However, for all my bluster about our love of FAST; we didn't just bomb in FAST, it turned into a Nevada nuclear test range. Saturday was a basic cruise missile performance really, with Sunday's edition leaving a massive mushroom cloud. Layla decided she was in control and couldn't even, or didn't even get her weaves. She would walk through the middle of them and look around, I'm not sure she took many obstacles when I actually cued them. BOOM! She wasn't injured and could comfortably do the weaves, as she demonstrated later, but when I sat down and thought about it I came to a conclusion that I was doing some things that were just not working, and I needed to change.
I had tried back in the spring to make some demands, or if you like, place requirements on Layla, rather than just get her to behave for about a second then TREAT, then beg for another second TREAT! I'm not someone who has ooozed up from the pits of hell and impose iron handed disciplinary training on my dog, but I will employ the word "no"; generally at home or training on Saturdays with not that many people looking. I've been told never say no to a dog around agility (by people who weren't my teachers), just treattreattreattreat. As I sat there on the floor (my chair was up next to the ring for watching) scratching Layla's neck (after demanding she accept it and not bark at me for daring to touch her at a trial); I realized that a couple of things Dr. HatefulVet told me might work better than the actions of my carefully honed, agility trial personality. She told me I could demand some good behavior rather than basically beg for it. So I decided to say "no" when she started barking before a run. She does that to my husband at home when he's eating and he rewards her with bites of his meal. She isn't doing that because she can't control those excitement impulses as much as she is demanding treats during those times, obeying what she's been taught. So that was OUT. Next, she would get "no" when I would want to pet her and love on her like she enjoys at home and she would bark and yap at me and pull away. Stern "NO" then sweetly "GOOD GIRL" when I scratch her neck and she starts leaning into my hand. I took her out to the area outside the ring, where my chair was residing, and had her lie down by my feet and not be obnoxious or "no". I didn't bring one treat with me. No bribing me for one second of decency then! (We actually have worked some on that down in TN, where the bleachers are further from the course).
Did "no" cause her to crumple when it was her turn to run, to be scared to death of me when I scratched her neck waiting to run? The next time out she got her first Excellent Standard Q ever and had that brilliant JWW run after that. She was so scared of my daring to say "no" in agility that she ran 15 seconds under time in jumpers. The final day of the trial didn't produce Qs but the mistakes had nothing to do with Layla becoming the prophesied fearful, agility-hating dog of lore; our three mistakes that day were a blown contact and a tunnel suck in Standard, and me causing a refusal in JWW. Nothing new there, just more work to do.
I'm going to keep working on her behavior like this. She discovered, finally, that she can still enjoy scratches by the one she came with at an agility trial; and I discovered that she is capable of more than I'd given her credit for, on and off a course.
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