Proofing your dogwalk contact-a primer.

All right. We're back and it is contact bootcamp week at my house. I feel mean and surly and like I have bad contacts and we are going to revisit EVERYBODY's and by the time dog shows start again for us in July, we will have sparkling clean contacts, all shiny like they've been bleached and dusted and waxed and vacuumed and look way better than the floors in my house.

So everyone has different dogwalk contacts in my family. I didn't plan this, it just happened. I believe it is evolution. Or devolution. Or disintegration? OK. They're not that bad, actually, our contacts are fairly decent but with, surprise, training holes in them sometimes. So we are going to actually practice all methodical like and see what happens. Let's start with Ruby.


She has a running contact. Did I teach it with years of careful practice, starting on the low board and clicking for millions of repetitions until we had a shiny happy and perfect contact? Of course not. It started as a 2o/2o and somewhere I fell in with a fast, dangerous crowd and I guess the peer pressure was too much and I started a quick release and it felt so good and I did it some more and before I knew it, a dicey, fly by night running contact. I was hooked. It was there. We tried to quit it here and there, contact rehab and cold turkey, but the monkey's there, on my back, and the monkey whispers, "fly like the wind ruby, down that yellow, fast as you can." We sometimes blow it, but I'm pretty good at holding it together, man. Except when that tunnel is there, staring me in the face, the mouth of god there, rolling it's big round lips into words, rolling off it's tunnel lips, "You should really have a totally consistent contact." And she's in, she may have bailed the yellow, but there was just no stopping her. Tunnel sucks her in and she's a goner but it feels so good.


So our little patch of a fixup is I throw food at the bottom of the dogwalk. I reward almost all contacts in practice. I click for feet in the yellow. It's a fine, thin line we walk on, this so-called running dogwalk contact. We are practicing clicking for feet in yellow during bootcamp. We'll see how it goes when the dog shows start up again. How do you like that turn to the tunnel? Inside hand, good thing I had a clicker there in my outside hand to keep it occupied. I believe that is good handling. Although I do need to stay near her dogwalk, is my tradition and voodoo belief.


You know, she's just a damn good dog and ran a whole heckuvalotta dogwalks today after a several week agility vacation and did not miss a contact out of the bunch. Or a turn to the tunnel or a straight ahead with the tunnel there. And never seemed sore and happy to run later in the evening at the beach. We believe her to be in good health and good spirits and will take that over maybe sometimes missing a dogwalk contact if that's what we have to do.


Otterpop started her contact career with a four on the floor. Which turned running on occasion when the judge was on her back and she was running down the dogwalk, looking over her shoulder trying to decide to jump, or perhaps fly off the handle at the judge, and we just decide to keep on running and get AWAY from that judge. So when she's slower, I just let her run down the bottom. So she practices sometimes running, sometimes stopping. Her cue is whether I call ok on the top or target. God knows if she gets this or not. I used to think she got it just fine until recently.


We have been practicing back with targets lately because she started leaping dogwalk contacts a couple months ago out of the clear blue sky. Always something. I believe I had said something to someone like, "Oh, Pop NEVER misses a dogwalk contact." Was struck down then and there. The agility commandment, Though Shall be HUMBLE re. your Contact Performance. Her four on the floor can be little haphazard and if it's too far out, creates too wide of a turn to the tunnel.


For some reason, I didn't really deal with the word turn with her so much as just say tunnel and point my claw and in she goes. But she is always speedy into that tunnel because frisbees lurk in the air outside of tunnels is her belief and speedy fast she goes hoping to be right. And Otterpop is always right.


Gustavo. Who is enough of a monkey we just stayed old school and 2o/2o on that dogwalk and it's staying like that until I receive some message from some mouth of god, saying, "You can Quick Release now." Like way far, down the line. Until then, he's staying put there. Too wiggly and giggly and fidgety and quick. Like maybe when he is 7 years old and has no giant wart on his snout.


We proof. He does ok. Feet are not supposed to be on the target and what am I doing about it? Yeah, that would be nothing. Sometimes I just really suck at dog training. Pick yer battles. He stopped, didn't he? He's staying put. A nose went down. Details, details, details.


So he doesn't have a turn exactly so to get him in the tunnel. And because we haven't formally met the whole concept of Turn-Tunnel, I am fully escorting him there and yes that is my outside hand and pointy finger. Special occasion. I swear we won't do many of these til I teach the turn. But the other dogs were practicing and it's just a couple and you know I won't get hooked. What's one or two tunnels? I promise, I promise, I promise I'll set up the baby tunnel by the contact trainer, maybe today and start teaching it the real way. One or two little ones, it won't hurt. Right? Right? You are NOT telling Susan Garrett on me. Or Greg Derrett. I know it's his system. Put down that phone. I knew you were his best friend. It's just one little outside hand turn, that was it. I swear. OK. We are going to practice right now, I promise, I promise, I promise.