Monday, training, rabbits, and more

I finally think I figured out how to share a video, and thought I would make one of Pallo learning a new trick. I want to teach him to "line up" with the goal of him ending up between my legs. I have seen a lot of agility and flyball people use this trick with their dogs, but, mostly, it seems fun to learn and show off.

The end result I am looking for:



The video was the second 2-3 minute session of having him try this trick. It only took a couple tries luring him in the first session before he caught on, but as you can see with his last try in this video, he doesn't quite have the hang of it yet. Also, you can see that "roll over" has become one of his fall back behaviors, which he tries whenever he gets confused.



Pallo also got to try out some herding... Kind of. What actually happened was my mom's rabbits discovered a hole they can use to get out of the fence, so I was asked to come visit and catch them. Chasing rabbits by yourself rarely ends up with catching anything at all, so I took Pallo with me and sent him out and around to the other side of the bunnies, and told him to find them. He did an awesome job, went out in a wide circle, then coming back in toward the fence, driving the rabbits in front of him towards me (and I had a net on a long stick for catching the creatures). He even would stop on cue, or back off, if he was freaking them out too much, driving them too fast, or in the wrong direction. So, while Pallo has never seen sheep, ducks, or cows, he is an excellent rabbit herder.

Once the three baby rabbits who were loose were caught, I introduced the dogs to them.

Koira snuffled the babies all up and down, then decided they weren't all that interesting after all:


Pallo smelled them, but was cautious:



And, Pallo just wanted me to let them go so he could chase them around some more. Here he is, caught with his mouth open, whining with excitement:



And here is the rabbit pen. It has wire along the bottom of the fence, laid on the ground, about 2 feet in from the fence on all sides. They can dig burrows and everything, but the wire discourages them from trying to dig out of the pen. The hutches are where the babies will be kept until they are too big to escape the fence, and where the does go when they are ready to kindle. I spent a long day building this pen so the rabbits would have a lot more room to move, areas to dig, and grasses to munch on. I think they are much happier like this than in a hutch all the time.




As for the flyball question I posed in my last post, I agree with everyone that answered. I would consider it box loader error and flag it. I did, when I saw it as a box judge. However, a discussion with a team mate revealed that many judges do NOT consider this a fault. No where in the rule book that I could find does it actually, explicitly say the ball must be in the box when it is triggered by the dog.

But, if it doesn't count as a fault/flag for the ball to roll out of the box, what would there be to stop someone from training a dog to trigger the box, then grab the ball from the ground, and run back? I see little difference between the ball rolling out of the hole versus the box loader placing it on the ground for the dog. I actually tried to read the relevant parts of not only the NAFA manual, but the U-Fli one, as well as BFA, the Australian one, and the South African one, and none of them explicitly mention that the ball must be in the box when it is triggered.

I would have thought this was a given in the sport of flyball. But, if some people don't view it as a fault, don't flag it as a box judge, and some judges don't require it, what is to stop someone from training a dog that has problems catching the ball from the box to simply grab it from the ground?

Have a happy Monday, and enjoy the week!