So, about Miikka.
Of course I can go on and on in this blog extolling my dogs' virtues, but like any other dogs, they are not perfect.
Peanut has a problem. A big one.
She.Doesn't.Stop.On.The.Whistle.
Now, to say she doesn't stop EVER is an exaggeration. She does stop...90% of the time.
She is such a good marker she can make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but marking isn't everything.
Miikka was a great stopper when I got her back from her Basics pro. She stopped on a dime. Somewhere in her first year back, I screwed her up...bad. I'm not sure what it was, or how it happened, but all of a sudden I found myself in a deep hole with her. Rookie mistakes, some would say. I probably pushed her too hard, too fast and made her run big dog blinds before she was ready and gave her corrections she didn't understand.
But regardless of how it happened, here we stand. The first year I put pressure on her for not stopping, and hindsight has taught me that the pressure was ill-timed and I made the problem worse. I was forcing her back essentially. More pressure put a pop in her. That's bad. It wasn't there until I got my hands on her and screwed her up.
Then, when I blew the whistle, she would go into another gear and just take off. I'm embarrassed to say that I even had her hearing tested and of course, she hears perfectly fine. All fingers pointed back on me and poor Peanut and I were left with just each other and the elephant in the room that we refused to talk about. "But she can mark", I would always say, as if that is all that mattered.
So we carried on as if she didn't have a problem. I made the blinds easy and short enough so we didn't have an issue, and that solved nothing. We merrily went on our way for another year with my head firmly entrenched in the sand. She was not progressing in her blind work, and I was ignoring the problem and pretending it would go away. She could mark the big dog marks..."man, she can mark", but her blinds were baby dog blinds and we left well enough alone.
Finally after seeing her crush marking tests at trials to go out on blind after blind, I finally had to face reality and start doing something about the problem. Any pressure (mental or otherwise) on her and her marking went down. To be expected. I didn't like that, so we backed up the bus time after time.
She didn't understand what I was asking and I didn't have a clue how to ask it. Blinds were great up to 200 yards and then all hell broke loose. Whistles became "stoptional" and casts were "suggestions". Because I was too afraid to enforce any rules and put a pop back in her, I did not do anything, thereby creating a nasty, nasty habit of an out of control dog.
Now, poor Kenny has been training her all winter. He knew her "problem" and has been dealing with it. Miikka is running blinds with the big dogs now and he is enforcing the rules and created high standards and expectations. Since she has not felt any pressure in a year or two due to my fear of applying it at the wrong time, she freaked out at first. Her marking went down the toilet and her blinds were horrific. And her pop came back. Kenny stuck to the standard and kept it consistent every day.
The standard being YOU WILL STOP. Marks will be thrown and blinds will be run and YOU WILL STOP.
Slowly, but surely, she is coming around and stopping more reliably and her marking is coming back. She's starting to get it.
She is still frustrating in that she will have two good weeks of work, and then out of the blue, she will blow Kenny off at the end of a long water blind. I created a long standing habit that will be tough to break.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Miikka is entered to run the Open at the West Nebraska this week-end. Our goal is not for fame and glory...we will "win" in our minds if she make it to the blinds and STOPS.
When I go to Colorado in a week to spend two weeks training, I am going to learn a lot about how and when to apply pressure to keep her on the path she is on.
I think this is what dog training is all about. It isn't all a bed of roses. Every rose has its thorn (excuse the 1980's hair band reference), and it is how to deal with those thorns that makes one a dog trainer. It is way fun to have the dog succeed every day on every test, but at what cost? When does personal ego, self-satisfaction and downright fear over-ride the advancement of the dog?
Ignoring problems does not make them go away. They are still there, bubbling under the surface waiting to rear their ugly heads as I shake my head in frustration wondering why she isn't "fixed" yet.
Poor Peanut is right. But together we will get through this and be a better team for it.
