The term "jackpot" usually refers to giving a dog a really big reward, often a large number of treats, all at once. It is usually reserved for a break through moment or a desired behavior that the dog only occasionally performs. But I've learned that there should be more to it.

Most trainers focus on the timing of the reward marker and the delivery of the jackpot. The timing is definitely important. Whether you are using a clicker or a verbal to mark the behavior they need to occur immediately when the dog performs the desired action. The delivery of the reward itself can be delayed.

I've heard Suzanne Clothier talk about using a "bridging" verbal while getting the reward itself. That is, you continue to use verbal praise to reward the dog while you both move to getting the actual reward (food/toy etc). I believe she told a story where she bridged her dog all the way from the field and into the house to get a particularly valuable reward. The whole time she was verbally rewarding her dog, looking at her, telling her how clever she was, and really focusing her attention on her dog.

The verbal praise really needs to be heartfelt too. I think dogs can pick up on us faking it. So just like Suzanne, we need to invest our entire self into the communication we are having with our dog. This should not be a robotic, emotionless interaction.

I believe both Suzanne and Dana Pike stress that the actual delivery of the rewards in a jackpot should also be deliberate. Not just opening you hand and letting the dog eat a handful of treats. You get a lot more impact if you invest over one second of praise for each treat you deliver. Then deliver over a dozen treats. One by one. You want to spend 15-20 seconds giving the rewards. If the behavior was really important to you you want your dog to understand what a great thing they just did.

So an example of a jackpot would go as follows with the handler using a happy voice, smiling and looking (even beaming) at their dog through out:

• Good thing happens
• Handler: "YES!" or click
• Handler: "That was perfect!"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "You are so clever"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "I am so proud of you"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "That was such a good <action here>"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "What a good dog"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "You did that perfectly"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "Wow that was really something"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "You are such a smart pup"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "What a good <dog's name here>"
• Handler delivers reward
• Handler: "What a brilliant little fellow"
• Handler delivers reward

I just timed that and to deliver 10 treats using the "script" above it took about 25 seconds. Jackpots are supposed to be something really special to our dog. It is up to us to put in the effort to make them truly special.

So for a homework assignment :^) how many different ways can you tell your dog they did a good thing?

Well I've been pretty busy this past month and I just haven't had time to do any blogging, so here are some updates. Two big activities, remodeling my kitchen and touring Chicago with our friends.

Home Improvements

The previous owners of my house had remodeled the kitchen around 1991 and put in good quality cabinets and appliances. When I moved in I had the tile floor replaced with oak (to match the rest of the house) and had the walls and ceiling painted. Other than minor changes I mostly left it alone. But the electric cooktop, smaller than normal electric ovens, and broken dual slide out range hoods were really bothering me on the three or four times a year when I actually cooked something.

I had always cooked with a gas stove and since I like wok cooking I wanted a high enough BTU flame to actually cook with. That and the fact I couldn't fit a regular size baking sheet in the ovens made me decide to cut apart the cabinet containing the existing cooktop (and electric deep fat fryer(!) and electric grill) and install a standard gas stove with a convection oven. It was one thing to have that as a plan, it was another to find a finish carpenter who could/would do it. Well the carpenter I spoke with a year ago finally got time to do the work for me.

Scott cut apart the cabinet, built a new drawer and slide out tray and got it all reinstalled in two days. He did a very nice job and also did it at a very reasonable price. My new GE gas convection oven slide right into place.

I went to get replacement parts for the two broken Gaggeneau range hoods and found the parts I needed were $ 200 for each hood. Seemed pretty dumb to invest that much in almost 20 year old hoods. So I decided to rip them out and install a single 30 inch wide Broan slide out hood. That took some modifications of the interior of the existing cabinets but I did a reasonable job.

Part of rebuilding the cabinet required a new countertop. The old ones were a Corian knock off (and the previous owner hid a poorly repaired crack under the microwave he "gave" me). I decided to go with synthetic quartz which is apparently the "cool" new material. "Of course" once you change all the countertops you "have" to go with a new undermount sink. "Of course" you can't put the old faucet back in, so I got one of those new retractable nozzle faucets. I'll spare you the histrionics of the material I chose no longer being available and the problems during the day of the installation. Of course I had to do the plumbing, which only took four trips to the hardware store and was finished at 11 PM the night before my friends from England arrived to stay for the weekend.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and now I don't have any excuses for not cooking... In any event here are a before and some after pictures.

Touristing Chicago

Our dear friends Andy and Carol came from England to stay for a long weekend and Nancy and I got a chance to do some tourist stuff with them in Chicago. We had a pretty leisurely three and half days and got caught up with one another. In no particular order... Went to Chinatown for Dim Sum and took a quick drive through IIT to see the new buildings; Andy and I met and went to undergrad there. Of course took a nice drive along Lake Shore Drive. Took in the Jeff Koons exhibit at the very nice Museum of Contemporary Art.

Spent a long morning at the Art Institute of Chicago. I hadn't been there in probably five years and was reminded what a great collection it has. Andy and I were both struck by the works of Impressionist Camille Pissarro. I hadn't been to Millenium Park before and we had beautiful weather for a stroll through it on the way for a walk along Michigan Avenue. Ended up at the John Hancock building and had a drink on the 96th floor, it was a nice view even if it was a bit "touristy" to do. Gave them a backyard agility demo and demonstration of much ball and frisbee chasing, catching and dog pool splashing.

Since food is fun... Ate at our favorite Chinese restaurant, Silver Seafood, it doesn't have much atmosphere, but it does have the best Chinese food in the city. Also took Carol and Andy to our new favorite regional Mexican restaurant La Oaxaqueña. Had to go up to Lake Forest for the omakase sushi at Sushi Kushi Toyo, my vote for best sushi in Chicagoland. Had some good Peruvian food at Aye Aye Picante with another IIT alum, John, who I hadn't seen in (dare I say it) over 20 years.

On their last morning with us we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather to take in the Chicago Botanic Gardens. Once again I had forgotten what a nice place the gardens are. Even late in the summer the displays of plants were really beautiful. Since we went on a weekday morning the gardens were lightly populated and a pleasure to visit. A very relaxing way to spend a morning outdoors.

It was just wonderful spending time with great friends and relaxing after so much tumult leading up to their visit. I promise I'll have some agility related articles soon.

I attended my first Stuart Mah seminar last month at Meyer's Kennel in Belvidere, IL. Stuart is certainly a very successful handler and trainer and one of the big names in agility. I was keen to meet him and learn about his approach first hand.

What little I knew about Stuart's methods were the ideas of "Handler Focus" and "Obstacle Focus". They seemed pretty intuitive concepts so I wasn't too sure what we'd actually be working on. Of course I have his books:

At the outset Stuart had us run a course with some off courses, jump wraps, 270s [270JumpHandling, 270Jumps], and other handling challenges just so he could get a feel for how we work as teams.

The ring was packed sand over gravel and it was a nice surface. It was a little tough getting going in a couple spots where the sand was a loose and little deep. In general it was easy on the feet and gave the dogs good traction. We really appreciated that ring when we got a substantial downpour after lunch. Once the rain stopped we could use the ring immediately. Sure beats running in mud!

After watching us run Stuart layed out the contrasts between Handler and Obstacle foci in five areas:

Cue	Handler Focus	Obstacle Focus
Motion	slowing, decelerating	speeding up, accelerating
Body Language	toward body, close to body	away from body
Verbal Volume	soft	louder
Obstacle Command	given	N/A
Gaze, Visual Focus	toward dog	toward obstacle

Stuart believes the inconsistency in our use of cues, using cues from both columns at the same time, is what confuses our dogs on course. If we give them conflicting cues which cues should they follow?

Depending on who's "System" you use these five areas might or might not be considered cues or major or minor cues. Regardless, I think everyone can agree they impact your dog on course. Some of these cues need to be taught, like the obstacle name commands and, I think, the verbal volume. Motion and body language are common cues that we all use (even when we don't know we are doing it).

Using your gaze as Stuart does is an interesting cue. I'm used to catching my dog's eye over a jump, for example, to help him understand that I want him to take the jump. Stuart also uses his gaze to direct his dog. We naturally face the obstacle (or at least the direction) we are moving, that should cue your dog to move toward that obstacle. When we shift our gaze to our dogs it tends to cause your dog to look back toward you, when our dog is looking at you they aren't looking at the obstacles; by definition they are in handler focus.

While discussing these cues Stuart also mentioned that he disagrees with the current trends toward motion centric handling systems. One of his objections was that they tend to emphasize perfection in handling without any "backup" for when you mishandle. What if you can't get in position for a cross or you end up on the wrong side of an obstacle? With a dog trained with verbal commands you could bail yourself out of your predicament. He puts execution of obstacles under verbal command specifically to shift some of the responsibility to the dog.

In my opinion the "System-ization" of handling methodologies is tending to group people into camps in which no variation from that System is allowed. I'm trying really hard to not "Drink the KoolAid" and I try to expose myself and critically examine approaches outside of my comfort zone. In general I think Stuart's approach is very compatible with other systems. The main conflict would be his training of verbal directional/obstacle commands to the point where he wants his dog to prioritize his verbal commands. I don't believe he actually said this, but I got the feeling we would want his dog to respond to his verbal commands even when they were in conflict with his motion. (Update: Stuart commented to me that the verbal should not be in conflict with the motion cue. But if the handler is far behind the motion cues are less effective and then the verbal commands become more important and provide more direction to the dog.)

As I've referred to previously, I currently only use a couple verbal commands: "Go" - take the obstacle(s) in front of you, "Come" - come to me (rarely used), and "Out" take the back side of the jump and jump toward me. So I was impressed by Stuart's verbal command structure consisting of three components:

1. Power - i.e. volume. louder commands to cue obstacle focus, soft commands to cue handler focus
2. Direction - i.e. left/right, 1/2, come/go
3. Obstacle Name - i.e. tunnel, jump

So "GO - LEFT - TUNNEL" would tell his dog to take the obstacle ahead, turn left and seek the tunnel. "easy - right" might be to wrap a jump and turn right. The Power concept is an interesting one and reminded me of a public speaking tip I learned. If you want people to focus on something important in your presentation speak a little softer at that point. You'll actually see people lean forward in their seats and focus carefully on what you say. It turns out your dog can and will do the same thing.

Stuart had us use small sequences within the course setup to work on applying the cues so we could see how they worked. There is some subtlety involved and even though I'm pretty comfortable with applying these cues Stuart helped me a lot with my use of deceleration while still moving; I tend to slow to a stop and my deceleration becomes more of a positional cue. In case you are doubting the applicability of Stuart's cues, he handled a number of the dogs and you could watch him playing with the timing and amount of the cues and really see the dogs react. As I learned many, many years ago, dogs are keen students of human behavior. When you learn to use behaviors that your dog already knows to cue them they respond very quickly.

So my "take home messages" were to work more on deceleration while still moving, and to incorporate command volume as another mechanism to get Meeker to focus on me. I've also been playing with eye contact specifically to engage him with me, as when collecting for a jump wrap. I'm still mobile enough that I haven't found a need for directional verbal commands, maybe as we get into more difficult Gamblers courses I'll change my mind...

So if Stuart is coming to your area make time to see him, his approach has been very successful for his teams and you'll learn something that will improve your performance too.

Recent visitors to AgilityNerd.com may have noticed some small colorful images fading in and out in the left margin that appeared a couple weeks ago.

I've just launched a small online store http://store.agilitynerd.com/ selling dog agility related items I've dreamt up.

At the beginning of the year I created AgilityNerd LLC, the company that owns the store, and now I'm an employee of AgilityNerd LLC. That was an interesting learning experience, I had never started a company before and my lawyer helped guide me through the process. I've spent the rest of the time learning and configuring the software that runs the website (Zen Cart) and getting my first products made. The later was an ordeal that gives me new respect for the folks at CleanRun.

The first products I've created are Positive Performance Wristbands^TM. I had the idea for them after attending a Lanny Bassham seminar a couple years ago (that I never got around to blogging about...). Lanny makes a point of having his athletes regularly rehearse positive affirmations that are specific to their performance. It got me thinking about positive affirmations that would benefit agility teams.

I was really struck with the idea of a wristband as the mechanism for reminding the handler of their affirmations. Each time you reach down to attach or remove your dog's leash or pet your dog you would see the message(s) on the wristband. Seemed like a natural place to put the positive messages we all want to have in our minds when we are practicing and competing. The three wristbands I've created are the outgrowth of those thoughts. Since then I've had some more ideas that might make their way into other wristbands.

I've given some wristbands to agility trainers at whose seminars I've attended as thank you gifts, so you might see some of them sporting these wristbands too.

So please visit the AgilityNerd store. It also features an email newsletter for which you can sign up that will let you know about new products as I develop them.

Nancy had to work all weekend so I've had all three dogs at my place this weekend. All four of us have been outside most of the time playing fetch and the dogs have been floating in their doggie pools to cool off. A while back I bought a digital SLR camera (Canon Digital Rebel XTi) and have been using it sporadically to take photos for my web sites.

I haven't been too successful photographing the dogs but I thought I'd give it a try today. It was hard because I had to shoot while fighting off Petey's "licker". In spite of his "help" I managed to take some photos that didn't look too bad. The ones of Milo and Meeker are OK but I really like the two of Petey. He sure is cute...

Next time I'll get Nancy to be the "dog distractor" so I can play around with the camera's setting. Not shooting in the middle of a very bright day and using a polarizing filter would be something to play around with too.

Now they are all sleeping on their beds... might be time to "watch" the end of the Tour de France through closed eyelids on the couch.

To keep the focus of this blog on agility I've created the Googility blog at Blogspot in which I'll post all future updates and tips on using Googility to search for agility information. I've already posted two articles: refining your search using categories and searching a specific site. I've put the feed of articles right on the Googility home page so you can see what is new with the site whenever you visit. So this should be the last Googility article on this site...

I've just added 500 new sites (mostly clubs and training facilities) to Googility. It has been taking Google a couple days to incorporate them into the search engine. But now they are starting to show up. I'm still visiting the sites and adding/changing their categories to make it easier to locate specific information. So now Googility is up to almost 800 sites!

So if your favorite site didn't show up last time you searched, please take a look now and Please email me if you know of a site to add!

It looks like the end of this month will be a good time to wrap up collecting money for the DanaPike Tornado Fund. I'll disable the PayPal donation button and once any remaining checks have all cleared I'll close the bank account and issue all the funds to Dana.

Being an engineer I had to get some statistics for the people who have contributed to the fund. So far we have had 60 contributors from the US and Canada in 22 states and provinces. Contributors included "locals", seminar attendees, other trainers, and even people who have never met Dana.

I think Dana has been quite overwhelmed by all the support, well wishes, offers of help, equipment, and donations. She is an independent and private person and I think this outpouring of help has been more than she would ever have expected. Personally, I've found it has restored my faith in humanity. I know I've run into a lot of genuinely nice people in the agility world and, while the stories and conduct on some of the email lists can make me doubt it sometimes, there are some really thoughtful and considerate folks in our sport.

I would like to thank all of you for your contributions and give my thanks to Whitney Rupp who has been helping out too.

In my prowling of the web for web sites to add to Googility, I found that Rachel Sanders has posted reprints of some of her CleanRun articles online. So far she has articles on weave entries, speeding up 2o2o contacts, and motivation.

Here is the direct link to her library page.

I really like Rachel and have attended all of her local seminars. I especially like her thorough approach to training the handling around contacts. I just ordered her DVD Contacts: Bridging the Gap Between Training & Competition and am looking forward to seeing it. I've also been using her running A Frame technique to retrain Meeker and will purchase that DVD when it is available.

Along with the launch of search.agilitynerd.com I launched a parallel site: Googility.com named for the combination of Google and Agility. Please tell your agility friends and neighbors.

I also decided to revamp my other search pages and create a new menu system for my blog too. So if you are reading this entry from a feed reader, please take a look at AgilityNerd.com to see the new look.

Read more ...

Ever search for agility terms and been frustrated with the results returned by conventional search engines?

I've taken the web sites, blogs, forums, and individual web pages to which I've referred over the years and entered them into a Google Custom Search. This customized search engine limits its searches to pages only on those sites, giving much more useful results for every search I've tried.

I've created a new web site just for this search: http://search.agilitynerd.com/

As new content is added to these sites Google automatically updates the search engine, so it is always up to date. I'll also add new sites and individual pages to the search engine when I learn of them. If you know of a useful site or even a single page that doesn't show up in the search please send me an email.

Happy agility searching!