Flying Poodles

Thinking about biomechanics and biochemistry and dog agility

Some trainers think that a collected curved jump is better for the dog than a flat fast jump and that that’s a reason for higher jump heights. I’ve been musing on that and on other aspects of the dog’s physical health.

Newton’s first law: an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force. An object at rest stays at rest unless acted on by an outside force.

Outside forces are friction, gravity, etc. So horizontal motion (like a dog jumping flat) is actually only subject to the force of gravity, the speed of the horizontal motion is irrelevant. BUT… the dog puts its legs down and generates propulsion (forward motion) by using its muscles. Theoretically more effort is required to go faster… but the most effort is required to stop a stopped object or stop a moving object.

Imagine a dog in a pool, for example. Its weight is supported by the water (which also generates considerable resistance, but I’m neglecting that at the moment so I can generate this theoretical construct). It can touch its legs to the bottom to move itself horizontally, but there’s no impact. That would be the zero-stress situation: not supporting its weight and using its muscles alone for propulsion.

If a dog is running fairly level (level topline, little bouncing), than the amount of impact should be minimal, and each leg as it hits would simply generate propulsion. So flat jumping would seem to be best since all that has to happen is that the dog suspends all its legs momentarily while continuing flat forward motion. It will fall somewhat during that time, and that amount of impact would have to be absorbed.

I certainly think a slow collected jump generates less impact than a fast collected jump, but I’m less persuaded that a slow flat jump is better than a fast flat jump–I just don’t think there’s a lot of difference in impact between the two.

Now, if we neglect impact and think about muscle energy, which is also a stress to the dog’s body, it definitely requires more muscle effort to move faster than slower. Biochemically, it’s necessary to generate more ATP more rapidly, for example, which also creates byproducts (lactic acid) if done anaerobically (without sufficient oxygen for full respiration). Agility runs are definitely all-out sprints for the handler and for the dog. Adequate biochemical recovery time is definitely required.

Reading poodle history

I’ve been doing some poodle history reading of late. I’ve been reading this book: Annie On Dogs which is a compendium of articles by Anne Rogers Clark, who had three dogs that she bred win Best in Show at Westminster. She was a poodle breeder and a judge of multiple breeds for the AKC. The Wikipedia entry is sparse: Anne Rogers Clark. However, her description of the idea poodle conformation is dead on, and well worth seeking out: “check head (foreface and skull of equal length), eyes, expression, mouth, ear leathers, fit and placement of the shoulders and forearms, correct heart-shaped ribs, slight depression just behind the shoulders at the top of the back (the swimming dip), good length of rib cage, short very muscular loin, depth of chest, forechest apparent in front of the forelegs, beautiful poodle feet, good weight and muscle” (page 74 of her book). She also has an amusing discussion of how poodle fashions have changed over the years, with photos of standard poodle Westminster BIS winners from 1935, 1958, 1973, and 1991.

If you’re wondering what a 1935 BIS winner looked like, check out this picture: 1935 poodles.

Now besides reading Anne Rogers Clark, who was one of the first professional handlers (male or female) in the conformation ring, I’ve been reading Blanche Saunders, who was one of the developers of competitive obedience. Her 1974 book The Story of Dog Obedience is readily available used for a few dollars. She was a poodle breeder and apparently an amazing dog trainer. The book is heavily larded with black and white photographs of black poodles with way too much hair, but by viewing them in bright light, you can see that the poodles were pretty amazing. My favorite is King Leo of Piperscroft taking the broad jump, in the early 1930s:

King Leo of Piperscroft, from the book The Story of Dog Obedience

Even a small victory is sweet…

In the latest news on Dancer’s teeter retraining (don’t yawn so loudly, it’s rude), today I took Dancer to a (drop-in) class at our regular barn. Five barking dogs. Five handlers. Small barn. Dancer did the teeter without stopping FOUR times. She was roundly (and justifiably) applauded by the class attendees (the people, not the dogs).

Clicking and grooming…

Apparently, I am an idiot. Actually, scratch the “apparently.” We have proof.

I have been working on learning to groom the girls since the beginning of 2008, when I started feeling the pinch of the cost of grooming two dogs. I took a lesson from my groomer. I bought good supplies. And did I think of training the dogs to enjoy being groomed? No, I did not. There you have it. I am definitely an idiot.

Nor did it occur to me as I struggled through wiggling paws and squirmy noses. Not until I went to the Clicker Expo last month and saw a BOOK on clicking your way to successful grooming did it occur to me that I could train the dogs to enjoy being groomed. (Note that I didn’t buy the book. I skimmed it on the spot and noticed that it was the usual step-by-tiny-step approach of any clicker trainer.)

So for the last few weeks I’ve been working on tiny step by tiny step in the grooming process. Put the dog on the table. Click her for standing calmly. Brush a bit, click her for standing calmly. Hold the paw, click her for not jerking it away. Hold the paw and turn on the dremel, click her for letting me hold the paw without pulling it away. (At this point, I had the clicker under my foot, just in case you’re wondering how I had enough hands to pull that off.)

Today I dremeled Dancer’s toenails, clipped her paws neatly, clipped the hair around her tail, and gave her a light brushing, all while she stood pretty calmly. It certainly wasn’t a struggle. She even jumped on the grooming table voluntarily. I dremeled Elly’s front toenails and trimmed her face whiskers with a pair of scissors, and gave her a thorough brushing. She likes brushing more than Dancer. She let me clip a little extra hair from her feet. No struggle.

I really wish I’d thought of clicker training it earlier. (Note that we have a lot of steps to go to get to calm face shaving. But I feel sure we’ll get there.)

A-frame training and differential rewards

Dancer has been having issues with the A-frame. (If it’s not one thing, it’s another… that’s life with poodles.) The latest issue is “let me stop up here and look around for a while… wow! there are a lot of dogs here.” So I’ve been working on her doing a complete A-frame without pausing at the top. Greta-the-clicker-trainer-who-has-the-barn-time-before-mine suggested that I try differential rewards. For a slow a-frame with a pause but a stop at the bottom, a tiny piece of kibble. For a fast a-frame with no pause and a stop, three or four pieces of steak.

I tried that Monday. Not too long before I had a pause-less A-frame performance. Of course, that’s only one training session, and it’s a training session in the barn with no distractions, too. We’ll see what we get today and then tomorrow with Debbie.

Shopping and cooking for the dogs…

With Elly’s IBD, I long ago got used to making the girls “dog soup” every day–I use Veg To Bowl (a dry mix of vegetables to which you add boiling water to rehydrate them) and meat–so I’m always looking for good prices on the meats I put in the soup. Yesterday must have been meat sale day at QFC, because I ended up buying 6 pounds of ground beef, 2 pounds of ground turkey, two packages of chicken and apple sausage (dog treats!), a package of steak for more treats, and 4 pounds of chicken livers–all on sale. Then it took me two hours to get everything divided up into meal-size portions, cut up into treats (that would be the sausage and the steak), and made into my famous chicken liver dog treats. Whew! But I’m stocked up for quite a while.

Physics of jump heights…

The debate is endless: should dogs jump at the highest allowable height or the lowest… AKC has the “Championship” program and the “Preferred” program, and the Championship program is pretty much preferred as more meaningful by most competitors. Ditto USDAA’s Championship program and Performance program. And NADAC’s Proficient and Skilled programs. CPE has Regular, Enthusiast, and something else entirely that I’ve forgotten. But in all cases, the competitors see the lower height program as the place NOT to be.

Should dogs be jumped at lower heights for long-term soundness?

I used to teach high school physics, which is where mechanics (Newton’s three laws) is taught. I would like to suggest that simple high school level physics explains why it may be better to jump lower rather than higher.

Two physics equations apply to the jumping question. The first is:

** Force = mass multiplied by acceleration (F=ma)

The second is:

** Kinetic energy = 1/2 mass multipled by velocity multiplied by velocity (KE=.5mvv) (or KE=.5mv**2) (since I don’t have a symbol for squared, I’m using old FORTRAN notation in the second equation)

In jumping, the dog will have a constant force in the direction of the ground while it is in the air. That is, the dog’s mass and the acceleration of gravity do not change while the dog is in the air.

However, the higher the dog is in the air, the more time it will spend accelerating toward the ground, and the more velocity the dog will have toward the ground when it reaches the ground. Note that the downward velocity is unchanged whether the dog is jumping collected or extended; it is purely a function of the height of the apex of the jump. Thus, more height leads to more velocity when reaching the ground which increses the kinetic energy GEOMETRICALLY (it’s a squared function). An increase of 10% in velocity (about what you’d get with one jump height increase) would lead to an increase of about 20% in kinetic energy that needs to be absorbed when the dog reaches the ground.

Note as well that forward speed does not matter in this analysis; only the speed toward the ground creates kinetic energy that must be absorbed by landing.

Now, dogs are beautifully built for jumping, and in fact, their tendons, ligaments, and muscles in the legs act as springs to absorb some of that kinetic energy. A biophysicist could calculate the force that a dog can safely absorb, and it would vary with breed and structure (things like shoulder angles and hip flexion matter). That lies beyond my knowledge base.

Strict criterion…

Note to self: the singular of criteria is criterion. Dogs need to be held to a single new criterion at a time. Thus, if you are asking the poodle to run over the top of the a-frame, you don’t also ask for a stop. Not right away anyway.

I’m Diana and I have a problem…

This morning I was at the grocery store, and I noticed that steak was on sale, for a very nice price. What was my first thought? Not, as you might think, “oh maybe we’ll have steak for dinner!” No, it was “dog treats!”

Worse, I bought four pounds of nice lean round steak, then spent 45 minutes cutting it into little tiny cubes and cooking it, then putting it in single-training-session containers and putting them in the freezer.

And even more worser than that… I just realized I forgot to buy dinner.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Well, the NADAC trial this weekend was interesting… painful… exhilarating… frustrating… maddening. (How many gerunds can I use?)

I did a total of 15 runs and got two Qs. One in Open Jumpers, with Dancer–that’s always been her best event. One in Open Hoopers, with Dancer. Elly did three runs Saturday and I left her home on Sunday because she was clearly not feeling her best. Her brush with IBD a few weeks ago seems to have left her rather less resilient. I’m hoping she can recover her fitness.

I had fun with the Open Hoopers run. The four non-test hoops were strung diagonally across the ring, followed by the start hoop of a six-hoop test. In Elite, you have to do a six-hoop test, but it’s not required in Open. Still, it looked doable, if I could do it and still make time, which is always the challenge. I led out the entire diagonal of the ring–five hoops, so more than 110 feet–and Dancer just sat and held her stay, completely focused.

When I said “okay” she just flew through those hoops. She did the challenge, which put us in a nice position for two non-test hoops to a serpentine, which she did perfectly. One more hoop put us in perfect position facing the first hoop of the last challenge–the six-hoop challenge–and she did it perfectly. We ran toward the finish hoop and she did two hoops ahead of me, then stopped and looked behind her, at me: “that hoop? you want that hoop?” She waited for me to signal it. It was the finish hoop, and I could have done without the pause! She went through it in 39.17 seconds, just barely under course time of 40 seconds.

Flying Finish

I’ve been working on contacts for a year and a half–about as long as I’ve been working on the teeter–and perhaps as frustrating. On Saturday (in Touch and Go), Dancer leapt off the a-frame, and I sent her back up, and she came down and did a perfect full-stop two-on-two-off, which is the FIRST TIME EVER she’s stopped at a trial. Yes, it was a repeat, but still…

Then, in her regular run, she stopped on the dogwalk contact. I have proof:

Dancer stops on the dogwalk contact

I held her there so long we didn’t make time.

In our next regular run, she walked off the end of the dogwalk and I didn’t ask her to repeat it, but she got to the top of the a-frame, stopped there, and then came down slowly into the 2-on-2-off. She held it. I led out. We didn’t make time.

Sunday, though… she leapt over her contacts again in the first regular run, then stopped at the apex of the frame for a LONG LONG time in her second run. I finally had to chivvy her off, but she did stop for me. I led out and we ran straight to the last hoop and left.

Most maddening, in Open Chances, the last run of the day, she got all the distance portions of the course–and it wasn’t an easy course–then leapt over the dogwalk contact instead of stopping…

I have LOTS of work to do on training the contact, but I feel like we’ve made HUGE progress. For the first time, Dancer has some understanding that I want her to stop. She’s clearly not sure about how to deal with the a-frame contact, and she’s not thrilled about stopping on the dogwalk. But I’ve made SOME progress with my training. Some is better than none. I know what I need to work on. My plan: lots of target-plate work to really reinforce stopping and the new “yellow” (take your contact position) cue; lots of speed and distance work; lots of distraction work.

(Photos by Joe Camp, of course.)