FEISTY'S STORY

Feisty dogwalk

Photo by Great Dane Photos

Feisty is a Pyrenean Shepherd who came to me via a student of mine. She was keeping her sister and wanted me to help her find a home for this one. I know she secretly hoped I would keep her all along. I knew two main things about Pyr Sheps at the time, my student had one who was extremely fearful and quirky and I had seen Ashley and Luka win their first USDAA Steeplechase finals. That was about all I knew at the time.

Feisty was a cute 9 week old grey fluff ball. When we put her down on the floor in the middle of my training school she immediately ran around and ran up to me and was so friendly. Within minutes she was running up the dogwalk all on her own. She was a tiny little thing. She was very outgoing and very friendly so I said I would keep her for a week and see how it works out. Well she is still with me so you know how that ended!

I started to learn more about the breed and wondered what I had gotten myself into. I had experience with Aussies, JRTs and BCs and had experience with stressed, sensitive, thinking dogs. Feisty seemed to be very brave and outgoing and was showing no signs of fearfulness. I continued to socialize her as much as possible taking her to many different places. She learned very quickly and I quickly learned that whatever she learned first would stick with her forever. She didn't forget anything. She was keeping a detailed notebook of everything she ever encountered.

As her agility training progressed I wanted to be sure to take her to different places with different equipment and lots of people and noise. I knew I needed to keep up with her socialization with agility since I train by myself. I enrolled her in two agility classes in two different places one winter. I had people pretend to be ring crew and judges with her and to hover around her. I had people crowd her at the start lines. I ran her with dogs barking and people talking and cheering. I was able to proof her on a lot of agility things and get her on different types of equipment. When I started trialing her I noticed that she was keeping track of teeters she had been on. We have a club that rents equipment to other groups who put on trials in different places. She knew that teeter even if it was at a place she had never been. She would get on a teeter reliably if she had been on it once before but not if she had never been on it. She would walk up to it and sniff it and then if she thought it met her requirements she would get on it on the second or third attempt. This went on for a few months until she was sure she could get on any teeter and it would be fine. She has detailed notes of everything.

I started trialing her in ASCA and NADAC so we could work on her running dogwalk in trials and train in the ring. I also started there because judges and ring crew are less imposing. When I felt she was ready we started to trial in AKC. In ASCA and NADAC I could redo sequences and obstacles until I liked what I saw. In AKC I did what I have done many times before with dogs who may stress, I would just keep running and not fix any mistakes. I just wanted her to be as confident in a trial as she was in training. She was a speeding bullet in training but at trials she was slow and careful. In trying to speed her up by not fixing things I soon learned that she thought that was what I wanted and I was creating weave pole problems in trials by not fixing them. Fortunately she taught me quickly that I was creating a problem. So I started to fix missed weave poles and missed obstacles with her. Very quickly she stopped missing these things because she does like to run and we would run the rest of the course when she was good.

While working on her agility issues I continued with her obedience training. She loves obedience and she has earned her CD and RN. I am currently preparing her for Open if I can find a free weekend to enter her in a trial! She loves retrieving her dumbbell and she loves heeling. Doing obedience proofing has helped with her agility because she has had to get used to people, especially men, in the ring moving around. The more proofing games I do with her the more excited she gets trying to "solve the puzzle".

In AKC we moved through novice and open easily once I figured her out. Then in Excellent we stalled out because she was on the table in a standard run in an indoor soccer field. The judge was very loud with his table count and for the first time in months she noticed the judge looming large. She did what she often does when she is afraid, she froze. She stared at him and would not get off the table. Then she balked at the ring stewards and photographer and all of a sudden she started to notice everyone out in the ring. That was the beginning of her not wanting to do the table in trials. She also developed an aversion to this particular judge and the next day she would not get off the start line in the Jumpers with Weaves ring when she looked out and saw him standing out there judging. The day before she ran Jumpers after standard and was fine with that judge.

So after a few trials where she would not get on the table in Excellent Standard I stopped entering her in it and decided to do some serious proofing. She is dog who loves to learn and she loves proofing and thinking. I was able to get her into a class which had a tall male in it and a few other people who were game to help me. We spent a few months in the summer doing extreme proofing. She got to the point where she would run up and down an aframe with a person lying on the aframe, she would do a table with two people sitting on it and she would do the dogwalk and weaves with people crowding her. At first she would take treats from students outside the agility ring but as soon as they were out there by agility equipment she would refuse treats from them. So we had to work on that first. Then she would avoid any obstacles where any of them were within about 5 feet. The tall male student was the most troublesome for her. She would totally avoid those obstacles. Then with high value treats and lots of repetitions by the end of a few months she would do anything no matter what people were doing.

While I was working on this I kept running her in Jumpers with Weaves at AKC and I would run her in NADAC and ASCA trials where I could train and I knew the ring crew and judge would give her space. I then started to do some CPE trials where the games end on the table. I figured if she got on the table it would be so easy to pair that with treats because we can quickly get out of the ring and get treats. At first she wouldn't get on the table at the end of CPE games classes. It would take a lot of convincing to get her on and all she has to do there is touch the table and get off. After a few trials she would get on and get off the table and get treats.

When I could get her to do the CPE table I decided to enter her in AKC Standard and I planned to have her get on the table and we would immediately run out of the ring to treats. We did this a few times and she started to get on the table faster and faster. So then I entered her in a USDAA trial where we could do other runs and have only one with the table. I was worried about the table because I saw that it was within several feet of a ring steward (who happened to be the tall male student who had helped me with proofing several months earlier) and within several feet of the timer and scribe. Feisty ran very fast and got on the table and went into a down and stayed beautifully. It was then that I knew we had turned a corner and we had made progress on the table. It took about 9-10 months to get to this point.

So we started doing more AKC and she started to qualify in Excellent standard. I first entered her only in trials with female judges to build her confidence. She still has problems with certain judges and/or ring crew because she doesn't like loud voices or bad moods. I have had times where she has been squirrely on a run because she is trying to avoid going near a particular person. Then a year ago I was at a trial where she refused to get off the start line. It was in a new place where we had never been before so I wasn't sure what was causing it. So after I couldn't get her off the line I got some really good treats and walked her around the entire place trying to figure out the cause. I narrowed it down to the photographer. At first I thought maybe she was having a bad day but then I quickly realized it was the click of the camera. I tested this theory by taking her out to my van and getting out my camera. I clicked my camera and she started to shake and pant and wanted to bolt away! YIKES! When did this happen? So I tried feeding her around the camera guy but that wasn't helping. I then asked him to not take photos of her. Well he forgot and she totally bolted out of the ring as soon as he clicked. That was a lost weekend. Somehow I started to put things together and wondered if when I was taking pictures of my puppies from a few months earlier and was using a flash if she had paired the camera click with the flash which in her mind equaled lightning which means thunder would soon follow. The thing that made this seem plausible was that I noticed she looked up in the sky anytime the click happened.

Well it has been almost a year and I have made very little progress on this problem. I have a couple more ideas to try to help her. She can hear a camera click at over 100 feet. There have been a few photos taken of her with very silent cameras. If there is a photographer at a trial I ask them to not take pictures of her and while I'm waiting to go in I will rub her ears and talk to her a lot so she can't easily hear the camera clicks for the dogs before her. After our run I try to get us as far away from the ring as quickly as possible and she is eating her treats so she doesn't notice it as much after the run. It is a very difficult fear to work on.

On the positive she recovers very quickly from her fears. She has run agility during rain storms. She won't run if it thunders close to her run and she will stop if it thunders while she is running. However she will come back and try running again so she doesn't associate it with that place or with agility so far. That is my goal is to keep her from associating camera clicks with agility.

The latest news with Feisty is that she ran well enough at NADAC Champs to place 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th in her class. Her first run was a bit of a melt down because a photographer had forgotten and clicked when she ran. She incurred 135 faults on her first run. But she ran great after that in a coliseum with crowds cheering! I'm very proud of her. She earned her MACH on Jan. 13th with two fast fabulous runs. She has gone on to run fast and consistently since then. This is a huge personal accomplishment and I'm very proud of her. While the camera click thing is still a work in progress, she has been running her full speed at trials more consistently over the last several weeks. It is very exciting to see it all start to come together.

Feisty jumping