Monday, March 29, 2010
Zazzy at Natasha Wise's training morning
After postponing then cancelling training through the winter due to tons of bad weather, I was pleased and excited to be training with Natasha at last! Unfortunately my back went and I was struggling with moving, breathing and playing. Never-the-less Natasha's training was brilliant as usual, and gave an opportunity to try out the video mode on my new Nikon L110! (the other video was taken on my old (tape) camcorder, but William was able to get an edited file onto the computer - something I have failed to do despite buying lots of gadgets and different software!)
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Box Hill walk
My guys on top of the hill
Mum with Boogie and my sister Mary with Jazz
OK got the picture, let's get on with the walk!!
My special blue eyed boy, I'm so sad that Boogie has started to have fits due to a heart condition. He is 15 this year.
Friday, March 26, 2010
My birthday!
No prizes for guessing what I have got! HUGE thanks to my mum, sister, Chrissie and Karen for this gift!. I am a very lucky girl. Here are the test pictures!
Kaydee
More spring flowers!
Becky - looking good at 10 years old!
Zazzy in the spring sunshine
Kaydee
I love the spring flowers!
Gathered on the playing field for their morning run!
The grass is growing fast already!
Kaydee and Deece exploring
More spring flowers!Friday, March 12, 2010
Thoughts on injury prevention in agility dogs
Are more dogs getting injured now that jump heights are lowered? It seems far too often now that I hear of another dog that is injured. I don’t remember so many dogs getting injured five years ago, are there just more dogs doing agility now, or is there a reason why so many are getting injured? Some people have asked my for some thoughts on injury prevention, so here they are!
1. Your dog should be fit before it starts doing agility. Do not make an overweight dog do agility!
2. Every dog has an injury threshold. Agility is a high impact sport; do too much and something will eventually give way. Just how much ‘too much’ is will vary from dog to dog. Of course, our goal is to avoid injury. In human sports, top trainers warn people in training to beware the 'terrible toos' - doing too much, too soon, too fast. Every research paper and every expert agrees that this is the number one cause of sports injuries. The body needs time to adapt from training changes and jumps in duration or intensity. Muscles and joints need recovery time in order to handle more training demands. Intense muscle usage causes muscle microfiber trauma, and this activates the development of more muscle fibres, which is how (during the rest period after such activities) muscles become bigger and stronger in response to exercise. While muscles can respond to exercise in a time scale of days and weeks, it has been estimated that it takes six weeks for human ligaments to repair after injury. If you rush the training process, you could break down rather than build up. It is worth starting with a very small amount (on lowered equipment if possible) and following ‘the 10 per cent rule’ used by many sports coaches as a general guideline. This means that the weekly increase of training would never exceed 10% more than the week before (ie if the total amount of agility the first week is three ten minute session, the second week would be three eleven minute sessions.) However that does not take into account the intensity of your sessions, so if the equipment is being raised that should be taken into account as well (so reduce the total time spent training and only raise the equipment very slowly). In addition to following a hard day/easy day approach, many top athletes use a system where they scale back by 20 to 40 per cent on a regular basis, maybe once a month.
Action Plan: Increase the amount of agility you do with your dog very slowly. Keeping a detailed training log can help you gauge your balance of injury prevention with improving performance. Record your training and how your dog is behaving. Look for patterns. For instance, too much training could cause your dogs’ performance to suffer rather than improve. Try to find the perfect balance!
3. If something is not quite right with your dog, if it isn’t jumping smoothly, or starts having problems with something, if there are behavioural changes (doesn’t seem to want to ‘play’), or you just have a gut feeling that something isn’t right, then stop training! Most sports injuries don't just suddenly appear. They produce signals - aches, soreness, and eventually persistent pain – but your dog cannot tell you this in English! It's up to you to notice – and not dismiss - the signs. Get to the root of what's causing the changes that you notice, you could prevent a major injury by spotting problems early on. Regularly massaging your dog may also help you to notice sore, hot or tense spots that signal potential problem areas, and massage may also help alleviate minor problems before they develop into something more serious.
Action Plan At the first sign of atypical behaviour that might indicate pain stop training your dog and get it checked out by a professional. Follow the advise the professional gives you regarding treatment and a recovery period, then ease your dog carefully back into work, do not rush it back into doing the same amount of work as before, you may cause the same damage again, especially if your dog has lost fitness during its’ time out. When unused, muscles degenerate and after a period of time muscle wastage is apparent. (See points above!)
4. Core muscle strength can help keep your dogs body properly aligned. Healthy movement should be as symmetrical and as fluid as possible. If you don't have muscle balance, then you lose the symmetry, and that's when you start having problems. Just like human athletes, a well conditioned and muscled dog that is properly warmed up is far less likely to suffer from sprains, pulls, tears, back or joint problems. Strong muscles protect the joints and back from injury, as anyone with back problems who undertakes pilates classes will tell you. Bodies are susceptible to injury from carrying out the same movement repetitiously (resulting in what is commonly called repetitive strain injury (RSI) or overuse injuries). So a mixture of exercises (swimming, walking, trotting, long walks, free running over different types of terrain, ladder work, wobble boards, tricks and games, as well as agility) are less likely to cause injuries and more likely to build a happy, fit dog, than carrying out the same exercises repetitively (ie only doing agility). Twisting, braking, landing impact, and sharp turning movements are demanding on muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints and bones. A dog must be fit in order to be able to do all these things. Slow controlled core muscle exercises will help develop muscle groups that ‘fine tune’ exact movement. These muscles also help stabilise joints, and therefore protect them against excessive movement of the joints that lead to wear between the joints, or overstretching that may lead to injury of ligaments, muscle or tendon. Rest periods are just as important as exercise. It is during rest that the body rebuilds itself and becomes stronger in response to the demands of previous activities. Without adequate rest, the wear and tear of exercise would weaken rather than strengthen the body. It is also interesting to note that gentle exercise is much better for the dogs’ recovery than complete inactivity.
Action plan: Give your dog a variety of activities, with regular gentle activity days. Balance the routine of more demanding agility alternating with days of gentler walks, core-muscle strength exercises, co-ordination and balance exercises, or tricks.
5. Get into habits that prevent damage. There are a few things that are done habitually by many people that regularly cause injury (and sometimes fatal injury). Releasing a pack in an exercise area to charge off racing each other has caused many terrible accidents, as the dogs are looking at each other while they are racing, and not where they are going. It is easy to prevent a catastrophic event by getting into a habit of releasing individuals in a controlled way, either releasing them one by one over time and distance as they settle into the walk, or keeping one (or some!) on lead throughout the walk, swapping individuals from free running to lead walking if necessary. Throwing toys is another danger area. If you talk to your vet about how many injuries have been caused by sticks being thrown I doubt that you will ever throw a stick for your dog again! In fact I would not recommend throwing a toy constantly for your dog, as the concussive force and twisting caused by the dog braking and snatching at a toy that it is chasing at full speed can cause acute or chronic physical damage. If you are throwing toys and there are a number of dogs likely to chase it, the statistics of an accident happening are significantly increased!
Action plan: Manage your dogs’ daily exercise habits to prevent accidents.
6. Warm up your dog properly before training, and cool down gently after.
1. Your dog should be fit before it starts doing agility. Do not make an overweight dog do agility!
2. Every dog has an injury threshold. Agility is a high impact sport; do too much and something will eventually give way. Just how much ‘too much’ is will vary from dog to dog. Of course, our goal is to avoid injury. In human sports, top trainers warn people in training to beware the 'terrible toos' - doing too much, too soon, too fast. Every research paper and every expert agrees that this is the number one cause of sports injuries. The body needs time to adapt from training changes and jumps in duration or intensity. Muscles and joints need recovery time in order to handle more training demands. Intense muscle usage causes muscle microfiber trauma, and this activates the development of more muscle fibres, which is how (during the rest period after such activities) muscles become bigger and stronger in response to exercise. While muscles can respond to exercise in a time scale of days and weeks, it has been estimated that it takes six weeks for human ligaments to repair after injury. If you rush the training process, you could break down rather than build up. It is worth starting with a very small amount (on lowered equipment if possible) and following ‘the 10 per cent rule’ used by many sports coaches as a general guideline. This means that the weekly increase of training would never exceed 10% more than the week before (ie if the total amount of agility the first week is three ten minute session, the second week would be three eleven minute sessions.) However that does not take into account the intensity of your sessions, so if the equipment is being raised that should be taken into account as well (so reduce the total time spent training and only raise the equipment very slowly). In addition to following a hard day/easy day approach, many top athletes use a system where they scale back by 20 to 40 per cent on a regular basis, maybe once a month.
Action Plan: Increase the amount of agility you do with your dog very slowly. Keeping a detailed training log can help you gauge your balance of injury prevention with improving performance. Record your training and how your dog is behaving. Look for patterns. For instance, too much training could cause your dogs’ performance to suffer rather than improve. Try to find the perfect balance!
3. If something is not quite right with your dog, if it isn’t jumping smoothly, or starts having problems with something, if there are behavioural changes (doesn’t seem to want to ‘play’), or you just have a gut feeling that something isn’t right, then stop training! Most sports injuries don't just suddenly appear. They produce signals - aches, soreness, and eventually persistent pain – but your dog cannot tell you this in English! It's up to you to notice – and not dismiss - the signs. Get to the root of what's causing the changes that you notice, you could prevent a major injury by spotting problems early on. Regularly massaging your dog may also help you to notice sore, hot or tense spots that signal potential problem areas, and massage may also help alleviate minor problems before they develop into something more serious.
Action Plan At the first sign of atypical behaviour that might indicate pain stop training your dog and get it checked out by a professional. Follow the advise the professional gives you regarding treatment and a recovery period, then ease your dog carefully back into work, do not rush it back into doing the same amount of work as before, you may cause the same damage again, especially if your dog has lost fitness during its’ time out. When unused, muscles degenerate and after a period of time muscle wastage is apparent. (See points above!)
4. Core muscle strength can help keep your dogs body properly aligned. Healthy movement should be as symmetrical and as fluid as possible. If you don't have muscle balance, then you lose the symmetry, and that's when you start having problems. Just like human athletes, a well conditioned and muscled dog that is properly warmed up is far less likely to suffer from sprains, pulls, tears, back or joint problems. Strong muscles protect the joints and back from injury, as anyone with back problems who undertakes pilates classes will tell you. Bodies are susceptible to injury from carrying out the same movement repetitiously (resulting in what is commonly called repetitive strain injury (RSI) or overuse injuries). So a mixture of exercises (swimming, walking, trotting, long walks, free running over different types of terrain, ladder work, wobble boards, tricks and games, as well as agility) are less likely to cause injuries and more likely to build a happy, fit dog, than carrying out the same exercises repetitively (ie only doing agility). Twisting, braking, landing impact, and sharp turning movements are demanding on muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints and bones. A dog must be fit in order to be able to do all these things. Slow controlled core muscle exercises will help develop muscle groups that ‘fine tune’ exact movement. These muscles also help stabilise joints, and therefore protect them against excessive movement of the joints that lead to wear between the joints, or overstretching that may lead to injury of ligaments, muscle or tendon. Rest periods are just as important as exercise. It is during rest that the body rebuilds itself and becomes stronger in response to the demands of previous activities. Without adequate rest, the wear and tear of exercise would weaken rather than strengthen the body. It is also interesting to note that gentle exercise is much better for the dogs’ recovery than complete inactivity.
Action plan: Give your dog a variety of activities, with regular gentle activity days. Balance the routine of more demanding agility alternating with days of gentler walks, core-muscle strength exercises, co-ordination and balance exercises, or tricks.
5. Get into habits that prevent damage. There are a few things that are done habitually by many people that regularly cause injury (and sometimes fatal injury). Releasing a pack in an exercise area to charge off racing each other has caused many terrible accidents, as the dogs are looking at each other while they are racing, and not where they are going. It is easy to prevent a catastrophic event by getting into a habit of releasing individuals in a controlled way, either releasing them one by one over time and distance as they settle into the walk, or keeping one (or some!) on lead throughout the walk, swapping individuals from free running to lead walking if necessary. Throwing toys is another danger area. If you talk to your vet about how many injuries have been caused by sticks being thrown I doubt that you will ever throw a stick for your dog again! In fact I would not recommend throwing a toy constantly for your dog, as the concussive force and twisting caused by the dog braking and snatching at a toy that it is chasing at full speed can cause acute or chronic physical damage. If you are throwing toys and there are a number of dogs likely to chase it, the statistics of an accident happening are significantly increased!
Action plan: Manage your dogs’ daily exercise habits to prevent accidents.
6. Warm up your dog properly before training, and cool down gently after.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Plans....
Here is Zazzy’s post-op recovery plan (now half way through it!):
Week 1
Zazzy is confined to downstairs, sofa is replaced with my mattress. (Yes I slept down there with her for a week!) Z was only let out into the garden on lead to see to the calls of nature. She feels very sorry for herself, crying in the night and trying to rip out stitches. I did not get much sleep! Poor Z has to wear a bucket collar all the time for the first week.
Week 2
As for week one, adding short lead walks of a few minutes, gradually building up in duration to a walk round the block. Ten days after the op the stitches are removed. Zazzy is feeling better, she is now trying to run around, play, and leap on/over things, I’ve got my work cut out trying to keep her calm! Although the vet said she can run off lead once the stitches were out, I kept her on lead until the end of the second week just to be sure.
Week 3
Zazzy is allowed free running. She wants to go wild running and playing with the puppy, while I desperately try to keep her as calm as I can (!!!!), while at the same time trying to increase gentle exercise (walks) (well that's what I was thinking, she had something more exciting in mind!) to build her fitness back up. Also work on wobble board, pilates ball, ladder work, walking backwards etc.
Week 4
Start playing crate games, sends and recalls. Letting her run as much as she wants now. She seems more playful than ever! (that makes me happy!!) Half way through the week I got Zazzy going round one large circle over low jumps (twice, once in each direction), plus had two goes at recalling her to the end of the see-saw, rewarding her there then gently lowering it to the floor. Kept up the balance and co-ordination work.
Week 5
Plan is to build up her fitness with on lead trotting, free running over hilly terrain, balance and co-ordination work, crate games, and introduction of more agility equipment if or when possible (lowered if available).
Week 6
Plan is to build up back to all agility equipment during the sixth week. Not sure how long it will take for her to be fit enough to return to training classes as usual, will have to see how that goes.
Good luck to little Yazoo who is having her op this week! And even more so to poor fretting Karen who no doubt will have a tough time holding down the little fidgeting flea for the next couple of weeks! I will be thinking of you!
Week 1
Zazzy is confined to downstairs, sofa is replaced with my mattress. (Yes I slept down there with her for a week!) Z was only let out into the garden on lead to see to the calls of nature. She feels very sorry for herself, crying in the night and trying to rip out stitches. I did not get much sleep! Poor Z has to wear a bucket collar all the time for the first week.
Week 2
As for week one, adding short lead walks of a few minutes, gradually building up in duration to a walk round the block. Ten days after the op the stitches are removed. Zazzy is feeling better, she is now trying to run around, play, and leap on/over things, I’ve got my work cut out trying to keep her calm! Although the vet said she can run off lead once the stitches were out, I kept her on lead until the end of the second week just to be sure.
Week 3
Zazzy is allowed free running. She wants to go wild running and playing with the puppy, while I desperately try to keep her as calm as I can (!!!!), while at the same time trying to increase gentle exercise (walks) (well that's what I was thinking, she had something more exciting in mind!) to build her fitness back up. Also work on wobble board, pilates ball, ladder work, walking backwards etc.
Week 4
Start playing crate games, sends and recalls. Letting her run as much as she wants now. She seems more playful than ever! (that makes me happy!!) Half way through the week I got Zazzy going round one large circle over low jumps (twice, once in each direction), plus had two goes at recalling her to the end of the see-saw, rewarding her there then gently lowering it to the floor. Kept up the balance and co-ordination work.
Week 5
Plan is to build up her fitness with on lead trotting, free running over hilly terrain, balance and co-ordination work, crate games, and introduction of more agility equipment if or when possible (lowered if available).
Week 6
Plan is to build up back to all agility equipment during the sixth week. Not sure how long it will take for her to be fit enough to return to training classes as usual, will have to see how that goes.
Good luck to little Yazoo who is having her op this week! And even more so to poor fretting Karen who no doubt will have a tough time holding down the little fidgeting flea for the next couple of weeks! I will be thinking of you!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Start lines and queuing
I have met a few people now who are encouraging their dogs to go crazy barking and lunging at the ends of their leads when around agility. Not just for a few seconds while psyching the dog up to get ready to compete, but all the time they are anywhere near agility. The handlers tell me that they have been advised to get their dogs like this when near agility, because their dogs are not driven enough and this will make them faster. They must never stop their dogs from behaving like this for fear that it will damage their agility prospects. My immediate gut feeling was that this made me uncomfortable (apart from the discomfort of having to stand near them that is), but it has taken me a while to think about it and figure out why. If I’m truthful I guess I would love to find a way to get Zazzy more motivated. Because Becky was (and still is!) very noisy when working, that did make me think a bit harder about the correlation with barking and motivation. But I don’t think this is the way forward and these are the reasons why: 1). I don’t think that continuous hysterical barking can be good for a dog (and it's certainly not good for me!). Think of all that adrenaline coursing through its body, doing this repeatedly must be a physiological strain (on the heart, adrenal glands etc.). 2). I have seen this behaviour, if encouraged, escalate into nipping, chasing, charging, biting, and going for anything that moves if it gets too close. 3). It may be a short cut to getting a dog excited, but once you have your dog in this hysterical state, can it think straight? Can you get a start line wait? Will it leap off the contacts? Can it be directed accurately? The answer I have been given is that ‘I would rather have my dog going fast without a wait/contacts or going in the right direction, than a slow accurate one’. That doesn't seem like a solution to me, more an exchange of one problem for another. 4). Getting dogs into a hysterical over-reactive state is not training let alone good training. Good training would be bringing out the best of the dog using motivational confidence boosting rewards. Of course that is harder and will take longer, and you would have to find yourself a trainer who knows how to do that rather than one who can offer a shortcut that may or may not work, and also possibly leaves you with a dog with bigger issues and bigger problems to sort out later. 5). I have seen many dogs barking in different ways (flyball dogs are interesting to watch for example). I have seen dogs barking hysterically that are not that fast or motivated when working, and I have seen that many of the best and fastest agility dogs are silent. I am not convinced that encouraging hysterical barking and lunging behaviour will ultimately have an exact correlation with increasing speed. Dogs can behave like that and still not be terribly motivated doing the job that you ask of them. Getting excited about the movement going on around them does not automatically mean they will be fired up to work for you. That comes from what motivation you have been using for the actual training. Also a dog that has gone rigid with over-stimulation cannot move well or jump properly. 6). Look at the top dogs in the sport. How many of them are hysterically barking and lunging on the start line? If I think of the top handlers that I know and have seen in training, such as Dawn Weaver, Toni Dawkins, Natasha Wise, their dogs are the fastest around, but I have never seen them standing by the ring for half an hour making their dogs bark! 7).Even if this were a good thing for your dog, what about the rest of the people and dogs in the queue, and at training? My dogs have been intimidated on the start line, subdued in the queue and even bitten by over-hyped dogs. It is hard to concentrate standing next to a screaming dog (and sometimes the noise is painfully loud), let alone try to remember a course or run it well when you are trying to keep your own dog out of harms way. And what about my poor dog?! Surely all the dogs in the queue have a right not be intimidated, let alone put at risk of harm?
I have just found this on Susan Garretts’ website http://susangarrettdogagility.com/2010/01/random-barking-thoughts.html and it sums this subject up very well, from someone who knows a great deal more than me:
‘…. I am NOT in favour of allowing any dog to bark and go crazy while another dog is working. Geeez, aren’t these critters supposed to be our family pets first? How does that contribute to the behaviour of your family pet? And as Rebecca pointed out, the top dogs in any sport have a grace and fluidness rather than a franticness about them. Don’t allow displacement frustration replace good old fashion drive training. There is a MAJOR difference. One requires thought and a progressive training plan. The other only requires you tie a dog to a fence and let the chips fall where the may. You can see why some trainers will offer up that advise, it requires little effort on their part and it may create what you want (however beware of what else you get in the process!)’
There is a ton of really good advice on her website.
Crate games.
What can I say? Brilliant. I played crate games last year with my dogs, who had already been brought up a different way. I thought it was useful and valuable, particularly it helped with Kaydee who gets over-excited when I am getting ready to take them out for a walk. However Deece has been playing crate games from the start, and now I can see even more benefits. I am grateful that I have been allowed to take the crate to the end of the indoor training centre that is not being used for agility training, while Zazzy is not able to do her usual agility class. This has allowed Deece to play crate games with dogs working near by, and I have been trying to move the crate a bit closed each week as his focus improves (had to move it back away a bit this week as he kept looking at a excitable dog when it was near, and ran towards it once, but generally he is getting better!) I have been concentrating on 1) getting him to play, play, and more play with me! 2) a fantastic foundation for a start line wait: ready, focused, not moving! 3) he is quiet when working 4) building drive and speed when called to me (at the moment his return to the crate is slower, something to keep working on!) 5) He is being rewarded for having his collar grabbed 6) he is learning to go from a toy reward, to a food reward, to a toy again. Deece is very interested in all other people and all other dogs, at the moment they are of more interest to him than toys and most foods as well, so these games are really invaluable for him. It has been three weeks since Zazzy’s op so I also took her to play some crate games last night. I was really pleased with her speed, drive, and desire to play. However there was one really interesting moment. She left the crate before I released her, and at that point I stood still and did not get the toy out to play with her. Within no more than two seconds her face completely crumbled, and she sunk to the ground like her world had ended, it took a long while to get her happy and moving again. A timely reminder of how careful I need to be with her training, to make sure I only ask for small incremental steps of difficulty so she gets it right most the time, to try and keep the speed and happy demeanor that she had last night.
I have just found this on Susan Garretts’ website http://susangarrettdogagility.com/2010/01/random-barking-thoughts.html and it sums this subject up very well, from someone who knows a great deal more than me:
‘…. I am NOT in favour of allowing any dog to bark and go crazy while another dog is working. Geeez, aren’t these critters supposed to be our family pets first? How does that contribute to the behaviour of your family pet? And as Rebecca pointed out, the top dogs in any sport have a grace and fluidness rather than a franticness about them. Don’t allow displacement frustration replace good old fashion drive training. There is a MAJOR difference. One requires thought and a progressive training plan. The other only requires you tie a dog to a fence and let the chips fall where the may. You can see why some trainers will offer up that advise, it requires little effort on their part and it may create what you want (however beware of what else you get in the process!)’
There is a ton of really good advice on her website.
Crate games.
What can I say? Brilliant. I played crate games last year with my dogs, who had already been brought up a different way. I thought it was useful and valuable, particularly it helped with Kaydee who gets over-excited when I am getting ready to take them out for a walk. However Deece has been playing crate games from the start, and now I can see even more benefits. I am grateful that I have been allowed to take the crate to the end of the indoor training centre that is not being used for agility training, while Zazzy is not able to do her usual agility class. This has allowed Deece to play crate games with dogs working near by, and I have been trying to move the crate a bit closed each week as his focus improves (had to move it back away a bit this week as he kept looking at a excitable dog when it was near, and ran towards it once, but generally he is getting better!) I have been concentrating on 1) getting him to play, play, and more play with me! 2) a fantastic foundation for a start line wait: ready, focused, not moving! 3) he is quiet when working 4) building drive and speed when called to me (at the moment his return to the crate is slower, something to keep working on!) 5) He is being rewarded for having his collar grabbed 6) he is learning to go from a toy reward, to a food reward, to a toy again. Deece is very interested in all other people and all other dogs, at the moment they are of more interest to him than toys and most foods as well, so these games are really invaluable for him. It has been three weeks since Zazzy’s op so I also took her to play some crate games last night. I was really pleased with her speed, drive, and desire to play. However there was one really interesting moment. She left the crate before I released her, and at that point I stood still and did not get the toy out to play with her. Within no more than two seconds her face completely crumbled, and she sunk to the ground like her world had ended, it took a long while to get her happy and moving again. A timely reminder of how careful I need to be with her training, to make sure I only ask for small incremental steps of difficulty so she gets it right most the time, to try and keep the speed and happy demeanor that she had last night.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
- Hannah Banks
- For a bit about what I do for a living, see: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AeEKryTUo-Q
