Pebble in Training

I'm a doctoral student in psychology and neuroscience and Pebble is my sweetest wildest darling mutt creature. We mess around with agility, trick training, hiking, and cuddling.

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Very good dogs get the double herring!

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Masked or not, Pebble always gives the best kisses.

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One year ago when shit kinda started hitting the fan. 

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Periodic reminder that we’re still around, my life is just mega-boring because I am waiting to get vaccinated to do much hiking and whatnot. Pebble is still the loveliest girl though!

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Personal space is a myth.

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More fun activities with Pebble! Starting more dedicated fitness work with her has been such a great consequence of her injury (all healed and back in full work now, by the way!). I’ve been lucky she basically stays in reasonably good condition without any special work on my part, but I really do like how she’s looking physically after a month of daily, intentional exercise. She also loves it, which is great.

Her auto-position sitting on the pivot tub when I’m not working her is also really charming. She’s so darn cute!

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Never gonna get over how fun it is to work this dog. Back up without luring is tough but she’s starting to nail it really consistently!

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I always forget my parents had cockers before I came on the scene... No wonder they’ve always appealed to me. I believe this cutie was Weetabix - apparently they were also better at naming dogs than I am!

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Her down-to-stand seems a little stronger than her sit-to-stand to me, although she definitely very much wants to crouch and anticipate in her down. I didn’t notice it the first couple of reps but by the third one I caught on. She can get her elbows down and does so when I insist on it after I noticed what was going on, but I need to remember to insist on it! I’m also not sure why she wants to lift that right front paw in her standing position - it seems more like impatience about waiting for her treat or something that I accidentally captured rather than something injury-related since my vet checked her front end super thoroughly and couldn’t find any hint of an issue there. I probably need to get out the clicker and try to retrain her to plant all 4 feet when she’s going to her standing position.

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Pebble is a good exercising gal. I need to 1) lure her slowly - you can catch her doing her “pop up” sit-to-stand when I go too quickly on the last rep here, which is normally charming but does not seem to be beneficial for this exercise, and 2) be more patient about waiting for her to fully stand before rewarding her - she kind of “hovers” in her stand so she can get back to the sit and earn more food faster. 

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Pebble had her rehab vet appointment yesterday and we have a game plan! Yay!

Her limp is extremely mild - honestly almost fully resolved in my opinion - but I figured I’d keep the appointment out of an abundance of caution. I’m glad I did. She has a mild strain of her left hip flexor and is doing a few very subtle things (tiny bit of offloading that left hind limb while standing, very minor but noticeable abduction in her sits and downs) that suggest she still isn’t quite right despite the limp improving on its own with rest. Plus a few other little “living life” types of things, but nothing that changes the rehab course for now. She got some cold laser treatment and learned some exercises that we’ll be doing daily for 2-4 weeks, and we’ll do weekly check-ins to see how it’s going and figure out when she can come back into work. I’m a little sad we’re missing the end of this agility session when she’s been doing so fantastic lately, and it feels a little silly because the most obvious clinical sign (the limp) is basically resolved, but I’m mostly very relieved it’s something she can recover from. I’d rather deal with it now while it’s a super minor issue that isn’t causing her serious discomfort than wait and have a much bigger issue to handle somewhere down the line. There will be plenty of time for us to run around and jump over plastic sticks later!

Less important but also proud dog owner moment: Pebble received an ideal body condition score and mentation notes of “bright, alert, friendly”. It’s not the first time a vet has told me they wished every dog they saw was like her, but it always makes me feel like I’m doing something right. I love my good girl, and even if I’m maybe being a little extra I’m glad I can do things like this to keep her comfortable and strong for as long as possible.

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Something is off with Pebble. She’s throwing the occasional skip-step with her left hind when she runs. I’ve always taken things really slowly with her but I’m still so worried this is a real permanent change associated with her being an almost 6-year old poorly-bred dog... It’s only been a couple days so I’m trying to just rest her before I panic too much. I told my housemates the plan and they admitted she slammed very hard into the wall while playing with them a few days ago and the timing would definitely make sense with her tweaking something during that event, too, in which case I’d expect improvement with rest. I do want to get her started on a joint supplement anyways though... can’t hurt at her age.

We did attempt agility class last night because that’s where we noticed something was off with her gait. It’s very, very infrequent and she does not seem to be in pain, so the plan was to take it easy and try to notice if it was getting worse or better after some light use. I was more focused on trying to watch her movement than the actual agility training, so I don’t have a fun training report... but she actually did everything extremely well because my mind was not so busy trying to over-manage her. Her gait didn’t seem to improve or worsen over the course of the class, but she definitely offered a few stutter steps this morning so... I don’t think it helped, let’s say. 

Fortunately one of the trainers we’ve worked with is a performance/rehab vet so depending on how the next few days go I may reach out to her for a consult. I kind of naively thought I was getting away from the heartbreaking panic-inducing mystery lameness by making the swap from horses to dogs... alas.

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Our latest agility class was not our best. We started pretty strong, but struggled with our A-frame/tunnel discrimination and that made me lose a little confidence which made me run worse which made Pebble perform worse which made me run worse which made Pebble perform worse, etc. I really think my horse experience is doing me in a little bit. With horses, I had enough experience to anticipate mistakes and manage the horse to avoid most fuck-ups without making things worse. With dogs... I don’t know what I’m doing yet. The muscle memory is still a work in progress. I want to avoid the fuck-ups, but the instinctive fuck-up avoidance maneuvers I try really obviously make things worse. A good example is with the tire jump, or any jump I’m not confident Pebble is going to take. My instinct is to stop at the jump and try to point it out to Pebble and use my body to block her from running out so she’ll take it. Unsurprisingly, though... if I stop, Pebble stops. We’re much better served by me just continuing to run past the jump, and if she blows past it, cool, we can troubleshoot from there. 

Anyways, in our last sequence this issue manifested in me just not asking for very necessary front crosses because I was overly worried about getting Pebble to the next correct obstacle without her blowing me off to do something else. By not doing the front crosses everything was awkward-to-impossible, though - it made the angles of everything super awkward and challenging. My brain wanted to ask for the front cross but it took a frustratingly long time for my feet to just do the damn thing. Once I finally started getting it everything went much smoother. Go figure.

Nothing was bad exactly, but it was a bit of a disappointing last class before a 2-week break for Thanksgiving. My plan is to keep working on trusting Pebble more on course and not getting rattled if things go off the rails. More tangibly, I want to practice the front cross footwork a lot more so I can keep building that muscle memory. I also need to keep up the crate games with Pebble. Our poodle buddy who usually holds her for me while I walk was actually handling in class last night so I had to crate her to walk my sequences. We’ve been working crate games at home without issue so it seemed like a good time to see how things are doing in her most high-key environment. Pebble did better than I expected her to, but she still got more demand bark-y and frantic than I’d like, especially later on in class. Honestly, I’d slowed up on the crate games at home a little bit because having our buddy hold her was working as a stopgap measure, but I do want to get that going again so hopefully eventually she can crate quietly in class (and possibly trials some day). Seeing that even what little I’d done resulted in some kind of limited improvement makes me want to take up those efforts more seriously again... it’s definitely not hopeless and I think if I’m a bit more persistent we’ll see good improvements there.

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Pebble is not the most autumn aesthetic dog but we do our best!

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Love her sweet little tippy ears.

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I think our new cattle dog classmate getting all the attention for being chaotic made Pebble want to remind everyone that she too can be chaotic. She completely wiped out at the tire jump in our last class, scaring me a lot more than her, fortunately. The tire broke apart like it’s supposed to and Pebble was physically fine, and she only took a couple seconds of extra encouragement to be happily jumping through it again for jackpot rewards. I am reminded yet again how much I love having a resilient dog. I’ve been trying to dissect what went wrong in hindsight, which is a little tricky since I was running with her and don’t know exactly what I did... but basically, it was a difficult sequence and I was trying to work with a bit more distance to let Pebble build up some speed, so she was working fast and I asked for the front cross too early which led her to take off early and angle too hard. I think we would’ve gotten away with it with a standard jump but she crashed into the side of the tire too hard and that knocked her down. She did the sequence beautifully once I slowed her down, so... yeah, I think it was a case of biting off more than we could chew.

Besides that, our last class was really great though! I’m still chipping away at trying to send her more and we’re definitely making progress on that front. We’re starting to get some moments where I feel like, wow, my dog is kind of almost feeling a little impressive here? We still have our bobbles (as evidenced by our total wipeout yesterday) but I’m starting to feel the connection and confidence coming through more often and that is a lot of fun. Every time we step into the ring I expect Pebble to succeed now, which is a new feeling for me, and it seems to make a huge difference for Pebble. My faked confidence is starting to become genuine confidence - magic! 

Our weaves remain the one glaring exception to this progress. The gears are turning more but it’s still not quite clicking. I think I am doing something wrong with my handling because Pebble will pop out and my trainer will come talk to me to troubleshoot things, then Pebble will run the weaves cleanly without me while we talk (the danger of having a dog who likes to problem solve and offer lots and lots of behaviors - they often show you up when you stop paying attention to them for a moment!), but I can’t quite get my finger on how I’m messing her up. I try to support her hard at the entry then stay about a pole ahead of her, but obviously something isn’t working. Each week it seems to take fewer attempts to get a clean run through, so I think we are progressing, but it feels really slow because Pebble usually picks things up so fast. I think it’ll come together eventually and I just need to be patient and not get frustrated in the meantime.

So... mostly good, but still plenty to work on! 

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Ok, time for a longer less facetious update from our last agility class.

Confidence is magic. Pebble was excellent and still seems like she’s starting to really fire on all cylinders. She’s starting to pick up obstacle discrimination, and in general things are getting a lot cleaner. She still likes to stick pretty close to me for jumps and tunnels, but she is getting awesome at sending and driving ahead of me onto any of the contact obstacles which has let us get our rear crosses working really nicely. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d often rather choose the rear cross than the front cross, but here we are. I really want to get brave enough to get someone to video us but my social skills aren’t quite there... but I’m really curious to see if some of these sequences are starting to look as good as they feel. I won’t compete until Pebble’s weaves are way more reliable, but our trainer brought it up again last night and I am definitely getting more into the idea of trying that out some day.

Anyways, speaking of our weaves... Pebble was totally committed and going to get her weaves on her first attempt except I messed up and blocked her entry... jlkadfslkjafd. We tried again and she picked them up much more easily than she’s been getting them, so our trainer tightened the angle up to near upright (where things like to fall apart for us) and she nailed them again and we stopped on that note - asking for more than 2 clean reps of all 12 poles still feels a little like pushing our luck at this point. I had a couple observations about weaves since I think about them a lot since they’re still by far our weakest point. 

Pebble seems to use my vocal cue more for the weaves than for anything else in agility; most things she’ll forgive a late or missed vocal cue and just do her best based on my body language, but for the weaves she absolutely needs an early, loud heads up that that’s where we’re going. I have no idea why that’s the case, but it’s definitely something I’ve noticed over our past few classes.

Tentatively, it seems like as long as Pebble gets her entry and I stay near her for support she’s getting pretty good about staying in the weaves for all 12 poles without popping out. I wouldn’t be surprised if that isn’t really permanent yet, but it’s nice while it lasts. 

So I’m really happy with how things are going with our agility! I mean, the main thing for me is always that Pebble gets to have fun and she’s 1000% still doing that, but it’s cool that she’s having fun and getting... kind of maybe a little good at it? Just a little?? Maybe???

The heeler dog was the one less-than-great experience of the night. Pebble hasn’t gotten to deal much with dogs that bark as they run yet. The BC from our previous class would do it a little, but only when his handler didn’t cue him early enough for something - maybe once or twice a night, if even. Our new heeler classmate subscribes to the constant-barking-while-running school of thought, and Pebble has Opinions about it that I was not prepared for. Before I realized she was reacting she took off to the end of her leash from her down-stay to bark back and posture at him, losing all interest in treats or returning to me while the barking and loud running continued. I did get her back to me after a few seconds but then the heeler needed to share his Opinions about Pebble and seemed vaguely interested in starting a fence fight, so we put up a couple blinders to stop them from looking at each other and it solved the problem. Once I knew it was coming I could prepare Pebble and distract her more actively during his runs, and that + the blinders seemed to work fine (although she did still want to crane a bit and stare him down when either of us were walking to the ring). Although it’s not fun to deal with I’m actually glad Pebble is getting exposed to this now in a controlled class setting instead of having to experience it for the first time at a trial, so silver linings! Always good for more opportunities to work on reactivity and impulse control and reinforce the good behaviors I want instead...