Monday, September 12, 2011

Schutzhund Clinic - Peter and Connie Scherk and Florian Knabl; Part 3

OK, here we go again. After the retrieve, they demonstrated their approach to teaching jumping. This was another example of what we would call lumping but definitely seems to serve a purpose in terms of patterning a particular jumping style, which is all that is required in the protection sports, as opposed to agility.

Again, they started with the desired behavior - a really fast retrieve over the jump with clean pick up and equal speed on the return.  They want clean, fast, powerful jumps. They don't ever want to lose any points because the judge didn't like the way their dog jumped.

So, they have developed a device that essentially turns the vertical 1-meter jump (or lower heights on the way to a meter) into an oxer for the dogs. They extend various different light-weight contraptions off both the front and the back of the jump. Light-weight is critical because they want it to fall (or make noise) when barely ticked. I know I'm not explaining this very well but know that many of you have probably seen similar home-rigged contraptions. They also cut the boards in the middle so that if a dog ever does fail the jump it gives way easily and minimizes the likelihood that a dog gets hurt.

From the first day that the puppy ever sees the jump, they are encouraging speed, drive and power over the jump. If the puppy ticks the metal rod they simply give a no-reward marker and try again. This the only place that they clearly, and purposefully, used a marker, as far as I could tell  but again, I only saw the final 2 days. The puppy's first jumps will be at a lower height and will essentially be a restrained recall over the jump to build speed and drive. Eventually, they turn it into jumping in both directions and a full retrieve but they didn't actually talk about that. So I don't know if they do anything other than lower the jump at first.  Again, literally hundreds of repetitions and much work at lower heights before going to full height.

The last two obedience exercises they talked about were the send out and long down. It seems sort of funny to lump them together but it works really well when I tell you about something that I thought was very clever. They have taught they're dogs to release from a stay, in any position, with a very particular physical movement from the handler.  For Bendix and his young dog, Peter drops into a quick squat, sort of.  The dog releases to him for a toy. It helps to minimize the likelihood that the dog breaks the long down when the other handler on the field gives their dog a command and also minimizes the likelihood that their dogs would release from the crowd reaction to their spectacular send out and down.  The other thing that it does is create a more active stay as the dog is now intently watching their handler and less likely to be looking around or distracted by other things on or around the field. I really like this aspect of it and have been working my dogs on this as well.

OK, the actual send out. Again, remember lots of repetitions. They have a shallow hole/ditch at the end of their field. They hide a special toy there that is used primarily for the send out.  They teach the puppy to run to the end of the field to get the toy.  They start close so the puppy can see it.  Once they get far enough away that the puppy can't see it they make a big deal sending their assistant running and waving the toy down to the end of the field to "hide" it.  Eventually they fade all of that. In parallel to that, they are teaching their puppy to down fast for that same toy - sort of a version of Ivan's game only more bite work like, with an assistant holding the puppy on a back line and the handler some distance away agitating the dog.

Once they feel the individual pieces are good, they put them together.  One very critical element though, the times that you tell the dog to down the toy is not in the hiding spot - very important that the dog not be able to self-reward. They fully expect that in the beginning, regardless of where the dog is when they call out "down", that the dog will go all the way to the end of the field to check if the toy is there before they down. That gets better with repetition as the dog realizes that the toy will NEVER be there when you tell them down. At some point in the future, they will start to give a harsh second command if they think the dog is not downing as fast as he is capable of. At that point, they will also withhold the reward.

From that point forward they will do about two gos for every send out and down. Again, they place a very high premium on speed and power in this exercise so are always building speed and drive for it. This is also the only exercise that he specifically mentioned doing a lot of foreshadowing to build the dog up. He starts cueing the dog as soon as he completes the retrieves.

He also has specific warm up routines for obedience and protection work, and I think tracking, too. I'm not sure how long they are but know that he activates his dog with barking before he goes on the field for protection. I don't know any more than that, though.

OK, that completes the obedience exercises. I'll try to get you something on the protection work tomorrow. It's a little more complicated with the start of the work week.

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