WHY PLAY DOG SPORTS?
Teaching Treibball at DogzWorth in Montreal was tremendous fun and I had the chance to reflect on a lot! Thanks to everyone who attended and to the hosts Ally and Melody!
Originally posted May 2013
I am on the train home now, after a fantastic weekend teaching Treibball with Dogzworth in Montreal. Great dogs, great people and a fantastic time. AND sushi for lunch. When I do workshops like this I often have the opportunity to visit people who are excited about a new sport or activity with their dogs and who are keen on learning new things. I get this at our own school too, but it is interesting to see a whole group of people who are new to me and watch them develop skills and tools to become really proficient at something brand new to them.
There are a wide variety of sports you can play with your dogs now. Obedience is possibly the oldest dog sport still widely played, where the handler and dog negotiate a series of activities directed by the judge, including walking on and off leash, allowing a stranger to pat the dog, and coming when called. Rally Obedience is an offshoot of obedience which allowed us to be marked on the preparatory exercises that we do to train for obedience trials. Agility is the fast sport of jumps, tunnels and obstacles. Flyball is a relay race you play on a team of four dogs and their handlers. The dogs race over four jumps, grab a ball out of a box and then run back and another dog goes. There are other sports too; protection, tracking, herding and retrieving all have their own competitions. And now there is Treibball.
Eco was really good at treibball and although we never competed it was something we really enjoyed doing together. Photo credit: Melanie Wooley
In the group I was teaching we had a wide variety of dogs with a wide ranges of backgrounds and talents. Of course there were a lot of flyballers and agility people there, but there was also a really talented Belgian who does obedience. I had a great chance to reflect on what doing sport gives us with our dogs, and what in particular Treibball gives us to support other activities.
First and foremost, I do sport with my dogs because we enjoy it. I love teaching sport because the dogs and the people are generally so happy. Especially when I am teaching a one day workshop. The only people who come are those who actually want to learn about what I am teaching; they are not coming to resolve a problem or to make a point; they are coming to have some fun while they learn something new with their dogs. Some folks get themselves all stressed out about competing and many people train for the sport and play on their own to avoid this stress. It is essential that we remember that we do this to have fun with our dogs, so if it is stressful, find another sport or find a way to play without the stress.
Secondly, dog sports, regardless of which ones, are activities that you and your dog do together. Your dog cannot go to class without you, and for the most part, people are not going to go to dog classes without their dogs. This joint activity makes for an interesting and fun way to connect with your dog. If for no other reason than the connection, dog sport is something I highly recommend for people who want to have a better relationship with their dogs. When you do sports with your dog, you have the chance to travel with your dog to places where you will meet with other dog people and their dogs. I have spent many happy days in the company of my dogs at obedience and rally trials. About two years ago, one of my instructors and I went to a trial together in Belleville. She drove and I slept; I haven’t been able to live that down yet. We had a terrific time together, cheering for one another when we won ribbons and sharing our disappointments when we made mistakes that prevented us from qualifying. Our dogs travelled beautifully together in crates side by side and we walked together in the morning before breakfast. Dog sports is all about relationships, both between you and your dog but also between you and the other people who play the sports with you. At the workshop this weekend, many people knew each other from previous events and their dogs knew one another too.
In his younger days, D’fer enjoyed agility. Here Deef is learning to run down the teeter, with his eyes closed! Photo credit: Karen Brodie
In order to play dog sports, you have to have a set of skills. Obedience classes cover skills, but often we don’t have much context for those skills. We love our obedience classes, but one of the reasons that our students come to us is usually because they want to solve a problem such as pulling, not coming when called or not staying when told. When you put obedience skills into the context of a sport, the dogs and the people both get more out of the experience. Yes, there are foundational skills to develop in order to play the games, but really, if you only ever developed the skills and never used them for anything useful what motivation would you have to maintain those skills?
As I taught the Treibball workshop yesterday, I was able to make ties between the skills we were teaching and a number of other sports. We do a one hour down stay. This teaches the dog to relax and to watch things around him. Dogs who watch things carefully are tuned into what their handlers want and what is happening around them. This is useful in obedience, rally, flyball, agility, protection, and herding. A dog who will lie down and stay for an hour is also a dog who is easier to live with. When you can ask your dog to lie down and stay for an hour, you can weed the garden, change the oil in your car, bring in and put away the groceries or bathe your baby all in the company of a calm and self controlled friend.
We teach a long go out in Treibball. Distance work is a big part of a number of other sports; agility, flyball and utility all include being able to send your dog away from you. We actually teach this in a number of ways; there is the go to mat, convenient for agility pause tables, and the go round directional control which is also useful for agility. The dogs who understand that we want them to go away from us and DO something can do all sorts of things, either at home or in sports. If you have your hands full and you want your dog to move out of your way, a good send out is really helpful. In context most dogs like to do things that are difficult when taught in isolation. If the dog doesn’t see the point of you sending him away from you, then the ONLY reason he is doing it is for the treat. If you teach your dog to go out so that he can jump a jump or go through a tunnel, then it makes sense to him and the food becomes a quantum of information that tells him what and how, within the context of why. Without the why, many dogs just don’t get the point and even though there may be a treat in it for them, they baulk or refuse outright.
We also teach the dog to go in the direction that we tell them to go. This can be extremely handy when you have a dog headed to the wrong obstacle in agility, or if you want him to change directions in a search or when retrieving multiple items. In obedience the dog who understands directionals is going to have an easier time of the directed jumping and retrieving because you can cue the dog more precisely where you want him to go.
An interesting paradox in dog training is that although we set up the situation, the dog is really the expert in how to do much of the job. In agility, I can tell you how to handle and how to set the dog up to succeed, but it is the dog who knows where to put his feet on the teeter and when to shift his balance to make it tip. In flyball, it is the dog who knows how far each jump is away from the previous jump and although we can teach the dog to do a swimmer’s turn and to grab the ball at just the right moment, and we control the moment at which the dog takes off, we cannot do that for the dog. Sport forces us to let the dog do his part of the job. There is no human fast enough to gather sheep into a group and then balance them through a gate and into another pasture. We cannot do the dog’s job!
It doesn’t matter if you get a ribbon when you compete in a dog sport because any activity you do WITH your dog and other like minded dog people is a win!
Conversely, the dog is ill equipped to do our job. I like to think about dog sport in terms of me deciding what and when, and the dog deciding how. As a partnership, my role is to make the choices and take the actions that I am suited to and my dog must be permitted to do his part of the job in the way that works the most efficiently for him. I remember once getting some coaching from D’fer’s breeder about retrieving ducks. D’fer had been taught how to hold a dummy and a dumbbell and he had held some real ducks, but I was having all kinds of difficulty getting him to take the duck by the body when I threw it in the field. He would grab the duck by the wing tip and try and run back with it. He would stop and regrip. He had even been known to throw the duck out of his way when he was frustrated by tripping over it. Amy suggested letting Deef figure out what the best way was to hold the duck might be. She suggested and quite rightly so, that I stop trying to micromanage his part of the job. We set up a couple of dozen short retrieves for him and allowed him to make all the mistakes he wanted. At about fetch number fifteen he decided that picking up the duck by the body would work best, and he learned through trial and error, not because I told him how to do his job. By doing my part well (directing him and allowing him to work it out) he was able to figure out how to pick up the duck (the way I wanted him to!).
This weekend’s workshop really pointed out to me how nicely Treibball can tie together many other sports and skills. If you have a puppy, you may be reading this because you are thinking about sports to do with your dog. There are so many benefits to playing games and sports with your dog. As I travel with D’fer I can see how our years and years and years of demos and teaching and doing dog sports have tied us together. I can tell him where to go and how to get there and although he may not always see the point right away, we have done so many things together that when I ask him to do things, he doesn’t ask why; he knows there will be a point to what I am asking. This trust is a testament to the relationship we have built, together over the years. The trust runs both ways too; if Deef tells me that I am making a mistake or if he wants to do something special, I trust that it is important to him and that I will ultimately benefit if i follow his lead. I have rarely been disappointed when I have followed my dog’s lead. This is what I would love to offer to every student of mine who comes in with a puppy. A means to communicate with your dog, while you have fun and do meaningful things together. If you are at the beginning of your training journey and you haven’t yet thought about it, try a sport.