Today, even though the sun was out, our field training group was flooded out of its training grounds, so Russ and I decided to go to watch the Irish Water Spaniels at this year’s Rose City Classic. We left the dogs at home, hopped in the car, and drove the few miles over to the Expo Center.

About half way there, the area around my solar plexus got tight, I found it harder to breathe, and my stomach started to churn.

This went on for a few minutes until I realized, “Hey! I’m feeling nervous. Why am I nervous? I’m not showing any dogs in this show.”

Hmm…

I guess that I have been nervous driving to dog shows for a long time, ever since I started showing my dogs. So some part of me has made this dog show = nervousness into an automatic connection, one that I seem to have no control over.

It’s like watching Tooey start to drool when I start getting out the field training bumpers. She often gets treats when she retrieves those bumpers, and some part of her brain has made the connection bumpers = salivation.

We’ve both been classically conditioned.

I am beginning to realize that if I’m going to keep showing my dogs at dog shows, I had better deal with this. It’s understandable to be nervous when there is something to be nervous about. But when I start reacting for no reason based in reality, well, that needs some attention.

I think it’s connected to the high rate of failure at dog shows. Conformation shows are the worst at this — only one dog and one bitch can get points toward their championship — everyone else loses. I lost a lot — it took more than three years of regular showing for Cooper to get his championship.

And for Obedience, the problem has been me. Every dog who passes the trial, earns a leg toward the title. But the dog and handler have to be trained and ready to pass. I’ve been eager for Cooper to earn his CD title in Obedience (for a lot of reasons), and so I started showing him as soon as I thought he remotely had a chance — as it turns out, before he was ready. Resulting also in a high rate of failure.

So mostly my experiences with dog shows have been uncomfortable, linking a strong desire to succeed and a fear of failure, with the regular experience of failure.

So. What to do?

I am taking some steps. I haven’t shown Cooper in Obedience for quite awhile. And all that time, we’ve been taking classes, going to private lessons, attending matches, and practicing at home. Am doing my best to make sure we are prepared when we go next time.

But I am puzzled as to what to do with that extra layer of nervousness that appears to affect me without reason. What to do with that nervous feeling that arrives just because I am driving to a dog show. It’s got to be a mental game of some kind, but what, I don’t know.

Perhaps you do.

But then we noticed sunshine. Odd… Hmmm… better go training now.

Tooey obeying the "Hold" command for a few minutes after an 100-yard blind

Cooper learning that he has to pay attention to his handler before said handler will throw the ball

We worked on

• a repeat of yesterday’s long V-blind, but in a new location for Cooper,
• a couple of 100-yard blinds for Tooey,
• a “Hold” practice for Tooey
• an honor for Cooper while watching Tooey go off for her blinds, and
• paying attention to the handler for Cooper

This paying attention is hard for Cooper when it comes to toys. For about a week, we’ve been working on a new rule: Cooper has to look at his handler before the handler will throw a toy.

Usually Cooper is so focused on the toy, or whatever else he’s distracted by, that he doesn’t even really know his person is there. This does not work well in Obedience, particularly during heeling, when the dog has to be paying attention to the handler so that the dog stays in correct heel position, no matter where the handler goes. So if we can convince Cooper that very good things happen when he looks at his handler, we are hoping that he will actually want to pay attention to his handler. This would, in theory, make correcting his tendency to get distracted during heeling much easier.

But you know, teaching a new thing can be dangerous. Students “forget” things they’ve long known while they are learning new things. This is normal, and it happens to people and dogs. Eventually, the new thing becomes integrated and the old things come back.

In particular, I’m hoping that teaching attention will not mess up his marking ability. Marking is crucial to fieldwork, during which he’s supposed to be looking out so he can “mark” where birds fall. We may have to re-introduce the “Find your mark” command, which tells him to look out and around for birds. He’s never really needed that command because he’s always been looking out without being told to.

So we got in about 1/2 hour of training. Then we noticed that the sky was getting suddenly darker, and that all the other people and their dogs had gone.

Hmmm… better leave now. And just as we got the dogs back in their crates and the bumpers and chuck-it put away, the hail started up again, pummeling the car and dancing off the windshield.

It was a short session. We knew the rain was coming, and wanted to get our work done before that started.

While we were waiting for Hank to arrive, Russ ran Cooper on some blinds. He ran it in a narrow V-pattern, each leg about 75 yards long, with one blind about 30 degrees apart from the other. The pictures below, taken with my very stupid smart phone, don’t show the V. The birch tree in the top photo is the left blind, and the V-shaped birch in the second photo is the right blind.

By the time Russ and Cooper were done with blinds, Hank had arrived, and we set right to work. First we ran some 30 yard blinds for Taura and Tooey (who was disgusted that there were only bumpers to pick up, and not birds).

Then we dreamed up a long double for Cooper. He ran two very long doubles through the trees and into two small clearings. The two legs were about 125 yards and 85 yards long. The area of the fall of his long mark was very strange — in fact, we used that as the area of the fall for all three dogs, and all three of them got confused.

In and amongst the trees in this field are very wide, tall clumps of blackberry bushes. For this long mark, the thrower stood in front of one clump and threw the frozen bird over in front of another clump. From 125 yards away (for Cooper) and 80 yards away (for Tooey and Taura), all three dogs thought that the bird had fallen on the far side of the clump. They all ran around to the back of the clump, searching for that bird. Cooper stepped on his bird on his first time out to this mark, but then lost it the second time. Tooey had to be helped a bit by the thrower, who simply took a few steps toward it. Taura had to search for quite awhile all around the clump, but she finally found it.

It was a puzzling view for me, too. When I was sending Tooey out to this mark, it looked like a flat plane of blackberries, simply two clumps right next to each other, with a clearing in front. When I got out there to throw for Taura, though, I could see that the area was actually sort of circular. What looked to me at the line to be flat was actually kind of a half-circle of brambles around the clearing.

It’s always a lot of fun to watch the dogs work, which is why I keep doing this.

• Cooper is like a laser. He doesn’t always get it right, but he always wants to retrieve — birds, bumpers, balls — whatever you want to throw. And he doesn’t want to quit — Can we have just one more throw, please? That’s his motto.
• Taura is elegant to watch, full of energy and grace. She doesn’t always know what she’s doing, but she does it with enthusiasm. When she finds a bird, she sort of pounces on it with a “Oh, goody! There it is!” kind of happiness, and then runs back with it, full out.
• Tooey is out there to be included in the game. Birds are definitely better than boring old bumpers. And today, she was riveted on Russ, who threw her first bird. She kept looking at him, wanting him to throw all her birds. I had to actually kind of hold her muzzle and point it in Hank’s direction, so that she could see him waving him arms and and making quacking sounds, getting ready to throw her second bird.

And then we were done. And just as we were loading up the cars with our dogs and equipment, the rain came, cold, wet, and pouring down. But the car was warm, and by the time we got home, we were all happy, dry, and ready for a snack.

Especially if that Irish Water Spaniel is Tooey.

Cooper, now, he’s easy. For whatever reason, his coat is not thick. That has its down sides, like not being thick enough to protect the skin between the pads of his feet. But one of the up sides is that he’s easy to comb out.

In his grooming session earlier this week, he was so easy and fast to comb out that I had it done one morning before I went to work. I found one measly little mat between a couple of toes on his front feet. So small that I could work it out with my fingers.

Tooey, the sweet darling, is another story.

Her coat is so thick that if I don’t keep up with her grooming — if I don’t comb her out completely every week — then I pay. And so does she. I end up having to spend at least an hour, or more, combing, brushing, or cutting out the mats and knots, and she has to put up with it. And neither one of us likes it much at all.

Her last brush-out and bath was the day we got home from our last hunting trip. That morning, she’d rolled delightedly in something not visible. It wasn’t poop, but it probably was urine of some kind. Stinky, musky, pervasive, and she loved it.

So without even letting her out of the car, I quickly unpacked the car, whisked her to you-bathe-it place, and got her clean. That was 15 days ago.

I spend the intervening time procrastinating. I should have known I would pay.

So last evening, I spent a good 1-1/2 hours working with the detangling spray, slicker brush, pin brush, poodle comb, and regular comb, working out all the knots and debris.

She had knots behind each ear, more between her front toes, and one or two in each arm pit.

She kind of likes getting her ears brushed and combed. That spot in the back of her head, where the ear is attached to the skull — that’s one of her favorite places to get scratched. So the combing probably feels good to her.

But her feet and armpits? Brushing, and combing especially, appear to be torture. I spray the detangler liberally on those spots, brush it through, and then go on to less sensitive areas while waiting for it to do its job.

But eventually, I have to get the knots out between the toes. That is a battle. At the least pull on a mat, she starts trying her best to get her feet away from me. If I can’t get the mat out quickly, I usually resort quickly to scissoring them out. She’s not a show dog anymore, so it’s okay if the coat on her feet looks slightly misshapen for awhile.

The underarms are almost worse. Last night, I laid her on her side on the grooming table, and had Russ feed her treats while I combed her armpits as gently as I could. When I got all the knots out, I clipped the fur under there with the hope that this will cut down on future mats.

But really, the only cure is to brush her once a week. No excuses. No procrastination. I know better — I just need to follow my own advice. And we’ll both be happier.

And I’m starting to realize that the biggest task in being a beginner is learning how to judge what is best.

I am not one who learns well from books or DVDs. That may sound odd coming from a person with an M.A. in English. But I find instructional books and DVDs difficult to follow, mostly because the authors, despite their best intentions, fail to explain the one crucial thing I don’t get. Or they assume I know things that I don’t. Or they go on and on about stuff I learned long ago.

And with a book or a DVD, you can’t get help.

With a person, when you’re not getting what you need, you can at least ask, and they can explain again. And with a person, they can observe and make comments when you’re doing well or making a mistake.

Now, if there were only one teacher in the world, that would be simple. But there are many more than one. Many have credentials, others have long experience, and some have both. A few of those actually know how to work with people. And only a small fraction are available at the same time and place as I am.

So, those are the people I work with (or try to, anyway).

So here’s the problem: they don’t agree with each other. Here are two example:

In hunt tests, you stand with your dog at the start line, facing the area where the first bird is going to fall. Sounds simple. But no.

You have to stand correctly, and how “correctly” is defined is not universally agreed upon. Let’s take just foot position. I’ve been told three different things by three different (and successful) pro trainers. The dog is on your left in heel position, so the question is just where to put your feet next to the dog.

• both feet parallel to each other, toes pointing straight toward the area of the fall and even with each other, feet about 6″-10″ apart
• the left foot (the one next to the dog) is pointed toward the area of the fall, with the other foot slightly behind and angled with toe pointing away from the dog
• the right foot (the one away from the dog) is pointed toward the area of the fall, with the other foot slightly behind and angled with toe pointing toward the dog

All of these positions have advantages. The first one keeps everything squared in the direction you want the dog to go: feet, hips, and shoulders. The second and third provide a bit more ease in your ability to maintain balance on uneven ground, and still have a foot that can indicate direction.

Okay, now here’s another one — about how to hold the leash when you’re training your dog to heel.

• Hold the leash loosely so that the clip end of the leash hangs from the dog’s collar in a J-shape. The leash should never be tight, even when the dog is somewhat out of position. For Cooper and me, this equals about a 3-1/2′ leash. You keep the dog in heel position with rewards, food lures, verbal encouragement.
• Hold the leash so that when the dog is in heel position, the leash is loose, but whenever the dog is out of heel position, the leash is tight. For us, this is about an 14″ leash. Of course, you can still reward the dog when he’s in the correct position with treats or praise.

In the first case, the dog learns to heel without depending on information from the leash and collar. In the second case, the dog is given information when needed by the leash and collar.

I won’t even get into the discussion about what kind of collar to use.

So the point of this post is not to argue about which one of the suggested methods is best — it’s to help me think about how to know which method is best.

One obvious answer is that whichever one works for the dog is the one that I should choose. But it’s not that easy.

• First off, I am a beginner. I can’t really tell which method works better. With heeling, I’ve just begun to figure out how to see if the dog is in heel position without looking down and back at him when he’s behind me (another no-no). I will get better at this, but I’m not there yet. With foot position in the field, well… there are so many other variables out there that I have no way of knowing which might be enticing my dog off the straight path to the bird.
• I go to a lot of training classes and sessions because I want training partners and, other than my living room, I don’t have a training space of my own. So I end up in the company of a lot of experienced people who don’t agree with each other and who are trying to help me. I find this both helpful and very confusing.

It seems like I need to just pick one way to do a thing and stick with it. That way, my dog can get consistent information from me.

But then, what am I supposed to do when I’ve picked a way that seems to be working, but the teacher/pro/expert wants me to do it another way? Particularly in the case when I have developed a relationship with this person, am paying them for the expertise, and/or need a training partner or their training space.

I mean, I don’t want to insult these people, and I do want their help.

If I knew how to pick and could justify my choice, it’d be much easier to talk to these people about why I am doing what I am doing.

But that’s the problem.

It’s a circle, and one of those vicious ones, too.

I am getting dizzy.

To celebrate the New Year (and no doubt, to keep me using their service) the WordPress.com statistics people prepared a 2011 annual report for The Cooper Project.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

I’m sure mine is not the only blog to which they are comparing the Sydney Opera House, but it is kind of a ego-boosting way to think about it.

But even without involving opera houses, I am very pleased to see that you wonderful people are reading and, especially, commenting on the blog. I love comments. I get many comments on Facebook and my Yahoo Groups about the blog when I post a link to it in those places, and I do appreciate those.

But comments made on the blog itself are easy for me to find, read, and enjoy long after they are made. Thank you to those who commented about my blog on my blog! Especially you top 5 commenters of 2011: Rosemary, Mark, Rachel, Laura, and Carol.

I was also pleased to see that a couple of Russ’s posts got a lot of traffic last year. You all seemed to enjoy his reporting on his portrait sessions with Cooper and his Coopercam video. I love watching him make photographs and having fun with videography, so I can see why you would enjoy getting a taste of that through the blog.

Health issues are also popular. I wrote one blog entry about all the health tests that Cooper underwent, and I know that people are searching for images of canine hip X-rays, one of which is shown in that entry. I think that’s the reason that entry was second most popular last year, even though it was written in 2009. I wrote an entry about the similar tests for Tooey, which shows a canine elbow X-ray.

With the popularity of the entries on health issues, I was surprised that the blog entries on Symmetrical Lupoid Onychodystrophy (SLO) weren’t higher in popularity last year. The disease certainly hasn’t been eradicated since Cooper was diagnosed. One reason that they’re not as popular might be that my SLO page, which includes a lot of information and links on the topic, is not itself a blog entry, and so doesn’t count in the rankings. Or maybe the topic is specialized enough that readers find those entries only if they already fear their dogs have the disorder.

And here’s one more fact that pleases me about this report: People are searching for my blog by using it’s name: The Cooper Project. That means that at least a few people know and remember the blog, even when they may not remember its URL. That’s high praise, and it means a lot to me.

If you’re interested in more stats about The Cooper Project, click here to see the complete report.

And again, thank you!

So while I was out washing Tooey (who had rolled in something muskily smelly out in the hunting field), Russ cooked up a wonderful Asian-flavored, pheasant soup. Appropriate, since ringneck pheasants were originally introduced from China into Oregon in the 19th century, their first appearance in the United States.

Cooper and Tooey admiring the pheasant soup

It was delicious! Even Cooper and Tooey got a ladleful on their dinner.

Here’s Russ’s recipe for Asian Pheasant Soup:

2 pheasants, skinned, cleaned, and quartered
2 Tbs olive oil
1 quart of chicken stock
1 large onion, chopped
water to cover
3 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery with leaves, chopped
5 large mushrooms, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 stalk lemongrass
1 medium ginger root, chopped into 2″ pieces
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
1 can coconut milk
chopped cilantro for garnish

Brown the pheasant pieces in olive oil in large pot. Add onions and continue browning. Add water to cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Pull out pheasant, and debone the meat. Chop meat into 1″ pieces and return to liquid. When cutting pheasant, be cautious of Irish Water Spaniels sneaking up behind you.

Add stock and all the vegetables, garlic, pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Cook until vegetables are tender.

Remove lemongrass and ginger pieces. Add coconut milk and stir.

Serve with cilantro garnish.

So, guess what kind of weather we typically get in December in western Oregon? You got it. Pouring-down rain. But this winter, we’ve been beguiled. It’s been dry and cold, not wet. So a hunting trip down in the Umpqua River valley seemed perfect for our Christmas vacation.

The Big K Ranch is a beautiful place. It’s just the place to go when you want a lovely setting, great hospitality, comfortable cabins, delicious food, and good pheasant hunting. That’s my kind of hunting trip.

Russ hunting in front of the Big K lodge and cabins

We had all of that, plus pouring-down rain. But if you’re gonna hunt in the rain, you better take an Irish Water Spaniel. Or two. Plus a Boykin Spaniel for variety, and friends for good company.

Norm and Scarlett, the Boykin Spaniel, quartering the field

We hunted two fields, each about 100 acres. The first run, we took Scarlett, handled by Norm, with Russ and Kent as gunners. Scarlett bounded, jumping up and over the cover, quartering the field. She flushed one pheasant, which got away, and then found two or three additional birds. But as you know, it was pouring down rain. The pheasants didn’t want to fly in the rain, so they ran along the ground. Scarlett gave chase, but the pheasants were faster, and ran into the thick, thorny brambles that filled a ditch along the center of the field.

Cooper hunted the second field, with me as handler in the center of the field and Russ and Kent again at the edges as gunners. Cooper found his first rooster, which did its best to run and then fly away low. Cooper fired his afterburner, and after almost getting the bird several times, pulling out tail feathers with each grab, he finally caught the bird and delivered it to me alive.

That experience turned the lightbulb on over Cooper’s head. Wow! There are birds out here! Over the next hour or so, he quartered the field and flushed three more pheasants. One got away, but two were shot, retrieved, and delivered.

Russ and Kent admiring Cooper's pheasants

Toward the end of the morning, the rain lightened up just a bit, and we decided to take Tooey out into the field that Scarlett had hunted earlier that morning. Tooey has sometimes been really excited about birds, but other times she’s been sort of ho-hum. So we decided just to see what would happen. Tooey quartered the field beautifully, without much handling. She’d run to one side of the field, get to that gunner, and then turn around to run to the other side.

I’d say that Tooey was mostly just out to see what was out there, maybe a mouse or a vole (she likes critters). But at one point, she trotted out past the edge of the field we were working and into the cover off to the side. And wow! She flushed her first pheasant! Russ shot it, and Tooey raced off to retrieve it and deliver it to hand, just like we’ve been training.

Tooey looking pleased with her first pheasant

We hunted a bit more, but by that time we were all tired and dripping wet. But happy. Handling my dogs and watching them work in concert with the gunners made me forget all about the rain.

Wet gunner, wet dogs, wet pheasants -- but who cares about the rain?

]]> http://patricedodd.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/if-youre-gonna-hunt-pheasants-in-the-rain/feed/ 3 Patrice BigK_111228 Norm_Scarlett_111228 Russ_Cooper_Kent_pheasants_111228 Russ_Tooey_pheasant_111228 Russ_Cooper_Tooey_pheasants_111228 http://patricedodd.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/my-dog-ate-your-home-work/ http://patricedodd.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/my-dog-ate-your-home-work/#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:41:36 +0000 Russ http://patricedodd.wordpress.com/?p=3712 ]]> I have always wanted to say that, and now I can. I teach a variety digital arts at the Art Institute of Portland, and I take in home work assignments on a variety of digital mediums. I normally download student assignments onto my laptop or portable hard drives — but occasionally I will accept a small thumb drive that I can download at a convenient time.

This morning, as I was getting ready to head to school for the last day of the Fall term, I heard a distinct crunch coming from the next room. Something was not quite right. I went to investigate, and there was Tooey, lying on the bed with 2 GigaBytes of digital illustrations and photographs in front of her, as shown below. Did you ever wonder what was inside those small portable thumb drives?

No data was ingested, just 2 GigaBytes of photography made inert with just a few bites from an Irish Water Spaniel.

2GB Thumb Drive: exploded view

Tooey spent the night curled into a very tiny ball in the front seat of the truck with her nose buried. With the temperatures just below freezing, she looked half her size as she conserved body heat, but very much sound asleep. I woke her about an hour and half before dawn (5:30 am) as we got our first come – first serve assignment of a hunting spot on Sauvie Island.

After the decoys were set in ice over shallow water, we moved a few yards back into the adjacent corn field to wait for first light. No sooner had we sat down, when a duck zoomed by and failed to escape the first shot of the day. Matt, our hunting partner, scored the first duck. Rather than make this a shaggy dog story, I will say that this was also the only duck of the day. Very few were seen and very few shots were coming from adjacent ponds and corn fields. Oh well, only one shell was used between us and it worked just fine.

Tooey, an Irish Corn Dog

And that is how Tooey got to do her long “sit-stay” which morphed into a long “down-stay”, and then evolved into a long “sleep-stay.” But having a calm quiet dog in the blind is an attribute, and so for her first official duck hunt, I am happy. She was quite curious about the decoys and was especially intrigued with one of Matt’s that had fluttering wings. That is what she is staring at so intently in the photo above as she peeks out from her corn field duck blind.

Tooey, holding the one and only duck of the day

After a few quiet hours we called it quits and collected the decoys. Tooey and Goose (Matt’s Lab) then did high-speed zooming laps around the cornfields on the way back to the trucks. There was a lot of dog energy that had not been consumed retrieving bazillions of ducks that needed to be spent before the ride home.

But now that my work schedule has become reasonable again, both Cooper and Tooey will be able to join me for a few more long “sit-stays” in the blinds. There are about 45 days left of this duck season, and I now have quite a few weekdays off, which should make for a few more opportunities to go hunting with Irish Corn Dogs.