Is reactivity a disability? Thoughts on making Rally-O more inclusive.

TaDa: Daisy got her CARO Rally novice title! Yes she did! Happy dance!

It was a tough day for us, way busier, way more dogs - including a loose dog which apparently belongs to the farm, running around the property & into the barn. One person just shrugged and said that the dog often shows up when they rent the facility for agility and that he's harmless.

Ha. That's how you know you're speaking to someone who doesn't have a reactive dog.

I don't care if he's harmless. Having a dorky wiggly golden running up to Daisy would have pretty much ended the day for us.

Fortunately by this point, I'd put Daisy away in the car with her kong. We were just waiting for the round to finish & our scoresheets.

She had struggled with the tight quarters in the set up area, & the lack of space in the practice area, but managed to hold it together, even with dogs staring, and dogs barking/snarling at her from crates. She was tense (& yeah, I was tense too!), and our scores showed it.

It's a good thing that our first trial in December was quite a bit more quiet and gave me the confidence to come back for the 3rd leg. If *this* had been our first event, I'm not so sure that I would have come back.

You know, it's nobody else's fault that I have a reactive dog. It's not mine either - I adopted her that way and I've worked hard to get her to the point where she can pass for normal in many circumstances. And I get that the world doesn't have to bend to accomodate me & my needs.

OTOH, CARO likes to talk about how it's open to everyone, & right on the scoring sheet there is a tickmark for indicating whether a dog or handler are disabled.

And that's when I got to thinking: Is reactivity a disability?

Is it reasonable to hope for, to ask for, a bit of accomodation in the facility & event planning, so that more dogs like Daisy can participate?

My dog can do the exercises. She can function with lots of distractions.

What my dog struggles with is getting into the actual rink. Sometimes, into the actual building. I was waiting outside for ages while a group of people with dogs, including one on a flexi zinging around all over, just hung around talking, right in front of the entrance! 

It wasn't urgent for me to get inside so I just waited, doing some BAT, some LAT, keeping Daisy loose and learning, but really, it was kind of silly and I suspect just due to lack of awareness on the part of the people - who I'm sure would have moved if I had asked. But you know, one doesn't always feel like asking.

Is it unreasonable to expect a bit more awareness? To make it clear to all participants that all entry ways & exit ways are to be clear or people and dogs? To not have people and dogs milling around the registration table which is RIGHT beside the entrance to the competition rink?

Would it be unreasonable to have the competition rink itself more securely fenced? With closed gates rather than huge open gaps at entry & exit? Would it change the nature of the competition too much to have rigid fencing & maybe the fence covered with tarps? To not put stations right beside the fence so that a dog has to approach the fence within feet of people & dogs on the other side of an orange plastic mesh?

With secure fences and closed gates, I'd consider moving on up the levels, which take place offleash. She's more than capable of doing the exercises, but I will not risk it with flimsy fencing and wide open gates.

So, she's done. She's Miss Daisy C-RNCL (I think. Haven't got the certificate yet!), who loves to heel, loves to prance, loves to work, but she won't compete in higher levels unless accomodations can be made.

I'm just wondering: What are we really scoring when we make it impossible for a dog to participate because of the way the venue is designed?

Could different facility set up's be used to enable more dogs to safely participate? Could we have an F Stream for Feisty Fidos where there are more secure provisions for the facility, more separation from other dogs?

What do you think? Is reactivity a disability like blindness or deafness & is it like when the handler needs a solid surface for their wheelchair? Does reactivity deserve a special accomodation?


An aside, sort of, not really related but I was thinking of it.... consider a 2009 CBC radio doc:

The Education of Ashif Jaffer (Canada) Not so long ago, the idea of a student with Down Syndrome in a university was unthinkable. Ashif Jaffer wants to change that.

You can hear the doc in the archives here (it's in the 2nd half of the show, after Michael Ignatieff discussing his book). I was just thinking about the limits of accomodation when I remembered this documentary.

Yeah, I know, people not dogs, serious problems not dog reactivity, university not a dog sport .... but, still.

Coming up Daisies - part 2

I can't believe you are talking about LEAKS!

You know I don't leak anymore - not since I've started taking those little pink pills!
Why did you have to bring it up????

All right Miss Daisy! Back to Rally Reporting.

At 6 am on Sunday morning, I was seriously questioning my commitment to attending a trial. I get up stupidly early five days a week & I'm SO not a morning person. Doing it again on the weekend didn't seem like such a lot of fun but Amelia & I hauled ourselves up & out of the house, leaving all the boys, including a pouting Darwin, at home.

We arrived, got checked in, took Daisy for a stroll around the property, gritted our teeth at the person who was playing ball with her offleash dog right in front of the building despite all the requests to keep all dogs on leash  (because you know how there's always at least one person who thinks that the rules shouldn't apply to them.)

 

As I said in part 1, my main focus was to get Daisy calm and happy. Looks like we're doing well!

 

Then it was time to get to the start line & go!

 

 Here we go!

 

Here's happy, prancing Daisy!

 

Front? I know front!

 

Am I doing a good job??

 

I had a couple minor heart palpitation moments. Like when I looked at the maps for round 2 & 3 and discovered they had a left pivot. For some reason, I hadn't trained a left pivot. I can't explain why because when I checked the notes I had printed from CARO, there it is, clearly listed in the Novice exercises. But I had done ZIP, NADA, NOTHING on left pivot.

You can guess what I was doing in all the time between rounds, right? LOL

But you know what? It was all good.

THREE Q's!!!!  188, 191, 192!!!!  (same judge so dog folks will realize she doesn't have her title yet. She needs to get another Q with another judge & then she'll earn her Rally Novice title.)

and: one HIGH IN CLASS!  (on our first round, no less!!!!)

Yippeeee!!!!! Good girl Daisy!



Um? Can I go now? This is kind of boring. Unless you're opening the fridge & not just posing me in front of it, I think I should just go.

Clearly, if we're going to do more of this, I'm going to have to work on getting Daisy to pose for ribbon celebration pix - because these were the best I could get from her! Here she is sleeping on the cat's heated bed.

Ah well. What a GOOD girl, Daisy!

Coming up Daisies - part 1

So, here's a sure fire way of getting yourself out of a funk caused by missing your foster dog: sign up one of your own dogs for their first ever Rally Obedience trial, which also happens to be YOUR first ever dog sport trial in anything.

For additional distraction, it helps if you haven't been to a Rally-O class - or any class, for that matter - since Spring 2009.

Yeah, so here we were, almost two years later, & I decided it was time to do a trial with Daisy. Rally-O trials here are few & far between (though that's about to get better, I hear!). There was one right in the middle of that 2009 class - I thought we weren't ready & decided to wait for the Fall one. That one got cancelled due to a leaky roof at the event site. Then I planned to do the Spring 2010 trial but right around that time, Bear was very sick & as there are only so many hours in my life I can devote to DOG & as he grabbed all of them, I skipped that one.

(Here is the first of a series of recent photos which are only related to this post in that they feature Daisy.)

When I signed up for the December trial, I didn't even know Bear was going to be adopted but life was settling down, and even though I'd have to vote December as the month in which I'm least likely to be able to take a day to goof off with dogs - I thought, what the heck. And signed up, pretty much at the last minute.

And then thought - hmmmm. Maybe we should brush up on a few things?

So I re-read my copy of Click Your Way to Rally Obedience (which I see has been revised but I only have the old one), and printed out a few pages from the CARO site.

We prepared for about a week. For four evenings, when everyone was getting ready for bed, I'd grab Daisy & go downstairs with her & work her for about five-ten minutes each time. I remembered that during class we struggled with 'crooked sits' so we worked on sitting with a wall on her left, which prevented her butt from winging out. Some fronts, finish right & left & that's it. Darwin & Bear were inevitably protesting at the door at the top of the stairs & I'd cut things short.

(There are no pictures of this. Be glad because you'd be looking at a sleepy woman in ratty old pajamas in a basement decorated in c. 1960's orange & dark wood.)

Instead, I offer you this:

Many evenings, I skipped it altogether, leaving it for 'tomorrow'. I'm good at leaving things for 'tomorrow'.

On the day before the trial, I set up plastic garden pots in my driveway & for about half an hour worked on the figure 8's and spirals. Things were not going that great as Daisy decided this was clearly some shaping exercise & she tried to nose the pots, paw the pots, then tried standing with her front paws inside the pots. Heeling past & around the pots was not very much fun apparently.

(There are no pictures of this either. Too bad because she was kind of cute when she tried to get in the flower pot. I was probably not so cute as I was gritting my teeth & thinking "gee, maybe I should have started refresher training earlier???")

My expectations by this time were much more focused on dealing with her reactivity. The goal was to get into a new place, with new dogs, barking dogs, excited dogs, & keep her focused and relaxed. I was planning on doing a CU type set-up, some t-touch massage, and I was ready to pack it up and leave if at any time it looked like things were getting to be too much. The actual trial - well, whatever. It's secondary to actually just being there & being able to function.

The running joke was that Daisy was going to try to win by eating the competition & I kept reminding her that you win in Rally-O by gaining points and that eating the other dogs would not help at all.

I can eat the competition?

.....to be continued.