Holes...

OK, in the past we have been through a lot of good byes with foster dogs, so the aftermath of a dog leaving is nothing we have not been through before and from the start we knew this day would eventually come, but no mater how temporary a dog is in the home, they carve their little nitch into our family and our lives. Yesterday was a day full of holes....although little Cherry was with us a LOT longer then any of our other fosters, and the great thing is that we can see her when ever we want I am sure, but it is funny the things you miss. Yesterday was our first day without Cherry, and it was a bit sad, I got up and usually it feels like I have a little herd of dogs all going outside, everyone tinkles and comes back in and it just felt like so few dogs yesterday-the yard seemed empty. Then I got breakfast ready and had to stop and put out just four bowls, the counter seemed so empty with a big empty space where Cherry's bowl always sits while I get it ready for her to eat. I got ready to go outside and train and usually that is sort of an aggravating time because I could not have all the dogs out to train because they would get too excited and they would get into tiffs-about the only time they would have tiffs, so it was a production to get everyone ready to go out and train, but yesterday it was very quiet, not nearly as much excitement and we just went out to train. I got home from the store and Cherry is always allowed loose in the house, so I walked in the door and the house was just quiet, no little wiggly body to say hello. While I worked in the kitchen the little bed she liked to lay in and watch me while I worked seemed so empty, just a thousand little things seemed so quiet yesterday. Holes all through the day. At the end of the day when Cherry always cuddled with me to watch TV (and try to lick me while I would try to keep her from licking me too much, LOL, our own little game, hahahaha) she would get her stretches and massages-- I did Breezes stretches and massages last night and it just seemed to go so fast-there was no one else that needed their nightly stretches...I forced Breeze to stay and watch TV with me-then she was missing Cherry because Cherry likes to sit with me in the evening where Breeze would really rather not ;-). I looked at the sliding glass door that Cherry had a weird habit of licking, so it is filthy to about five feet high, how did she do that??? Anyway, looking at the filthy window I thought I should clean it today because it will stay clean, but I could not bring myself to do it yesterday... maybe today? Anyway, I know Cherry is safe and happy and things will be ok but I it takes time for things to settle in and the holes that are empty to fill.

Cherry

Well, we had a big change in our little house today. Cherry has been with us just a few weeks short of a year, originally she came to us to do some rehab after she had an FHO, and she has done amazing. She looks totally normal and moves really nicely almost all of the time now. Over the year we have come to really love Cherry, she is one of the nicest, easiest dogs. She doesn't nuisance bark, she doesn't counter surf, she never has accidents, she doesn't get into things she shouldn't, she loves everyone, she loves to listen and always tries to please, but at the same time that dog LOVES to learn and to work and has a heck of a lot of drive and is obsessed with toys, especially balls. She is a very fun and easy dog. I do not think you could find a dog that was closer to perfect. I would love for her to be our forever dog but she belongs to Contact Point Agility, and it was time for her to go back to have puppies. So today was the day that I brought her back. I cried most of the way there and that was a really hard drive to look in her little eyes and know she would not be "ours" anymore, but I felt much better when I saw how happy she was to see everyone and she is very at home there because she spent her first two years there-she looked happy. I will look forward to hearing how she is doing and following her progress, and luckily we will get to visit her. Karen -her owner took this picture today when we brought her back. Isn't she a pretty girl?

OUCH!!

I have to wine today, so sorry but.....

I keep forgetting agility can be a contact sport! I must be getting old, but I have not slept in nights because in the middle of the night my knee just has shooting pains and wakes me up and I can not do anything to make it feel better so I usually get up and go outside and play with the dogs, the neighbors probably think I am batty playing ball in the middle of the night. So today I am out practicing the teeter and used one of my patented graceful moves and tripped over a sandbag (in retrospect it would have been good to pick that up before I practiced), and just went skidding along the ground, so now my formerly bad knee is really a doubly bad knee and is three times the size it was and all bloddy, my boob will never be the same-I almost got a reduction the hard way and my elbow looks like hamburger, and my hair is full of dirt, my shorts and shirt are torn, can someone remind me why I do this??? I must have been a site and I am just grateful there was no one with any video equipment there.

I was proud of myself though because Breeze has been having teeter issues and she was running up the teeter beside me when I went down....so all I could think of was that I could not scare her, so I was able to keep my wits and yell, YES, good girl and throw the toy, or actually I think the toy just flew from my hand.....but what ever, it ended up where it should go. So no harm to the dog was done, LOL. I am sure she thought it was just another weird proofing thing.

Note to self, get padding for the back yard practice area, hard packed dirt with a little sand on top is a footing that hurts when ya fall, especially if ya skid.

An Afternoon at the Movies

whoops! I think it is going to get hot in the next few days, and I am not sure I am ready for it! I spent the afternoon at the movies-I saw UP, which was very sweet and had a great message. I love the little doggie that has a collar that lets him speak--the man walks out and sees the dog and the dog says something to the effect of "I was hiding under the porch because I LOVE YOU", aww...at the time the guy really did not seem to like the dog or want him around, but it just seems such a typical dogggie, sweet thing, to just want to love you no matter how much of a jerk you can be to them! Then I LOVED when the dogs were all intense and really focusing on something and when someone would yell SQUIRREL, bam, no matter how much they were into concentrating on something they were all whipping their heads around to see the squirrel.

After a lot of steps backwards for Liz...FINALLY another step forward!

Perhaps a week of having to sit in her crate and watch Breeze do agility class made it look much more fun to Lizzie to stay with me and actually do agility instead of trying to run off??? All I know is this week in Deanna's class I actually had a dog to work with. I got in the yard and Lizzie was paying attention and able to do her tricks so I did the first sequence with her. It was a sequence with some treadles, a lot of turns and collection--and I have to say she did great. The next sequence she did OK with but about half way through the course she deceided to run wander around a bit, so I did not want to give her a chance to run off because I saw where that was going, so I IMMEDIATELY got her and put her in the crate, which was very close- which helped with the dramatic effect of putting her away. I grabbed Breeze and played with her (I had not warmed her up so I could not run the sequence with her, but I got a good game going!). A few minutes later it was Lizzie's turn and we had a dog back again. Her 2020 contact on the Aframe was gorgeous...although then she kept wanting to go back to the Aframe because we had prebaited a target when she had taken the Aframe before..... Breeze of course did amazing. Breeze's Aframe contact was looking pretty good last night.

The greatest thing was that it is still cool wheather wise here. It is so unusual for this time of the year that it is not blazing hot until midnight, but I am really enjoying it because I know soon we will be hammered by scortching temperatures. The dogs love this weather for agility, and have to say...so do I.

Moe Srenfel Seminar

I was lucky enough to get to go with my friend Denise to the Moe Strenfel seminar on Saturday. This was a seminar on Foundation work and I really enjoyed it. First off it was held at a persons home that was gorgeous, they have the prettiest agility yard-I could have moved to that agility yard and lived there and been happy I think. The day was cool, which is not the usual for this time of the year here, just cool enough that I needed to put on a sweater a couple of times during the day, PERFECT weather. There were some other fun people at the seminar which never hurts and some very cute puppies-so it definately had the makings for a really great day!

As far as the seminar, I think it is very safe to say it seems Moe feels very strongly about foundation for dogs/puppies being very important. She said that her dogs do not see equipment for their first year but get lots of foundation work and then once they get on equipment after a year things go fast and they progress very well due to their strong foundation.

One thing I really found awesome and interesting was how she talked about raising your puppy so they are excited about exploring and playing. She said you should not be raising your puppy to stay out of things and be the traditional "good" puppy if you want a good player and a really good performance dog. You should manage the environment so you do NOT have to be telling the puppy to leave things alone, or not to get into things because that discourages them playing and investigating things and can dampen the toy drive. Using xpens, baby gates, and putting things up lets your puppy really learn to explore and play and feel like that is a good thing.

The whole theme of the seminar seemed to be that you should find your chosen handling system-she uses Greg Darretts handling system (I am using Linda M's), and make sure all the teaching and foundation you do with your puppy is true to your system so everything the dog learns is consistent and will make sense to the dog. The first parts of the seminar addressed lots of flat work, and I really enjoyed seeing how she does flat work-I have read a lot of books but it was great to see someone really demonstrate flat work well, and Moe was great about explaining how each of the exercises had a purpose and was designed to teach things. LIKE..when she did an exercise where you put a plate with food on one side of you, the dog on the other and click/feed the dog for looking ahead, and the dog is not supposed to go to the food until you move and point your body to the plate-she feels this teaches the dog to not go on off courses because no matter how much the pup wants something, say a tunnel, the pup needs to wait until they are given permission to go to the desired object. She uses games and little exercises to teach the dog to listen to body movement, decelerations, accelerations, etc...

I found her methods to be very respectful of the dog, she talked a lot about making sure the dog was comfortable and not stressing the dog out. Even when she was working with the participants if a dog did not look totally comfortable she would immediately tell the owner to put the dog back because it was not worth stressing the dog out.

The last section of her seminar was a section I really liked because it is something we have worked with a lot at our house and that is doing things to make sure your dog is physically fit. She uses wobble boards, and she showed us where she used a 9" cone filled with cement with a wobble board on top, so of course I had to do that when I got home--I posted a LONG video of that, LOL, but that stuff is just so good for the dogs and so fun. She also uses stools, and exercise balls, exercise discs, and she brought a lot of her implements for everyone to practice on.

So the videos she recommended for raising your puppies are Susan Garretts Crate games, a personal favorite, Wendy Papes Games video-another personal favorite, Click and Fetch, On the Ball-Deborah Gross Saunders, Pilate for Pooches-Sarah Johnson and Andrew Sams.

THIS IS BREEZE, THEN LIZZIE, THEN CHERRY DOING THE WOBBLE BOARD ON A 9" CONE FILLED WITH CEMENT-SO IT REALLY ROCKS AND ROLLS-the balance work really helps with core strength which protects the dogs back which I feel like helps protect the hips, knees, etc. Another benefit is the dogs that learn to ride the ball or the boards learn to relax their joints which helps them to relax their joints on equipment so they are less prone to injuries, and of course their balance is better so again they are less likely to injure themselves, and it can be fun!

Liz contact progress

We still need some work but Lizzie is finally got the idea of her 2o2o contacts-she is a retrain from the 4 on the floor and I have learned that retrains are HARD! The distressing part of the practice was Lizzie totally not understanding to stay on one side, dancing, twirling and cutting behind me, we had to do tons of call to side work. We do so much work using the Linda M. jump book page 24...my poor page 24 is going to be totally worn out.

My all time FAVORITE training course...so far...

I am teaching the agility class where I usually take classes....and things were sort of messed up, the contact obstacles were not at the yard which sort of messed up some of the plans for the class, it was a cool, cloudy day and I just deceided to do something that I thought would work for everyone and would be a lot of fun for me. The basic class plan that was left for the class was very similar but it did not have the tunnels, so I took some license and changed things a little. I have played with this particular basic box type set up a little before, but I love it, it is very simple but you can train so many skills with not that much equipment and without moving around a lot of stuff. Then it gives you a great place for the dogs to go with the tunnels at the end, so it works to build speed, motivation, or to test things like the weave poles coming out of a tunnel with a lot of whoo hoo factor and a lot of speed.

So with the first class that has the youngest dogs I was able to really walk with them and help them get some front crosses and I will say they all got their front crosses in and did marvelous. Even the youngest dog was able to just back chain small parts and ended up sequencing four obstacles with a front cross in there. I was very proud of them all. It worked great because I held the dogs before the first tunnel to start out with so they could get set up for their front crosses and practice them, then we were able to put the whole first sequence together.

The second class is a class with some more experienced people and we were able to start out helping one dog with speed and motivation by just making a huge speed circle and rewarding often, then we were able to work on a variety of skills. That was a small class so I was able to run Breeze in that class and we had a blast. I rarely get to participate in the class when I am teaching and when I taught last summer I felt like I missed out on so much of my own training time, so it was REALLY COOL to be able to work in the class today-I LOVED that!

WHEW! Teaching the class makes for a very long day, I had to take my daughter to get a tooth filled at 1 pm, and then left for class around 3, but it is a long drive there so by the time we had the two classes, with the drive, set up and clean up, I got home around 11:30.