Colin
from the UK (I think) and proud owner of Pippa, was kind enough to
provide some info on the USDAA:
I
LOVE my Cairn terrier!
SHe
is very, very smart, well-behaved and a super agility dog.
She
competes at Master level in USDAA and we are now working on our
Champion jumper's title. We always get lots of compliments
after
our runs and people are amazaed at how focused and fast she is on
course. One judge talked about her all day!
I entered her
in USDAA Steeplechase and she was one of only 3 dogs to qualify -- in
fact I am thinking of getting a t-shirt to read "My Cairn Terrier Can
Beat Your Border Collie!"
USDAA
is the oldest agility association in the US. It is also the
toughest venue in which to compete. Even at the entry level,
no
mistakes are allowed and the courses have 12 weave poles.
Courses
are complicated and fast, especially at Master's level. Classes offered:
Standard
-- all the regular agility equipment
Jumpers
-- jumps and tunnels
Pairs Relay --
2 dog and handler teams, where each team runs a specific section of the
course.
Gamblers
-- this has an opening and a closing. In the opening, you
have so
many seconds to accumulate points (based on value of obstacles
completed), then the closing where the dog is sent out to complete 3 to
5 obstacles from a distance (the
Gamble).
The distance and complexity of the Gamble sequence varies according to
level, as well as the time alloted to complete. The handler cannot
cross a marked line.
NOTE:
Pippa is great in Gamblers. In one Advanced class, she was
the ONLY
dog to get the "Gamble."
Snooker
-- this is a stretegy game and consists of an opening (handler choice)
and closing (required). There are rules for how you collect
points in the opening and this can get very confusing, especially at
Master level.
Grand Prix
-- one of 2 tournaments. This has all the standard obstacles
except for the table. It is a fast course, and first place in
Grand Prix can get you into Regionals.
Steeplechase
-- tournament class that consists of jumps, tunnels, an A-frame and 12
weave poles. The weave poles and A-frame will have to be
performed twice. This is a very, very fast course.
Pippa is also competing in agility in Canine Performance Events (CPE) and United
Kingdom International (UKI).
UKI is
a new venue out of Great Britain. I entered her in the Sweep Stakes (jumps
and tunnels) class at a local trial and we took first place.
I
wish I had some photos to share, but I don't have a digital
camera. I do have photos I have purchased from trial
photographers, so I may try to scan one or two of these and send to
you.
Comment
on Biting
The
answer to this question depends on getting more specific about the type
of biting and also is one area which is often owner self-inflicted.
If
the Cairn is a pup, is playing too hard and that is when the biting
happens, stop the play immediately, point your index finger right at
the
dog's nose so you have his full attention and issue a very stern, loud
'NO!'. Repeat as many times as necessary. Unfortunately,
remember this is a Cairn Terrier you are dealing with and they aren't
the brightest bulbs in the room so get used to lots of repetition.
If
the dog is biting because you are smacking him when he does something
wrong, stop hitting him and he will stop biting.
What I
mean is, remember what Cairn terriers are bred for. They are
verminators. If you smack a Cairn
and the Cairn thinks the smacking is unjustified or over the top,
he is likely to regard you as not his owner, but
one
large vermin and he will respond in kind.
Can't say I would
entirely
blame him either.
In
all seriousness though, if you have a vicious, mean Cairn and
it
is through no fault of your own, contact the breeder and do
what
you
can to get a replacement. This is a trait occasionally found
in
the breed and it is a defect. Don't waste your time trying to
deal with a vicious
animal.
Get rid of it.
If that breeder is responsible,
you will be compensated either through
another
pup or a refund.
My Cairn Terrier won't Come
when Called.
Short Answer:
One
day you will have an epiphany when you go out to grab the
little
hairball who won't recall and the little hairball looks at you
with that perfect expression which says it all:
"Don't you get it
by now? I am a Cairn Terrier. This is what I do.
I am a hairball and I don't recall."
Long Answer:
Relax.
Unlike other commentary, this is one instance in which it is not entirely your
fault.
There are three
possible issues we are dealing with here:
1. The dog is
a Cairn Terrier.
2. The dog is
a Cairn Terrier.
3. The dog is
a Cairn Terrier.
Given these
obstacles, how does one obtain at least marginal success in getting a
Cairn to when called?
You have to
keep it very simple, with special emphasis on 'very simple'.
Use
one distinctive word to persuade the Cairn to stop whatever he is doing
to come to you because he knows he is going to be bribed beyond belief
with something special.
Instructions:
1.
Figure out what specific treat will cause your Cairn to gorge himself
into oblivion if allowed to do so and then chop that treat up
into tiny pieces.
2. Fill your
pocket with those bits of food.
3. Choose your
magic word. The word used in this example is 'Rufus.'
4.
Pick a day when you are apparently the most interesting thing around to
your Cairn and call him using the magic word, 'Rufus!'
5. If on
the off-chance he actually comes, feed him a choice bit and praise the
hell
out of him.
Note:
Praise doesn't have much effect on a Cairn, but it could make you feel
better in that you might think you are
actually accomplishing something.
6.
Repeat the process several hundred times to where the Cairn knows that
if he hears the magic word and comes to you, he is always going to get
a bit of his favorite treat.
If
you are consistent in using the magic word for one use only - to bribe
the hell out of the Cairn, you might
achieve a 75% or slightly better
recall rate on a good day.
You see in the
Cairn's world, there are many things infinitely more
important and
exciting than you, the magic word or
bribery.
Hunting lizards for example.......
an expedition fraught with its own peculiar perils.
Cairn
Terrier Face Biting
or
Please
Re-Arrange My Face because I am an Idiot
or
Can I
have My Free Deviated Septum NOW, Please?
This
in my view is entirely owner contrived. The consequences of same are
best learned by others unless you have a masochistic streak running
through your veins........................
The 70's was a time
of for discovery and one of my friends discovered the hard way that it
is not a good idea to discipline a nine month old Australian Shepherd
pup by grabbing his collar for a good ole one on one, up
close and personal @$$
chewing.
It was my turn to drive that night. I knocked on
the door, was told to come in and I saw a really po'd John grab the
shepherd
pup, get down on his knees and pull the pup up close to deliver some
choice invectives.
I think John might have got two words out of
his mouth before the dog lunged at his face. This was closely
followed by a loud scream (from John) and blood everywhere (from John).
The pup managed to get a couple teeth up inside both nostrils, bit down
and pulled. This resulted in a deviated septum and the piece
of
flesh that separates the nostrils was itself separated (a polite way of
saying it was ripped out).
John's wife was in the kitchen at the
time and came out to see what all the commotion was about.
One
thing I will have to hand to to her - she was a cool customer under
fire.
She took one look at John, went back in the kitchen and
filled up a Ziploc bag with ice cubes and put a towel around it, walked
back out and gave it to John with orders to keep it pressed to his face
(and some wonder why men have shorter life expectancies).
She
then took John to the hospital and I had to call in to work to explain
why we weren't at work. I also had to babysit their kids until a
relative arrived. The relative came over, took one look at all the
blood in the living room and ordered the kids into the bedroom while we
spent a good hour cleaning the mess up.
------------
It
is not uncommon for some to anthropomorphize their pets as strange as
that may seem and it is probably the same group of people who insist
that animals have the same 'rights' people have.
Dogs are not people.
Dogs are dogs. If you want to discipline your Cairn eye to
eye or
play kissy-face, you do so at your own peril. The coin might flip tails
50 times in a row, but one day it is going to land heads up.
Open
your Cairn's mouth and take a good hard look at all those teeth and
then think about how all those teeth would look attached to your face
the day that coin lands heads.
------------
How do I Provoke my
Cairn into Providing Personalized Cosmetic Surgery?
Before
I segue into that, lets preface this with a brief discussion on eye
contact, another thorny issue in the world of canine
psychology.
Conventional
wisdom for a long time held that if a dog maintained eye contact with
you, the dog was challenging for Alpha Male status. I believe
this is flawed.
From my perspective, a dog that maintains eye contact is
looking for direction or leadership; in fact there are breeders of
hunting dogs that look to include this trait in their lines.
Cairns
when they stare at you, generally want something. Catahoulas
when
they stare at you are either in a state of adoration or they are
looking for direction. With Poodles the message is quite
clear
- 'Ok, what do you want me to do next?'
These are examples of pack followers where they accept you as
the pack leader.
Then there are the
Pig-Headed, Aggressive, Alpha Male type dogs.
These
dogs refuse to maintain eye contact. They view eye contact as a contest
for
dominance. They don't want to challenge for top spot because they think
they are already there, or close to it.
This
type of dog
is difficult to train, constantly vying for a
better position in the pecking order because there is no clear pack
hierarchy. In other words, the owner is falling down on the
job.
So How do I Provoke my Cairn (or
any breed for that matter) into Providing Personalized Cosmetic
Surgery?
Simple.
I
would pick up my Cairn terrier and hold him an
inch away from my nose, force eye to eye contact and proceed to chew
him out in a threatening, denigrating, really unpleasant tone of
voice.
Facial lacerations
virtually guaranteed and perhaps a free rhinoplasty thrown in as well.
Cairns
and Balls and
Obsessive
Behavior or, Who is Training Who?
This
almost always starts out innocently enough. You start
teaching
your Cairn to fetch a ball or some other toy, praise him for his
efforts and are generally quite pleased with yourself for teaching the
dog his first trick.
Pretty soon every time you let your
Cairn inside, he dashes happily over to his favorite toy and brings it
to you to throw for him.
After ten or twenty times in the
space of half an hour, this starts getting rather annoying and you
start ignoring the dog.
Cairns are a stubborn breed and they can get persistent if they feel
they are being ignored.
Your
Cairn's new trick is turning into one annoying nightmare because if you
don't throw the ball, your little gem will grunt at you,
nudge
you with his nose and be a general pain until you throw his toy which
you do so you can gain some temporary peace.
Congratulations!
Your Cairn has successfully
trained you to play with him whenever he wants!
Wait a minute..............wasn't it supposed to be the other way
around?
The Fix
Put the toys away until you feel like playing.
Put the toys away after you
are done playing. Playtime is your choice, not his.
This applies to most obsessive behaviors.
Helpful hint:
DO NOT Teach Your
Dog to Shake Hands and DO NOT Teach Your Dog to Speak.
Some learned behaviors while originally seeming quite cute are
not............after 10,000 or so repetitions.
Question:
Cairn Terrier Training - What is the Principle of Four?
For this I defer to Ms. Barb,
frequent contributor to the show..........
The
potty training, is a curious thing. As I glean finer details
out
of my dog training (train the trainer) notes..... there is the
Principle of Four.. in dog training, a dog must learn
something
in 4 or 5 DIFFERENT locations for it to sink in.
for instance,
just becuz Frosty is potty trained in MY house, does not mean that he
understands the concept completely. going into a new house,
or
new building he must learn again. isn't that weird?
attached
is my handout "Principle of Four" which makes sense, that this applies
to learned behavior (in my classroom setting, I give out homework,
explaining that each dog may sit nice at home, but completely forgets
how to "sit" in any other setting.).... this was an AHA moment as I
teach a new puppy. he immediately decided to "leave his
business
card" at my dog studio. (lifted his leg). it is
carpeted. I was not pleased.
my "aha" moment clicked, as
I remembered the Principle of Four. I know it applies to the
usual list: Sit, Watch Me, Down, Stay, etc... it stands to
reason
that it applies to the potty training too.
puppies... sigh. so much work. but then again, so joyful and fun.
Here
is the Handout
Comment
Thanks for the 'Principle of 4 ! In
retrospect that
certainly explains a few things!
Question:
Can Cairn Terriers be Trained to Retrieve?
Answer: Normally
I would say 'No' and if you want a retriever, you
should
have bought one. I dedided to think on that a bit since the
question didn't specify 'what' to retrieve and then decided to make a
contest of sorts out of it and contacted several of my most ardent
cairn entusiasts.
The challenge: The Cairn Terrier Owner
would have three weeks to train their cairn to retrieve at
least
three toys (I suggested balls) and deposit them in a basket -
'Go
pick up your toys' - and videotape the result. At the same
time
I bet that my Standard Poodle Max could do the same with five toys in a
week or less. Rufus the Cairn......I figured for a lost
cause.
If I won they owed me a good Cairn story. If they
won,
they'd get one of my custom pen and pencil sets. I
have a
number of sets to get rid of. Other than selling them,
I
would rather donate to a worthy cause - proving out the fact that even
a Cairn Terrier can be taught to put away his toys.
Well,
things changed at the outset. I got sent out to a
job site
for a while and got off to a very rocky start with the
poodle.
Amazingly fast learner. He's now up to retrieving 5-7 toys
from
multiple rooms and brings them back to the basket in the
living
room. He's fairly consistent but the Attention Deficit
Disorder
thing makes it a challenge.
It
was quite funny one day. I told
Max to go get his toys and instead he decided to go investigate
something in the kitchen . Rufus got up and
walked down the hall into the bedroom and brought back a toy.
Max
of course had to come over with the 'What's going on...What am I
missing...What's Rufus doing' expressuion. Rufus
dropped the toy by my chair, turned and looked at Max like he was
trying to say, 'That's how you
do it, you stupid poodle.'
Since then, Rufus partakes in the
toy activities too. He doesn't happily run, though. Or even
trot. He walks to wherever the toys are, finds one he likes
and
walks back and drops it on the floor (gets a treat, of
course).
No luck getting him to put anything in a basket yet, or getting him to
do it multiple times.
I ended up making the offer to another six
cairn owners I know (have a lot of spare pen and pencil sets) and to
date, no one has succeeded in getting a cairn to place three
toys
in a basket. One owner says he can get his cairn to put one
toy
in. Period. Not interested after that.
Since I have
not seen any video evidence supporting the one toy claim, I
will
leave that as suspect.
Personally,
I think that while a Cairn Terrier is capable of performing
the
task, I think the stubborn behaviour might be
difficult to
overcome.
Question: How do I stop my Male Cairn
Terriers fighting over toys.
Answer: Remove
the toys.
My
Cairn Chases Rabbits - Oh my, Oh my.........What
can I do?
Lets
see..........Cairns are bred for what? And someone has a
problem
with Cairns going after vermin?
Reminds
me of a story out of California some years ago where there was a
concerted effort in a K-6 school to feminize little boys - get rid of
that aggressive masculine behavior by having them play 'house' with
little girls. That worked fabulously for about 2 minutes
until
one little boy found that ironing boards when balanced on top of
a play house made excellent catapults for tables and chairs
and.........if you loaded it up with forks, spoons and
tea cups......you had shrapnel!
My Advice:
1. Research the Cairn before you buy the
Cairn.
2. If chasing is rabbits is a problem, consider a Basset
Hound.
My
Dog Peed in My Bed...or...Whose Home is it Anyway?
This
issue is unfortunately for you, more than likely another owner
generated problem and its genesis is in your failure to
maintain
Alpha Male or Alpha Female status, whichever the case may be.
Your
house is your house and you need to keep it that way. If you
and
the dog are outside, dog sees you going to the door and races ahead of
you, head jammed in the door so he ends up being first in the
house, he is assuming the dominant position in
doggydom and has usurped your authority. Same thing going
outside.
You lead, the dog
follows. Not the other way around.
If
a dog is peeing in your bed, my first question is why in the world
would you share your private space with your dog. There are
places for dogs and there are places for people. There needs
to
be a clear delineation as to whose turf belongs to who. Don't
go
blurring the lines and expect not to have problems.
Your house
is your home,
not your dog's.
Think
of your dog as a guest. Would you yourself prefer an invited
guest in your home or an uninvited one? If a dog races in
ahead
of you in or out of the house, he is not the guest, you are.
You facilitated
his desires by opening the door and letting him in first.
Cairns
as you may have figured out by now, are a stubborn breed and not all
that bright. They are smart enough however to know or sense
when
they can move further on up the pecking order, which they think is to
their advantage. You provide them with that opportunity and
all
sorts of hell is likely to break loose.
You the owner are
in charge. Keep it that way.
Question - Is aggressive
growling and biting for a 5 month old Cairn terrier normal?
Answer - No.
This could be normal for an unsocialized, untrained 5 month old Cairn
terrier though.
Question - My Cairn Terrier
is 22 pounds. Is that too large for tunnel training?
Answer - Maybe, maybe not and there is
a very easy way to find out if by tunnel training you mean Earth Dog
trials.
Earth
Dog trials are used as a method for testing a terrier's instinct, its
natural ability to do what it was originally bred for.
And what is that?
Terriers - Terra - Of the Earth - Tunnel Rats - Dogs going to ground to
seek out and destroy vermin.
In
order for a terrier to enter an AKC proscribed Earth Dog Trial, the dog
must be small enough to enter a tunnel constructed of a predetermined
size.
The tunnel diameter for for a small earth dog and Cairns are in theory
small earth dogs, is about nine inches by nine inches.
So,
construct a short 9" X 9" tunnel and see if your Cairn can fit through
it. If he can fit through it, you are probably good to go.
Interested in more information on Earth Dog trials? Check out
Duffy's Cavern
My
Cairn Terrier Pulls too Hard when
Playing 
Free Video
My
initial response to this one is 'You've got to be kidding.'
But.....I
suppose that might be a bit insensitive so here is an alternate
suggestion:
Leave the pulling
to somebody else. I must admit after watching the video,
that's a lot of pulling!
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