From The CC Vault: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

by Chris Robinson

Most folks who participate in any performance or field activity spend a lot of time “proofing” their dogs against the various distractions usually encountered in most dog sports. The result is that their dogs are pretty comfortable with the usual stuff–lots of other people and dogs around–by the time they get to an event. But, there are things that can happen for which it is impossible to train. So, when you ask yourself, in preparation for a dog event, what could possibly go wrong, the answer is, “Way more than you ever imagined in your wildest dreams.”

Take, for example, what happened to a Labrador Retriever and his owner at an outdoor agility trial. For those unfamiliar with training sporting dogs for field work, pigeons are often used as training birds because they’re much cheaper than quail, pheasants, chukkars or ducks, for one thing and for another, if the dog has a bad training experience and gets “turned off” pigeons, it doesn’t matter because most people don’t actually hunt pigeons
and they’re not going to encounter pigeons in either hunt tests or field trials. But, to most sporting dogs, to paraphrase poet Gertrude Stein’s immortal line in Sacred Emily, “a bird is a bird is a bird and birds are to be retrieved.” With most sporting dogs, especially those that have field training, it doesn’t matter if the bird is a sparrow or a Canada goose. If it flies, it’s supposed to be retrieved when it’s on the ground.

This created an insurmountable problem for the Lab. The area where the agility course was located had an unusually rich bug population and this bug bounty attracted an enormous flock of pigeons. As the Lab began the course, pigeons kept landing in front of him and, true to his instincts, he went after them. Unfortunately, they frequently didn’t land on the proper paths to the obstacles and his owner knew it was futile to try and call him off the birds. You might as well tell the sun not to come up in the east. He veered off the course repeatedly chasing and jumping after the pigeons as his owner watched her entry fee with no ribbon in her hand at the end of the trial fly away with the pigeons. She said that there was some satisfaction in the knowledge that she owned a dog that had just set a national, perhaps international, record for the number of times a dog could go off course on an agility run, but not much.

Birds and an enthusiastic young dog also created a problem for one of my hunting partners at a hunt test. Walking up to the line in a junior test, her dog managed somehow to slip his lead and went bounding out into the field. She called him back and he started to return when he spotted the man running the winger, which is like a giant slingshot that catapults the birds into the air eliminating the need for a strong-armed human to throw them. Her dog homed in on the winger man who had his back to the dog and failed to see the danger until it was too late. The dog took the legs out from under the winger guy who lost control of the device and launched a pheasant. The effect of being launched from a winger on a bird is somewhat similar to that of a pilot riding an ejection seat from a jet aircraft. There was a brief period of disorientation which caused the pheasant to stagger for a few seconds like it was crippled before it righted itself and was able to fly properly. That was enough to convince the young dog that his job was to chase it and chase it he did, all over the field where he varied his speed runs with ballet-like jumps that rivaled the highest cabrioles performed by the Bolshoi Ballet’s greatest leapers. It took more than fifteen minutes to finally corral the dog and return him to his red-faced owner. Needless to say, he did not earn a qualifying score that day.

Think that it’s only birds that create “unproofable” distractions? Think again. For instance, how about sheep? A herding person I know was working sheep with her Swedish Vallhund. The dog made what his owner called a “boisterous” outrun and turned the sheep back toward his owner. Unfortunately, the outrun was so boisterous that the flock came thundering at the dog’s owner at speeds she roughly estimated at mach 1 and before she could execute any meaningful escape and evasion, the sheep were upon her. The next thing she knew, she was astride a very tall ram facing his tail as the animal barreled around the arena. Convinced that he was under attack by at minimum, a puma, the ram was not just running at top speed but was also doing his level best to buck off the terrible predator on his back. The “predator,” on the other hand, was hanging on to the ram’s fleece for dear life as she was unable to figure out a way to get off the speeding, bucking beast without incurring significant pain and contusions.A Springer had an unusual experience with a bird in a hunt test I judged a few years ago. The test was in May when most pheasant hens are laying eggs. When the dog went to retrieve the hen he had found and flushed, he must have grabbed her in just the wrong place because a fountain of egg yolk erupted from the bird covering the dog’s face and head with pheasant egg. The dog was first shocked and then furious at being attacked in such a manner by a bird. He took out his fury on the bird by shaking it and generally mauling it to the point where he rendered it unfit for the table, earning an immediate disqualification.

When the sheep finally slowed enough so she could slide off and hit the arena floor with a minimum of damage, the ram demonstrated that not only was he big and fast but he was also agile and angry. He turned on a dime and came after the “puma” with his head lowered. Since he was a breed that also sprouted impressive horns, it was clear that he intended to inflict grievous bodily harm on the two-footed puma. Fortunately the dog was, by now, back in his owner’s vicinity and he became a snapping, snarling wolfish presence between the angry ram and his owner trying her best to scramble out of the way. He provided enough of a diversion that his owner was able to regain her feet. In the face of both an upright shepherd and a dog that clearly meant business, the ram apparently decided that this was not his day to become mutton and he backed down, trotting sheepishly back to the flock. While she escaped with no more than a few bruises and badly wounded pride, she was not able to fend off the nearly hysterical laughter from everyone who witnessed her sheep-riding performance. The only consolation, she said, was that it didn’t happen at the national specialty.

Another herding person was not quite so lucky and she recounted a somewhat similar story of what could possibly go wrong except that she didn’t wind up on top of a sheep but rather underneath the entire flock. The dog and the shepherd started out nicely with the sheep under control, no shoving, no panicked runs. However, the dog was a bit wired and she suddenly burst through the sheep, setting up a wild run. With great delight, she tore after them and turned them right back at her handler with both dog and sheep at a dead run. The shepherd disappeared under a sea of sheep. Since the dog couldn’t see where the human she was fetching to had gone, she proceeded to circle at top speed, tightening the sheep over the shepherd’s prone body. Unfortunately, for the shepherd, one of her friends was videotaping the dog’s performance. On the video a hand appears every so often from the depths of the sheep knot and cries of “Lie down” can faintly be heard from the middle of the sheep. The shepherd was finally able to pull herself up by the wool of a sheep and as her head appeared, the dog suddenly decided it might be a good idea to lie down. The shepherd said she was never able to get all the stains out of her clothing and the black and blue hoofprints all over her body were spectacular. She also has had to endure at least one showing a year, that is usually heavily attended by family, friends and other dog people, of the videotape of her being engulfed by a tidal wave of wool.

Ah, you say, but I don’t have a sporting breed, hound, Airedale or Poodle so birds aren’t an issue and I don’t do herding so I don’t have to worry about sheep. Well, how about dog bones?

A friend of mine was running her setter in an agility event where one of the vendors was selling bones that were extremely attractive to the dogs who could wind their delightful scent at great distances and would do their level best to drag their owners to the vendor. When it was the setter’s turn to run, at the top of the A-frame, he stopped and began to sniff the air with great enthusiasm. Without a word from his owner, the dog flew down the A-frame, jumped over the orange show fence that marked the ring boundaries and zoomed over to the vendor selling the wonderful bones. Before anyone could corral him or his owner could catch up with him, the setter snatched a bone from one of the milk crates in front of the vendor’s stand, and raced off to his owner’s truck where he immediately jumped into the back and entered his crate with his treasure. By the time his owner got to the truck, the dog was comfortably ensconced on his crate bed happily gnawing on his bone.

John G. Campbell, the influential editor of Astounding Science Fiction coined Finagle’s Corollary to Murphy’s Law. It said, “Anything that can go wrong will–at the worst possible moment.” While Campbell was referring to thermodynamics, he could easily have also been writing about dogs and their owners competing in dog events. It’s also why it is imperative to have the ability to laugh at yourself and at your dog if you are going to be involved in any dog sport. It’s either that or face the possibility you’ll spend a lot of money occupying a psychiatrist’s couch.

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Posted by Liz on Mar 3 2023. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.