Kerry Blue Terrier Performance Newsletter
April, 2005
By Jane Eno

This week we lost a truly great dog, Can OTCH Wedgewood Blue Max II UDX, NA after a long and joyous life. I was lucky enough to see him working in his prime and have always carried that image of confidence and strength in my mind while training my own Kerry Blue Terrier in obedience. I will write more about him and his talented owner and a good friend, Carol Oddi Wert, in a future newsletter. For now, I just wanted to say good-bye to him and extend my deepest sympathy to Carol and her husband.

I’m still waiting for spring to get going here in Rochester, NY. We are still having lots of days with frost, cold winds, and of course, tons of mud. I can do some training in the dry spots in my backyard and out on the sidewalks in front of my house. Sidewalks are a great place to practice all the various forms of heeling. You can make lots of turns, do a long set of halts or pace changes, work on the moving stand using the cracks to see if your dog stopped nicely, or do signals on a long line. The neighbors provide a nice distraction to proof against. My backyard is just the right size for me to set up weave poles, a tire jump and a tunnel, so we’ve been tuning them up back there.

My Kerry Blue Terrier, Jessie, now has five UDX legs. It has taken us about nine months of showing to get them. (We took three months off in the winter to train for the Invitational, and it has been an adventure.) Both of us are feeling the stress, so I’ve decided it’s time to take a break. We are going to, at long last, try some agility. We have taken lots of classes in agility, but never attempted a title. I’ve sent in my entry to three trials, and I am waiting to see if we got in. They are in June and July. We have also signed up for a Novice level competition class. Hopefully a couple months of agility will be just the fun distraction we need. Maybe we’ll even come out of it with a title. But agility is lots of fun, so even if we don’t, I think it will be well worth the time we spend on it.

When I wrote the USKBTC list recently about having a sit stay problem with Jessie, Susan Dunivant forwarded some great information for working on those heartbreaking sit stays. For those of you who do not show in obedience, the stays in Open consist of a three minute sit stay and a five minute down stay, both with the owner out of sight. The dogs are left in a line of dogs, and must stay in position the entire time or the dog will NQ (Not Qualify). Most dogs can learn to do a successful stay exercise for the Open competition to get their title. The problems usually crop up when the dog and handler start to work towards the UDX or the OTCH. The dog has to do this same sit stay over and over, sometimes with the down first. They become bored and try lying down. They learn that there are no consequences to this, so then they start to do it every time they are bored. I’ve seen dogs that have both their UDX and their OTCH suddenly start to do this and even very experienced handlers have given up trying to fix the problem once it gets started. In fact, at a recent show, I actually qualified in Open with a score of 196.5 but didn’t go back to the ring to get my ribbon and went home depressed because somehow I convinced myself Jessie went down on his stay. It wasn’t until I looked it up on the AKC website and spoke to some friends that I realized I had somehow remembered it wrong. Anyway, below is the posting that Susan wrote up with some ideas on working through this problem.

Susan wrote: "On the sit stays...it may well be that he is getting "bored" with the monotony of that routine. I might try going back to the drawing board on that and shaking up his routine. First, do only one sit stay per training session (which you probably already do) or skip the exercise entirely every other training session. Or alternate training the down and sit stays in training sessions.

A few other ways to shake up his routine: You might leave him for a shorter period of time, step back in and immediately reinforce the command, then leave again for the remainder of time. Go back and release, praise/reward. Next time you train it, leave and stay a bit longer time than regulation, then return and praise/reward heartily. Then the next time leave, return only a few moments after you've left sight, release, praise/reward. You might also, on another training occasion, leave, return in a minute, release, heel him a few paces away, take him back, command sit again and leave for regular time. Just keep him guessing when you're coming back.

In poor Jessie's defense, he may have been "catnapping" due to a restless night and was not as sharp as he could've been. Or, it could be his obvious comfortable knowledge of this routine, knowing he'd have a few minutes of down time (pardon the pun!) in this exercise and could fudge a bit there when he knew he couldn't with you there part of the time. Kerries are SO intelligent. Don't believe they can't work this sort of reasoning out. Don't need to tell you that though. You've probably found it out in spades given all the hours of teaming with this dog.

Great to hear he bounced back to his superior performance to finish out though, since ending on a positive note is the mantra of dog training. Hopefully, he'll move on to proper sit/stays after these faux pas, but who knows what creative turn he'll have next in store for you? The very reason training terriers, especially Kerry Blues, is such a challenge AND so interesting. Guess we ought to be grateful they will bend their desires to ours as much as they do!

BRAGS

From Susan Coliton
April has been a big month for this household. Halley, Blue Fuzzbutt, CD, has two legs of her novice b Rally so far, going for her third on Sunday. Eidenbock's Jamison Lee, earned his CD in three straight at the Northern California Terrier Assn. Trial and Sacramento Kennel Club shows, that were back to back in Sacramento April 14th-17th. He goes for his first Novice B Rally leg on sunday at Mt. Diablo show in Martinez.

Follow up from Sunday:
Halley, Blue Fuzzbutt is now CGC, CD, RN. Jamie got his first Rally Novice B leg with a score of 88. A huge entry really complicated the smells of the ring. If I remember the number correctly, 23 dogs got their RN's under judge Laura Cox.

From Virginia Barishek
I'm very pleased to announce a couple of Kerry brags.
On Friday, 4/22, at Columbia Terrier Association (Md.), Finn got his 2nd leg in Novice B with a score of 189 and 3rd in the class. He was a VERY good dog through his most difficult exercises--the 1-minute long sit and the 3-minute long down--and remained rock-steady even though the dogs on either side of him were fidgety. But Finn stayed solid with an expression of great maturity and knowingness on his face. True, there was a brief period during the off-lead heeling where he thought the judge looked like a nice lady, so maybe he'd walk with her a bit, just to be friendly. Then, on Saturday at Lower Bucks DTC (Pa.), Finn got his "4th leg" for insurance in Rally Novice B, with a nice score of 95.

Also at Columbia Terrier, Andy got HS Kerry in Trial with a 192.5 in Open B. The prize was a lovely plate painted with a KBT--and this time, I didn't leave until they dug out the box and bubble wrap that it came in! So, it arrived home intact. We had a decent run in Utility B, despite a sudden pounding rainstorm on the metal roof of the building--Andy was working well, but my brain was not, unfortunately, and I "talked" myself into an NQ by giving a 2nd "sit" command on the first go-out. So, no UDX legs...yet.

Anyway, the next day at Lower Bucks, Andy earned his 1st leg in Rally Advanced B, with a score of 90. Again, due to handler error--perhaps I should just get out of my dog's way!

Thanks to Columbia Terrier's obedience chair, Linda Dart, for a very well-run trial, as always. And thanks to everyone at Lower Bucks DTC, too, for all their work. It was their first Rally trial, (in conjunction with their regular annual Obedience trial), and they did a great job.

BTW, the boys' Rally Novice title certificates arrived yesterday from the AKC. They finished their titles on 3/27, and considering the quantity of Rally entries since January, a month is a pretty good turnaround time for the official paper.

From Jane Eno
Jessie got two legs in Utility (188.5 and 189.5) and three legs in Open (191, 192.5, and 196.5) in April . . . unfortunately not on the same day so no UDX legs.

Last Updated: 05/04/2005, 11:33 pm