# The Rally Signs I Really Need



## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

At Rally practice yesterday, nose work class was going on in the ring next to ours. For an easily distracted dog like Noelle, it was a good challenge for her. More than anything else, Noelle needs to practice focus and attention. So, I made four new Rally signs to practice this week. Can you think of any other signs that could help?


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## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

This is the last sign I made.


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## Johanna (Jun 21, 2017)

Great additions! I'll vote for them.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

You are very clever. If Noelle can do those, she can do any rally signs!


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## Skylar (Jul 29, 2016)

OMG, I love them. You're so clever.


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## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

Thanks. My hardest issue with Noelle is focus and attention. I accidentally trained Noelle a behavior chain that is making training harder than it should be. Can you spot where I made my mistake?

Noelle is noodling around the ring with her nose to the floor.
I get Noelle's attention.
Noelle performs the required task.
Noelle is noodling around the ring with her nose on the floor.

Where did I go wrong? Did you spot it? I made it my responsibility to get Noelle's attention instead of Noelle's responsibility to offer her attention. So, all of my attention getting efforts backfired on me. I taught my dog to check out and ignore me in the ring. Oops!

The "Look at Handler in any Position" sign means standing still as a statue, waiting silently for Noelle to look at me. When Noelle looks at me, CLICK, treat, and move forward. We could wait 2 seconds, 2 minutes, 20 minutes. I don't care. The point is teaching Noelle that her attention is what makes things happen, not me being interesting. I'm dull as a post until she looks at me. 

Hopefully this creates a new behavior chain.
I am being boring.
Noelle makes eye contact and captures my attention.
Her attention seeking causes fun things to happen.
I go back to being boring and wait for more eye contact.

Until Noelle can maintain her focus on me like a laser beam, we're not trialing again. We've hit Rally Master way faster than I expected. I don't want to go into the ring after OTCH Ultra Trained Wonder Dog UDX2 RM3 and look like a bumbling fool begging for Noelle's attention while she heels four steps behind me. No thanks. 

Let me see if I can figure out some more signs. A whole course of rally signs that all deal with focus and attention would be fantastic for Noelle, and other dogs, I'm sure.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

This is interesting timing about the paying attention being the dog's job as opposed to you taking on the job of attracting the dog's attention since I was talking about that with two of my trainees today. One of them just got hooked into the idea of obedience after she came in to talk about CGC (she was in my December crop of new CGCs). She has a couple of legs in CDSP starter novice. The other is someone who has a lot of agility experience and a bit of obedience experience. She was also one of my December CGC folks, but has also been doing a lot of rally and is trialing in Beginner Novice and Rally Advanced on Sunday. Both of them were being like Pez dispensers with treats today giving a cookie every time their dog looked at them for just barely three seconds. And this was while the dogs and people were being figure 8 posts. Since I know the dogs knew what they were supposed to be doing I made them wait longer before treating, but also to feed more quickly if the dog had looked away and then looked back right away. Moral of that story is wait for Noelle to reconnect, but then do mark and reward that very nicely and quickly to. You will need that automatic attention not just for rally where you can say things to get Noelle back, but even more so for Open and Utility obedience where clearly you have a huge problem if the dog decides to break contact while standing on the other side of the ring for signals and you are given the drop order by the judge. You can't say anything to save that.


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## Skylar (Jul 29, 2016)

Click-N-Treat said:


> Thanks. My hardest issue with Noelle is focus and attention. I accidentally trained Noelle a behavior chain that is making training harder than it should be. Can you spot where I made my mistake?
> 
> Noelle is noodling around the ring with her nose to the floor.
> I get Noelle's attention.
> ...


I have the same problem with Babykins..... and I've made the same mistake - well I've made a lot of mistakes. And I'm constantly looking to fix my mistakes.

I'm going to start training this tomorrow.


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## Johanna (Jun 21, 2017)

So i asked one of the best trainers in our poodle club (Joanne Neal) if I should do rally and obedience at the same time. She said to do obedience first because it has more stringent requirements. Joanne was quite strong about that point.

That does make sense. Lucky for Zoe and me that we have not done any rally. We have only done the first classes (the preparatory level) for novice obedience and agility. I also asked her about doing obedience and agility at the same time - she said that was not a problem at all. I taught Zoe "watch me" when she was a little puppy, so she is quite good at that.

So we begin Agility I on May 28th. Our next level for obedience is Intermediate Novice, but there is not a class for that on the calendar yet. There is a class beginning on June 20th for CGC that I just enrolled us in.

So no more conformation, but lots and lots of fun!


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## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

I'm with you, Skylar. Actually, I'm worse. I'm a mistake factory. 

Noelle's attention while we are doing signals is intense. It's lovely to see. Open A orders are Stand/Down/Sit. Noelle watches with great attention waiting for me to signal position changes. I think she likes them. Maybe it's because she feels confident in moving her body. I think a clown car could drive into the center of the ring and Noelle would stare at me, waiting for her signal.

Her attention before recall is also lovely. Four out of six Novice A dogs blew the recall exercise by freezing in place. Noelle came to me like she was fired out of a cannon. She tagged me all three times, but it made the judges laugh. After NQ-ing dog after dog on the recall, seeing Noelle fly made everyone happy. On stationary exercises, or exercises where she has to move from point A to B, Noelle has wonderful attention. 

My biggest problem during the trial was about turns and ring gates. Can't we do our heeling pattern straight up the middle of the ring, about turn against a wall, and then heel straight back? No? Why must we make about turns next to a ring gate where a Utility dog is snorkeling away at a pile of very interesting dumbbells. And then, as if that wasn't horrible enough, we have to make a second about turn in front of chairs and people nibbling sandwiches and dogs wandering around. AAAAH! No wonder they call this a trial! 

My goal for the next few months is getting Noelle to understand that we heel with attention between the rally signs, and move as a team fluidly. What happens outside of ring gates is irrelevant. Once we have that sorted, the race is on toward RACH. I'm thinking we'll start trialing again in August. That gives me some time to work on what needs polishing. Attention Heel to Jackpot Sign! JACKPOT! Let's go, Noelle!


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## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

We did obedience classes first for almost a year before doing rally class. I think learning obedience first set Noelle up nicely once we started rally. Noelle took to Rally like a duck takes to water, though. Obedience has been a more difficult journey for us, but I think that was because we had the wrong trainer. Our trainer was compulsion based, jerk the collar for everything. Noelle's spirit withered until I found a new trainer.


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## Skylar (Jul 29, 2016)

Johanna said:


> So i asked one of the best trainers in our poodle club (Joanne Neal) if I should do rally and obedience at the same time. She said to do obedience first because it has more stringent requirements. Joanne was quite strong about that point.
> 
> That does make sense. Lucky for Zoe and me that we have not done any rally. We have only done the first classes (the preparatory level) for novice obedience and agility. I also asked her about doing obedience and agility at the same time - she said that was not a problem at all. I taught Zoe "watch me" when she was a little puppy, so she is quite good at that.
> 
> ...


Like Click we did Obedience before Rally.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

And I will throw a wrench in the obedience first rally first picture. Lily got her CD and her RN almost simultaneously and we went on with doing both. For Javelin I did the RN with him to finish it at PCA the last year it was in Maryland. It is too far for me to go to St. Louis near the end of April until I am retired from teaching. He won't go back to rally for a while. I think there are many approaches that can work for various people and dogs.


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## mashaphan (Sep 4, 2014)

LOVE LOVE those signs! We,too, did rally before obedience (Che Whippet) as he loved the cheerleading. Otter is great in rally practice-he is the only one in the ring-sucks at obedience because we are all in the ring at the same time and I am FAR less interesting than those potential playmates. Again,main problem is focus/attention to ME. We will see if the class I am adding this week helps or not!

Martha


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## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

Honestly, the only reason we did obedience for a year before starting rally was because I didn't know rally existed. Once we found rally, Noelle and I found our home. We will see if Noelle enjoys Open and Utility exercises. Novice got to be a slog for her, to be honest.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I think the most important thing is for people to do things that improve their relationship with their dogs and that it is fun for them. In the long run a RACh is at least as big an accomplishment as an OTCh. Whichever thing one does is grand as long as both parties are getting pleasure out of the time spent.


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