Finding What They're Meant to Do

I've been worried about my blog.
When I worry, I float away.
Part of it is evasion, but most of it is letting things percolate in the back of my mind, until they sort themselves out into coherent thought instead of a vague, smoggy cloud.

I've worried about the blog because it's become so much about theory, instead of actual doing. I'm not riding enough horses to come up with interesting problems and solutions anymore. Madonna is pretty much who she is, a decently trained, keen eyed cowhorse. Odin is coming along as fast as my riding time allows, but he's an amiable, competent, easy to get along with horse, so I don't have a lot of stories coming from him.

Riding them is a joy for me, but not particularly the stuff of interesting training knots. I miss those knots. So here's my question to you guys. Should we bring the training questions back to the main blog? I've been neglecting the training page something terrible. If anybody has a training question, they can bring it up here, I'll reach back in the dusty archives and answer as best I can and we'll go from there. We can move conversations back to the training page, chances are I'll remember it's there that way.

Anyway, let me know-- now onto my post.

How often do we read, hear or say,"I have to find what my horse, dog, self, child, wants to do,"?

The theory is sweet, kind and open-minded. Thing is, I also think it's suspect.

I suspect it REALLY means, "What can I find that's easy enough for me to handle?"

Does jumping my warmblood scare the crap out of me? As a rider, if I'm scared, my horse is going to perform poorly.  If I don't want to admit I'm scared, it's easy to justify all by saying, "He's much happier since we started riding Dressage."

Which, up until recently, didn't bother me.

Except I've been learning something  from my dogs. Actually, I've been learning lots from them lately. This particular instance is finding what they are meant to do, by learning what they were bred to do.

Many of you know, I have four dogs, Charlie, a rat terrier (9), Dinah a corgi/JRT mix (15), Snocone, a mostly maltese (100), and my newest addition, Brockle, a big hairy GSD something or other (1).

Brockle is a wonderful dog. He lives life large, has become my devoted guardian and assistant, and has a wicked sense of humor. He is also a rotten, bumbling, arrogant, dominant, willful teenage boy.

Brockle is not the most dog I have shared my life with -- that would be my wolf hybrid Scott, from twenty years ago-- but he is the smartest, at least from a human perspective. He is still a lot of dog, and in order to avoid the mistakes I made with Scott, I went to a professional dog trainer for help.

I was lucky enough to have made the acquaintance, through my job at the FV newspaper, with the Colorado Springs newspaper's dog training columnist. He's a GSD trainer who specializes in Schutzhund training and I have always liked his philosophy on people and dogs. So he was where I went to for help.

We're a good match, he read Brockle where I couldn't and was able to help me understand how he ticks. He also plays some pretty hard core heavy metal and shouts "Free beer!" every time Brockle does something spectacular. Hard man not to like.

It became clear very quickly Brockle is mentally all GSD. Physically, he moves and responds the same too, so he's been an easy read for my trainer. It's been harder for me, I'm not familiar with the breed, other than admiring the working shepherds at the FVPD. Needless to say, I've been having a blast, because I get to untie knots again, and I'm learning something new.

I have learned Brockle is a sensitive, dominant dog with an unusual focus on all things Mugs. HMT (Heavy Metal Trainer) told me he has only come across one other dog in his career with such single minded focus on his owner. This is good and bad, good because I always know where Brockle is, bad because he is so non-responsive when being handled by others.

HMT starts new training with games and treats. Really, really, good treats. Brockle will play them with him, but slowly, and he looks back at me every two or three seconds. Within a minute or so Brockle breaks away from the task and comes back to me. This makes it hard for HMT to teach me our next step, because like the Big K, he's more of a "show it" than a "say it" kind of trainer.

We're getting it though and Brockle is sharp enough and motivated enough for us to continue on into the actual Schutzund training. One of you guys suggested I look into Schutzhund when I was first wallowing around for training help, whoever that was, THANK YOU!

Anyway, I really do have a point here, bear with me.

Brockle still charges dogs. His recall is perfect...unless he sees a dog. Then his eyes glaze over and he's gone. Straight as an arrow he flies with astounding speed, straight at his target, and pounces on it. He hasn't hurt one yet, but there is a lot of snarling, snapping and slobber involved and completely freaked out dog owners.
Then he spins around and flies back to me.

He's doing really well as far as ignoring them on leash or his 30 foot training line, but I still don't have him off leash.

He understands and obeys "Leave it!" for people, livestock, birds, anything and everything, but not other dogs. It's driving me nuts.

HMT is not a Positive Response only type trainer. Like me, he believes animals need to understand the concept of consequence. He didn't faint, freak or stone me when I asked if we needed to try a shock collar.
He did however, tell me to hold off. I didn't get an explanation, but being well broke by the Big K, I didn't question him, I just did what I was told.

I also started watching Schutzhund competitions on Youtube. At first I just watched with my mouth a little open and the thought, I'll never be able to get him to do this. After a while though, I started to really see the dogs work. I watched them over and over, until I felt like I was getting a feel for the energy. I'm not even close to understanding good runs vs. bad ones, unless they're obvious, but I'm beginning to see the forest.

The next time I lost Brockle to a dog launch it was a poor unsuspecting little brown dog and her owner at least the length of a football field away. As he blew off my "Leave it!" and took off like he'd been shot out of a cannon, I had time to admire how fast and true he was flying at the now screaming lady and her dog.

It hit me like a coyote on a cat. Brockle looked exactly like the dogs in the Schutzhund competitions during the protection tests. Straight, powerful and %100 percent focused on the task at hand -- taking out the bad guy.

He wasn't being bad, he was doing what he has been bred to do (however haphazardly), protecting me.
It was suddenly clear to me why HMT didn't want me to use a shock correction and why I couldn't break through Brockle's obsessive need to launch.

More tomorrow, I've got to take Jim to the Doc.