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Siren’s
owner learned his training and handling skills with three of his other
dogs that were not flyball naturals. They were members of his household
in spite of rather than because of their flyball abilities, but they ran
respectably. In a much unplanned way, he ended up with three dogs whose
birthdays bunched up within a 3-month period of the same year. As their
sixth birthdays neared, he began to think about introducing a younger dog
to the household. Siren would be that dog.
Getting Siren,
her handler says, was a selfish act aimed at making our team more
competitive. As a BorderCollie/Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix, there was little doubt
that she was capable of doing so. At the |
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same time, she was quite adaptable and fit in
wonderfully with his house of calmer sighthounds. Her training started
very early – you might say on the day she came to live with him –
beginning with leash walking on day one. At practices and class, we
worked on recalls with distraction, calling her out of play groups and
working for a tug, and she was amazingly attentive to her handler. She
ran her first tournament two weeks after her first birthday and posted
some 4.1s and 4.2s but was not so responsive to the tug or her handler.
The bunches of tennis balls were far too distracting. And so she ran
for a second ball for the next year, seemingly stuck to or slipping
backward from the performance of her debut.
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She recently returned from
Camp Ferlitto, where from their observations, they gave two very important
pieces of advice: (1) Don’t put her away when the other dogs are
working. Watching gets her excited (in spite of the annoying, incessant
barking) and gets a better performance from her when it’s her turn to
work. (2) Stop playing with tennis balls. Make the tug the only handler
and dog play. Both of these suggestions, and perhaps Siren’s getting to
run around with other dogs of the same breed and temperament, seem to have
made a difference in her work ethic and in her focus on her handler.
We’ll see how that translates to the competition ring in the weeks and
months to come. |
