I think I am one of the luckiest girls around lately, I have got to go to a LOT of seminars and I am really enjoying the seminars. Heck I have not got to trial more then once because of the seminar schedule but what the heck I do not always get this many seminar opportunities so I feel like I have got to enjoy it as much as I can.
I meant to get a little video of some of the things we learned from the Rachel Sanders seminar last weekend....but with the Monday Holiday and me going out of town starting tomorrow, it just did not happen, so maybe next week.
Rachel was AWESOME as always.....she has such a way of breaking things down so you can really get how to handle something, and this seminar focused in on how to blend cues, your forward cues, your turning cues etc....
I really want to make a video of some of the fun stuff, Rachel was working on some of those flashy, sexy looking handling moves, it was a lot of fun so I will get on it the first of next week. Although maybe we will not be able to still do them by next week, LOL.
SOOOOO guess where I get to go this weekend??? Friday I am attending a Foundation seminar with Stacy Peardot Goudy at one of my favorite seminar venues, and Saturday Stacy is doing a Masters handling seminar which I get to audit. Friday night we all have a dinner out planned, and I am going to stay over so I feel like I am heading out for a vacation.
The only thing that is like a dark cloud over my little vacation is the predictions of light rain on Friday and TORRENTIAL DOWNPOURS all Saturday, .....of course this is an outdoor seminar;-).
Sooooo totally non agility, non dog related.....I have been looking around trying to decide what type of phone I should get because it is time to upgrade. Well, it was time we could have upgraded MONTHS ago but I could not decide if I wanted to stick with my basic phone or step up to the smart phones....I do like me some apps, and I know I would have a lot of fun with a smart phone but I am basically pretty cheap and that is a lot of extra money over a year for the extra data.
I had to go out of town to the vet yesterday.....and stopped at Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga where they have an Apple store. The girls and I had a great lunch then strolled into the Apple store.
I am sorry but I am a desert small town girl and I have never bought anything from somewhere like the Apple store so that was really something else.
The closest I have come to an experience like that is buying Build A Bears for the girls. If you have not done that that is an experience too, and a lot of the appeal is just the experience of buying your bear.
So at the Apple store I was just gazing longingly at the iphones-the 4s's of course and a salesperson came and answered a few questions saying earlier in the day they were out of the phones I wanted, but she would check, so I look away and look back and ask her if it looks like they have any and she shows me the box. WHAT??? It was like it magically appeared.
Next the salesperson says do you want your iphone to have a little jacket and she helped me pick out a protective case so my iphone would be protected. When you pick out your build a bear you pick out a bear and then go and they stuff it in front of you, you take your bear to all the stations and dress and comb your bear and put all their accessories on. Next my iphone just like the bear got all her little car chargers, screen protector, so it would look just so.
At Build a Bear you take a golden heart and say a promise to take care of your bear as you toss the heart into your bear and they sew the bear up. At the iphone store they break the plastic seal but wait for you to be the actual one to open it and you have to be the first one to turn it on, LOL, too cute. Then another associate transfers all your data from the old phone to the new phone and breathes the life into the new phone. You never even go to a register. It was surreal how I was just asking about the phone and then seconds later it seemed the transaction was complete, I had not totally decided yet but there she was..my new white 4S 16GB iphone, LOL.
So far I am having a lot of fun, it is too trippy to get my emails at the grocery store and I love the texting. I am all signed up for a class in using my new phone next week but gosh I have it all loaded with music and apps already.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Modern Communiction is so AMAZING, ...until it is not, ;-)
Ever think it feels like you are under some weird black cloud....well, this weekend I think I was not meant to use communication...
The first weird thing is that I was doing my last blog entry and trying to look at blogs and this message pops up that says my blog and my email have been yanked off the web. There was a small message that says I should review the terms of service because that could be why my accounts were all yanked off the web.
I read the terms of service and it basically said that if you were posting mature content information it needed to be labeled as such.....I did not think my blog fit into that in any way????
They then suggested if you were posting heavy duty pornographic content you could be yanked....wow, I had talked about Crickets urine PH but I really did not think that fit into that category.....
The last category was that you were not allowed to say do things like talk about your ex wife and say all sorts of really nasty things and perhaps suggest people go visit her.....well, I don't think my blog qualified in that category either.....although recently I did get accused by someone in the local dog club that my blog was a vehicle of hate about the club, LOL, I never did understand what she was talking about and I do not think that anyone would have been yanking my blog for that type of infraction-unless that particular lady had got a job yanking offending blogs off the net.
I mentally reviewed any blogs I had recently read or responded too and I did not THINK I said anything offensive, I sure did not mean to offend if I did...
So having ruled out an infraction of the terms of service, I filled out the form that just said if you disagree with what we did you can fill out this form that asked what you were doing when the problem happened and HOW TO GET AHOLD OF YOU SINCE ALL THE EMAIL ACCOUNTS HAD BEEN PULLED OFF THE WEB. LOL, YIKES! No hint of when they would get ahold of anyone, or if they would or what the next step was if the problem persisted.
The next day I got a simple form email saying sorry for the inconvenience, and my accounts were back on the web. How odd is that??? I guess we should feel safe because if they want to yank everything you have off the net they can do it very efficiently in the blink of an eye. On the bright side it was cool they got it fixed on the weekend, I was thinking given that it did not seem there was a lot of info on how to dispute the problem or find out what happened, I was sure I would have to wait until a business day for someone to figure out a mistake had been made.
The day of the Internet terms of service incident....I was at a seminar and had been texting on my way there, but when I tried to call my kids my cell phone kept saying there was no service. Humm, well, I thought we must be in some cell black hole until much later in the day when I realized the person sitting next to me had been texting and checking her email all day and had the same carrier. WEIRD!!! It felt like I was just not meant to be connected to the world this weekend....
Turns out my hubby decided to get me a new phone and they disconnected my old phone without anyone telling me while I was hours away from home going through the desert and some pretty deserted roads late at night, ughghghghgh. The new phone is an older model of the phone that I knew there were some issues with...., so we had to return it and no one has been able to reactivate my old phone....for two days now.
The first weird thing is that I was doing my last blog entry and trying to look at blogs and this message pops up that says my blog and my email have been yanked off the web. There was a small message that says I should review the terms of service because that could be why my accounts were all yanked off the web.
I read the terms of service and it basically said that if you were posting mature content information it needed to be labeled as such.....I did not think my blog fit into that in any way????
They then suggested if you were posting heavy duty pornographic content you could be yanked....wow, I had talked about Crickets urine PH but I really did not think that fit into that category.....
The last category was that you were not allowed to say do things like talk about your ex wife and say all sorts of really nasty things and perhaps suggest people go visit her.....well, I don't think my blog qualified in that category either.....although recently I did get accused by someone in the local dog club that my blog was a vehicle of hate about the club, LOL, I never did understand what she was talking about and I do not think that anyone would have been yanking my blog for that type of infraction-unless that particular lady had got a job yanking offending blogs off the net.
I mentally reviewed any blogs I had recently read or responded too and I did not THINK I said anything offensive, I sure did not mean to offend if I did...
So having ruled out an infraction of the terms of service, I filled out the form that just said if you disagree with what we did you can fill out this form that asked what you were doing when the problem happened and HOW TO GET AHOLD OF YOU SINCE ALL THE EMAIL ACCOUNTS HAD BEEN PULLED OFF THE WEB. LOL, YIKES! No hint of when they would get ahold of anyone, or if they would or what the next step was if the problem persisted.
The next day I got a simple form email saying sorry for the inconvenience, and my accounts were back on the web. How odd is that??? I guess we should feel safe because if they want to yank everything you have off the net they can do it very efficiently in the blink of an eye. On the bright side it was cool they got it fixed on the weekend, I was thinking given that it did not seem there was a lot of info on how to dispute the problem or find out what happened, I was sure I would have to wait until a business day for someone to figure out a mistake had been made.
The day of the Internet terms of service incident....I was at a seminar and had been texting on my way there, but when I tried to call my kids my cell phone kept saying there was no service. Humm, well, I thought we must be in some cell black hole until much later in the day when I realized the person sitting next to me had been texting and checking her email all day and had the same carrier. WEIRD!!! It felt like I was just not meant to be connected to the world this weekend....
Turns out my hubby decided to get me a new phone and they disconnected my old phone without anyone telling me while I was hours away from home going through the desert and some pretty deserted roads late at night, ughghghghgh. The new phone is an older model of the phone that I knew there were some issues with...., so we had to return it and no one has been able to reactivate my old phone....for two days now.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Poor Cricket does not like poor quality dog food, and Trying a New Way to Get Dog Food in the New Year ;-)
We have had some food woes to start our New Years off with! I have fed my dogs raw for YEARS now, but, last month with the holidays coming up, I was having trouble doing the drive to get one of my staple foods-chicken backs and necks from a restaurant supply store. For a few weeks I was giving the dogs some kibble that I had around the house, I had used the kibble for training and it said GRAIN FREE, so how could it not be a nice high quality kibble? I was still giving the dogs meat and bones in the evening but just for breakfast they got kibble, with some eggs, or yogurt or assorted things like that.
Well, Cricket was just acting funny and lots of dogs were acting funny around her, so a friend had suggested I check for a urinary tract infection because in her experience sometimes when dogs were overly interested in a girl, it might be that she had an infection....
I took Cricket in and her urine had a very high pH, and lots of crystals and lots of gunk. Ughghghg. The vet was pretty sure it was the kibble. Turns out I was using the Costco Natures Domain-Grain Free, I generally trust Costco products.., it was a good price and I guess I equated grain free with really good. Looking closer at the label there is a lot of potato, which the vet felt could cause the problems. The other dogs seem fine but gosh figures how many people feed crap for years and years and their dogs are just fine, but I slack off for a couple of weeks, and we get problems, LOL.
Oddly enough the vet had me give Cricket cranberry, that is not so odd..vitamin C to change the ph, still not so odd...but she wanted me to use pool PH strips and test the PH of her urine and keep track of what it was at different times. So if the neighbors did not already think I am a FREAK, they are now treated to me following my dog with a shallow dish and collecting her urine at all hours of the day and night. Yep I am SURE the neighbors have no clue what to think of me at this point. OOH well.
MR CHEWY-HOW I GOT ORIGINS DOG FOOD SHIPPED RIGHT TO MY DOOR WITH NO SHIPPING COSTS...
Right about the time I was questioning my dog food I got a coupon from a company that I had not heard of before. Mr. Chewy http://www.mrchewy.com/ I thought it was really neat because they had some of the foods that we just can not get in our town I use Origin's dog food for training a lot and for occasional mornings when I don't have anything else to feed, but I usually had to get it when I was in one of the bigger cities around here. I used my coupon for ordering some Origin dog food. They have cat food, some pet supplies,a bunch of treats,cat litter and it even says they offer prescription pet foods, who knew????
I was really curious about how it would work...I ordered the food and in about a week it arrived (it seems the company is on the East coast so I think it took a little longer to get all the way our here), the bag was inside a box, and I think Fed Ex delivered it. I ordered some treats and they came in a different box about a day later. They offer free shipping on any order over $49, I thought that was pretty cool because one has to wonder how much the shipping cost of a 40 lb bag of dog food would be??
So...it looks like you can set up a regular shipment and get your food on a schedule which would be really nice if that was your source of dog or cat food....
The best thing I saw on their web site was that on your first order the company will donate $10 to an animal charity-North Shore Animal League http://www.animalleague.org/ , Best Friends Animal Society http://www.bestfriends.org/, or Bidawee http://www.bideawee.org/
IN ADDITION IF YOU ORDER FROM MR. CHEWY AND USE A REFERRAL CODE...They will donate $10 to the above charities and GIVE YOU A 10% DISCOUNT. You can choose any of those charities to get the $10 donation or ask that Mr. Chewy splits it between the three charities. So the referral code is MOCH2275--and I don't think I get anything from anyone using that code, but you will get your 10% off!
Well, Cricket was just acting funny and lots of dogs were acting funny around her, so a friend had suggested I check for a urinary tract infection because in her experience sometimes when dogs were overly interested in a girl, it might be that she had an infection....
I took Cricket in and her urine had a very high pH, and lots of crystals and lots of gunk. Ughghghg. The vet was pretty sure it was the kibble. Turns out I was using the Costco Natures Domain-Grain Free, I generally trust Costco products.., it was a good price and I guess I equated grain free with really good. Looking closer at the label there is a lot of potato, which the vet felt could cause the problems. The other dogs seem fine but gosh figures how many people feed crap for years and years and their dogs are just fine, but I slack off for a couple of weeks, and we get problems, LOL.
Oddly enough the vet had me give Cricket cranberry, that is not so odd..vitamin C to change the ph, still not so odd...but she wanted me to use pool PH strips and test the PH of her urine and keep track of what it was at different times. So if the neighbors did not already think I am a FREAK, they are now treated to me following my dog with a shallow dish and collecting her urine at all hours of the day and night. Yep I am SURE the neighbors have no clue what to think of me at this point. OOH well.
MR CHEWY-HOW I GOT ORIGINS DOG FOOD SHIPPED RIGHT TO MY DOOR WITH NO SHIPPING COSTS...
Right about the time I was questioning my dog food I got a coupon from a company that I had not heard of before. Mr. Chewy http://www.mrchewy.com/ I thought it was really neat because they had some of the foods that we just can not get in our town I use Origin's dog food for training a lot and for occasional mornings when I don't have anything else to feed, but I usually had to get it when I was in one of the bigger cities around here. I used my coupon for ordering some Origin dog food. They have cat food, some pet supplies,a bunch of treats,cat litter and it even says they offer prescription pet foods, who knew????
I was really curious about how it would work...I ordered the food and in about a week it arrived (it seems the company is on the East coast so I think it took a little longer to get all the way our here), the bag was inside a box, and I think Fed Ex delivered it. I ordered some treats and they came in a different box about a day later. They offer free shipping on any order over $49, I thought that was pretty cool because one has to wonder how much the shipping cost of a 40 lb bag of dog food would be??
So...it looks like you can set up a regular shipment and get your food on a schedule which would be really nice if that was your source of dog or cat food....
The best thing I saw on their web site was that on your first order the company will donate $10 to an animal charity-North Shore Animal League http://www.animalleague.org/ , Best Friends Animal Society http://www.bestfriends.org/, or Bidawee http://www.bideawee.org/
IN ADDITION IF YOU ORDER FROM MR. CHEWY AND USE A REFERRAL CODE...They will donate $10 to the above charities and GIVE YOU A 10% DISCOUNT. You can choose any of those charities to get the $10 donation or ask that Mr. Chewy splits it between the three charities. So the referral code is MOCH2275--and I don't think I get anything from anyone using that code, but you will get your 10% off!
Saturday, January 7, 2012
some Trial Photos
I trialed with Breeze for about a year before there was a photographer at a trial, so how lucky was it that there was not only a photographer at Crickets first trial but she got a bunch of pictures of her. Dynamic Dogs Photo did a GREAT job!
The picture of her hanging onto that table was neat because Cricket has always done a lot of sliding off the table in practice-she drives onto it and loves it but is still trying to figure out how to work to hold onto it once she hits the table, LOL, I keep trying to play games so she figures that out. As I was watching the sequence up to the table had the dogs building a lot of speed, this one was two jumps to her running aframe straight to the table, so she was going fast, dog after dog had skidded off the table, so I thought there was about a 50% chance Cricket was going to stick the table, but she did! Looking at that picture and the video she worked hard, she is just such a good girl.
Check out the tongue, LOL, what a character!
The picture of her hanging onto that table was neat because Cricket has always done a lot of sliding off the table in practice-she drives onto it and loves it but is still trying to figure out how to work to hold onto it once she hits the table, LOL, I keep trying to play games so she figures that out. As I was watching the sequence up to the table had the dogs building a lot of speed, this one was two jumps to her running aframe straight to the table, so she was going fast, dog after dog had skidded off the table, so I thought there was about a 50% chance Cricket was going to stick the table, but she did! Looking at that picture and the video she worked hard, she is just such a good girl.
Check out the tongue, LOL, what a character!
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Crickets first trial, SECOND day!!!
FINAL TRIAL STATs:
Saturday:
Novice B Standard-Judge: Susan McClair
Distance: 126 yards SCT: 64 seconds
Score 90 (Q) Time 43:09 seconds 2ND PLACE
Novice B Jumpers With Weaves- Judge: Mark Upshaw
Distance 98 yards SCT: 36 seconds
Elminated time: 18:02--1 DROPPED BAR
How funny I never checked our scores on the first trial day- Sunday-I knew we had bobbles so I just went home and never bothered to look. I got home and was in bed and it hit me THIS IS NOVICE, you are allowed a few bobbles, so when I got back the next day I found I almost did not pick up my FIRST RIBBONS!!! WHat was I thinking.
SUNDAY:
Novice B JWW-Judge: Susan McClair
Distance: 93 yards SCT: 34 seconds
Score: 100 (Q) Time 22:49 seconds FIRST PLACE
Novice B Standard Judge: Mark Upshaw
Distance: 130 yards SCT 65 seconds
Eliminated time: 39:43 Teeter flyoff
Well, our first trial is history now. We were back Monday for our second day. Monday was pretty light at the trial and I left the house thinking I had plenty of time to get to Woodley Park, in Van Nuys where the trial was-about 2 hours from my house.....BUT I was not thinking and we had to go right through Pasadena where the Rose Parade was just about to let out. I knew I would never make it to the trial if the parade let out before I got past that point so I was sweating that, but we made it. I could see the parade from some over passes as I drove by ;-).
It was like mid 80's and I live in Southern CA but this time of year I was really not used to that temp, so it really felt HOT.
Cricket was a little more excited, and I do think we are out of the woods yet with start line "issues" I would not be suprised because I could feel Cricket getting more and more anxious. Cricket did hold her start line, she got all her contacts, except her teeter she thought was a dog walk so she FLEW off it. I had one point in jumpers where I think I was admiring my dog and did not get my butt moving so Cricket spun around to see what I was up to.
It was a lot more fun to be running with my girl then I had thought it would be, she was such a good girl....well, except how she jumped on every table, every person and lunged into the ring netting and got her head stuck and pulled it down, she was a bit on the excited side most of the day.
Not sure what is going on with the video but if it does not play the link for the video is http://youtu.be/cZUrxULuJjs
it does not seem to work with IE but it does with firefox, if you can not see the trial videos and are dying to, you can email me at mochos@charter.net and I will email you the link!
I got some GREAT Pictures, check it out, a first trial with all runs I was happy with, 2 Qs and a photographer that got lots of great pictures, some really pretty ribbons, what more could I have asked for????
Saturday:
Novice B Standard-Judge: Susan McClair
Distance: 126 yards SCT: 64 seconds
Score 90 (Q) Time 43:09 seconds 2ND PLACE
Novice B Jumpers With Weaves- Judge: Mark Upshaw
Distance 98 yards SCT: 36 seconds
Elminated time: 18:02--1 DROPPED BAR
How funny I never checked our scores on the first trial day- Sunday-I knew we had bobbles so I just went home and never bothered to look. I got home and was in bed and it hit me THIS IS NOVICE, you are allowed a few bobbles, so when I got back the next day I found I almost did not pick up my FIRST RIBBONS!!! WHat was I thinking.
SUNDAY:
Novice B JWW-Judge: Susan McClair
Distance: 93 yards SCT: 34 seconds
Score: 100 (Q) Time 22:49 seconds FIRST PLACE
Novice B Standard Judge: Mark Upshaw
Distance: 130 yards SCT 65 seconds
Eliminated time: 39:43 Teeter flyoff
Well, our first trial is history now. We were back Monday for our second day. Monday was pretty light at the trial and I left the house thinking I had plenty of time to get to Woodley Park, in Van Nuys where the trial was-about 2 hours from my house.....BUT I was not thinking and we had to go right through Pasadena where the Rose Parade was just about to let out. I knew I would never make it to the trial if the parade let out before I got past that point so I was sweating that, but we made it. I could see the parade from some over passes as I drove by ;-).
It was like mid 80's and I live in Southern CA but this time of year I was really not used to that temp, so it really felt HOT.
Cricket was a little more excited, and I do think we are out of the woods yet with start line "issues" I would not be suprised because I could feel Cricket getting more and more anxious. Cricket did hold her start line, she got all her contacts, except her teeter she thought was a dog walk so she FLEW off it. I had one point in jumpers where I think I was admiring my dog and did not get my butt moving so Cricket spun around to see what I was up to.
It was a lot more fun to be running with my girl then I had thought it would be, she was such a good girl....well, except how she jumped on every table, every person and lunged into the ring netting and got her head stuck and pulled it down, she was a bit on the excited side most of the day.
Not sure what is going on with the video but if it does not play the link for the video is http://youtu.be/cZUrxULuJjs
it does not seem to work with IE but it does with firefox, if you can not see the trial videos and are dying to, you can email me at mochos@charter.net and I will email you the link!
I got some GREAT Pictures, check it out, a first trial with all runs I was happy with, 2 Qs and a photographer that got lots of great pictures, some really pretty ribbons, what more could I have asked for????
Sunday, January 1, 2012
GUESS WHAT WE DID TODAY.........CRICKETS FIRST TRIAL EVER!!!!
TALK about a RED LETTER way to start a year, you all get TWO blog posts in two days, just want everyone to take note of that feat!!! LOL. Sorry my computer ran out of memory and did not fully process the video so I thought it was ok and posted it, but then had to take that one down, throw away all I could on my computer and then redo the whole thing,so if you got some error messages when you tried to look..that is why.
I know I can be very wordy, so it might be hard to read my post so I am going to try to keep this short so that the star of the day can be spot lighted.
Only two people in the world knew what we were doing today, my friend Denise who is the best support team ever, and Rachel Sanders because she asked when we would do our first trial.
I put a lot of pressure on myself and the time leading up to the trial I would sort of shake, and my breath would come fast and shallow when I thought of entering the trial, I can be a big basket case so I did not want to talk about it a lot before the big day. I was worried about myself, it is so hard to run with my foot which is finally feeling better just the last few days, but I am so insanely out of shape that it is embarrassing. Of course in the last three weeks I tried to smash a full year of fitness to get into shape but it does not happen in three weeks. Not running around all fall because of my foot really has not helped me a lot.
So today I got up and knew this would be Crickets first day at a real trial. We have not done a full course since last spring when we did a fun match. Cricket has not been to a trial since last spring. Cricket was a freak when we got to the trial, walking to get her measured she was lunging and jumping on EVERYONE. She was so over the top I thought this might really end in a horrible train wreck. Unbelievably it was insanely hot for a January day, and our run was not until late in the day. There was a miscommunication and I have been working Cricket at 20 in and had to run her at 16 inches,(I don't know what I was thinking....), and I do not think that helped us but....
After we ran I was sooooo happy, I am not sure I know we did not qualify in JWW (dropped bar) and I am pretty sure we did not in Standard, but we had rock solid stays at the start line, whooo hooo. We had BEAUTIFUL weaves and I did not have to babysit the entries. The standard weave entry was after the long jump to a 180 turn to the weaves but she did it.
HER CONTACTS WERE AWESOME, how cool is that?
I messed up and gave too many forward cues at the start of standard and caused a wrong course and when Cricket came out of the tunnel I did not make contact with her and cue the teeter so she raced past it. Not perfect but boy I will take that as a first trial day any day, I am very happy and proud of my girl.
The only thing that cast a small dark cloud on the day was when I was getting ready to go and Breeze thought she was going. She has been the only trialing dog for a long time but now that she is pretty much retired, she had to stay home, the end of that era made me a little sad ;-(, but I had to take a deep breath and not take away from Crickets day.....
I know I can be very wordy, so it might be hard to read my post so I am going to try to keep this short so that the star of the day can be spot lighted.
Only two people in the world knew what we were doing today, my friend Denise who is the best support team ever, and Rachel Sanders because she asked when we would do our first trial.
I put a lot of pressure on myself and the time leading up to the trial I would sort of shake, and my breath would come fast and shallow when I thought of entering the trial, I can be a big basket case so I did not want to talk about it a lot before the big day. I was worried about myself, it is so hard to run with my foot which is finally feeling better just the last few days, but I am so insanely out of shape that it is embarrassing. Of course in the last three weeks I tried to smash a full year of fitness to get into shape but it does not happen in three weeks. Not running around all fall because of my foot really has not helped me a lot.
So today I got up and knew this would be Crickets first day at a real trial. We have not done a full course since last spring when we did a fun match. Cricket has not been to a trial since last spring. Cricket was a freak when we got to the trial, walking to get her measured she was lunging and jumping on EVERYONE. She was so over the top I thought this might really end in a horrible train wreck. Unbelievably it was insanely hot for a January day, and our run was not until late in the day. There was a miscommunication and I have been working Cricket at 20 in and had to run her at 16 inches,(I don't know what I was thinking....), and I do not think that helped us but....
After we ran I was sooooo happy, I am not sure I know we did not qualify in JWW (dropped bar) and I am pretty sure we did not in Standard, but we had rock solid stays at the start line, whooo hooo. We had BEAUTIFUL weaves and I did not have to babysit the entries. The standard weave entry was after the long jump to a 180 turn to the weaves but she did it.
HER CONTACTS WERE AWESOME, how cool is that?
I messed up and gave too many forward cues at the start of standard and caused a wrong course and when Cricket came out of the tunnel I did not make contact with her and cue the teeter so she raced past it. Not perfect but boy I will take that as a first trial day any day, I am very happy and proud of my girl.
The only thing that cast a small dark cloud on the day was when I was getting ready to go and Breeze thought she was going. She has been the only trialing dog for a long time but now that she is pretty much retired, she had to stay home, the end of that era made me a little sad ;-(, but I had to take a deep breath and not take away from Crickets day.....
Saturday, December 31, 2011
HAPPY NEW YEAR and some more on Aframe lesson with Rachel Sanders
HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!
I hope 2012 if full of new adventures and great surprises for everyone!
BOY, do I have a list of resolutions. I have been working on some goal setting programs, and there is sure room for improvement for me in that area. One thing I have been having trouble with is posting to my blog.
I promised awhile back to post about my running aframe and what I learned from Rachel Saunders during our private lesson.
Going back to when I was teaching Breeze a four on the floor, when that method first came out....I trained that and actually feel like we did a great job with it. Of course we did it before the second round of articles Ann Croft put out so a bunch of the things she addressed in the second round of articles were training issues that I had messed up with and had to figure out how to fix them.
When I started Crickets contacts I wanted to try a running aframe. I wish I had not wasted so much time going back and forth and had just went for it, but doing a running aframe was a bit scary for me. I am a slow runner, I feel like I have so many skills to learn as far as handling which will make the running aframe a little harder perhaps, and I really had no one around me learning it at the same time. Just like the four on the floor with Breeze, there were a few parts of the running aframe training with Rachel's method that I feel like I did not fully understand. Rachel is releasing a second running aframe DVD very shortly that I think will address some of those things. You know if I understood a few things I would have been done with my aframe and moved on a LONG time ago and it would have caused me a lot less worry, LOL.
So as far as my lesson, I started out telling Rachel the saga of our running aframe and all the steps we had taken. I fully admitted we started with the box, and the grids on the ground, then back chained on the aframe to the box, then slowly raised the aframe. At a certain point Cricket was VERY consistent about putting her left front foot right on top of the "box", two hits but a little bit of a step with her foot above the box, so only three feet in the box.
The criteria for the aframe when the pvc box in place is....
1. four feet in the box--which means four feet in the contact zone
2. two hits on the aframe
3. FORWARD FOCUS
Well, I was very afraid to accept how Cricket was CONSISTENTLY doing the aframe because I did not want it to deteriorate and leave me wondering what to do once I broke down my original PVC box training.
Here is where I could have saved myself a lot of heart ache and time if I had just sent a video to Rachel and asked for some help. A few quick questions would have taken care of the problem and clarified things, if it took more then that I could have paid for her time, but I think most people who put out a method of training would really like to help people with quick questions rather then have their method twisted and messed up, LOL. In my case I know now Rachel would have said to take the pvc box off the aframe and to move on a long time ago-because Cricket was so consistent in how she chose to perform the aframe.
So the way I chose to fix the three foot problem was to put a stride regulator in place. I had to admit this to Rachel knowing she REALLY does not want to see a stride regulator used. I do not want to speak for her but my UNDERSTANDING is that even if you want to think of the pvc box as a stride regulator, it is a stride regulator with CRITERIA. The dog has a job and can work to do it. A stride regulator is just something that is trying to mechanically force a dog to do what you want. Hummmm, guess I see why the stride regulator was not a great idea, but truly it was the only way to get the behavior since Cricket was so used to sticking that one foot down BEFORE the PVC box it was a habit. The stride regulator did get the behavior.
After talking to Rachel I should have just taken the box off. The second thing I did not understand until after my lesson was that the criteria we used for the PVC box was for the PVC box, but once that box was off, the criteria for the aframe changed. Now with the box off it is perfectly acceptable to have three feet in the yellow as the criteria. If I need to put the box on then we go back to the four feet in the box as the criteria. I think before this I would have been way too fast to put that box back on, it should not be a crutch.
So as far as a lot of Crickets hits being rather high up in the contact zone Rachel said what I have heard Silvia Trkman say ....namely that as the dog gains confidence and relaxes into their running contact dogs with high hits will usually normally start hitting lower into the contact zone and so she thinks Crickets aframe will be fine. She also said that dogs that hit really far down into the contact zone will settle in and start hitting a little higher up, so you just have to sort of let them settle into how their performance will be as they gain confidence.
Rachel also said to make sure to help Cricket sort of settle and get ready for the aframe before she approaches it and for now to do everything I can to be out even with her or in front because she does not totally understand doing her aframe while I am decelerating behind her, so some good tips for when we do our first few trials. Rachel gave me hints about to look for that could still break down with our aframe, but said to send her a video and ask if any of those things started....so that was really nice of her.
It was sooo funny because when I told Rachel I had used a stride regulator she kept asking WHY would I do that? She was kidding that her next DVD was going to have a big picture of a stride regulator with a line through it for NO STRIDE REGULATORS. A little while later we were watching another dog work, a puppy starting his aframe and I was filming, we were having trouble seeing what his feet were doing so Rachel says hummmm, I need to think for a minute about what we want to do here....I said "Do you think we should stick on a stride regulator" LOL, good thing she has a great sense of humor!!!
Just a few min. of the first couple aframes we tried with the box...then we did some without the box and a few in sequences.
I hope 2012 if full of new adventures and great surprises for everyone!
BOY, do I have a list of resolutions. I have been working on some goal setting programs, and there is sure room for improvement for me in that area. One thing I have been having trouble with is posting to my blog.
I promised awhile back to post about my running aframe and what I learned from Rachel Saunders during our private lesson.
Going back to when I was teaching Breeze a four on the floor, when that method first came out....I trained that and actually feel like we did a great job with it. Of course we did it before the second round of articles Ann Croft put out so a bunch of the things she addressed in the second round of articles were training issues that I had messed up with and had to figure out how to fix them.
When I started Crickets contacts I wanted to try a running aframe. I wish I had not wasted so much time going back and forth and had just went for it, but doing a running aframe was a bit scary for me. I am a slow runner, I feel like I have so many skills to learn as far as handling which will make the running aframe a little harder perhaps, and I really had no one around me learning it at the same time. Just like the four on the floor with Breeze, there were a few parts of the running aframe training with Rachel's method that I feel like I did not fully understand. Rachel is releasing a second running aframe DVD very shortly that I think will address some of those things. You know if I understood a few things I would have been done with my aframe and moved on a LONG time ago and it would have caused me a lot less worry, LOL.
So as far as my lesson, I started out telling Rachel the saga of our running aframe and all the steps we had taken. I fully admitted we started with the box, and the grids on the ground, then back chained on the aframe to the box, then slowly raised the aframe. At a certain point Cricket was VERY consistent about putting her left front foot right on top of the "box", two hits but a little bit of a step with her foot above the box, so only three feet in the box.
The criteria for the aframe when the pvc box in place is....
1. four feet in the box--which means four feet in the contact zone
2. two hits on the aframe
3. FORWARD FOCUS
Well, I was very afraid to accept how Cricket was CONSISTENTLY doing the aframe because I did not want it to deteriorate and leave me wondering what to do once I broke down my original PVC box training.
Here is where I could have saved myself a lot of heart ache and time if I had just sent a video to Rachel and asked for some help. A few quick questions would have taken care of the problem and clarified things, if it took more then that I could have paid for her time, but I think most people who put out a method of training would really like to help people with quick questions rather then have their method twisted and messed up, LOL. In my case I know now Rachel would have said to take the pvc box off the aframe and to move on a long time ago-because Cricket was so consistent in how she chose to perform the aframe.
So the way I chose to fix the three foot problem was to put a stride regulator in place. I had to admit this to Rachel knowing she REALLY does not want to see a stride regulator used. I do not want to speak for her but my UNDERSTANDING is that even if you want to think of the pvc box as a stride regulator, it is a stride regulator with CRITERIA. The dog has a job and can work to do it. A stride regulator is just something that is trying to mechanically force a dog to do what you want. Hummmm, guess I see why the stride regulator was not a great idea, but truly it was the only way to get the behavior since Cricket was so used to sticking that one foot down BEFORE the PVC box it was a habit. The stride regulator did get the behavior.
After talking to Rachel I should have just taken the box off. The second thing I did not understand until after my lesson was that the criteria we used for the PVC box was for the PVC box, but once that box was off, the criteria for the aframe changed. Now with the box off it is perfectly acceptable to have three feet in the yellow as the criteria. If I need to put the box on then we go back to the four feet in the box as the criteria. I think before this I would have been way too fast to put that box back on, it should not be a crutch.
So as far as a lot of Crickets hits being rather high up in the contact zone Rachel said what I have heard Silvia Trkman say ....namely that as the dog gains confidence and relaxes into their running contact dogs with high hits will usually normally start hitting lower into the contact zone and so she thinks Crickets aframe will be fine. She also said that dogs that hit really far down into the contact zone will settle in and start hitting a little higher up, so you just have to sort of let them settle into how their performance will be as they gain confidence.
Rachel also said to make sure to help Cricket sort of settle and get ready for the aframe before she approaches it and for now to do everything I can to be out even with her or in front because she does not totally understand doing her aframe while I am decelerating behind her, so some good tips for when we do our first few trials. Rachel gave me hints about to look for that could still break down with our aframe, but said to send her a video and ask if any of those things started....so that was really nice of her.
It was sooo funny because when I told Rachel I had used a stride regulator she kept asking WHY would I do that? She was kidding that her next DVD was going to have a big picture of a stride regulator with a line through it for NO STRIDE REGULATORS. A little while later we were watching another dog work, a puppy starting his aframe and I was filming, we were having trouble seeing what his feet were doing so Rachel says hummmm, I need to think for a minute about what we want to do here....I said "Do you think we should stick on a stride regulator" LOL, good thing she has a great sense of humor!!!
Just a few min. of the first couple aframes we tried with the box...then we did some without the box and a few in sequences.
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