The Cheete 3-22-09

Post date: Mar 23, 2009 1:08:54 AM

This weekend Trevor and I went to the Sheltie trial in Dixon.

On Saturday I was half asleep and half frozen on JWW, and Trevor popped the last weave pole when I turned my back on him to do a front cross. (video)

I had high hopes for Std since he Qed in both of his Std runs last weekend, and we need Std Qs more than jumpers. He got 2/3 of the way through the course clean, and then he suddenly pulled up on the dogwalk descent. What was going on? I got my answer when we reached the base and I tried to send him into the chute that was flapping in the wind. No go. He was spooked by it, and he had been staring at it all the way down the dogwalk. He eventually went in it, but he was so distracted by it that he stared at it from the table and then missed his weave entry after the table. (video)

FAST looked impossible, so we went home instead of waiting around for it.

On Sunday morning we NQed in FAST. We Qed in JWW and got second place (video). We spent a lot of time sitting by the Std ring, watching the chute blowing in the wind. Whenever a dog went through the chute or the wind whipped it up, I gave Trevor a treat.

I planned our Std run so that I would be right next to Trevor when we got to the chute. The wind wasn't blowing during our run. I was sure he would do it. He didn't. He refused it twice and he finally went in. Since we were already NQed, I spent the rest of the run working his table leadout and contacts, trying to get further ahead. (video)

It's hard to express how frustrating it is when your dog decides to start refusing a particular obstacle. He's done the obstacle a million times before with no problems. You don't think twice about it. Now you're going to have to figure out a way to get him on it again. You're going to spend non-trial your weekends on the road, going to fun matches and unfamiliar practice locations. You're going to practice it every day in your back yard. Then when you get to a real trial, you're going to be on edge, holding your breath until that moment you and your dog come upon the obstacle on course and you wait to see if he will do it.

In the meantime, as long as your dog is refusing the obstacle, you can't qualify. An obstacle refusal is a binary switch that negates everything. If you have a dog that's a bad bar knocker, you're still going to have days when the bars stay up. But when a dog starts refusing an obstacle, it puts your agility career on hold until you confront the problem and work through it.

Let's be blunt about something else. I know that somewhere in my psyche, I have the admittedly unrealistic expectation that because Trevor has PRA, he's supposed to be perfect now, while he still has his eyesight. As a consolation prize, if you will. So he is never supposed to break his start line stay, try to lift his leg on agility equipment, sniff on course, eat poop, look away from me when he's heeling, and so on. But being a young male dog, he does all of these things. So get over it, Mom.

Suffice it to say that I was not in a happy mood when I walked off that Std course. Trevor and I just spent months working through a series of teeter refusals. A few Std Qs later, we were going to be starting all over again with the chute. The chute, of all things! The chute, an obstacle so inconsequential that we hadn't bothered to practice it in months, because it had been too wet. Uh, wait, hmmm... maybe that's part of the problem.

If you think about it, cloth flapping in the wind is one of those Temple Grandin things that you would expect a sensitive animal to find alarming. I don't think Trevor had ever seen a chute flapping in the wind before--since his AKC agility debut last fall, he's mostly trialed indoors.

Usually when something goes wrong at a trial, I practice it when I come home. But I don't have a chute. As I said above, the chute is too inconsequential to practice--until your dog decides that he hates it, and you realize that you're not going to ever Q in Std again unless you can get him back in it. Then suddenly, you're motivated. You're even thinking about buying that $340 chute from J and J. Just let my dog do the chute again, I'll do anything!

After I got home, I was playing with Rowan and Trevor in the back yard when a huge wind came up. What a shame, I thought--if only I had a chute, this would be perfect weather to practice it in. That's when the lightbulb went on.

I went into the house and found a fitted sheet. At first I just ran around the yard with it, kind of like Superman, if Superman were a derelict. It's the least I can do for the always-impeccably-groomed, upwardly mobile young couple who live behind us. But it wasn't quite having the desired effect. I draped it on our tunnel. No, still not quite right. Then I had my inspiration: The Cheete™ .

The Cheete™ (pronounced "the cheat," because you're cheating) is a jump draped with a fitted sheet (Ralph Lauren, Costco, 10 years old, custom-distressed by lab claws). As The Cheete™ billows in the wind, you throw a squeaky ball at it. Your chute-phobic dog who is a ball freak runs up to The Cheete™ to retrieve the ball, because he can't help himself--he would retrieve his ball from the mouth of hell.

I think we got some training value out of it. Trevor was leery of The Cheete™ at first, but it didn't stop him from digging his ball out of its malevolently billowing folds. He seemed to get desensitized to it as the afternoon went on. Rowan's contribution was to plunge through the sheet and rip it off the jump as he was struggling to get to the ball. He's not the poetic, sensitive type.

Here's Trevor and The Cheete™.

"Damn, you look weird, Cheete."

Hey, where's my ball?