After being away last week, we arrived at FLYBALL beginners class to find a whole lot of new faces – probably around 30 of them! The three classes we joined in last year just before Christmas had been relatively quite with mostly experienced dogs so it was good to be back in our depth.
Having said that, starting and then having a break obviously has some learning benefits. I have noticed it with new tricks when I just do a couple (literally 4 or 5) repetitions and then don’t try again for a few weeks and it seems that they must have thought about what they were doing during the break!
The same happened tonight – not a single jump was missed – over-over-over-over. Both Pepper and Rosie even waited on stays while I went up the other end of the jumps (this because Pepper got a little scared at being ‘held’ – one thing I will have to do more of but there’s hardly a need when you can click behaviours!).
We also practiced the ‘box’ by going over a jump, around a pole and back over the jump. Both were exceptional and got it on just a click or two.
On Saturday at the Vicki Austin seminar one of the other attendees asked if a dog’s brain got ‘full’ as they got older because his dog wasn’t able to learn new things – Rosie at 9.5 years learns new behaviours every day – just this week we put together our first behaviour chain – with five clicks she learnt ‘flat’ (to lie on her side) and this was put with ‘bang bang’ – ‘down’ – ‘flat’. Well, two days and 15 repetitions later – tonight she ‘died’ from 2 metres away in a paddock full of barking crazy dogs. That tells me the only thing that can get ‘full’ (or stuck) are primate brains!!!!
Go Rosie! I feel like a proud aunty!! Also agree that it is we bipeds who get full brains - not our dogs! I am well aware that Jet is a more capable dog than I am a trainer - so perhaps this is the same with the person who thought their dog's brain may have been full!!
ReplyDeleteAng, I can't believe that Rosie is 9 1/2 years old!. She is so active, and just loves her ball. As you say, a dog is never too old to learn new things, or will there ever be a risk of a dog getting a full brain. The only thing that may prevent a dog from learining new things is the handler's lack of imagination.
ReplyDeleteGabe