No puppy breathe for me this halloween!

Well, this weekend I went to my friends house-Breeze's first mom to assist her with the delivery of anywhere between 8-13 pups that her dog Nel is expecting. Nel is such a sweetheart but I have never seen such a big doggie, she is a small border collie but her waist is 33 inches around and just looks so huge. Her temp was down on Saturday so I expected pups would be there soon, but when I left to go home Monday at noon there was no sign of puppies yet ;-), just poor Nel who really did not even want to walk to go outside anymore-who can blame her. I was bummed I missed the delivery....but I had to get home for Halloween with the kids! I was at the delivery of her last litter, that was a litter of 12 also.

When I got home this is what the girls had done while I was gone to get ready for Halloween:
Abby's Pumpkin:



Emmas pumpkin-


While we were hanging around waiting for Nel to pop we got to do some agility with Cricket and Breeze. Breeze was actually able to do the weaves, but all her contacts were broken and she was doing some funny jumping-I am going to have to review the video and see if I can see what was going on.....and Cricket, she was pretty spot on, she did great except for dropping about 25% of the bars,....hummm... We got some pretty awesome trick training in a new environment done--the dogs were so excited after waiting for me in the kennel they really were happy to earn some treats and willing to do just about any tricks to keep me from leaving them to the OUTSIDE KENNEL, ((shudder)).

Only Breeze and Cricket got to go to the ranch because if I bring dogs they have to stay outside in a kennel when I am not playing with them (((gasp!!)) and Lizzie will not put up with it (she barks constantly) so she got to stay home. It was too funny because every time I came out of the house-the kennel is across from the house door and these two tricksters would be in virtually the same spot doing the same thing every time I walked out the door.




So much for getting things done on time, I had planned on making our videos for our on line class this weekend --UNFORTUNATELY we are on the first week, and it is the second time through the class so no good excuses but we are late already, DRATS! We actually have done the training just nothing to post showing our work, so ya know, sometimes that is how it goes! Then there is my blogger friends that I have sorely neglected,sorry everyone, I am trying to do better but I have just been sort of really busy lately, not sure what I have been busy doing because it really does not seem like I have done much but.....

So Maybe I'm not the Fastest Person........ ;-)

I am super excited because I decided to redo the Silvia Trkman Puppy/Tricks October class. I did it last spring but I really enjoyed it, we got so much out of it but some of the tricks just required time for muscle building-and there was a lot of content in that class so we did not finish all the tricks. Since the tricks are all so good for keeping dogs in shape, I really wanted to redo it. I had such a good time the first time. Sooooo fair warning I will be posting videos of our work. We audited last time and this time we are going to be posting videos ;-)

I am redoing the Foundations class Silvia has too because we fell behind. I was trying to think this morning why we fell behind, I thought I was working hard and that class really was not as hard for us to keep up with.....then I remembered I HAD BROKE MY FOOT and couldn't do the class for quite a while, duh!

All of it just seems like things to take your time, get the behaviors really well and have fun with them, so no shame in being a repeater, ;-)


Speaking of the more confusing side of life....On Tuesday I got it into my head that it was Wednesday, not sure how....but I spent all day confused until the end of the day when I figured out it was Tuesday, duh!!

My confusion continued on the next day, my Thursday, everyone elses Wednesday.

When everyone elses Thursday came around-- it was my Friday -that was really bad. I texted an acquaintance that was having surgery on her dog on Friday to ask how things had went when I figured she probably would be getting ready to pick up her dog, well, she was still waiting for the surgery since she was on Thursday.... I had to look pretty dumb, LOL. I had trouble figuring out when to put the trash out,I missed my favorite show because I was confused about what day it was.

To make matters worse I saw another friends picture of her dog in costume, and thought oooh she has to be going to the dog club meeting for the costume contest tonight and called and asked another friend if she was going and what type of costume she would put on her dog. She was confused since the meeting is on Wednesday and for her it was Thursday, so somewhere along the way on Thursday I was thinking it was Wednesday and Friday at the same time.

It is a bad thing when your internal clock gets all messed up,YIKES!

I really hate good byes ;-(

I am feeling sad today. Today is Miss Kinetics's last day here. Today is Spa day and she will get her beauty treatment so she will be all ready for the next stop in her journey tomorrow.

Kinney was not here long this visit, it was actually a pretty short visit-- but it seems like she has been here a long time...In a good way ;-). When Kinetic got here we had a rough day or two to start with... but then we really clicked and started to get each other, since we clicked and began to understand each other I have had a really good time with Kinetic and I am going to miss her. If I had known we were going to click like we have I would have volunteered to take her a little longer.

My whole goal for this visit was teaching Kinetic to come when someone called her, and make sure when she got near I could grab her collar. People grabbing you means all fun stops. Anyway, I was pretty proud I came up with some games where Kinney got to play some games that she seemed to think were fun, and I was able to get her to come to me when I needed her too, the best type of situation in dog training-a win-win situation where we all get our needs met. I was lucky and hit on some games she really liked. How much fun is that???? I used some of the things I have been reading about from BAT which is such a cool training method-Behavior Adjustment Therapy which was developed by Grisha Stewart http://functionalrewards.com/


I LOVE training my dogs, but got to say I am also really starting to like working with dogs that are not my dogs sometimes. It is a totally different challenge then working with your own dog. With your own dog you have a bigger investment in getting something trained, so I think you might rush things a little more or worry about it more.

I think you can be a bit sloppier in your training with your own dog because your dog really wants to work with you- a dog who does not know you does not have a big reward history associated with you so they might want to work with you and they might not so you really have to earn their trust and use good training principles otherwise the dog can just decide this game is really not worth playing.

I think working with dogs I do not know as well teaches me to watch much closer and evaluate what I am doing a lot more. When I work with Cricket I know what she likes and what she doesn't, I know what will probably work, sometimes she surprises me but I basically know what I can get away with, how fast I need to go, how long to work, what type of treats will work best, so I always try to pay attention to all those things, but sometimes I probably do better ten others...but with a dog you do not know you have to really watch each of those factors and pay attention since you just do not have a big bank of prior knowledge to draw from regarding this dog;-). The other thing is that you do not have as much time to work with a dog you don't know...usually you have to make the most of the time you have and work efficiently, no putting your goals on the list to work on next week. Maybe I should do more pretending my dogs are someone elses dogs, LOL,perhaps I would see even more results in my dogs??


Ok- the cutest trick Kinnetic just started offering(I taught her but now she is coming up and doing it when she wants my attention) is when she comes up to me she does the cutest play bow. The bow seems like a default position that she really likes, so she gives me great duration - it keeps her from jumping on people, and it is super cute. Figures a couple of days and I can teach another dog to be a lot less likely to jump on people, but my baby-Cricket is two years old and is horrible about jumping on people, LOL, might be time to focus on that myself with the Crickster.

ps, Kinetic is waiting to go to Japan in February, so she has been waiting for her forever owner to really start her training, the owner is going to have a blast--this is one smart girlie!

SHE'S BACK!

WOW, I was getting ready to post an entry to my blog and it says I have posted 500 postings, how is that possible???? LOL.

So She is back,... who is she that I am referring to??? Well, it is Kinetic, the BC puppy that will eventually be going to Japan. I agreed to keep her for a few weeks when her temp. mom was going to be going on a trip. Kinetic was here in August for 3 weeks. I have been going through one of those periods of just feeling overwhelmed by things lately so not the best time for a house guest,.. but, hopefully we will all have a good time.

So the fun thing about interacting with a pup that you do not see every day is that it is REALLY apparent how they have changed. With your own pup the changes might be happening really fast but because you see them everyday it is hard to see, or at least it is for me. Kinetic has changed a LOT in the last month. The one thing I noticed right away is a little more of a calmness about her. She is not calm by any means but she is just not as unfocused, she has a more settled inner self or something, LOL, sorry to describe it like that, but she seems a little more mature.

Surprisingly Kinetic seems to be about the same size. I really think when she was here last time she was going through a big growth spurt. At that time she could not get enough food and she was worried about food all the time, she was so hungry I felt bad for her... she would do ANYTHING for food and she had grown quite a bit during the time she was with us last time. Now she likes food but she is not willing to do ANYTHING for food -- she is a little pickier about it....well not picky about food but just a little more particular about what she is willing to do for it ;- ), she just does not seem to think about it as much.

Ears are always fun to watch how they change and all the pictures I saw of Kinetic from her first days she had prick ears. I thought her ears were pretty big to be prick ears but they seemed to be really determined to stay bright and perky. When Kinetic was visiting last time her left ear had started to go out to the side, or bend a lot. Now it seems like both ears seem to be trying all sorts of ear sets. I am betting her ears will end up sort of half up and half down sticking out to the side, sort of like Breezes ears.. but we will see.

As soon as I picked up Kinetic she was really trying to bolt out of the crate, so we did some crate games today. Kinetic may have done crate games in her home, I don't know but within 12 min she had gone from bolting and just trying to get out to rushing out of the crate when released then running back into the crate. She did great and learned really fast. I will have to move the game around to a few other locations and a few other crates in the next few days.

if you CHOOSE to look at this video, it is almost our entire crate games session today. Please do not look too carefully at the big legs, LOL, be kind, and luckily a good portion of the video I did in fast speed so no I can not open and close a crate door that fast, I don't do anything that fast, just ask anyone who has watched me do agility,LOL.