ChambrayMiraclesTraining

PROLOGUE from Editor: Tony Alonso came on board with Chambray Labradors with the addition of Chambrays Miracle On The Meadow back in August of 2011. Miracle for several reasons was to follow along with his namesake.

First of all he would be part of the last litter that Jennifer Shake would co-breed with Chambray Labradors. The day that Jennifer dropped him off at Chambrays Acres, tragically later that day she would pass away of an accidental medication overdose.

On a positive and fortuitous happening later in October, Miracle would win several Best In Show Puppy awards at the International IABCA Shows in Orlando Fl. and qualify to compete at the prestigious IABCA Grand Sieger. Out of 17 Best In Show competitors, with some ranked in the IABCA Top 10 in the country, Miracle indeed performed a miracle becoming the first-ever Labrador Retriever in IABCA history to ever win a Best In Show Grand Sieger and as a 13 week old puppy!

In the following 9 months, the Alonso family along with Miracle has become very involved with Chambray Labradors Owner’s Programs. In addition Tony has a penchant for writing and sharing his adventures which of course we encourage and post to the website for others to read and derive some benefit from.

The following is the latest offering from Miracle’s owner as we now embark in Miracles AKC rookie year.

Home Training...our homework begins...Can the “Grand Clown” become the Grand Sieger winner[1] again?

So the long awaited (by me) debut of Miracle at an AKC Show is coming. We thought it would be a couple of months earlier, but the reality is that things happen, and Miracle, being his true self, injured a shoulder at the end of last year, and did so, probably destroying something that didn't belong to him, like my screen terrace, my patio furniture, my sprinklers, the tile on the floor (don't ask me about that one, I am baffled by it), and other things. It was a painful recovery for all of us, and a hard one because Labradors, in their truest of forms, are playful, tough, and relentless when it comes to winning any sort of a game. You play catch with him, he has to win. If you go outside to feed him, he must run around and jump on you, thus winning the boxing fight. If you just go outside to look at him, he will run around like a maniac until he notices that nobody is running with him. All of these things, plus two children, makes any recovery, a work of patience and time. For the last few months Sandy worked on a regimen that we followed and worked to perfection, finally eliminating the issue with his shoulder and his limping a little more than couple of weeks ago, thus restarting his show career again, and luckily, not too late.

The statement above is a summary have basically been the goings on with Miracle "The Terminator" Alonso. He is the same nincompoop that he was when I first met him, just bigger, heavier, stronger. But still runs into chairs and walls when he's scooting around, although he has learned to harness the craziness a little bit so he actually slows down before he runs into things. Maybe the shoulder thing taught him a lesson, who knows. Maybe he's just showing off, I don't know...Either way, he's getting ready for the Major Leagues, after getting his call up from the minors.

This week, Sandy covered us regarding a ‘training, conditioning and showing plan” for Miracle. He lost 3 months of training due to his injury, because the reality is that part of Sandy's approach, aside from the vitamins and LabWell products that he prescribed, was a "wait and see, with as much rest as possible" approach, the perfect approach in my book. So the famous Grand Sieger winner is now a Grand Stooge lagging behind the rest of the Labradors on the “show roster lineup”. One thing needs to be said on his behalf, he is extremely smart, and he picks it all up again very quickly (remember who poops and who picks up the poop). Anyway, just like many other owners who will be showing their dogs, we visited with Sandy and he explained to us that now was the time to become proactive with Miracle. Not only did we need to take him to training every week, but to also work extra with him at home. While at Chambray Acres, we were taught a few things that I should do with Miracle to be able to bring him up to par again. One of the biggest problems with Miracle is that he loses focus sometimes and that's where a few minutes a day of training will help him dramatically improve his chances of performing well at the dog shows coming up that he is targeted to show at, and also makes it much easier for anyone else training him to do so, since he'll already know what's coming when it's time to stop and to go, to step, etc.

Since I hadn’t been working much with him in the last 3 months, the renewed home training began and the first round went a bit strange as he didn't want to do anything at first. Remembering some of what Sandy taught me over the weekend at a private session (something that Sandy also recommended that we do, since he is behind the 8-ball a bit), I got a hold of the lead, fixed his collar to get better control of him {something they Herzons refer to as “cleaning the neck”}, and started walking and doing block work[2]. Since I only have enough blocks for one stage, what I did was that I had him step on the block, and then walk about 25 feet (the length of our brick sidewalk), then turn around, walk some more until he got to the blocks and had him step again. Then he walked about two feet (the end of the sidewalk), turned around and stepped again.

The first couple of times, he didn't feel like doing it, but later he understood it was work time, and I saw him strutting again and listening intently to his rookie handler (Me). See, I am beyond a rookie. I am a High School player that goes to the Major Leagues to play because someone made a mistake in his paperwork and sent him to the wrong team. Anyway, we did this for 5 minutes, took a 15 minute break and played some catch, and then we did 5 more minutes of this. Logistics indicate that this is the best way to do it at our house, so it worked out well. He was very attentive and although I am very bad at this handling thing, I drilled into his brain the most important part of his and my "homework", walk when your lead is released a bit, stop when tightened a bit and step on the blocks when he sees them and I command "step". How he stands on the blocks right now is not exactly a work of art. I am not completely sure myself how to get him to stand as nicely as the Herzon Clan can do it, but in due time, I'll learn. In the meantime, he is concentrating better and I feel exactly what the Herzons feel when they handle him, when he is on, he is all business, not because he has to, but because he seems to enjoy doing his strut...

Part of his training, also includes making him a bit bulkier[3], something that I never thought any full blooded Alonso would have trouble with. We Alonsos are a large people. Although I may not look like it now, a couple of years ago I was very heavy and ate too well (not healthy, just well). Having said that, I figured that if anyone knew how to make him heavier, I would. Boy have I failed...He is following in my footsteps today and is a healthy, thin dog but strong dog, not exactly ideal for showing (Ok, I am not exactly strong anymore, but working on it). So now, the other part of my homework has begun, figuring out how to help Miracle gain some weight. We have gone through 3 different types of dog food with Miracle and he likes none. He eats when he wants, what he wants. However, part of our homework is to try to curb that behavior, so my wife and I decided that we were going to buy him cans of food to flavor his dry food, and since my daughter loves to eat pasta, then I thought she would share with Goofy...er...Miracle, so I cooked some last night and then Miracle ate all of the pasta and wet food (good), while somehow leaving the dry food untouched (Bad). Uncanny!!! I mixed it really well!!! Back to the drawing board....Tonight I am going to hide the pasta to see if he eats the food first, although I have a feeling that he'll outsmart me again, as usual, and he'll end up eating all of the pasta again and leaving his food, although that may not be such a bad thing in the "bulking" department.

Here is to hoping that by the time April 7th and 8th come about, he'll leave his "Grand Clown" stage behind and behave like that Grand Sieger winner form we saw back in October. I am pretty confident that he will be alright.

Update (05/13/12): Elkton Fl Dog Shows, April 7th and 8th came and the “Grand Sieger winner” was a bit out of sorts, so he acted like the Grand Village Idiot. The same thing happened at his second weekend of AKC dog shows in Sebring Fl. According to Sandy, the sights and sounds, the flurry of activity of hundreds of dogs all about, the helter/skelter-like goings on of in and out of rings, especially for a dog his age really got the best of him. To his defense, he almost started from scratch this past March as we had missed so much time with his injury, losing all that time that we would have gotten all that good teaching from the Herzons. However under Sandy's guidance and urging, we have been working hard with him to get him back to where he was before he hurt himself and I can now say that the Grand Clown stage is behind him, and he is now, finally, ready for the Big Leagues. The Miracle Strut is back, and he looks like he is ready to hog the spotlight. We practice at home 3-4 times a week, like Sandy has told all of us to do, and he goes to Wednesday classes religiously nowadays, so he has no choice but to be better (Yes Allen Iverson, it's practice...).

He also has been eating much better as we came up with the blueprint of what Bailey's Children {his sire AM/UKC BIS Ch/Int BIS Ch Chambrays Bailey On The Rocks} and Hogan's grandchildren {his grandsire BIS Ch/Int BIS Ch Chambrays Out Of The Ruff} should be eating: dry food, mixed with rice, mixed canned food. Although I understand that canned food adds no nutritional values to his meal, I guess it is to him what the Tabasco sauce to my meals, or the BBQ sauce to my ribs. In any case, he eats two solid meals a day and he is getting heavier and stronger (The other day he was really happy to see me and almost knocked me sideways before I had a chance to correct him...I weigh in at a not too solid 200 pounds).

His next show is coming up on Memorial Weekend. We will be there for this show and look forward to a great time with good people and a whole new environment. I wonder if there will be a Gun Show[4] here too...Would be funny, right?

EDITORS NOTE: 2: Miracle has now been included in the regular show handling roster from the 9 to 12 Puppy Class. This in essence makes him a first-string player, because at Chambray Labradors there are at least 5 dogs not showing for every dog that is out on the front lines at the dog shows. Each of the dogs that are out performing at the show has been specially selected from a large pool of top show quality individuals, all waiting their turn to jump in at the AKC show's competition.

[1] Miracle is the first-ever Labrador Retriever winner of an IABCA BEST IN SHOW Grand Sieger. The Grand Sieger is the final competition held after 4 days of showing. All the Best In Show winners from the previous 4 shows are eligible to compete for the BEST IN SHOW Grand Sieger. Since there are 4 possible Best In Shows per show, 1 Best In Show Regular Puppy, 1 Best In Show Bred By Exhibitor Puppy, 1 Regular Best In Show Adult, 1 Bred-By Exhibitor Best In Show Award, plus there is a also 1 Best In Show Rare Breed Puppy, 1 Rare Breed Adult, 1 Bred By Rare Breed BIS Puppy. 1 Rare Breed Bred By Adult………………there could be a total of 20 Best In Show winners vying for the Best In Show Grand Sieger.

[2] Block Work – An innovative training method used at Chambray Dog Training where a series of blocks of differing heights are set up some distance away from each other and the dogs are walked up to each block and commended to “step” up on the blocks with their front legs and hold there while being “focused” with bait and other attention getting methods.

[3] Bulking up – At Chambray Labradors, health is paramount so young puppies are kept lean while they are going through the formative growing stages from birth to about 8 months of age. Depending on the individual dog, special training and conditioning programs are devised to get them show ready for the conformation ring. Weight gain is essential as is an exercise regimen to increase muscle and body tone.

[4] At Miracle’s first-ever dog show, there was also a Gun Show going on at the same fairgrounds, making for quite a mixture of social and activity-driven folk at the same stomping grounds.