Up The Farway Tree

Agility Training

I have largely recovered from my cold, although am not feeling 100% yet. I decided to go into work yesterday, as there was an interesting teaching topic, but was disappointed to find I really didn't feel too well by the end of the morning. It's almost inevitable that having a cold is going to affect my chest, and although the oral antibiotics have helped keep things under control I don't feel I will improve much more under my own steam. I have therefore arranged a hospital appointment for Tuesday with the view to starting some IV antibiotics. I have a weeks holiday coming up soon, so hopefully if I am feeling tip top after the IVs, I might even manage to get away for a few days.

I'm not sure if anyone has been watching the TV show 'Underdogs', where celebrities are given rescue dogs to train, and then they compete in weekly agility and obedience tasks. The idea is to raise the profile of charities such as the Dogs Trust, and to illustrate that rescue dogs can be intelligent, fun, and rewarding pets. When watching the programme, I kept announcing every 2 minutes "Seb could do that" or "Seb could do that better" (the fact he is not a rescue dog is besides the point). I am convinced he would like the agility training, where they jump over bars, run through tunnels and the likes, although unfortunately at this stage, I would be unable to keep up with him. However, to prove my point I decided to build him a make shift jump in the hallway. Yes, I know I am odd, and in fact might have lost the plot, but in fairness I have been off work for nearly 2 weeks and cabin fever is setting in. Anyway, I constructed a jump using the sweeping brush balanced on the stairs at one side, and the washing up basin at the other. I then attempted to lure him over with a treat (as I had seen done on the TV show). He looked at me strangely. He then inspected the brush, before pushing it defiantly with his paw so it rolled off the basin, and clattered onto the floor. Undeterred I reconstructed the jump. I even attempted jumping over it myself a few times as an illustration of what he had to do (although I suspect only humans are capable of learning by example). He watched my antics with interest. He then inspected all around to see if there was another way round. On seeing there wasn't, he sighed loudly, crouched down and commando crawled under the 6" gap before strutting off in an aloof manner. Despondent, I decided to abandon the project for the night (although amusingly I did forget to dismantle the jump, causing Andrew to later trip over it in the dark. He has been accusing me of "booby trapping" the house since)


The following evening, I decided to resume the training. We went through pretty much the same routine as before, again cumulating in Seb crawling under the jump before walking off in disgust. It then occurred to me that my reward was perhaps not 'high value' enough, as I had run out of his normal treats so was using a substitute. For Seb, the highest value treat is probably cheese, so as a last resort I went to get a piece of cheese from the kitchen. Seb watched this with interest, his eyes becoming bigger and wider by the second. As I walked back into the hallway, he suddenly bolted past me at high speed, leaping over the jump before spinning round expectantly to receive his reward. I couldn't believe it. I initially thought it was a fluke, but no, he spent the next 10 minutes flying back and forth over the jump with great excitement in the hope of earning a piece of cheese. I do however suspect he understood what I wanted from the second I set up that jump, but thought it would be more amusing to make me jump over it myself a few times first. I often wonder if he is in fact training me.