EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Bernhardt and I are a grassroots team, self made from scratch. Other than for competitive jumps we almost never have a fancy dock. Our training and exercises are happening at ponds and jumping from elevated grass-covered shorelines or short wooden fishing docks. Lakes are a real luxury for us when we do get the opportunity to use them. Lots of practices in fields or pastures, jumping on or over horse jumps or tree logs. For air retrieve training, I built a small training device that I tie to trees or simply hold up myself. Sometimes I even stand in the water to hold the practice bumper. I set toys on large round bales of hay or straw or on bank obstacles that are originally built to jump horses on or off; this is all to teach my dog a pattern response to charge and retrieve. We had to be very creative and had to come up with lots of creations to simulate the situations that would be required to compete on the diving circuit.
Below, you can see images of one of our favorite training banks. It even has a little gap to jump across or to stand in while holding a toy or hanger. But the best feature is that the dog can walk off it without having to jump downwards. It reduces the stress impact on the dog’s front legs and offers great options to strengthen the hind end with lots of different placing options.
“Water Jumping dog” was my very first google attempt looking for outings we could attend to compete or at least to upgrade our very improvised ways of having fun together. I found Bernhardt to be very talented, everything came very natural to him, he loved the water and to swim and of course to jump. From my horse trainer career I had learned to always look for talent, for pattern displays that just needed to be directed and linked to distinct triggers being as natural as possible. Every animal has only so many repetitions of a very dynamic act in their body so I worked him carefully, trying to never fall for this trap of juvenile energetic outbursts suggesting there would be a lot more in that still growing body. There really was not much of any educational input towards the agility sport of dock diving other than the main hosting organizations and the ways they ran their events. Some short blogs where there reflecting narrow personal experiences fitting on one webpage and anything out there had one thing in common – the featured team or dog where finished in their training and well accomplished. There was almost nothing to find on what to do when you had never done this before, nothing how to fix issues or how to condition or work outside of competitions. If you had no access to a dock with a trainer – a topic that also needs some serious input and attention – you were pretty much on your own.
IN DOG TRAINING, EVERYTHING MATTERS
(TRIGGERING) – identifying confidence issues, no- trust behavior and obvious bio mechanical displays that connect to real – time or previously made experiences triggering the basic natural instinct to not severely taking risks that rather lead to body damages and pain infliction than contributing to enhance the quality of life and guarantee survival.
As more sensitive, reactive and self-preserving an animal one gets to work with as more observant, experienced and detailed a trainer has to be. As higher the quality of independent evaluation of a presented challenge becomes as harder it will be to reset the “button of functioning performances”. What was once very easy – the original levels of training were just playful without any human inclination to put some value on those – becomes harder and harder to eventually hit a block of nonexistence.
To understand those dynamics, I always refer to the jumping horses that by nature are seriously not meant to jump. For that they make a great example of simplicity following a training process. Horses joints and bones are not very elastic, unlike a Gazelle. Almost none can jump a 4 ft 7-inch fence from a stand still or of short distance, unlike a deer. And they are way heavy build which leads to huge wear and tear on their weight bearing front legs – in fact just ONE leg will have to hold up for the whole body equaling an average of 1500 pounds coming extremely forceful out of the air. Their logistics in nature are very simple – they “hunt” for non-moving grass and once that is eaten, they travel along to better grounds, they establish a warden system that alarms the herd or self-monitor their environment for enemies and upon attack they run over flat ground rarely ever facing an obstacle. If they get cornered, they will use front and hind legs trying to fight the predator off – if successful they continue running. So why are they doing it then under saddle or free jumping but rarely ever on their own. The answer is simple: the training trigger used to condition the pattern in its origin is mainly the flee instinct or fear (of pain infliction), given to them by nature, being pure Prey in the wilderness. It is artificially created by a predator either sitting right up their neck or chasing them down a shoot from the ground or even both. The whole pattern already imprinted and execution of it with multiple more and more challenging conditions including professional handler patterns can be reviewed in the video below. The finessed animal looks calm, willing undistressed and is handled quietly. Of course one can create failure by setting the jumps to an extend that success is no longer possible, but truly who would do such thing on a consistent basis since that would dramatically increase the possibility of physical wear and tear plus psychological distress not being able to complete the quest? Well in some competitive disciplines of dock diving the set up is exactly that – as little sense as this makes to knowingly set up for defeat.
Mildly and correctly build up, the more and more confirmed recognizable pattern to first flee, than jump and then be rewarded turns into automized behavior that can be reinstated and perfectionated using at times very tiny almost invisible signals or aids. The performance looks like the horse is doing it almost on its own, enjoys the job and would go on for eternity – the perfect illusion had been created. Individual fences can be linked together to a course and finally physical strength and technical ability combined with the riding humans feel and correct assessment giving the trigger defines the ultimate limit of challenges to be presented. The team relationship here is Predator working Prey. The roles are fundamentally established from the get go, of course human behavior, self-understanding and self confidence foremost however human emotions can easily create a fully unbalanced and even reversed leadership model of dramatically unnatural outcome – The Prey eventually controls the Predator.
The role model and triggering in dog agility work and training, period, is of a very different structure. It operates on a relationship between TWO PREDATORS aiming for a performance outcome logically more influenced by social dynamics, mimicking, body language and body read. The terminologies of “becoming the pack leader” or the illusion of “psychic reading of an animals mind” or the true reality of the fact that “my dog can read of my eyes or lips” have all a well-deserved place in the approach to eventually form and shape a successful team working together.
The most effective drive used in dog training is primarily the prey (hunting) drive and the trigger that causes the instinctive pattern can be initially launched just by an odor, a noise, a trace or a distant or imminent visual, a sudden move (throw). Once the target is in a proximity that seems close enough to pursue the hunt, the dog will most likely show some form of action to bring the target down. It might charge and run at full speed or at first freeze in alert position to than show a full energetic outburst. It might approach the work rather cautious, self-preserving using intellectual qualities connecting the dots.
Another drive is the herding or gathering behavior used primarily for retrieving work. And then there is of course the play drive in the younger canine. To use any of those one must be able to channel the natural instinctive pattern towards an artificial object of utmost desire. One creates a toy or dummy (rubber duck) pursuit to channel all energy towards a desired artificial performance – such as jumping at a suspended bumper or launching off a dock to grab and retrieve a hanging toy at the back of the pool or retrieving real ducks of a pond. Although, unlike in horses, there is no longer any direct body contact between the two acting individuals the vibe and gestures of the handler still act as a supporting aid, demonstrating active interest in the target, becoming energetic and expressing great confidence that this hunt will absolutely work and is worth the effort.
A toy imprinted hunting dog will pursue the work different than a herding dog, the adrenalin levels create certainly a lot of different dynamics, so does inner determination, physical strength and willingness to please. A playful puppy will show different performance patterns than a seasoned competitor and the swim technique and ability of a whippet look much different than that of a Labrador. There is a lot of variety to create a toy drive with quite a tool box to choose from. Going in depth into the analysis of those techniques and into the evaluation of instinct driven natural behavior patterns are of course a substantial tutorial portion of this blog.
Other tutorials will work on and answer questions concerning very complex topics like
BIOMECHANICS
purity of all gaits, full usage and potential of the dogs body, stride length in relation to placing maximizing the ideal take off spot, form in air – at take off and in landing, placement and eventual preference of one hind leg or canter lead over the other, body straightness, tail use and carriage, headset and ear play, swim motion and efficiency and foremost ease, hip and back usage, correctness of body build – conformation, body position during swimming, breathing techniques, displays during and after performances …..that list can get even longer and it reflects just one single aspect of a sports or compaignon or working dog.
The previous topics serves only as one tiny example for a truly gigantic project. As I go along with this blog I strive to create and design a educational library that does not leave any stone unturned to not only give incentives but also to inform and clarify.