The Glasgow Dog Training Club’s big doggy day – “Paws in the Park” takes place this Saturday. The forecast is looking good – warm with sunny spells, and the event sounds fabulous for anyone with an interest in dogs.

There are all sorts of dog displays from heelwork to music to flyball. And perhaps even better for some, lots of ‘Have a Try’ activities including flyball, lurecoursing, agility and more. For the two legged companions there will be lots of lovely craft stalls (one in particular that I’m interested in is hand-crafted wooden items) and pony rides, face painting etc for the kids.

The purpose of the event is simply to celebrate the fact that the Glasgow Dog Training club has been running for 30 years. A lot of people have been putting a tremendous amount of work into planning the event over the past year so it really should be a great day out!

The event runs from 12pm – 4pm.

And the best bit….

Beanie and Biggles will be taking part in the flyball demo! (I think the flyball demo starts ast 12pm if you want to cheer them on…..or have a laugh – it could go either way with our two !).

It’ll be good practice for them. They entered their first little competition last week up in Dundee, but we’re planning on taking them down to Redcar in Yorkshire next month for a propper starters competition. It seems the whole of the club is going so it’ll be lovely to watch the baby class in their first competition! It’s amazing how quickly they’ve all progressed.

I just spotted in the “This Week Last Year” section that it was a year ago that Beanie was diagnosed with atopy (allergies). We were worried at the time that the condition would worsen each year with the dog becoming allergic to more and more things (that’s the norm with atopic dogs) so I thought I’d provide an update.

Beanie was found to be allergic to about 10 different tree, weed and grass pollens. The levels ranged from 250 to about 400 which is pretty low really. She started on immunotherapy in about October of last year and we’re continuing to give her monthly injections at home. Mamy vets advise against testing and treating until a dog is a couple of years old as they will typically develop new allergies over this time and further testing will be required. However, we figured (based upon Paul’s personal experiences with allergies) that when the dog (or person) is itchy it’s more prone to developing new allergies. We wanted it nipped in the bud and fortunately our vet agreed to test at about 9 months old.

It’s been a huge success. Beanie very occasionally has an itchy day, but at worst you’ll see her having a good scratch perhaps half a dozen times a day. Most days she’s itch free. Overall I’d say she scratches less than Biggles. This year she’s had no pyoderma, no rashes and no marks at all on her skin. Her allergy season (Feb – Oct) ends in a couple of months so it’s beginning to look as if we’ve got on top of this early enough to not only stop the condition from worsening, but to virtually eliminate all symptoms. With any luck she’ll be one of the few dogs that can be weaned of the immunotherapy. Although the monthly injections are completely painless and administered at home so it doesn’t matter if she does need them for life.

For most of the past two weeks we’d mainly been taking Beanie and Biggles to the dog enclosure in one of our local parks. We’d been working hard on keeping them close and attentive. Beanie was doing brilliantly. It didn’t matter what was going on around her – she’d be stuck to my side like glue following my commands without hesitation. Biggles was capable of this too, but it was hard work getting his attention and he had more of a tendency to get distracted. He got so excited on the walk to the enclosure that he’d be baying, squealing and screeching. Totally out of control. Rather than getting better with practice he was getting more and more excited each day. We don’t allow him to pull on lead – if he tries we just stop until he calms down. Sometimes it was taking half an hour to cover the 200 yard distance from the car park. But once he got into the exercise he’d do very well.

On Saturday morning we decided to take them to our regular park to see how they’d do there. Biggles was first. He was perfect! If we could rely on Saturday’s behavior being consistent then I’d go as far as to say we have the perfect dog! The balance was just right – he’d run a little ahead but keep looking back for guidance; he’d have a little play with another dog but would break away the moment we called or walked away; he happily played fetch, tuggy and did tricks with us as we walked.

Beanie wasn’t quite as good. She ran a little further ahead of us than Biggles and looked to us for guidance a little less. But even so, she stayed in sight and for the most part responded well when we called or changed direction (The little clip shows the worst of her behavior – and it’s really not at all bad). But she was ‘twitchy’ and our feeling was that she could easily dart off at any moment.

Both of them are capable of behaving perfectly and will faultlessly follow numerous commands and do endless tricks. We’ve realized that the secret to consistency is to get them into a calm attentive state before asking them to do anything (I think I’ve been watching too much Dog Whisper!). They are both very good at excited attentive, but things are unpredictable when they are in this state – because it’s all too easy for their attention to flit from us to something else such as a scent, a rabbit, a fast moving dog. And when that happens they are over the horizon before you can blink! They always come back very quickly (2 minutes), but god only knows what they’ve been up to whilst out of sight.

So this week we’re working on rewarding a calm and attentive state (and therefore gradually making it their default state). We’re taking them to lots of stimulating places. If they start going ballistic then we’ll watch for a slightly calmer moment and click and treat it. Then we’ll try and build on that – each time clicking and treating calmer and calmer behavior. Once we’ve got calm then we work on attention. Although to be perfectly honest, once they are calm, attention becomes second nature to them. Next we’ll start walking them on a loose lead. If they pull we stop until they look at us calmly. If they keep looking at us calmly we’ll click and treat. Gradually they need to look at us for longer and longer between treats.

At this stage we’re ready to start working on our off-lead exercise. For now we’re keeping them on a very long training line. I don’t think we need it – the dogs behave perfectly. But it’s early days and we don’t want any setbacks. We aren’t giving them any commands at this stage. They associate training with excitement so by telling them to do something we can ramp up the excitement – we don’t want this. They’re sticking to us like glue so it’s not necessary to say anything. The commands (tricks etc) only start when we’re confident that they are completely calm and attentive. And they only get rewarded when they follow the commands calmly.

It’s working well. It took a lot of patience at first. At one point I think Paul stood motionless in the middle of a field for 30 minutes with a baying, screeching Biggles straining on the end of his lead. But gradually Biggles figured out that the only way to get what he wanted was to be calm and attentive. They key is to say and do nothing – just wait for the dog to figure it out. In each new stimulating situation we’re finding that the excitement starts out slightly lower, and we are able to ramp it down much more quickly.