog folk prefer to have their problems addressed in the privacy of their own homes. Each problem is unique and requires a different approach. Not all problems are trainable, some benefitting more from management rather than discipline.

Some calls are so simple that one wonders whether the caller is trying to have you on. For instance, one lady phoned me asking “please can you come and help me with my dog. The situation is an emergency, so we need you here tomorrow if you can make it”. Of course I immediately cleared my diary and rushed around, expecting the worst. After all, an emergency requires prompt and decisive action, not so?

For me, one of the biggest problems with house visits is finding the house. I have a natural bias to turn left, and can happily spend hours getting to the correct suburb and then going round and round in circles, before breaking down and phoning for more directions, only to find that I’ve driven past the house five times already!!

Anyway, this call was only about half-an-hours’ drive away in a suburb that I am vaguely familiar with, so after only two wrong turns I arrived at the house. It turned out that the dog in question was a young Great Dane male (intact) which was kept in a large area at the back of the house. The owner was very proud to point out that there were no plants of any sort – this so that there was nothing for the dog to destroy. This poor dog had only been off the property twice (to visit the veterinarian – hardly a red letter day for the dog!) and was kept in this area bereft of any stimulation. True, there were other dogs, but they were kept inside the house. The “emergency” was that the owner had two weeks prior to my visit put a collar on the dog. And the dog now wouldn’t stand up with the collar around his neck. So here was this huge Great Dane male lying on his side and propelling himself along the ground like a flounder. Take the collar off, and hey presto! He was back up on all four legs bouncing around like any normal dog.

Problem number one was that this dog was not used to having strange people enter his enclosure. It took a few minutes for him to accept that I wasn’t the Great Dane Killer from Hell. I always use food as a primary reinforcer, as no animal (including humans) will eat if it is stressed. As for a lot of the time I am working with animals that I don’t know, this is the easiest way to assess how receptive the animal is to my presence and the training process. Needless to say, this Dane would not touch a morsel of food. We tried chicken liver, cheese, roast chicken, raw beef, cat food, etc., etc. No go. The dog was just too stressed to eat. That was problem number two. Problem number three was that the dogs left in the house didn’t quite see why they should be excluded and set up an almighty wail from inside, which of course distracted and upset our poor Dane even further.

After spending some 10 minutes or so playing ball with him, we took the plunge and placed a collar around the dogs’ neck. He fell to the ground like a stone. No amount of coaxing would get him to lift his head. So I put another collar on him. Then another. And another. And then I attached a lead to each collar. The poor dog now looked a bit like a horizontal Maypole. We moved away from him to see if our presence was upsetting him. Not a bit. He wasn’t going to get up with those heavy things around his neck. I went back and removed all the leads and two of the collars. And started playing ball with his owner on the other side of the garden. (I was assured that this was his favourite game). Sure enough, this proved too much for the dog, and (after carefully checking that we weren’t watching him), he leaped to his feet and joined in the game. As soon as we looked at him, he fell to the ground again.

This procedure went on for some time – collar on, dog down. Play ball, dog up. By the end of an hour the dog was wearing all three collars and leads and was walking around the garden in a relaxed fashion. He was still unhappy about someone holding the end of the lead whilst he was on his feet, but at least the owner now could see that the collar wasn’t the problem, but rather the manipulative dog!

Categories
dog training Dogs

Rico brings new hope for an end to rhino horn smuggling

The following article was released by the EWT, who have given me permission to post it on my web site.

The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) is proud to welcome its newest member of staff – Rico the Wildlife Sniffer Dog! Rico, who is being trained to detect wildlife products, is funded through the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust and will be deployed as part of a partnership between the EWT and the African Consultants for Transport Security (ACTS), a cargo screening company that uses sniffer dogs to detect explosives in cargo.

Rico, a two year old Belgian Malinois, arrived in South Africa from Germany on Tuesday the 6th of March 2012 to take up duty as a Wildlife Sniffer Dog at OR Tambo International Airport’s cargo and baggage sections. The canine is physically ideally suited for the task as he has a high work drive, immense confidence and intense focus, coupled with an extraordinary sense of smell.

The dog forms part of the EWT’s strategy to quell the rampant rhino poaching and illegal wildlife trade. The rhino poaching crisis has demonstrated that there is no single solution to addressing illegal wildlife trade, which is an increasing global phenomenon, estimated to be the third largest illegal industry worldwide after drugs and human trafficking, and often has its roots in organised, trans-boundary crime. For this reason the EWT is implementing interventions at several stages in the poaching and wildlife trade chain, including the deployment of highly trained sniffer dogs specifically trained to detect wildlife products like rhino horn, at various ports of exit through the country.

Rico will be housed and cared for by ACTS at their canine facility in Kempton Park, with generous sponsorship for the animal also coming from BIDVest and the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Fund. Once he has acclimatised to his new environment Rico is to be introduced to his future handler. While he already understands the principles of searching for and detecting scents he will now be imprinted on the specific scents – particularly rhino horn, ivory and abalone – that he needs to detect before being put to work. As he matures, new scents of other threatened species affected by illegal trade and smuggling will be added to his olfactory repertoire.

The EWT will facilitate the deployment of a further five dogs at various high risk border points of entry and exit during 2012. This will contribute to increasing the detection rate of wildlife contraband in transit and therefore, the risk associated with wildlife crime and rhino poaching specifically. With increased detection comes improved arrest and prosecution rates and hopefully, a reduction in poaching through deterring individuals involved in organised crime.

A day after arriving in SA, Rico shows his enthusiasm to get to work (Photo: Claire Patterson-Abrolat)

Article By The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT)

Categories
dog training Dogs

Critics Challenge ‘Dog Whisperer’ Methods

JonBee jumps up at Cesar Millan, his sharp teeth snapping repeatedly. Millan calmly yanks on the leash and pulls the wolf-like Korean Jindo away. This continues for over a minute, with Millan’s face remaining undisturbed and JonBee’s owners gasping on the other side of the living room. Finally, the dog shows a moment of weakness. Millan quickly pins him to the floor and rolls him onto his side. Millan’s calmness seems to be reflected in the dog now lying frozen in submission.

Every Friday night, troubled American dogs undergo a seemingly miraculous transformation on national television. The magician is Cesar Millan, better known as the “Dog Whisperer.” He is the current face of dog training, and he has brought “dominance theory,” an age-old training technique, back into canine conversation and practice.

To understand how to control a dog’s behavior, according to Millan, one needs to look at the hierarchy of wolf packs. Domestic dogowners must confidently carry the title of “pack leader” and assume power over their pets.

But many dog trainers and behavior experts criticize the show, advocating a gentler approach to training that replaces coercion and physical behaviour corrections with food rewards and other forms of positive reinforcement. They point to new studies that have placed the two popular dog-training methods head-to-head and almost universally shown positive training to be more successful than punitive methods in reducing aggression and disobedience.

Millan may have the ratings, they argue, but purely positive trainers have the science.

No more crying wolf

Millan’s concept of dominance is based on an old understanding of the behavior of wolves. In the 1960s, researchers observed that wolves formed large packs in which certain individuals beat out others to earn “top dog” status. These were called “alphas.” Millan contends that a dog displaying aggression is trying to establish dominance and attain alpha status, much like its ancestors. He advises humans to take on this position themselves, forcefully if necessary, to keep the dog in a submissive role.

Dog trainers whose practices are grounded in these concepts, such as the late Bill Koehler and Captain Arthur Haggerty, have dominated the business for most of the past half-century. But as Dave Mech, an expert on wolf behavior at the University of Minnesota, points out, the early wolf research – much of it his own – was done on animals living in captivity.

Mech has been studying wolves for 50 years now, yet only over the past decade has he gotten a clear picture of these animals in their natural habitats. And what he’s found is far from the domineering behaviour popularized by Millan. “In the wild it works just like it does in the human family,” says Mech. “They don’t have to fight to get to the top. When they mature and find a mate they are at the top.” In other words, wolves don’t need to play the “alpha” game to win.

In the 1980s, around the same time that our understanding of wolves began to change, positive dog-training methods slowly emerged from the fringes and grew in popularity. A tug-of-war continues today between dog trainers practicing predominantly positive reinforcement and those using punishment-based techniques.

Nicholas Dodman, director of the Animal Behavior Clinic at Tufts University, is one of the leading proponents of positive training methods. He believes the source of most bad behavior, especially owner-directed aggression, is mistrust and recommends rebuilding a dog’s trust by “making sure that the dog understands that all good things in life come only and obviously from you.” To get those things – whether food or basic attention – the dog must learn to please you first.

But others see these techniques as little more than pampering borne out of lax and inappropriate attitudes toward pets that have recently come into vogue. “In the last ten to fifteen years it’s become, ‘don’t ever say ‘No’ to your dog; don’t ever punish dogs,'” says Babette Haggerty, who is carrying on her father’s dominance-based teaching at Haggerty’s School for Dogs in Manhattan. “I think people are coddling dogs more than ever before.”

But in 2004, “The Dog Whisperer” – Millan’s doggy psych 101 – premiered on the National Geographic Channel, and the momentum mounting in the positive direction was stymied. “In America, we [had begun] using human psychology on dogs,” Millan says in an email. “What was needed was for humans to learn dog psychology.”

Perils of punishment

Many veterinary behaviorists believe punishment-based techniques, like those seen on the show, could come back to bite dog owners. The National Geographic Channel even posts a warning on the screen during each episode: “Do not attempt these techniques yourself without consulting a professional.”

According to a paper in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, attempts to assert dominance over a dog can increase a dog’s aggression. Researchers from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom studied dogs in a shelter for six months, while also reanalyzing data from previous studies of feral dogs. Their findings support those of the Mech at the University of Minnesota: dogs don’t fight to get to the top of a “pack.” Rather, violence appears to be copycat behavior – something borne of nurture, not nature.

In another recent study, around 25 percent of owners using confrontational training techniques reported aggressive responses from their dogs. “The source of dog aggression has nothing to do with social hierarchy, but it does, in fact, have to do with fear,” says Meghan Herron, a veterinarian at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study published in the January 2009 issue of Applied Animal Behavior Science. “These dogs are acting aggressively as a response to fear.”

Dogs react physiologically to stress and fear in the same way people do, with hormones. Two 2008 studies out of Hungary and Japan showed, respectively, that concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol increased in dogs that were strictly disciplined and that levels were linked to elevation of aggressive behavior. What’s more, an Irish study found that physically or verbally reprimanding a dog with a history of biting people was one of the significant predictors of a subsequent bite. The results were published in April 2008 in Applied Animal Behavior Science.

“[All these studies] confirm what many of us have said for a long time,” says Pat Miller, owner of Peaceable Paws dog and puppy training in Hagerstown, Maryland. “If you use aggression in training your dog, you’re likely to elicit aggression back.”

Paybacks of positive reinforcement

Before practicing professionally as a dog trainer, Jolanta Benal of Brooklyn, New York, learned the difference between positive and punitive methods personally.

Her dog, Mugsy, had an attraction to men in uniform. Whether they were wearing UPS brown or U.S. Postal Service blue, Benal’s bulldog would lunge at them on the street. So she hired a highly recommended dog trainer to try to correct this behavior.

“He would set Mugsy up to do offending behavior, and then throw a can full of pennies at the dog,” she says. “It was a traditional old school technique. And it worked to suppress the problem behavior – at least in the moment.” Mugsy’s unhealthy obsession with the postal workers, however, did not go away. Even if he didn’t always jump at the UPS guy on a walk-by, says Benal, he wasn’t happy to see him either.

Benal then traded in for a new trainer that brought chicken instead of coins. As the man in uniform approached, Benal was now instructed to distract Mugsy by giving him the treat. And it worked. After several times, the dog would look to her in expectation, rather than towards the uniform-clad men in alarm. “For the last year of his life, he was an angel,” says Benal. “It was amazing the changes it brought.”

Millan argues that using food to coax dogs may be impractical: “It can result in an addiction to treats or an overweight dog,” he says in an email. However, Dodman of Tufts University explains that trainers only give food at the beginning of training. After a period of time, owners should reward intermittently, reinforcing the response. “If every time you played the lottery you won money, then the excitement wouldn’t be there anymore,” says Dodman. “The thrill for the dog is ‘Will I get a treat this time?'”
Back-aches from stooping low to feed a dog, or the added cost of extra chicken or doggy treats, he believes, are far less dreadful than the anxiety and altered relationships caused by the punitive alternative.

Dodman has some data to back him up. In February 2004, a paper in Animal Welfare by Elly Hiby and colleagues at the University of Bristol compared the relative effectiveness of the positive and punitive methods for the first time. The dogs became more obedient the more they were trained using rewards. When they were punished, on the other hand, the only significant change was a corresponding rise in the number of bad behaviors.

A series of more recent papers also support Dodman’s theory and Hiby’s results. A study published in the October 2008 issue of Journal of Veterinary Behavior found that positive reinforcement led to the lowest average scores for fear and attention-seeking behaviors, while aggression scores were higher in dogs of owners who used punishment. Another 2008 study, this one published in Applied Animal Behavior Science, found that positive training methods resulted in better performances than punishment for Belgian military dog handlers.

Bridging the differences in dogma

It’s hard to argue that the slow, patient techniques used in positive reinforcement would elicit the same dramatic moments seen on Cesar Millan’s show. “There’s a big difference between looking at behavior as a ‘Stop that’ versus a ‘Here’s what I want,'” says Bruce Blumberg, a professor of dog psychology at the Harvard Extension School. “Positive reinforcement is a different mindset. And it’s one that doesn’t work quite as well on TV.”

Dodman is one of many people who have asked the National Geographic Channel
to discontinue “The Dog Whisperer,” consistently one of the highest-rated shows on the network. The American Humane Association issued a press statement in 2006 asking for a cancellation because of what they suggested were abusive techniques used by Millan. More recently, the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior issued a position statement in which it expresses concern “with the recent re-emergence of dominance theory and forcing dogs and other animals into submission as a means of preventing and correcting behaviors.”

Millan defends his methods, asserting they “use the minimum force necessary to prevent or correct a problem.” According to the dog rehabilitator, he can “redirect the behavior of most of my pack with just my body language, eye contact and energy.” He points to the “thousands upon thousands of letters” he receives from viewers touting “miracles” of restored relationships and saved dogs. “All I want is what is best for the animal,” Millan says.

Despite the controversy, there is a lot that everyone agrees on. Both sides of the training spectrum teach that a lack of discipline or structure is not conducive to a well-behaved dog. “Dogs need direction and boundaries, just like human relationships,” says Haggerty, the trainer from the School for Dogs in Manhattan, which uses dominance theory. “If dogs don’t know what the boundaries are, they will wreak havoc.”

How a dog owner projects those boundaries is also important. “You have to be calm, you have to be clear, you have to be consistent, and you have to make sure you meet your pet’s needs for other things: exercise, play, social interaction,” says Herron of The Ohio State University.

So what does an owner do when a calm and structured environment still breeds a misfit pup like JonBee? Should it be the leash and hand that redirects the dog, or poultry and patience? Current science favors the chicken flavor. But whichever strategy you choose, everyone agrees that the timing must be precise. It is very difficult for a dog to make an appropriate association and learn from the reprimand or reward otherwise.

Of course, if you take Blumberg’s Harvard class, he’ll tell you, “If your timing is lousy using positive reinforcement, the worst thing that happens is you get a fat dog.”

Categories
Clicker training

Timing is Critical

In my workshops I always make a point of emphasising how important timing is. One of the ways of improving your timing skills is to study music in any form. E.g. learn to play a musical instrument, join a choir, or take up dancing. Of course, one should always “put your money where your mouth is”, so here I am doing my Gold Bar Medal Test: Latin American. I am partnered by my instructor, Sandy Smuts-Steyn.

Categories
Clicker training dog training

Clicker Workshop Module 1 : 4 December 2011

Lacey has the habit of “killing” her scent cloth in the scent discrimination exercise in “C” test obedience. Here Sue, her handler, clicks and treats her for carrying it calmly.

Carla teaching her Groenendael, Maya, for targeting a disk with her right front paw.

Maxine getting her volunteer, Retha Kruger, to demonstrate different ways of getting behaviours. Here Retha is being compelled to sit on a chair. You can see by her face that she is not enjoying the experience, which is one of the reasons why we do not use compulsion in clicker training.

Categories
Clicker training dog training Pet

Clicker Workshop Module 2 : 7 July 2011

Attendees and their dogs demonstration “101 things to do with a Box” – each handler was tasked to get 10 or more behaviours within 5 minutes. Sharon and Ashley (a dog she rescued and had only had for 4 months) demonstrate how easy this is.

Here the dogs had to perform a behavioural chain – in this case they needed to weave through the poles, go around the bucket and then return straight to the handler. The handler was not allowed to move forward. They had 10 minutes to get this behaviour on cue. Here Charles shows how he and Gaudy mastered it.

Some dogs were nervous of the equipment. Here Mariano rewards Ashley for moving towards the scary bucket. This is not his dog, and it was the first time dog and handler had met and worked together.

Categories
Clicker training dog training Dogs Pet

Clicker Workshops

Clicker workshops are designed to be interactive and fun for both you and your pet. Animals such as dogs, cat, horse, meerkat, parrot, rat, chicken etc. have participated in these workshops, so that attendees can see for themselves how this training method works for all animals.

The Module 1 workshop includes the following:
What makes a good trainer
What is clicker training?
How it all began
What is the difference between a primary and secondary reinforcer?
Conditioning your animal to the clicker
Timing skills

If you’re interested in participating in one of these workshops, e-mail me on Maxine@clickersa.co.za , and I will notify you of forthcoming events.
Some photos taken at recent Module 1 Clicker Workshops:

Maretha teaching her Pug to jump on cue
Categories
dog training Dogs

Classic Working Trials

This is a wonderful sport for handlers and dogs alike. Most of the competitions are held out in the bush, as we need a lot of acreage for the tracking stakes. There are levels through which the teams must progress.

Entry level is Companion Dog, then Tracker Dog 1, then Tracker Dog 2. After a team has qualified Tracker Dog 2, they may decide whether to go on to Tracker Dog 3 or Police Dog. Once a dog has three qualifying certificates under three different judges in either Police Dog or Tracker Dog 3, it earns the title of “Police Dog Champion” or “Tracker Dog Champion”. Full details regarding this sport are available on the KUSA web site: www.kusa.co.za

Here are a few pictures of some of my students competing in the Companion Dog stakes. These pictures were taken at an open show in Birch Acres, Gauteng.

There are three sections to Companion Dog, and the dog has to gain a qualifying mark in each group in order to obtain a Qualifying Certificate.

GROUP 1: CONTROL
Heel on lead (all three paces, with left, right and about turns)
Heel free (all three paces, with left, right and about turns)
Retrieve a dumbbell
Recall to handler
Send away (20 metres)
Down stay (10 minutes out of sight)

GROUP 2: AGILITY
“A” Frame
Clear Jump
Long Jump

GROUP 3: NOSE WORK
Elementary search
In this exercise the dog has 2 minutes in which to sniff out and retrieve an article. The judge gives the article to the handler to scent, and then places it somewhere in the ring. The article is placed in an area 15 metres square and the team are not allowed to see where it is placed. It is a test to see that the dog can sniff out an object with human scent and retrieve it promptly.

Of course, the dogs don’t always perform as you expect them to. It can be quite stressful for the dog to suddenly be asked to perform all these different exercises in a strange environment on the same day. So sometimes nature takes its toll. (dogs are not allowed to eliminate in the training area, and lose marks for doing so). These are pictures of one of my dogs who just couldn’t hold it any more. She is supposed to be doing an area search …….. This show was held at a grass farm in Heidelberg.