Category Archives: TREIBBALL

up north in Alaska!

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It’s workshop season! And what a great start. A trip up north to Anchorage and Wasilla for a variety of topics, freestyle, cross training, team success and treibball. Ask anyone who wants to book me, it takes a lot to get me to leave home. But in this process of prying me away from my comfort, I seem to almost always love every minute, and meet some of the nicest people, from literally all over the world.

I love giving workshops, I love teaching, and sharing, and learning from those I am teaching. It is truly a full circle experience. The bonus to working with such a group of talented folks is that the level at which you can teach is that much higher, and the conversations that much better. Working with talent is always a gift in my opinion.

The groups I worked with in Alaska were so deeply involved in the dog world in one way or another, or another, or another! Mushing, dock diving, obedience, tracking, agility, SAR, hunting. Talented and committed.

The Alyeska Canine Trainers club in Anchorage have an amazing facility. Karen gave me the early morning tour, lucky me! And we tried to use it all, but it is huge. I would be lying if I didn’t say I had facility envy on some level. Folks came from all over Alaska, even Juno. When I asked Martha how she got to Anchorage, she looked at me quizzically and said, “you either fly or swim really hard” and then she had a great laugh!

I was fortunate to get some time watching the Alaska Dogs Gone Wild Fly Ball Team, and to visit the Alaska K9 Aquatics center.

Dinners, driving up the Cooke Inlet to the Alyeska ski resort, which by the way was the only 1 hour of sun I saw while I was there, and then off to Wasilla for a Monday Treibball workshop!

The photos can do the rest of the talking. Awesome all the way around! Just click on the photo to enlarge and follow the arrows.

Thank you Karen and Claudia for arranging everything and taking such good care of me! Nancy

balls of a different sort…

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treibball treibball treibball … Our World Treibball Winter League finishes it’s last Match, today, March 23rd! What an awesome inaugural season, awesome, awesome, and totally awesome! Players from three countries; USA, Canada, and Australia!

I have been buying balls, pumping them up, selling them, storing them, having my dogs push them, and watching other dogs push them, nearly every day since the beginning of November. It’s been an awesome journey, more leagues to come and titling events to be sure! And hopefully everyone will be seeing our World Pusher shirts pop up around the globe! We’ve been sporting them as often as possible.

pushers

Today however, my husband and I put on our World Pusher shirts and decided to play with balls of a different sort, bowling balls! Bowling for the Tiny Tails Rescue Fundraiser to be exact. Diana does an amazing job recusing, fostering, and finding homes for mostly small dogs, but really any dog that needs to find love and a new place to live.

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I thought, why not, it’s for a good cause, it would be fun to bowl a bit, visit, meet new people, and bid on some stuff in the silent auction. Happy Saturday! Both of us grew up bowling, but literally have not touched a bowling ball in 16 years, today would be a nice casual way to ‘play’ again.

NOT!

We showed up to a packed house! Everyone had their own bowling bags with multiple balls, shoes, and all of the necessary gear for serious league players. I never got the 411 that the Montana Senior Traveling Bowling League dominates this fundraiser, and has for over five years. They come to have fun, but also to BOWL! All of the major cities in Montana were represented today.

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We were put on a team with some very cool, and very serious players. Strike after strike after strike. Mel, at 89 years of age, ended his first game with a 207. Clapping, cheering, and some serious bowling! I don’t think I have been around a group this collectively happy, and at the same time so uber serious.

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So Spore bought me a Bloody Mary. Good husband. Good Bloody Mary, cheers!

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They set a rigorous pace, in fact we were three frames ahead of any of the other lanes. We were jammin’ right along, there was no goofing off with this crew. My first game was dusting off the cob webs, I was just glad I never dropped the ball. It felt good to be out there again. All my team mates scored near 200, all amazing bowlers. They were congratulatory, but I knew they were treating me like the rookie, because really I was.  But having your ass patted by a octogenarian while he tells you, ‘good game’ kind of seals the deal  ;-)

After my turn I would go bid on some of the silent auction stuff, or buy some raffle tickets. I’m like a kid in a candy store with silent auctions, I bid on things I don’t necessarily want or need, because for me it is just that fun!

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Spore was loving it, the atmosphere, the game, the cookies. These were his people! And the ladies loved him.

Then it all kicked in, Spore and I started with with similar first game scores, 126 & 127. The second game I scored a 157, while he schooled me with a 207. The final game, Spore had a 189, and I finished with three strikes and a 210. Rookie my ass! woop!

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Spore even agrees, we couldn’t have had better folks to spend our day with, he is still smiling. It was like a dose of happiness we weren’t even expecting.

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Thanks to Diana for making a fundraiser a FUNraiser! I hope Tiny Tails made a bunch of money. We had a blast and hope we can do it every year. We may need to buy our own shoes or balls, or something, just to have a bit more ‘street cred’ like our team mates. And by the way, we want the same team mates!

Nancy

snowball treibball

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Well, it was a treibball afternoon in the yard. My husband and kids love this game with the dogs. While they were playing away, I decided to try some ‘moving action shots’. The light was kind of funky, it was snowing pretty good, and the wind was strong, but I love the motion…

my B & W’s … $eeker makes using a camera fun!

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Spore and Story – they are a great TEAM. And the crappier, windier, and snowier the weather, the happier they both are…?!!!!

 

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Spore and his TREIBBALL SAFETY GLASSES. On snowy days they are kind of handy!

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I love this dog! Story is so powerful. I want to work, on a better light day, capturing his power, how it feels when you are out with him.

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love this collection. $eeker loves this game!

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And now for Mr. Happy Pants!

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Loving our new snow, but now I am off to warm up … Nancy

treibball workshop – so awesome!

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We had such an awesome treibball workshop today. Five teams, five different skill levels.

Because treibball can be such a strange concept to some handlers, and most dogs, it’s fun to take the time to go over what works and what doesn’t. We started today with ‘teacher/student’ work, and training each other. Great for timing, marking and learning how to communicate without a lot of clutter. Limit variables, ALWAYS limit variables.

One thing I have learned about treibball, or any sport for that matter, is to get rid of the variables when teaching new concepts. Hmmmm, did I just say that again? Create an environment where choices are limited, and both handler and dog can focus together.

Reward the behaviors you are looking for, ignore what you don’t want, and manage the environment. Training happiness, and treibball fun!

We had -

Zeus – the Rock Star Pug – he is our ‘border collie in the witness protection agency!’ He has as many if not more behaviors than most of the working dogs I know, and works as hard as his little body will let him!

Cate – The Grand Dame of the group, and one of the best hard pushers in Montana! Now to convince her owner that they should compete, hmmmmm

Edge – Baby girl at one year old, and she rocks this game. If she stays with it, everyone watch out! ‘The Force’ is with this girl!

Timbre – eager and awesome and wanting to work. She is as smooth as butter, fast, and lethal with distance.

Ruff – Two years ago all he wanted was to play with his friends, now he wants to play with his Mom with treibball! Distance, pushing, waiting… the whole package!

Bailey – the Bomb! That little tiny body carries a world of energy… blind finds, multiple balls, distance. Small but mighty!

 

why I love treibball!

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Last year, the spring of 2011, I kept hearing about this new dog sport from Germany, something about urban herding, balls, goal keeping, etc. Everyone was spelling and pronouncing it a bit differently, lots of different opinions were floating around, good and bad, and I couldn’t seem to obtain clear information. In all honesty I wasn’t looking that hard, I was busy with other dog sports and family stuff. But it piqued my curiosity on some level.

I love YouTube for a lot of reasons; music, comedy, movies, and dog sports to name a few. Some of my good friends from various parts of the world I met through YouTube. One  evening I settled in with a glass of wine and searched for TREIBBALL. I was truly surprised how many videos came up. I watched about twenty videos before I came to one that made me smile and move in my chair, that is always a good sign by the way!

YES!

A woman, her dog, a soccer field, and a dozen or so exercise balls. I was hooked. I could sense that this was a team sport all the way around. And it only took this one VIDEO to turn me on to a new dog sport challenge. What I liked about this video was the trust at a distance, and that each team mate had a job and/or task to perform, independent of each other. I love, love, love freedom in training once there is a partnership and trust. For me it is being able to read each other, understand each other, and work through concepts together.

The history, where did it all start? Jan Nijboer, a German trainer came up with treibball, a combination of what he felt were complex behaviors that included soccer and herding skills. Mental and physical work for a dog. Today he runs the International Natural Dogmanship Center where he trains people to train their own dogs. Thank you Jan for your creative way of thinking!

I was looking for, and needed a breath of fresh air in my own personal training program, something to challenge me and add new skills. I also wanted to try a new sport that wasn’t concussive for my dogs,  and that all of my dogs could learn, even with their varying ages.

I am a visual learner. I can watch something, and in my brain, some place, it all makes sense. (OK, my neuropsychology friends, tell me why?) Dogs sports, cooking, knitting, gardening, but not carpentry. That my dear friends, I suck at!

So we went to work. We had a bunch of beach balls at home, the benefits of having kids. We also had a couple of exercise balls, the down side of aging and squeaky joints!

The kitchen, our favorite training ground is where we started touch on the ball. $eeker can be a bit grippy, so I wanted to make sure we had a solid foundation and new understanding of the balls purpose. Ocean has a HUGE fear of balloons, so this didn’t go well. I had to leave the balls out in the house and yard as ‘ornaments’ so to speak. I let her observe the other dogs practicing touch with the balls for a few days and asked nothing of her. When she was comfortable and offered a touch, we moved forward with that. Being able to observe was so helpful for her.

What hit me right away was that the balls were not the focus, the TEAM or handler/dog relationship was the focus. The balls were a way to access each other. I loved seeing that.

My dogs all have distance skills, or what we refer to as ‘go to’. Distance is different depending on the context of the task at hand. Whether it’s hiking, freestyle, agility, or games in the yard, ‘go’ means ‘keep going until you hear otherwise’. Distance is so fun to play with, and when you have distance combined with understanding of behaviors and vocabulary it’s feels like freaking magic! Here is a VIDEO of our distance/mat work that we play with all of the time. If your dog has a plethora of behaviors while performing in front of you, can they also do it 30,40, 50, 100 feet away? Fun all the way around.

Ah, the pushing. This was tricky at first as I had four dogs and four different styles of pushing. $eeker took to it like he had just stayed up all night and watched every treibball video on YouTube, AWESOME. Story was offended that I was asking him to move something with his face. He truly had a look of disgust when we practiced this. So I let him come at it his own way. He will push to get it rolling and them guide it with his chest. He wants to see me, and he wants his face off of the ball. He took the longest to learn this concept. Ocean was initially a light tapper, but once she got into it she knew instinctively how to guide and direct that ball right to me, my little perfectionist. Franny, well this is where her game stopped. Repetition and tasking are not her things. While she is still a great toucher when the ball comes out, she believes the ball should move on it’s own if the ball wants to move, she’s no baby sitter, and for sure no ball slave!

Then I started to put all of these skills together, and play, play, play -

  • go to mat
  • go to mat and lay down facing me
  • go to mat/down with duration
  • go to mat clockwise and counter clockwise
  • go to amt with balls all around the yard
  • touch ball
  • balance with ball, handler/dog opposite of each other
  • fun games in the garden with pushing and distance runs
  • playing new games with counter and clock outruns
  • playing games with ‘wait’
  • playing games with discrimination and multiple balls
  • playing games with directing the ball around objects
  • playing with blind finds
  • playing with control or driving the ball to the handler
  • changing up ‘push’ with ‘bring it’, ‘drive it’, ‘find it’
  • working on multiple ball brings before reward
  • games with more distance
  • keeping motivation high
  • short games at first
  • introducing balls on windy days
  • playing in all weather
  • games, games, games

I can say that out of all of the activities we do, my kids and husband love playing this with the dogs in the yard. The equipment, balls, are light and colorful and you can kick them to the other side of the yard for the next dog to bring in. They all love doing distance work, again it feels like magic. And the dogs love it!

I have quite a few VIDEOS logged on my own YouTube channel. Check them out if you love this sport!

For me, this sport has all of the components to be challenging, interesting, intense, and fun. I love that once I send my dogs out to their ‘place’ behind the balls, once they are released the game is theirs, making choices and decisions on their own to get the ball to me. Awesome! For my dogs, it allows me to see their abilities to solve concepts, reason, work through problem solving, work through frustrations, work as a team, and when finished have that look of being completely satiated! Woop!

Nancy, pushing on!

the proof is in the pudding … walk on & wait training

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The proof is in the pudding! I like this phrase, it’s a delicious word picture for me. But it’s the meaning behind it that I really like, it means that the true value or quality of something can only be judged when it’s put to use. 

I am a person that learns by doing. If I want to learn the Tango, I have to get out on the dance floor with an instructor and do it. I could not, even in my wildest dreams, open a  book and read about the Tango and hope to understand how to do it, let alone the nuances behind the moves. And most importantly for me, how it feels to actually execute the moves. Learn by doing, that is me at the core, whether it’s dancing or dog training.

Treibball, the new sport in the dog world, is breathing some fresh air into training. It is challenging and wonderfully weird. As with everything I do, I just jumped in to do it.

At certain learning stages it can feel awkward, and yet at other times wildly fun. I love that it is not concussive for my dogs or me, it is truly about team and working together, and it requires coming at certain behaviors with more creativity than some other sports.

All the behaviors I train for this sport, or any sport really, are trained with play in mind, play with a purpose as I refer to it. I like my dogs to fly, and encourage that, but I also like thoughtful. Combining play that has goals, instead of knucklehead throw yourself into the fence play, seems to work to encourage a strong team that works together.

Walk On and Wait are two behaviors that I feel are pretty useful for this sport, but can be challenging too. I use a mat or bucket for distance, directionals, tricks and walk on’s. I am finding this is helping with dogs that creep up on the ball or insist on pushing every time.

For me, it isn’t about the ball. It’s about word recognition and puzzle solving. While the task is for the dog to bring the ball to the handler, there are a lot of other things to think about while at a distance from the handler.

Here are two video examples

I filmed this today to demonstrate that just because the ball is there, it isn’t about pushing it unless the word ‘push’ is introduced. Playing around with different words, different behaviors with the ball present is really helpful. OH!, one thing I forgot to mention, when starting a new sport, always use the reward that your dog considers a great reward, not what you want your dog to consider a great reward. Super important to keep motivation high when introducing something new.

This is some fun we had this past winter while playing with walk on’s and wait. I wanted to strengthen the behaviors during play. We could literally do this type of work for hours, and I think we have!

Have fun working with your dogs… Nancy

treibball blind finds

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So I started Treibball about one year ago. I had heard a bit about the sport, saw my friends in Missoula getting started with it, and decided to give it a go.

Exercise balls are easy and cheap enough to purchase, so that was a selling point for starting this new sport too. After 10 years in agility with expensive and heavy equipment, it seemed dreamy to have fun colored equipment that you can literally kick into place.

I have started nearly thirty teams now in Montana, and frankly, I’m having a blast.

Today we did blind finds, meaning

    • sending them out to a place where they cannot see me
    • I cannot see them
    • then allowing them to get to the ball
    • pick it up and direct it back through obstacles
    • around a corner to me
    • working with about 100 feet of distance

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My dogs weren’t sold in the beginning, in fact I’m pretty sure they thought I had finally lost it. What do you even mean, run away from me, find a ball, and push it back, really?

Ocean who was nine years old when she learned this new sport was not thrilled. She is terrified by balloons and when she walked into the yard the first day and saw all of the big balls, she ran for the hills. I was a traitor for sure in her eyes. I just let her play fetch int he yard with the balls as yard ornaments, and let her watch the others get acquainted with the game. When she was ready and offering to be close we started working. At almost ten now, this Grandma rocks the treibball! I am so proud of her.

$eeker is freakishly good, he gets this game, the nuances and all. And the bonus, his stay at a distance has improved by leaps and bounds.

Story, my honest and true steam train of a dog thought this was stupid and awkward. But as he does with all sports, he watch’s, takes his time learning the game, and then becomes amazing. His ability to direct with his chest makes me smile each time.

I have an arsenal of videos from the stirring the oatmeal stage (it isn’t very pretty or exciting, but int he end it’s imperative for a healthy foundation), to where we are now – VIDEOS

Have FUN, Nancy