Secret's Journey

She's Official!

2012-02-10T08:23:00.000-08:00

Exciting stuff came in the mail yesterday -- No, not any of our NADAC awards. I've pretty much given up on those ever arriving. It was Secret's permanent USDAA card already! That was fast!

Because she measures into the 26" class, there are no measurements that need to be done. I think it's silly that they send me the temporary card just to make me send it directly back to them, but it is what it is. So next weekend when we go to check in at our first USDAA trial, Secret will have a pretty permanent card to show. :o) Poor Kaiser has to be measured. He hates that.

I was surprised to see such a different look from Luke's USDAA card that we got several years ago. This one is much prettier, I must admit. Luke's is bright yellow and not very attractive. I wonder if I can get them to reissue him a new one? lol Nah, probably not important.

This photo is from our last trial at FDC. Let's hope Secret manages to keep her eyes OPEN when the jumps get a little higher. I've seen plenty of photos of dogs with one eye shut in agility, but I'm not sure I've seen both eyes closed. Good heavens, Secret, look where you are going! This was her Jumpers run from Saturday, I believe, which was a good run and a Q. Amazing how she manages to stay on course when she isn't looking where she is going.

One more week! I'm not looking forward to the butt-crack of dawn drive, but we've done it before. The puppy makes it slightly more of a hassle, but Luke will be having a sleepover at "Grandpa & Grandma's" house, so hopefully that helps. Now we just need the weather to cooperate. It would be just my luck to go nearly this whole winter with barely any snow and then we end up having a blizzard next weekend. lol Let's hope not.

Missy continues to do well with her training. Potty training is going well when she's with me (who knows her schedule), but Bethany watched her yesterday while I was working at the shelter and I guess she had several accidents. Puppies are hard work, you know. I think the reason I'm queen of house training is only because we go outside like every 15 minutes if needed (okay, might be an exaggeration, but we go outside a LOT when puppies are in the house). Bethany really hasn't had a puppy before (Rascal was like 9 or 10 months when she got him) and I think she just isn't into the routine yet. But I still very much appreciate her playing puppy-sitter all day! :o)

It came in super handy when it was time for me to come home, too. Yesterday we confirmed two cases of kennel cough at the shelter -- Noooooooo!!!!!! I've never been worried about working with the sick kitties because I have no cats at home to bring anything home to (ringworm is my only heeby-jeeby area, as I did bring this home to Luke once and that sucked). But the idea of bringing kennel cough into my house -- into a house with a puppy and dogs who have a few trials coming up -- almost sent me into a panic. So despite the fact that I was training in the Iso/Q section, I more or less tried to avoid handling the KC dogs as much as possible. We took one to the vet, though, so it was impossible to avoid it.

I called Bethany on my way home and asked if she would mind keeping Missy for an extra half hour or so while I showered. She said it wouldn't be a problem and offered to bring Missy over when I was ready. So that just left my own dogs for me to worry about. I did what I could with my shoes at the shelter -- I walked through the Trifectant foot bath and then sprayed the heck out of the tops of my shoes with Trifectant as well. I don't care about bleaching when it comes to KC germs.... Once I got home I took everything off down to my underwear in the garage. That's right, I was standing there in my skivvies in my 25 degree garage in February. I opened up the door to the outside and then opened the house door and tried to shoo everyone outside without anyone touching me or otherwise greeting me. They thought I'd lost my mind!!!

Once they were outside I grabbed my pile of clothes (including my jacket that I was wearing on the vet run) and threw everything into the wash. I did let the dogs into the house before getting in the shower (because they were standing at the patio door with worried looks on their face because Mom went crazy) but didn't let anyone touch me until I got out.

So, fingers crossed that I didn't bring anything home..... That is the LAST thing we need right now.

More Missy

2012-02-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

I realize this is supposed to be Secret's blog, but poor Secret hasn't gotten to do a gosh darn thing since the puppy arrived -- so this is just another post about Missy!

I had to get some "formal" pictures done for the Border Collie Rescue of MN web site, so I figured I'd share some here. She's quite the photogenic little thing, really. That would be a bonus of choosing the red dog, I suppose. Much easier to get a good picture than with a solid black face. :o)

House training is going as well as you'd expect for an 11 week old puppy --- BTW, did I call her 12 weeks before? Because I actually looked at a calendar today and realized (according to her given DOB, at least) that she just turned 11 weeks old today. She's so wee!! I haven't actually HAD a puppy this young in my adult life before. Go figure.

Anyhow, if I'm not a lazy sod, house training is going very well. Each time there has been an accident it has FULLY been my fault. Yesterday I tried to pull a "hold on just a minute" on her and, well, she couldn't. So we had a wee poo in the house that was totally my fault. Today she woke up from a super long nap in my office and I *knew* she had to go out, but I tried to get everyone dressed and ready to go on a walk before taking her out and of course, we had an accident. Lesson learned -- take the darn puppy out when she needs to go out. I'm sure part of the reason Joe was so easy was because he was quite a bit older. They are pretty easy around 4 months, IMO.

Kaiser still loves the puppy. It still weirds me out a little why he's being so nice to her, but let's hope it keeps up! Pretty sure she will outweigh him in a matter of days with the way she eats. lol

Secret is still mostly ignoring Missy, which is weird because normally she's all over puppies. Secret is also getting mopey and needy, so it's obvious I have to find the time to do SOMETHING with her very soon (tonight is a shelter night, yay....). The yard keeps fluctuating between frozen and sloppy, so it is not good frisbee surface. That leaves basement work, which I suppose just means I need to put the puppy in a crate so that Secret can have some special time.

Melissa asked me to get side shots of Missy for the web site. Do you have ANY idea how hard that is to do when you live by yourself? I figured the easiest thing to do would be to grab my grooming table and try to prop her up on that -- because puppies don't want to fall off, right? Um, puppies don't know about falling.... But it still worked relatively well.

And darn if she isn't the worst built dog on the planet. Looking at her (semi) stacked on the table I actually might believe she's a border collie. ;o) Seriously, I cannot tell you how many people have remarked, "Is she part pit bull? Part bulldog?" *sigh* She does have a blocky face that is only exacerbated by the white, but so do most of the other border collie puppies you see in photos. The nose grows, and so will hers. It will be interesting to see her in several months, I'm sure. Heck, even Joe has changed a lot since finding his new home! (I so love that his new owner keeps in touch on Facebook -- Joe is so handsome!)

We stopped into the vet clinic last night to pick up a bottle of Percorten for Luke (it's on back order -- a life-maintaining drug is on back order -- that is awesome), so I took Missy in to say hi to everyone. I carried her because she's not fully vaccinated yet, but she got lots of attention and enjoyed meeting everyone. Why does everyone think I will keep my fosters? If I didn't keep Joe, I think I'm safe. ;o) I'm learning that some people think it's weird when I say she doesn't fit my color scheme, though. Ha! Come on, I can't be the only one....

Missy was so tired when we got home last night. I tried to get good footage for an adoption video, but didn't come up with much. I didn't even try to do any training exercises because she was so sleepy, so we more or less crashed on the couch last night (sorry Secret...). By the way, I hope whoever ends up adopting Missy doesn't mind snoring. Good heavens, I have never heard anything like it from a dog (who isn't squishy-nosed, at least). The more tired she is, the louder she snores!! One of my requirements of any man in my life (of which there haven't been many, lol) is that I absolutely will NOT put up with snoring. Thankfully the canine variety is more on the cute side vs. highly annoying.

I've been carrying the camera with me all morning and finally managed to get enough clips to mosh together into a video. I used Jet's, "Are you going to be my girl" as the backdrop song -- I thought it was fitting, but I always worry about music choice turning people off. Not everyone likes the "rock" sound, but it worked so well that I went with it. I couldn't top the Lion King music I used for Joe's video, anyhow. lol

Meet Missy!

2012-02-06T10:38:00.000-08:00

Missy is here! She arrived via transport Saturday afternoon. My cousin was wonderful enough to meet the transport in Tomah at one of their scheduled stops (the rest of the dogs were continuing on to Minneapolis) to retrieve Missy while I was working at the shelter. Bethany then had the terrible inconvenience of watching the puppy for a few more hours until I got home. ;o) I wasn't sure I was actually going to get to bring her home with me!

I was fully intending to call her something other than Missy. No offense to anyone who has that name or has a fondness for it, but it is probably on my top 10 list for most undesirable dog names. lol I was waffling between Nell & Nessa for this little redhead -- and I actually did start calling her Nessa at first. Ultimately, though, I decided it would just be too darn confusing in the long run. She will be Missy on the web site. All of her paperwork will be in the name Missy. Any potential adopters would be e-mailing for information on Missy. So yes, in the long run it is far easier to just call her Missy, no matter how much I don't happen to like the name. Surely she will not be with us a terribly long time and her new owner can choose whichever name they like! :o)

Missy is fitting in with my crew remarkably well. When Joe arrived, Secret took to him more or less right away. Luke ignored him. Kaiser tried to attack him any time he played or tried to have any fun. Totally not so with Missy. I have no idea how to explain it, but he adores her. It can't be as simple as male vs. female, either, because Kaiser was just horrid to Lexie for the longest time. Whatever the reason, they are terribly cute together. They are almost the same size at the moment (Kaiser is 17 lbs, Missy is 16 lbs), so it is a good fit.

Secret has tried to play with the puppy a few times but I think Missy finds her a little overwhelming at the moment. They will play bow a bit, but then Missy backs off and doesn't act like she wants to play with Secret anymore. Of course, this could be because Secret snapped at her the first night and sliced a small spot right above her nose (which caused a super fun episode of sneezing, which sent blood spatters everywhere -- so fun to clean!). Secret was trying to keep Missy from following me into the bedroom and I let her know in no uncertain terms that this is not for her to decide. She has done a few lip curls at the puppy around toys, but it hasn't gone any further than that.

Missy is a terribly uncoordinated puppy. All I know of her history is that she was found wandering alongside a road. Her vet paperwork has a guestimated birthday of 11/22/11, which puts her right around 12 weeks. She has pretty much no muscle to speak of, so she looks a bit wobbly when she runs sometimes. She is working it out quickly, though, and I've already noticed an improvement in her gait. I'm the sort of overly anal person that would completely have a meltdown if this was a puppy I'd bought as a performance prospect, but since she's a foster the rational side of me is kicking in and knows this is just an awkward puppy stage.

Missy seems like a pretty bright little thing. Sit comes quite naturally to her and she offers it when presented with a treat. We haven't had a chance to work on anything else yet, but imagine my surprise when I was fixing up dinner dishes yesterday and she popped into a perfect, "Sit Pretty" all on her own. The only other dog I've ever known to do that completely unprovoked was my family's Scottish Terrier years and years ago.

She does very well in a crate, which is always nice! She rides nicely in the car, goes right into the crate in the living room to eat her meals and deals with bed time without any fuss. We've gotten up once each night so far, but that's just because I wake up and figure it wouldn't hurt to take her out (ie: she's not waking up and asking to go out). She seems to have done quite well while I was working yesterday, although thanks to Bethany & my parents she only had to go three hours between potty breaks. I wasn't sure how fair it would be to have her go 5 hours, so that worked out quite well.

The only real negatives I've spotted so far would be a total lack of bite inhibition (ouch!!) and the fact that she is pretty intense with her food. We are working on both of these things!

Missy isn't on the Border Collie Rescue of MN web site yet -- and likely won't be until I manage to get video and pictures put together -- but if you or anyone you know might be interested in adopting this little ginger dog, be sure to drop them a line! :o) I haven't gotten a chance to really evaluate her just yet, but early inklings say that she is going to be everything you would expect from a red girl. lol

I leave you with video from Missy's first walk today! It was pretty entertaining, I wish I could have captured some of the funnier bits.

It's like 4 exercises in 1!

2012-02-03T07:50:00.001-08:00

As someone who has trained on my own for several years now, I am always on the lookout for new things to do with the dogs. Clean Run has always been invaluable (which reminds me, perhaps I should actually reactivate my subscription that just lapsed.... -- I have less motivation to do so in the winter when I can't set any of the drills). The other wonderful source in my life is YouTube.

I believe it was on Rosanne DeMascio's channel ( http://www.youtube.com/user/DKSAgility ) quite a while back that I got the idea for this exercise. She claimed it was good for working on core strength and bending -- I'll throw in that it's super great for collection and basic jump skills as well.

There is no special spacing, at least not in how I set it up. I figured I'd make adjustments as needed, but Secret was a rock star and worked it out. I started her at 10", moved up to 16" and finished at 22". We didn't overdo it as I recall Rosanne saying this was pretty hard work for the dog. I'm super impressed with how much effort Secret put into the exercise -- and she kept her bars up! I was going to use food for this drill, but once again she chose her tuggy. Cool beans.

In addition to the jump drill, we also did more table work, building on the auto-down behavior. Secret can be a goober sometimes. She seems to have it down pat that we get on the table and lay down, but the ways in which she actually goes about getting on the table at times can be interesting. If I just sat and waited for her to offer the behavior (vs. sending her), she would alternate between getting on like a normal dog, backing on with her rear feet first, and going up SIDEWAYS (ie: lifting both legs on the right side of her body and crawling up sideways). Oddball.

I upped the ante on the teeter work, too. I moved the end of the plank over to the concrete so that it would bang louder during our slam session. This did seem to startle Secret at first, but she quickly got over it and continued on with our game. I really hope all of this confidence-building game play crosses over to new teeters. I more or less feel I have to at least give it a try in Gamblers in a couple of weeks -- Speaking of which, I got our initial confirmations e-mailed to me this morning! Yay!!

And it's official! My new foster will be arriving tomorrow. I had the option of the red & white puppy or the black & white puppy (different locations, so they aren't siblings). I chose the red girl for a few reasons -- She looked a little smaller (though pictures are hard to judge!), it looks like her ears are going up (swoon!), and she doesn't fit my color pallet so we don't have to worry about her staying. lol

I learned this morning that her name is Missy. Blargh. I can't call her Missy. I think she looks like a Nell. We shall see. :o)

She chose TOY over FOOD?

2012-02-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

We had a bit of a mind boggling occurrence last night. Since the dawn of man (okay, maybe just since Secret was a puppy), food has always been number one for her. It took me AGES to get her to show any interest whatsoever in toys -- and then even longer for toys to have enough value to be used in agility training. Even once that point was reached, though, I always had to be very careful that she didn't "see" me using treats with anyone else (Kaiser or Rascal), because then she would shut down and not want to play anymore.

I more or less have continued to follow this unspoken rule. I always work Secret before Kaiser, although there have been numerous instances where I have brought her out for a second go-round after putting his food away and she will still work for toys. I have never worked her with toys in the presence of food, though.

Everything is melting here at the moment (yay!), which means the yard is becoming a giant mess (boo!). Because of that, when I got home from the shelter last night I decided to go down to the basement for a training session. Figuring we would do more teeter slamming work (we raised the teeter again!) and perhaps a bit of table shaping, I just grabbed the bag of cheese (trial leftovers!) and went down to do some clicker work with Secret.

Her Woolie Dog tug was laying on the floor from the last time we were playing downstairs. I expected her to ignore it and start mugging me for cheese -- so imagine my surprise when she dove at her tuggy and wanted to play! While I was holding cheese!

I set the open bag of cheese on the floor and played with Secret for a bit. Then, because she has never in her entire life seen a broad jump and will soon be expected to successfully complete one in competition in a mere few weeks, I took three jumps and fashioned them into a makeshift sorta-broad jump. The bag-o-cheese was sitting on the floor right in her path to the jump and she completely ignored it for her toy. Go figure. What a breakthrough!

Now.... If only I could get her to play at a trial. Food is still #1 in that scenario, unfortunately. She will mouth at her leash a bit when I offer it to her, but then she drops it and says, "Where's my food?" Oh well, maybe some day!

On the subject of the broad jump, do you suppose it will bite me in the ass that she's never seen one before? Not really sure what to do about that. My boys have only seen them a handful of times in their life and have never really had an issue, so we'll see. There are uprights on both ends of the broad jump in USDAA, so IMO it's fairly obvious where she is supposed to go. I'm throwing a lot of new stuff at the baby dog at her first USDAA trial, though, so what is one more thing? Contacts with slats, higher a-frame, higher jumps, smaller tire, teeter, broad jump, chute, judge moving around all over the ring.... Good lord, if we get through the day without a meltdown I think that in itself will be huge. lol Hence why the baby dog is only running in three classes!

I wish the 18th would just hurry up and get here already. I am not a patient person.

Oh! Exciting news! I might be getting another foster puppy this weekend. :o) It's in the works, so we'll see!

Trial Report + Videos!

2012-01-30T12:05:00.000-08:00

Secret had another great weekend at our NADAC trial in La Crosse! She had eight runs over the two days and managed to Q in six! Unfortunately, her two NQ runs were both in Chances, so she is still sitting at 9 away from NATCH.

I'm quite happy with how she ran, especially considering that she has not seen the chiropractor since the beginning of December (I'm sure Dr. Engel is wondering where we are....). I really do think that the Back on Track coat must be helping her quite a lot!

Secret started out the weekend a bit leery of our judge, Chris Nelson, but seemed to get over it quickly. He was never in the ring with us, so she had no reason to worry. My friend, Rich, pointed out to me that not only is she going to have to deal with the judge being in the ring and moving around with us in USDAA, but also shouting out numbers and raising arms in Gamblers. Oh my. That should be fun.

I almost caused an off course in each round of Regular on Saturday, but thankfully we were able to catch & fix them before faulting. There was another near miss in Jumpers at the end of the day where I started to move laterally too soon for a front cross and Secret pulled off the jump. This happened to several other teams as well at that spot on course, so at least we were in good company. :o)

Neither day had a "gimme" course in Chances, unfortunately. Saturday was a course I'd seen posted from other trials and honestly when I'd seen them I'd thought, "Man, I'm not sad I didn't get to run that course." lol Secret actually came very close to getting it, but I was a hair late on calling her back to me and she went out and grabbed an extra off course hoop. The course on Sunday was a monster, just an absolute monster of a course. I knew it would be very difficult for Secret. The first challenge was to get them to the out tunnel under the a-frame when the curve of jumps lead them straight to the a-frame. Then you had to have a flip out of the weaves to a set of jumps AT LEAST 30' away. Yeah... We didn't get either of those challenges, although missing the out tunnel was completely my fault because I rotated too quickly and pulled her straight to the a-frame.

Other than that, though, she was great! My proudest moment for Secret on Sunday was in Regular Round 2 at the very end of the day. The weaves were the second obstacle on the course and I think we all know how "fast" she weaves in that situation. I was quite prepared for her to walk through them, so I tried to get her revved up and upbeat before leaving the start line. She actually weaved faster on that run than in the previous one where the weaves were second to last! That was great to see. Also great to see was her happy, wagging tail as we waited on the line for bars to be set before our Jumpers run!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Kaiser was a little rock star this weekend. The dog walk was causing us problems as expected, but he was running fast & happy. By the end of the day on Sunday I decided that if his Regular run was clean up to the dog walk, I was going to try to get ahead and ask him for a stop. I hate that I gave up on the running contact, but there is NO WAY to train right now and it seemed to be getting progressively worse through the weekend. I think until spring I'll stop him if I can get ahead and run him if I don't have a shot. If I'm ahead he seems to take it okay and not shut down, but I know he hates it if I'm behind and screaming at him to, "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!"

Kaiser had absolutely gorgeous runs in Jumpers both days, which was fabulous to see. He didn't shut down or stress at all and those courses were jam packed with off course opportunities to freak him out. I hustled my ass and got in front crosses wherever possible, which seems to make him happy. The stutter-stepping was all but absent this weekend! Let's hope that continues when he has to jump 12" in USDAA again.

The little man did a super job with the Chances course on Saturday, but unfortunately got called on his dog walk contact. No surprise, I more or less expected it. I did a happy dance when I saw that there was no dog walk in the course on Sunday, until I saw how difficult it was. I had faith in him, though, because I figured Kaiser's space bubble would help push him out in both cases -- He had a lovely run, which leaves him just four Q's from his NATCH now! :o)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Poor Luke. The old man only got to do five runs this weekend. I kept him out of all but one round of Regular to try to cut back a bit -- and since he doesn't need the Q's, he was the obvious choice. I did put him in the first run of the day on Saturday because I knew he'd have a meltdown if I made him wait until halfway through the day before running. As it was, he was a bit of a wild child this weekend, but thankfully in a good and mostly manageable way. :o)

I thought he would have no problem with Chances on Saturday, but unfortunately he did the same thing as many other teams and turned left instead of right at the far hoop. Were I to do it again, I would have moved laterally more, as I did with the other two (who did manage to turn right). Live and learn -- sometimes I take the big guy for granted, thinking he can read my mind.

Luke blew me away in Jumpers on Saturday. It was one heck of a tricky course for a big dog with traps left and right, requiring them to NOT take the obvious "swoopy NADAC line" that Luke so loves. He had great turns and kept all the bars up; I'm so proud of him!

He had a good try with the bonus line on Sunday, but we got stuck at the part that worried me and he spun in front of the jump (no doubt he totally read my thoughts there!). Then I had a complete brain fart and went way too far to the right as he was coming out of the tunnel, so he did the correct thing and followed me -- right off course. We got back on track and finished well, though, so good boy!

And finally, he was a super good boy in Chances -- this type of course, hard as it was, is right up his alley. His a-frame was slightly naughty, but otherwise he made it look easy.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Aside from the agility part, this was a pretty interesting trial. There was much hubbub about the whole VT fiasco that was recently on the NADAC list. I find it incredibly interesting how many people read the Yahoo group but don't post, as numerous people I never thought followed the list came up to me and remarked at how they agreed wholeheartedly with everything I posted. That's great, but I really wish more of those folks would send in their own posts to share their thoughts!

Bottom line, not one single, solitary person could fathom how adding VT points to trial points could possibly be a good idea. Not one person was for it. Nobody cared about offering VT titles if people wanted to earn awards that way, but everyone agreed that the points should never, ever be combined. It is NOT THE SAME.

I struggled with whether or not to go to the judges dinner to bring up the topic with Chris (Nelson). Nobody else felt like stirring the pot with me, and what fun is it to do it alone? ;o) Ultimately it wasn't worth driving all the way back to La Crosse after delivering the dogs at home, so we stayed home and relaxed. It's probably for the best, as it wouldn't have gotten me anywhere.

That's not to say Chris probably didn't hear me bitching at the trial. I was fairly vocal while talking to others. lol

So exciting!

2012-01-27T18:30:00.000-08:00

I just found out that one of my co-workers has agreed to switch shifts with me so that I can have off on Saturday, February 18. What does that mean? It means that tomorrow morning I am sticking entries in the mail for our first USDAA trial!

I decided to enter Secret in Jumpers, Gamblers & Performance Speed Jumping (Steeplechase). Kaiser will do the same, plus Standard. He'll probably miss his dog walk, but I don't have teeter worries with him. I'll have to decide if I think Secret will be ready to attempt a new teeter in Gamblers....

The trial is in Canon Falls on dirt. Secret likes dirt, so I figured it would be a great trial for her. After having almost a year of trial experience under her belt now, I'm hoping Secret doesn't have a cow about the judge being in the ring... I actually worry more about that then the teeter. Time to grow up and get over it, baby girl!

So that's my big news! We are on the eve of a NADAC trial weekend and I'm just giddy about doing USDAA. :o)

A post without a picture?! That's what happens when I post from my phone!

BTW, I never got Secret to the chiro before this trial. :o( Hoping it's not going to be a big deal with the help of her Back on Track blanket -- she's baking in it now and will wear it all weekend. She will absolutely have to go in before the USDAA trial.

Hey blog world, any thoughts?

2012-01-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

I did this video partially so that I could see what is going on with Kaiser and also to get pointers from anyone who has them.

Kaiser has a slight luxating patella on the right hind. It did not cause any problems until this past summer, when I began to notice him making odd jumps more frequently. He crashed several bars by landing directly on top of them -- generally following a "stutter/pop" jump style.

Out of concern for his safety, I lowered his jump height to 8" in NADAC -- Kaiser measures 14" and previously jumped 12". His has seemed happy and confident at 8" -- he will still occasionally stutter/pop, but he hasn't been crashing bars. In addition, he's been running faster.

I plan to start doing some USDAA, where he will be required to jump 12" in the Performance program (as low as he can go). Because of this, I wanted to again focus on improving his jump style and strength. We have been doing jump drills and peanut work to help with this. If anyone has any other exercises I'd love to hear some ideas.

There has been improvement already! Previously Kaiser wouldn't jump 16" from right to left, he would just keep going under the bar. The fact that he is trying and succeeding gives me hope! (My thinking here is that if he is comfortable and okay jumping 16" in drills, then 12" shouldn't be a problem at trials.)

Teeter Training (Part Duex?)

2012-01-26T12:34:00.000-08:00

As I believe I mentioned in an earlier post, I've decided to tackle Secret's teeter training again. She is back to being confident and happy on our teeter, but she has continued to spook at the rebound stage. I know that if we don't conquer this, we'll go back to step one again when we see a competition teeter.

I did video of our training session last night -- this was the second session, as we did a bit of touch work the night before. I started with the teeter at the same low height but then did move it up halfway through our session when I saw her confidence growing.

Ultimately my goal is for her to reach up and slam the board down with two feet. At the moment she is bringing it down with one foot the majority of the time, but she's doing it happily so that's okay.

I ran her over the full teeter again at the end of the session and noticed that she is still doing a bit of a butt scoot as she comes off. She's getting better, though, so we will continue on this path because I do feel that it will help her confidence to know she can control the motion both on AND off the teeter.

If you are in a video watching mood, I also made one for Lexie! :o) She is learning to jump & weave this week!

Step One -- Done!

2012-01-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

I figure the first step in committing to playing in a different organization is to actually get my dogs registered in said organization!

So.... This morning I signed up Kaiser & Secret for their very own USDAA numbers. Luke actually was registered back in 2009 when Family Dog Center was trying to get USDAA started in La Crosse. They were hosting a sanctioned match as part of the approval process and any dog participating in the match had to be registered with the organization. I was still pretty new to agility at the time (two years) but figured I'd give it a try. I think USDAA was a little beyond my skill set at the time and the jump heights concerned me with Luke, especially on the super craptastic mats that FDC had at the time. As a result, we never ventured out further than that fun match, so poor Luke has a record that has sat empty for all of these years!

Having now invested a grand total of $60 into USDAA for registration numbers, I hope that increases my motivation to actually enter a trial.

Although -- teeter or no teeter, I've been thinking about it and figure I could always plan to enter a trial and only enter Jumpers, Steeplechase, Gamblers & Snooker (of course, hoping that the latter two courses don't contain a teeter). I don't recall if I posted about this earlier, but I'm looking at a trial in Ham Lake, MN at the end of April or one over in New Berlin, WI at the end of May as my choices. The facility at New Berlin has turf, which would be a familiar surface for my dogs. On the Run in Ham Lake has the SUPER NICE Comfort King matting and I've heard wonderful things about it, but it would be new for my crew.

We'll see. I have time to decide, as the premiums aren't even published for these events yet.

Meanwhile, I'm crossing my fingers for lots of Q's this weekend at our NADAC trial. The sooner Secret & Kaiser can finish their NATCHes, the sooner that monkey is off my back and I can move on with a clear conscience. ;o) Everyone use your mental power to send, "Don't bring Chances courses with dog walks" vibes to our judge. lol

Lexie is staying with us this week while my parents are off cruising the Caribbean. How do I always pull the short straw in these situations? Ha! At any rate, my goal is to teach the little black terrier to weave while she's with us, but she arrived Friday evening and I have yet to actually bring my weave poles down into the basement. Hmm. Maybe I should get on that.

I'm not sure how Lexie would handle USDAA. The little cherub would have to jump a minimum of 8" and I have never actually gotten her to jump that high to date. lol Another thing to start working on, I suppose. No excuse anymore, considering she turned a year old back in September. She is a wee thing and only measures about 10" high, I think, with short stocky legs. I always figured I'd just let her run at 4" in NADAC and didn't worry much about jump skills, but that wouldn't be an option in USDAA. Honestly, I think a dog like her would be best suited to AKC (with which she is already registered, so no worries there) -- but it would be kind of hard to just run her in that organization if none of my dogs are playing... Eh, we'll see. Not worth worrying about it just yet!

When one blanket just isn't enough...

2012-01-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

Yup. Secret is wearing her Back on Track blanket AND her superbly awesome pink plaid blanket from Schneiders Saddlery. It is THAT cold here right now.

When I posted this photo on Facebook there was some discussion about how, due to the heat reflecting properties of the BoT products, a second layer is simply unnecessary. That may be so, but with wind chills of -25, I don't think it will hurt, either. ;o)

The BoT blanket is relatively thin and lightweight. Secret's body has become accustomed to wearing it indoors, so I thought it might still be a bit of a shock to her system to go outside with no extra protection. If anything, I feel that throwing on a second layer over the top of the BoT simply helps to insulate the warmth being generated. Mind you, when I stick my hand under the double layer it is comfortably warm, even at the very end of our walk when you would expect the most heat to be present.

So yes, I feel perfectly justified in having her wear two layers. It might be overdone, but she is comfy! Too bad it's not flattering on the waistline. lol

We've been working with the teeter the last two nights and everything is going well. As stated, I went ahead and duct-taped the book back onto the teeter on Wednesday and worked the dogs again at the low height. Secret did not seem bothered by the rebound in the least and happily tugged and played as the teeter reset itself each time.

Last night I bumped it up a few inches. Secret started out oblivious to the rebound but then did start to react to it for whatever reason. Instead of releasing straight to the toy and tugging madly, she would hold her position until released, scoot her butt off the teeter and then watch it reset before tugging. A positive note is that she would continue tugging while I moved the teeter up and down with a free hand; for whatever reason she seemed to be okay with that. I finished her teeter work using food to build up some positive reinforcement for hitting and holding her end position, but she did keep doing the "scoot-n-stare" maneuver when released.

In addition to the teeter work, I also took a jump downstairs last night to give us something to do (much too cold to do anything outside, unfortunately). We did lots of one-jump work as well as including it in drills with the table and teeter. I had the jump set to 22" for everything and Secret did great!

At the end of the night I did some foundation jumping work with Secret where I knelt on the floor next to the jump and rewarded successful efforts -- She's always been a careful jumper, so pretty much everything is successful for Secret. I moved the bar around a lot and Secret really only disapproved when it was at 26". I'm going to guess she was tired by this time, as she was actually panting (fairly uncommon for her!). Jumping higher takes more core strength than she typically uses, though, so I have to keep that in mind and not push for too much. Her jump form over the higher jumps was quite lovely, I was happy to see.

I did the same work with Luke when it was his turn (only going up to 18" for the big old fart) and it is very interesting to compare the two. Secret is definitely more agile and light on her feet than the big guy, but he still put in a pretty respectable effort for having never done that drill in the past. I did have to chuckle, though, when he would just plow through or step on the bar instead of jumping... Oh, Luke. He says, "Just give me a course to run, darn it!"

We have a trial next weekend at the Family Dog Center. I will have to talk to someone to see how we might go about getting in some practice time on the teeter this winter. I would very much like to make it a goal to attend a USDAA trial at the end of April or in May -- Considering that there aren't NADAC trials in La Crosse from the beginning of April through July, I figure that is as good a time as any to branch out and take the first step of playing in a different organization.

Winter found us

2012-01-18T12:41:00.000-08:00

Well darn. There is no hiding anymore. It is the middle of January and I suppose winter had to find us hiding here in Wisconsin eventually. But it doesn't mean I have to like it!

We got about 6" of snow late last week, followed by another inch or two yesterday. Apparently we could get upwards of 8" on Friday! I suppose if one is going to be stuck with winter, you may as well make it worth your while. The dogs do love to play in the snow, after all!

Sub-freezing temperatures have come along with the snow, unfortunately. The dogs do NOT seem to enjoy snow when it is paired with temperatures below 15 degrees. They become weenie little wusses, actually. Yesterday they were pretty pathetic on our walk -- Secret and Luke were wearing blankets, but that was all. Poor Kaiser was naked only because he can't wear his blanket with his harness and I didn't figure he needed it yet.

Well, I was wrong. They were all just in such a sad state. Secret stopped multiple times on our walk to chew the ice balls out of her feet. Luke kept hitching a different leg, as he couldn't decide which foot was more frozen. And poor, poor naked Kaiser looked so sad and cold that I actually picked him up and carried him. Twice.

Enough of that! Today everyone wore blankets AND booties. It was probably close to 20 degrees on our walk, but the wind is pretty cold. While nobody seems overly thrilled about the act of getting dressed, there is no denying that once we get outside they are much, much happier to be dressed for the weather. Everyone was very bouncy and full of themselves on our walk today. I figure it's worth the added effort.

Really, though, when it comes down to it, can you really blame them? I've always found it remarkable that humans expect dogs to be fine in frigid temperatures with no protection. Dogs who live indoors and adapt to our lifestyles aren't any more hardy than we are. Their bodies regulate to the same temperatures as ours (that would be 67 in my house!) and going out into the sub-freezing temperatures (and sub-zero, as we saw this morning and will see tomorrow) is no doubt just as shocking to their system as it is to ours.

I can go outside in the winter wearing a sweater long enough to get something done (take the garbage out, get the mail, etc.). I can even manage in fewer layers of clothing when exerting myself in some fashion, so it is reasonable that a dog should be able to walk or play outside on an average winter day without too much fuss. But when I am dressed as the Michelin Man in order to be comfortable in the elements, I figure they deserve the same consideration -- and I believe they thank me for it. :o)

My little winter weenies were in a sad state last night. Before I even finished shoveling the snow off the rear deck, they were already hiking their feet up and asking to go inside (booties live at the office since I haven't ordered any more to replace the second set that got holes last year). I figured that meant we shouldn't have outdoor play time, so we went down to the basement when everyone started to get squirrely.

I had Secret keep her Back on Track blanket on during her peanut work and holy cow was it interesting to see how much heat her muscles pumped out in that time. The blanket was warm to the touch!

After everyone had their time on the peanut I drug the teeter out and adjusted it to a medium-low height. Remember, it's been darn near a year since Secret has even seen one of them, so I figured I'd better start off low.

Well now I feel bad for not dragging the stupid thing out of the basement and letting them play on it this summer. Kaiser was elated to see it and I couldn't keep him off it. Secret, too, kept charging for it and slamming into her bottom position. Luke could barely get a turn in because every time I sent him towards it one of the others would run onto it and nearly clock him in the chin. So yes.... We will be doing more teeter work in the coming months, but ONE AT A TIME. No better way to turn a dog off a teeter than by getting clocked in the head with one, I'm sure.

I also have to re-duct tape the book to the bottom of my plank, as that has always seemed to be Secret's biggest issue -- having a teeter reset behind her. I will be sure to do that before our next session, which I suppose will be tonight if it's too cold for frisbee.

I am very motivated to get Secret's happy teeter back, which will include getting out and finding other teeters on which to train (which is harder than it sounds around here, unfortunately). I am becoming less enchanted with NADAC each day and really need to buckle down and set a goal date for a USDAA trial -- or hell, even AKC. We just need to try something else.

Once Secret & Kaiser finish their NATCHes, that may be it. We'll see. I just feel I would enjoy one of the other venues more at this point, although I would feel bad if Luke couldn't participate. He qualifies for the Veteran program in USDAA now, but so far as I can tell there isn't an ADCH equivalent for Veterans so I don't know if there is much point. But he could still run, we'll see.

If anyone is curious, it is the recent announcement that the "Video Tape" runs being submitted are earning Q's towards the normal titling program instead of being separated into their own VT award categories. It was one thing when she said that 50% of your Champs Q's could come from VT runs, but I'm sorry, I think it completely degrades the entire organization to allow video tape runs to count towards regular titles. I can set up courses at home and have a 100% Q rate with all three of my dogs. Hello, NATCH 5,294 --- Sorry, but I don't think that is right.

Emotional Support

2012-01-16T12:14:00.000-08:00

I have been very thankful for my three dogs over the past week. My grandmother passed away last Monday, with the visitation on Friday and the funeral on Saturday. With so much going on during the week (work, emptying out Grandma's apartment, etc.) it was pretty easy to just keep plowing forward and getting things done. I get this from my mother, I think. She's a very strong woman and has never been one to get overly emotional.

At any rate, I got through the week okay. I only cried a couple of times and on each occasion I immediately had a dog (or two) in my lap as they tried to figure out what was wrong. Secret will usually come over and give one of her worried wiggles when I am in such a state, but Kaiser comes and stands on my lap and gives me a look of sincere worry as he wonders what is making me act so out of character. Often times I just have to laugh at his serious expression, but it's good for lightening the mood. I usually give him a squeeze (which he SO loves...) and feel much better.

Saturday was very, very hard for me. The dogs all hung around me more than usual Saturday morning before I left for the funeral. Their ability to sense these things is amazing. I came home midday to let them outside before going to my aunt's house to take care of some things -- we threw frisbees for a bit and then they all obliged me with good long hugs. I felt much better after having that "dog break."

I was back at the shelter yesterday and found myself having a few emotional moments here and there throughout the day. Somehow I kept gravitating towards the wee itty bitty kittens residing in my intake room and found a great deal of comfort in clasping their little purring bodies to my chest.

As I age, I seem to be becoming a more emotional person -- Or rather, perhaps I am simply becoming more free about expressing my emotions. I feel that having animals in my life has assisted with that change. They are such good teachers, listeners and friends. Despite being surrounded by family & friends, I can't imagine how lonely it would have been without my crew the last week.

My grandma was not an animal person. She wasn't terribly fond of dogs, really didn't like cats at all and didn't see much purpose in having them. That said, she always asked about my dogs and the events we do together because she knew how important it was to me. I will miss her a great deal.

Book! Training! Snow....

2012-01-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

First things first -- Look what came already! Holy buckets, that seems really fast. I wonder how fast it would arrive if I didn't choose the cheapest shipping/production price? That's why I don't bother. I'm in no hurry to receive it, really, so I'm fine with the one that projects a delivery date almost a month out from purchase. Besides, I ordered this on the 6th and it's already here!

It is very, very pink! lol I know that's what I wanted, but it's an eye-catcher. Perhaps the only thing I would have changed is to go with a more muted shade of pink on the inner pages (don't worry, it's not the same bright pink as the cover -- that would give you a headache!). I did the same thing with the last book, which had a darker purple cover and lighter purple pages, but that turned out a bit lighter. Oh well, it's still plenty readable.

I'm currently reading a Patricia McConnell book, "Love Has No Age Limit" as a bit of homework for the shelter, but once I'm done with that I'll be cracking into Volume 2!

For a few days now they've been blabbering on about a snow storm we were supposed to get, starting last night. I was home for the evening, so I figured I'd better take advantage of it and be sure to get it what is sure to be the last outdoor training session until spring. How often do you get to say that on January 11?

I have seen this front cross drill posted numerous times in numerous places, but I don't believe I've ever actually set it for myself. Rose over at the "Going the Distance" blog posted a video on YouTube the other day of this drill so it was fresh in my mind. I thought it would give us lots of fun stuff to work on with a minimum of set-up time, so I went with that.

Because I am driven by my desire to play with Secret in organizations other than NADAC, I decided to bump her back up to 20" for these exercises to see how she does. I have kept her at 16" for some time, more or less because I felt she was not enjoying herself at the higher heights anymore. Perhaps it was due to her back issues, so I felt it would be good to see where she's at after using her Back on Track coat the last couple of weeks. Whatever the reason, I felt she did very well back at 20"! If we had more time outside I'd actually start to experiment with going a bit higher, but that will just have to wait until spring. I think she could likely handle the 22" Performance class in USDAA, though. We'll see.

Secret wasn't blazing fast through these exercises as she tried to figure out what I was asking -- and since I more or less went into this without a plan, I don't blame her because I, myself, was hesitant! Considering that, I think she did exceptionally well. She stayed happy & playful throughout everything, even when we had to restart exercises because of my mistakes. I rewarded her for EVERYTHING because I figured all errors were my fault. I kept all of our play time (in fast forward!) in the video to show our entire session from start to finish. There is a bit of a blip around the 2:50 mark, you may notice if you watch the video -- There was a five second clip that was corrupting my entire video, so I just pitched it. Don't worry, it wasn't much. :o)

Kaiser did surprisingly well with these exercises! As I've mentioned several times in the past, I managed to install a giant space bubble into Kaiser during his early agility training. Great for distance work, not so great for anything technical. I also rely far too much on vocal cues with him in particular, so after listing to a podcast by Daisy Peel yesterday, I made it my goal for all three dogs to keep my darn mouth shut. Kaiser started out by doing what he always does and totally ignored my body cues, but once he figured out I wasn't saying anything he started to really pay attention! By the end of his session he was doing multiple threadles in a row without popping a vein in his brain! I'm terribly pleased with him.

Poor Luke. This is not his cup of tea, but he still tries hard! It helps that I keep the jumps at 8" for him so that he at least doesn't hurt himself, but he still barges ahead like a freight train and turns like a yacht. :o) Actually, his wraps are really coming along better than I figured they would at this stage in his training (or lack thereof). I tried for a threadle at the end and just laughed at the result and gave up. There is no point in pushing the old man so far out of his comfort zone, so I let him end with a bit of distance play.

I'm very glad we got this training in last night. We have something like 3"-4" of snow out there now, I believe. It's hard to tell because it's blowing around and still coming down lightly. Blah. I figured we probably wouldn't get through winter without any snow, but a girl can always dream, right?

So.... I suppose now it's time to start playing in the basement!

What we did on January 6

2012-01-09T11:04:00.001-08:00

This is the BEST WINTER EVER. I don't care if people are screaming "global warming!" from their rooftops, I would be pleased as punch to never see snow again in my lifetime.

While I'm sure that won't happen, I can at least take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather we are currently experiencing in Wisconsin. It hit 50 degrees again this past Friday, so I skedaddled home from work a bit early so that I would have enough sunlight to set & run a course with the dogs.

My options are limited due to the contacts being packed away for the winter -- well, EVERYTHING is packed away right now, but everything else is "easier" to bring out. I was looking for something that wouldn't require too much set-up time but that would offer us some fun & unique challenges (ie: more challenging than a NADAC Jumpers course). I went to the agility course maps web site that afternoon and found a really fun UKI Jumpers course!

This is the "Champion" version of the course, which I believe is more or less the "open" division of UKI. The Novice or Starters course, whatever they call it in that organization, was exactly the same course but minus a few of the wraps in the middle. I decided to suck it up and go for the harder course. The level above Champion wasn't posted on the site -- I'd be scared to see it. :o)

The dogs did far better than I anticipated! There were all sorts of challenges that we don't see very often, starting with the threadle at the start of the course. By the way, does anyone else have problems noticing threadles on course maps? My brain just doesn't catch them right away and when I originally printed the course out I saw a wrap at jump three, not a push through/threadle. Thankfully I did finally realize it while building, so I did mange to run the course as printed. I used hoops at numbers one and five because I ran out of jumps, but otherwise I tried to set the course as true as I could, knowing that jumps add to the difficulty of many of the questions posed.

Secret rocked it out! She was just lit up from the get-go and really seemed to enjoy herself. Her first few weave poles were out of this world -- at least compared to what you see from her at trials. She stayed happy and enthusiastic through several repetitions of the course! So long as I supported her path and handled it halfway decently, she did impressively well. Of course I have to wonder if her Back on Track blanket is helping her back issues and she performed better as a result. I suppose the true test will be at her next trial -- I'm really waiting to see if I notice a difference in her weaves in that environment.

I didn't come out of Secret's session with a very long list of homework. It wouldn't hurt to revisit some call to heel exercises, as both of us had a bit of a brain fart about how threadles work. She only back-jumped on a wrap once or twice, so I wasn't too concerned about that. Otherwise the only problems we had were when I got a bit lazy or sloppy in my handling. I was thrilled with how she drove down the final line time and time again -- she was hauling!

I even managed to get it on video! Yeah, I had to set the camera on the fence post again and we are ants, but it didn't turn out too horribly.

The boys played as well, of course. Kaiser has gigantic space bubble issues thanks to me being entirely NADAC focused with him during his foundation training. Everything he was taught was centered on distance. As a result, he doesn't do "tight" work very well, or like me stepping into his space. Considering that, I thought he did quite well. Our biggest issue was the tunnel after the weave poles and then, of course, his classic back-jump-instead-of-wrap problem. He got it together by the end, though, and did quite well. One thing I love about Kaiser is his can-do attitude. Even when something goes wrong, he is very good about coming back and trying again. He didn't always used to be like that!

I am not about to worry about teaching new skills to Luke, who recently turned eight years old. Luke is a NADAC dog and will always be a NADAC dog. He is not built for tight courses, but this is what was set and he wanted to play, so I figured I'd at least give him a shot. I work Luke at 8" at home to try to save his body (he runs so hard that it is easy for him to hurt himself!!). The big guy surprised me and had some impressively tight wraps and even did well with the threadle! He's such a fun guy to run.

We have at least a few more days of warm temperatures ahead, so hopefully there will be more opportunities to continue to train outside. I'm not one to tempt fate, however, so I have been schlepping all of my equipment in and out of the garage as it is used. I figure the first time I try to leave anything outside we will get dumped with a freak blizzard out of nowhere or something. It's a pain and a hassle, but it's worth it!

Look at what Secret gave me this morning. It's even prettier now that it's becoming colorful. Oh yes, it is one heck of a shiner!

Secret can occasionally be a putz about jumping into the car when she's wearing her Back on Track blanket. I don't know why, because she's shown that she is perfectly capable of getting in there on her own. Last week she was being lazy, so I assisted her in the same way I do Luke (guide her front end up and then hoist the butt). This morning she was just standing there again like she expected some assistance, so I leaned over and put a hand under her chest for the first part -- and then out of the blue she sprung up and just walloped me right on the temple with the bony part of her head.

I immediately grabbed my eye and started to let out a stream of cuss words, mostly aimed at Secret (although granted, it really wasn't her fault!). I got Kaiser in the car and then went into the house to check the damage. Considering how bad it hurt, I figured there must be something to look at.

And there was. It blew up INSTANTLY. I filled a ziplock bag with ice and held it to my eye the entire drive in to work -- that was fun. This photo was taken after a good thirty minutes of icing and I kept ice on it for about another hour. It didn't help! I finally took some ibuprofen around 10:00 to help with the throbbing and the headache improved at that point. Now the only annoyance is that I don't have any peripheral vision to the left due to a giant lump being in the way.

So thanks a bunch, Secret. Let's try to be a bit more careful in the future!

Another year, another book!

2012-01-06T08:42:00.001-08:00

Considering this is technically the first post of the year (the last one was about a trial that occurred in 2011, so I count that as last year!), I was loathe to make it about the darn book -- But alas, I don't really have anything else to talk about at the moment, so the first post in the next book will be -- about the book! lol

Volume Two of our "blog-to-book" series is currently in production! I spent all day working on it yesterday and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Since I went with purple for Volume 1, I felt it was almost required to go with PINK for Volume 2. :o) Oh my, where will I go for Volume 3??

Despite having six fewer posts in 2011 than I did in 2010, this book actually ended up being 12 pages longer than the last (164 pages to 152)! I believe that's due to me taking a bazillion more pictures in the last year, though. You know, those ribbon pictures really add up! My posts from Championships were also epically long, so that more than made up for it, I guess.

I am finally almost through with reading Volume 1 and have only a handful of pages to go. It has been so much fun to look back on that first year and I am equally as excited to be able to sit down and read through our adventures of the last year. Again, if anyone else is interested in doing the same thing, be sure to head on over to blurb.com to make a book of your very own!

Being the first post of the new year, one is inclined to sit down and create some goals. If there is one thing I've ever really, truly sucked at it is having goals. I'm more inclined to just float all willy-nilly through life without a clearly defined path. While I am satisfied with where this has taken me (well, more or less), I do know that I'd probably be more successful if I sat down and actually came up with goals.

So here I sit, thinking.... I don't really HAVE any big goals for the year. Due to financial reasons, I can't really commit to or set a goal to attend any National events this year. NADAC Championships is going to be held in Utah this year, which is a 24 hour drive for us! I know I am not capable of that, so it is not even on my horizon for possible goals. And while we aren't competing in USDAA at this time, even their National event is out in Colorado, which isn't attainable, either.

That would bring us to local goals, then, I guess. Obviously a goal for Secret this year would be to get her first NATCH. She's really not all that far off from it at this point (the nine Chances Q's are going to be the hardest, obviously). Once we reach that goal I suppose I will have to reassess and see where we're at. I still would like to branch out and do other organizations with Secret, but I just don't see how feasible that is right now. It's hard to start from the beginning! And, well, Secret hasn't been on a teeter for a year now. Oh my.... How did I let that happen??

I would like to continue to increase Secret's speed at trials. The number I always have in my head is 6.0 yps. I would love for her to knock out Jumpers & Tunnelers courses at that speed, at the very least. We'll just keep plugging away at upping the speed & motivation factors. In a somewhat related vein, I would REALLY love for her to play at trials. We've come so far with regard to upping the value of toys at home, but Secret is still very much a foodie at trials. I would like to get her tugging more and not relying so much on treats in the trial environment. I feel this would be a large factor in getting more speed out of her as well.

On a personal level, I would really, really love to dig myself out of debt. Sadly, the only thing I can really cut out of my life is agility trials. :o( So.... I will probably end up doing fewer trials this year and traveling less. That is fairly depressing, considering how much I cut back last year. Oh well, you do what you have to do. I am still waiting for my sugar daddy to arrive -- if you find him, please send him my way! lol

Meanwhile, we are having record breaking temperatures here in Wisconsin -- and for once, it's to the GOOD side of the thermometer! Yesterday we actually hit 53 whopping degrees, but sadly I had to work at the shelter last night and couldn't set a course or otherwise take advantage of the nice weather. It looks pretty nice outside at the moment and we will be leaving shortly to go for a walk, so I look forward to soaking up the sunshine and enjoying the lovely winter we are having. It makes life so much less depressing to have sun & warmth this time of the year! I have hit the December entries of my first book and it was SO MISERABLE last year. I will take this weather any time, even if it does point to global warming. ;o)

2011 Wrap-Up!

2012-01-03T09:04:00.001-08:00

We finished up 2011 with a bang! My alarm went off at the dreadful time of 3:45 a.m. on Saturday, December 31 --- But it ended up to be worth it, as all three dogs put in a fantastic day at the Minnesota Mixed Breed Club's annual New Years Eve NADAC trial.

Unfortunately I didn't get much on video due to camera issues. Secret put in a really beautiful run in Regular 2 -- I didn't even enter anyone in Round 1 because I didn't want to be stressed out about getting there, setting up and walking the course. Secret was our only Q in that round thanks to Luke taking the tunnel under the dog walk right at the start (what is WITH him in that scenario???) and Kaiser missed his dog walk contact, but otherwise had a lovely run.

The entire time I was waiting to run the three dogs in Regular, the course walk and subsequent running of Elite Chances was going on in the other ring. Due to how my dogs were spaced out, there was just no way I could get over there for either of the split walk-throughs that they ended up having. They were going to have a third walk-through, but at that point there were only about five dogs left to run in the class -- three of which were mine. I opted to just grab Luke and run him without walking the course. It really wasn't a difficult Chances course and it played well to our strengths.

Luke did great! He earned his NATCH 3! Pretty much the entire reason for getting up at an ungodly hour to enter a single day at this trial.

They did do another walk-through following Luke's run, but I figured there wasn't much point in walking it by then. So instead I grabbed Kaiser and let him have his shot -- I was so happy to have a course without a dog walk! I picked the right day, too, because not only did the course on Sunday have a dog walk, but the course in general appeared far more difficult on the videos I was able to watch. So thanks to this nice course, Kaiser is only 5 Q's away from his first NATCH! And thanks to a kind judge, and perhaps because I happened to block the view or something, Kaiser even got another Q in Touch-n-Go!

Secret ended up with a perfect day with Q's in Jumpers & Touch-n-Go as well. Her run in TNG was pretty lack-luster at the end of a long day, but her jumpers run was quite nice. She actually managed to come in 0.39 seconds FASTER than Luke for a change! She came in 2nd of 8 in her class, so that's pretty good for her.

As I mentioned, I unfortunately didn't get much on tape due to some camera issues (it got knocked into Night Shot mode, so everything is blurry) and the crazy two-ring schedule -- But I did get everyone's Chances run on video:

Luke's Chances run is in that video, but I figured he also deserves a NATCH 3 video of his very own!

My friend, Karen, got a couple of runs on her camera. I hate trying to figure out how to download & format them properly off YouTube, so I'll just embed the links. She got Luke's Jumpers run and Secret's Touch-n-Go run.

So with that, we bring 2011 to a close. It has been a pretty spectacular year for Secret! She has come so far since her first trial in February. I looked back and added up that she had a total of 25 days of trialing under her belt for the year, plus her experience at NADAC Championships. She wracked up a total of 87 Qualifying runs and is at 865 Lifetime points in NADAC already. For her NATCH, she needs only one more Regular Q, five more Jumpers Q's and nine more Chances Q's -- And she hasn't even been doing this for a year yet. She's doing awesome.

I can't wait to see what 2012 brings for us!

Back on Track

2012-01-03T07:43:00.000-08:00

Secret got a belated Christmas present at the trial this weekend (post to follow -- working on video!). Our favorite vendor, Best for Pets, always manages to get exactly the items I'm interested in exactly when I tend to need them. Darn them for making me spend money every time I see them....

I've been looking at the Back on Track coats for Secret for a while now. There has been discussion of them on various agility lists and the people who use these products tend to swear by them. I have been wondering if one of these jackets might help Secret with her multitude of back sensitivities. The main reason I have put off ordering one (aside from the expense...) is that they come in a bazillion different sizes and I had no idea which would be best for Secret.

When I saw that Jason & Natalie had them in stock at their booth this weekend, I could hardly pass up the opportunity to bring Secret over for a sizing. We started out with the 63cm and it was much too large. The 55 was a bit small, which brought us to the 59 -- and it was perfect! It looked so nice on Secret and the price was the same as online, so I decided that I may as well support Best for Pets and buy it from them.

I've been letting Secret get used to it the last couple of days. I've had her wear it out in the yard while I pick up poo and have been putting it on her following play sessions to keep her muscles warm. Today she will wear it while we go for a walk, as the published information says it actually has the most benefit while the animal is in motion because there is more heat to reflect back into the muscles. It doesn't hurt that it's our coldest day of the season today, so she probably won't mind the extra warmth. It will be interesting to see if we notice a difference after a few weeks.

So.... Joe is gone. :o( His new owner came to the agility trial Saturday morning to pick him up. She brought her dog along and she seemed okay with Joe right off the bat, so we don't expect there to be any problems. I got a report on Sunday and it sounds like he was being his usual perfect puppy self, so it looks like he's a keeper.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy to let him go, but it hit me harder than I expected. I said my goodbyes Friday night during our final cuddle on the couch. Figuring I got it out of my system, I actually did okay when it was time to say farewell on Saturday. What I didn't expect was to completely lose it when I got home and had to put away all of his things (dishes, crates, etc.).

I'm doing better now, but I do still miss the little guy. He was such a good puppy. I've already been asked if I would like to take in another one -- a 6 month old cattle dog cross who is pretty shy & reserved -- but I had to pass for now. My parents are going on vacation the last half of January and I'll have Lexie for that time, which includes a trial weekend in La Crosse. I'd be overtaxing myself to take on another one right away. I also feel that I'd like to stick to border collies and younger puppies. My dogs seem to accept them better if they are younger (okay, that only applies to Kaiser!) and if they are under 5 months I can technically avoid any legal hassles with the stupid limit laws in my area. Not that I care, but it's easier to explain to the shelter, were they to ask. :o)

So there you go -- I'm not a foster failure. This time.

What Joe Knows!

2011-12-27T11:09:00.000-08:00

I put together a new video of Joe with several clips I shot over the weekend. It's hard to believe he's only been with me a bit over two weeks. He has learned so much already!

We are meeting his approved adopter this coming Saturday at our trial in Burnsville. If all goes well, he will be staying with her. I will be very sad to say goodbye to him, but I hope to receive many updates and follow his progress on Facebook!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

Secret wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! Doesn't she look so festive and cheery posing with her sparkly, glittery ribbons? lol She's such a good sport....

It was a pretty quiet Christmas for the dogs. Luke did get to go up to my parent's house on Christmas Eve and it was just as crazy as I figured it would be with my brother's dogs. I was thankful I only took Luke, as he can handle that sort of thing well.

They had a boring, uneventful Christmas day. I had to work at the shelter in the morning, but we got done early and I was able to spend a bit of extra time with the dogs before I had to leave again. They got play time, so they were happy! Then it was back home for a couple more hours before leaving again. That time I set up one of my big loopy speed circles with hoops and a tunnel and let everyone wear themselves on that. Have I mentioned lately how awesome it is that we don't have snow?
Christmas evening was back up at my parent's house, but I elected to go without dogs that time. I got home at 9:00 and honestly I didn't think the dogs should HAVE to go out and run around again after having three play sessions earlier in the day. Well that was a mistake, as Joe & Secret played for a good hour in the house and made it hard to fall asleep on the couch. ;o)

My mom got all of the dogs a bunch of stuffless stuffies with squeakers. I haven't actually handed them out yet because I know there will be no peace in the house once I do.... I was a bad dog mom and didn't actually get them anything for Christmas. The trial this Saturday will be their present, I guess.

I worked at the shelter yesterday and did a double-take when I walked past the daily calendar. I grabbed it on my way out the door at the end of the day because it reminded me so much of Secret! Why is it, though, that I can never, ever remember which side of her face has the split? It always seems to be exactly the opposite of all the dogs I think look like her.

I thought this was a scruffy puppy after a bath or something, but the description calls it a "mixed breed" with border collie characteristics. Upon closer inspection, I think the blasted thing is actually a borderdoodle. God forbid....

Bath Day!

2011-12-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

Thursday morning, someone (ie: Secret) was kind enough to barf all over my bed while I was in the shower. There is a slight possibility it could have been Joe, but my money is on Secret. No worries, nobody is sick -- The cause of the upchuck was a giant chunk of hoof that was apparently refusing to digest properly. I don't have these at home, so it was definitely from our trip to my parent's house Monday evening.

At any rate, because it sat for who knows how long before I noticed it and was able to clean it up, it resulted in the aforementioned vomit soaking through the "dog blankets" on top, through my comforter, through the sheets and all the way to the mattress pad (which thankfully is the kind that prevents anything from getting to your mattress!).

This meant a trip to the laundromat following work because try as I might, I simply cannot fit a king sized comforter into my machine at home. Conveniently enough, the laundromat in Bangor has the added bonus of having a "dog wash" station available. It's pretty handy and for $6 you get 15 minutes use of the tub, water, soap, conditioner and a blow dryer. I'd say it's worth it to keep that mess out of your house.

Mr. Joe has smelled like a cow barn since he arrived. Most of the time it's not even noticeable, but when he gets wet (such as when wrestling outside with Secret) it can be a little overwhelming. So I figured that as long as we had to go to the laundromat, I may as well see what Joe thought of his first bath!

The washing machine had a half hour to run, so I decided to kill a little time by going to a nearby park and letting the dogs run around for a little bit. Well..... Secret went and jumped in the creek (!!???!!!) and got all muddy, and then she found something to roll in when I wasn't looking. So guess who else earned herself a bath?

I decided to do Secret first so that Joe wouldn't have to sit and freeze in the car after his bath. Secret was already wet, too, so I figured it would be easiest to start with her. She didn't love it, but she was a fairly good girl about the whole thing. The blow dryer scared the crap out of her, though, and she was shaking pretty much the whole time I used it on her (which is like half the 15 minutes -- the dyer kind of stinks).

But I had to laugh at how huge and fluffy she looked when she was done! When does Secret ever look fat? She looked positively ginormous!

Then it was Joe's turn. I let Secret stay in the wash bay with us for Joe's bath thinking that he might be happier to have a friend in there with him. I lifted Joe up into the tub and he kind of stood there looking around, a bit unsure of things. When the water started he had a minor freak-out, and then when it touched him he started to scream like a little girl!

It didn't last all that long. He gave up rather quickly and stood like a good boy. Holy cow did he smell horrible, though!! The cow barn smell was just leeching off him and he reeked. The soap that the dog wash provided was pretty pathetic. I ended up soaping & conditioning him twice to try to get rid of the smell and in the end I can still smell cow on him.

I didn't mess around with drying Joe as long as I did Secret -- Partly because I took double the time soaping & rinsing him, but also because I figured there wasn't much point in stressing him out when the dryer doesn't work that well anyhow. For what I did do, he seemed to handle the dryer far better than Secret!

He didn't end up as poofy, but he's a whole lot cleaner and softer than he was before. Yay for beautifying! :o) In addition, Joe got his nails clipped Thursday afternoon and he's been learning about the fun activity of teeth brushing! Everyone in my house gets their teeth brushed a few times a week and I started introducing it to Joe right away. We started easy by just letting him eat the toothpaste, but he's already letting me brush his teeth with the tooth brush! Granted he does try to eat the tooth brush, but he's still being very good about everything.

The nail trim went well also, he's just very squirmy and it took a while. He didn't react negatively, but he'll need some help learning to sit still. I ended up putting him on my lap like I do for Kaiser to get his back nails done. It worked quite well, but he won't be able to do that for long for as fast as he's growing!

The holidays are upon us. I'm working the morning shift at the shelter both days this weekend, which is nice because I don't have to worry about having anyone else let the dogs outside. Tonight I have to go up to my parent's house (I still think I'll let Luke go along, but nobody else because it's so crazy up there) and then tomorrow I really have no idea what's going on. My mom's side of the family is all out of whack this year because my grandma broke her hip a couple of weeks ago and has been going between the nursing home and the hospital, and one of my aunts is still in the hospital following a hysterectomy. Merry Christmas to us, but I suppose we'll make the best of it. But sadly the dogs won't get to take part in any of it.

It snowed again, but it's all melting away today again. Hopefully we can find something to do this afternoon that doesn't involve getting covered in mud! Because I don't really feel like going through the bath scene again so soon. :o) We went down to play in the basement last night and Joe was introduced to the Theraball. That little stinker isn't afraid of anything. Everyone took a turn on it, even fighting at times over who's turn it was. I was very surprised at how comfortable Joe was on the peanut. I let him shake and wobble to test him out and nothing phased him. So long as there was food involved, he was totally game!

Since I won't be posting again for a few days, Merry Christmas to all!

Training Outside - In December!

2011-12-22T10:30:00.001-08:00

What's that you say? Training? Outside? In December? On the 21st?

Why yes! Yes we did!

Yesterday I went and downloaded one of the "Video Trial" courses from the NADAC Yahoo Group to set up in the yard. I picked the "Stormy" course because it looked fairly easy to set, didn't use a ton of jumps (12) and it had a tunnel (which I wanted to have out for Joe). Because hoops are easier to pull out of the garage than jumps, I used all six of mine in this course and then used six jumps to finish it out. As I'd hoped, it was a pretty easy course to set and didn't take that long -- Which is good, because we don't have much daylight to work with right now!

I put the "big kids" in the house while I set the course and let Joe run around the yard with me. He doesn't do much when he's out there by himself. There were no toys outside or anything, but I was still surprised at how much he just kind of stood there instead of finding something to do. lol

I wanted to see how Joe would react to seeing agility, so I planned to hook him up to the deck to let him watch. Yeah.... That did not go so well. The first issue was that Secret was up first, and the two of them are kind of in the routine of getting to go crazy with each other when it's just the two of them outside. I had to break this up right away, which made Secret put on her grumpy face. Then Joe had a holy freakout when he realized he was tied to the deck and started screaming -- Secret got a horrified look on her face at that point and I had to put Joe back in the house.

At that point Secret did NOT want to play with me. When I came back from putting Joe inside she gave me one of her looks and I knew it wasn't going to be good. I showed her the Woolie Tug and she looked away from me. Great. I went straight to the big guns and grabbed the Jolly Ball. She mouthed it a few times on the way to the start of the course, but she was not enthused at all. The first run was really, really sad and pathetic. I more or less drug her around the course and when I threw the ball at the end she just stood there and looked at it. But then instead of rolling over with her tail tucked like I expected, she came and crawled up my chest and tried to lick my face. What the?? She's never done that before in this situation.

I switched toys to the bumper. I showed it to her and she still didn't really care, but she still followed me to the start. The second run wasn't a whole lot better than the first, but she finished with a little more speed and she actually targeted the bumper and brought it back to me for a game of tug. Once she did that it seemed like she was ready to play and she left the baggage behind. We ran the course twice more and she was much faster and happier.

I let her chew on her bumper while I moved all the jumps down to 8" for Kaiser -- Since she still seemed in the mood to play I let her run the course once more with the lower jumps. I was curious to see if the lower jump height would motivate her more, but it wasn't much different than the last two attempts. Granted, I don't usually do so many attempts at the same course with her, so I was asking a lot. I'm happy that she still felt like playing with me for what was what, the sixth time through the course?

Kaiser could do no wrong, so he just ran the course three times. I just increased my distance a little with him on each run, otherwise there wasn't much to change. Luke's session was a disaster. I was focusing on bonus line work and we just could not get it together. Finally by the end I gave up and just ran the course with him to end on a high note (which we did, so that's good). I found it a little discouraging to have so many problems with distance when we need that Chances Q at the next trial. lol Oh well, I'm sure it was just an off night for both of us.

I set the camera on a fence post and got video! I debated not including Secret's slow & crappy runs, but I figured it's for the blog and I may as well document everything!

Oh! And Joe did his first tunnel last night! I didn't get that on video because it was pretty dark by that point, but he did the full 12' tunnel with a slight curve in it. He's a smart boy!

Have I mentioned....

2011-12-21T12:41:00.001-08:00

That it is December 21st and we have no snow?

The whole crew is enjoying our lovely 40 degree weather today!

Joe loves to run! Running is easier without ice!

Joe is getting better at posing, too. :o)

Joe likes Luke a lot - Luke accepts but ignores him. Doesn't Joe look tiny?

I like Joe's structure quite a lot...

The whole crew out exploring - Look at Joe way out front!

He likes to hang with Secret, too.

See how much better we are at posing, now? No ASPCA puppy here!

Secret has a stick - Joe wants the stick. Not going to happen. But look how tiny Secret makes him look...

Look at that movement -- Sorry, the obsession with movement goes back to my horse roots!

Joe has a stick -- Why sticks are so fascinating I will never know!

Whee!! Aw look, his ears are up. :o)

Secret's Christmas Gathering (+ Joe!)

2011-12-20T10:28:00.000-08:00

Last night was Secret's Christmas experience for the year. :o) She won't get to go up to my parent's house for the "real" Christmas because my brother is bringing his dogs up from Chicago and I have no real desire to participate in that insanity, so instead I took Secret to our "pre-Christmas" family get-together. My aunt Jeri and family were visiting from Minneapolis, so we got everyone together for dinner at my parent's house.

It was a given that Joe would come because the socialization experience would be so invaluable for him. I was torn between Secret & Luke, though -- So in the end, no lie, I drew names to see which of them would get to come. I had to be fair, after all, and Secret ended up winning fair and square. Poor Luke. I might sneak him along on Christmas Eve, as I know he'll ignore my brother's dogs anyhow.

Secret did better than she ever has in such a setting! At previous engagements I've always made a point to start her out on leash at the beginning of the evening because she seems so uncomfortable with all the commotion. In addition, there are always at least a couple of smaller children running around and this has made her come a little unglued in the past.

Perhaps it's just a sign that she's maturing, but she handled everything very well last night. We arrived at the same time as a carload of people and she was a little bug-eyed at them when we first pulled up, but there was no barking or other such poor behavior.

Inside the house she briefly made her rounds to say hello (mostly to my parents, whom she knows very well) and then she found a cow hoof and spent the next half hour or more laying down to chew on that. When she got a bit overwhelmed by the activity in the living room, I noted that she took her hoof and went to lay by the door to the garage where it was more quiet.

There were several occasions later in the evening where Secret actively sought out interactions from people. A few relatives remarked that they had never been able to pet her in the past and that they were surprised at how she came right up to them. She did very well during dinner and more or less stood back from the table a bit and just watched. Good girl for not begging, but I'd prefer that she lay down and stop staring at everyone. ;o)

My parents have quite a toy basket for Lexie in the living room, so towards the end of the evening Secret started to empty it toy by toy. There were several tennis balls, so all three dogs ended up having their own to play with. Lexie also has several of those stuffed toys without any stuffing, so Secret was having lots of fun throwing those around in addition to finding every toy that squeaked.

It was a long evening and we got home a bit after 9:00. I figured everyone would be totally pooped, but Secret instigated a chase session with Luke & Kaiser in the yard before we went inside to feed dinner & crash. Guess she missed them!

Little man, Joe, was a huge hit with everyone! Numerous times people asked me his age and then remarked at what a well behaved dog he is for only 4 1/2 months old. Granted, I planned ahead and had him chase the tennis ball for a good bit of time before we left to go up to my parents, so he was a little more subdued when we arrived. :o)

I saw Joe cuddling with several people throughout the night and he instigated a game of tug with my cousin when he found one of the stuffless toys. He was very good about leaving the Christmas tree alone (I don't have one at my house) and when he found a couple of ornaments on the floor he was very gentle with them and gave them right up when asked (they are BALLS, can you blame him??).

Joe was a good boy during dinner, too -- Mostly because I kept him by my side by feeding him kibble out of my treat pouch. I did see that he nabbed a couple of dessert plates off the coffee table at the end of the night, but he gave them right up.

In addition, we spent four hours at a new place and still no potty accidents! He's a smart one, this kid.

Playdates, Vet Visits & Other Fun

2011-12-19T10:47:00.000-08:00

This morning Secret went to the vet for her annual wellness visit. She wasn't due for any shots -- Well, except for Bordatella, which I took care of last night...............

Side track -- Have you ever tried to give an intranasal vaccination by yourself? Maybe that's not the right question. I mean, I've given one to dogs at the shelter on my own numerous times if the dog acted like it wouldn't present a problem. This is Secret. This is MY dog. I figured I should be able to handle giving her an intranasal vaccination on my own. Right?? Yeah.... That was fun. I even prepped her by showing her the empty syringe and giving her treats. She even made faces at the empty syringe! Oh yay. I chased her around the house with the vaccination a few times. In the end, I think I might have successfully gotten 1/4 of it up her nose. My vet made me feel better by saying that's all they really need to be protected. That's what I get for trying to save money. I can get a bordatella vaccination through the shelter for $2 vs. at least $15 or so from my vet. Now I know it's probably worth it to have the vet do the injectable vaccination!

So anyhow, annual wellness visit.... Joe went with us to get his staples removed from his dew claw surgery. He did remarkably well until just the last few staples (and there were a million, so that's saying a lot). Joe decided he didn't want to be restrained any longer and pitched a bit of a screaming fit, but then he relaxed and let us finish the job.

Secret was a good girl at the clinic. I think Secret wants a kitty, though. There was an orange kitty roaming about the office when we first came through the door and Secret did her usual whine & wiggle when she saw him. Then Olivia, the black & white kitty who is decidedly NOT afraid of dogs, was at the desk when we checked out and Secret was just beside herself trying to get Olivia to come over to play. She has never shown so much interest in cats before! Joe seemed more or less oblivious to them.

I asked to hold Secret for her heartworm blood draw. I hate that it is standard practice to take animals to the back for a draw. For a dog like Secret, that makes it all the more traumatizing. Thankfully my vet is cool about letting me help, so we did the blood draw in the room with me holding Secret. She was very good, especially considering we had to switch legs when Becky couldn't stick the vein in the left leg (having Joe jumping around on her more than likely wasn't helping). She got it right away on the right leg, though, so I don't think the experience was overly upsetting for Secret. She let Becky check her all over without me holding onto her, so that was actually a big step for Secret.

Everything checked out fine, so it looks like we are good until March now when I see that Secret is due for Lepto & Lyme boosters. After discussing Secret's chiropractic issues with Dr. Randy, he thinks we should spend more time doing core work (such as with the theraball) to see if that helps. I told him that's pretty standard for our winter routine, so I guess we'll see if it makes a difference. She had a hot spot in her lower back that he noted -- No surprise, they tend to turn up about two weeks after each adjustment. Randy would prefer not to see such issues in a dog Secret's age, but it's mostly because of her wonky build and there's not much we can do about it -- Other than core work, I guess!

I believe I posted last week that it sounded like Rascal was going to come over for a play date. He & Bethany did, indeed, swing by for about an hour on Friday and the above photo is what I got to enjoy after they left. :o)

We haven't really gotten to train or play with Rascal much this past year and as a result I think he was a little more withdrawn than usual. Bethany has had some medical issues lately and I think Rascal has spent a lot of time with his therapy dog hat on, and as a result he wasn't so much into playing at first. He did get better and they had some good chase sessions going (with Kaiser in the house, of course), but then Joe started to get really full of himself and this turned Rascal off again.

I got to see a whole new side of Joe, though. He was pushy, pushy, pushy! When Rascal needed a break and Joe wanted him to run some more, Joe started to bite Rascal in the butt! Apparently Rascal's "go button" was broken because it didn't work, so then Joe tried to butter him up with kisses on the nose. When that didn't work, either, Joe decided his best option was to hump Rascal!?! He had never, ever shown any inclination to try that with any dog prior to that occasion! It totally took me by surprise.

We had Lexie at the house yesterday while my parents were at the football game. I was at the shelter all day and we only had about an hour of playtime before my parents came to pick Lexie up, but Joe was humping on her, too! That situation makes a little more sense considering we now know that Lexie is in season. I'm not cool with humping behaviors no matter the reason, though, so I made sure to not let it go on when I noticed it.

Look who figured out how to get up on the bed all by himself now? Joe is still sleeping in a crate at night, but I don't care if he goes up on the bed while I'm getting ready in the morning and whatnot. He takes full advantage of it and thinks the bed is pretty awesome. He has made himself right at home, that's for sure.

Joe did well with my weekend work schedule. He seems to think that Kongs are the greatest thing ever as evidenced by how he stock piled them in his crate each evening. Being stuck in a crate all day must not bother him, either, since he still goes barreling in there on his own at meal time. And it sounds like he was a good boy and did his business outside for everyone that came to let the dogs out both days this weekend, so good boy, Joe!

I got good news from the shelter this weekend (back pay, yay!) so it looks like we are going to head up to Minneapolis for a NADAC trial on the 31st. Luke needs one more Q in Chances for his NATCH 3, which would be his fourth Champion title of the year (two NATCH, two V-NATCH). Greed is winning out and I want that title! In addition, we don't have another trial in La Crosse until the end of January and that's just a super long time to wait. Secret has trialed at Soccer Blast one other time (in July) and I think it's good for her to get out and about to more places than just La Crosse. We probably won't run too many classes, but we'll hit up Chances & Jumpers for sure. Maybe we'll enter Touch-n-Go to try to get closer to completing her Elite Versatility Award as well.

Oh! And Joe has an approved adopter who lives in that area who is going to come meet him at the trial and see how he does with her other dog. Fingers crossed that everything goes well. This would be the difficult part of fostering. Obviously the goal is to find Joe an awesome forever home, but I will still be sad to see him leave so soon. He's been so much fun to have around.

Speaking of fun -- Tonight we are having a family get-together (ie: early Christmas) because my aunt from out of town is visiting. The perk of having these events at my parent's house is that I can schlep dogs along. Joe is coming for sure for some valuable socialization time and I think I'll bring Secret with him. I feel bad for leaving Luke out.... But I don't know that we want to deal with five dogs at a family dinner (because if Luke comes, so does Kaiser, and my parents have Lexie). Maybe Luke can go for Christmas and I'll leave everyone else at home. :o)

More Puppy Fun

2011-12-16T10:33:00.000-08:00

Joe likes bully sticks! They are good for his sore little teething gums. I noticed blood on his chewed up bully at one point this morning -- Poor little dude. I don't think any teeth have fallen out since he arrived. If I find any, do you suppose I should save them for his new owner's scrapbook? :o) I still have Secret's teeth somewhere. Heck, I still have my horse's tooth that I found in his feed bucket years ago, and I don't even have the horse anymore.

I'm still enjoying my puppy fix, in case you couldn't tell. Today marks the end of Joe's first week with us and it's been loads of fun. He's still the best puppy on the planet, although he's definitely getting a bit more energetic than he was when he first arrived. I figure that's just part of the settling in process and his personality is starting to come out.

Today the wee man actually seems a little tuckered out. I suppose that's what happens when you play like a crazy man the night before and then don't get a nap in the morning because you are busy chewing your bully stick. He still romped & played on our noon-time walk today, but he spent more time walking next to me and we didn't have a repeat of yesterday's hilarious puppy zoomies. It was so cute -- It was towards the end of our walk when he bolted about 50' forward and then just started to zoom in circles ahead of us on the trail before pouncing into the tall weeds. Gotta love puppies.

I tried to get a shot of Joe running in the yard this morning, but this is what I got. He's kind of fast. ;o)

We made progress with the clicker last night! I was correct in guessing that Joe would do better having the food delivered directly to his mouth vs. finding a tossed treat in front of him. His focus was world's better in this last session and he seemed to really be getting a grasp of the game. In addition, I was able to have the food bowl right out in plain sight and he left it alone! I didn't have to hide it in my lap anymore, so that was major progress as well.

While a good deal of progress was certainly made, we still aren't finished. Secret's first inclination is to touch EVERYTHING with her feet. She's just always been that way. Joe, on the other hand, is very much a nose targeting kind of guy. He was nose bumping the touch light like nobody's business last night and he seemed to truly understand that was the mission. I tried to wait him out at one point to see if he would escalate the behavior to using his feet, but he got frustrated and quit (ie: lay down). We did have a few successful attempts where he started to move forward, but then he'd go back to nose touching again. That's okay, I ended on that because it's still a lot further than we got in the last session!

One thing I always find difficult with the young ones is figuring out how much to feed them. I remember how hard it was to find a balance with Secret that wouldn't give her runny stool (ie: too much) or starve her (too little). Add to that, the fact that I am delivering kibble out of the treat pouch all day long makes it even harder to nail down. Right now I'm giving Joe 1/2 cup for breakfast & dinner, using 1/2 cup in our clicker session and probably handing out a good 1/4 to 1/2 cup in random treats throughout the day. He's been remarkably "regular" this whole time, but yesterday I must have fed a few too many treats because he was having minor poo issues. So... Fewer random treats, I guess.

I'm probably just overly sensitive to the poo issues because Kaiser developed a raging case of "colitis" (I use the quotes because that's the only technical term I can think of for horrible diarrhea and vomiting) on Monday and only today had his first solid bowel movement (with the help of metronidozole and pumpkin). I made sure to have a good stock of carpet cleaner on hand when the puppy came, but so far I've only used it for Kaiser's accidents....

Anyhow, I have no idea why I went off on that side track. Speaking of Kaiser, he's still being a rotten turd to Joe, but there have been huge improvements. This morning, for example, the two were actually laying right next to each other chewing on their bully sticks.

Kaiser is all fluff, more or less -- and Joe just has to stop letting Kaiser bully him. I think I found out how that is going to happen -- Toys!

Kaiser is the play police and tries to stop Joe from having any fun -- But last night we were throwing tennis balls and Joe is SO in love with them that he would just plow right through Kaiser when Kaiser would try to stop him. Eventually Kaiser just stopped being so rude and Joe was able to have his fun.

Joe is doing well in learning to play around the other dogs -- as in, this is my ball, that is your ball. Well, until one of the dogs drops a ball at my feet, then that is Joe's ball, too. Thankfully my dogs know they'll get it back when I throw it, so they didn't care -- And Joe would always find his own ball again after I threw one of the others. He is a natural at fetch. He pretty much always brings the ball back, although he will often forget to drop it and take off after one of the other dogs when they go out for their ball. Oh well, that's fun, too. :o)

We were actually able to play for quite a while last night with Joe staying focused the whole time. I figured I owed him a longer session because it was his first time being left home alone at my house (well, with the other dogs, too) because I had to work at the shelter. He seemed like he did absolutely fine, though. He's so good in a crate.

Which is good, because he'll be in it a lot this weekend. I'm working the 8:30 - 5:00 shift both days at CRHS, so he'll be crated all day save a break when my parents come tomorrow and my cousin on Sunday. I realize millions of people do it all the time, but I always feel bad the first time I leave them.... Oh well, he'll get introduced to the frozen Kong for the first time and I bet he'll love it!

Everyone is crashed right now, which is good. They need to rest up because it sounds like Rascal is coming over for a play date after work. I think Joe & Rascal should get along quite well! Secret will be happy to see him, too, I'm sure -- They haven't been over for some time.

We have a vet appointment at 8:30 on Monday for Secret's annual wellness visit and to get Joe's staples out. They look really good now, so I figure that should (hopefully) be a non-event.

Differences

2011-12-15T07:36:00.000-08:00

Considering that Secret was my first border collie, it has been very interesting to have Joe in the house. He is close to the same age Secret was when I adopted her, so it is fun to compare & contrast their similarities and differences.

FYI, I had to Photoshop the side-by-side photo because I was unsuccessful in getting them to pose next to each other this morning. lol Secret was a very good girl and held her pose like the glamorous model that she is, but I couldn't get Joe to stay by her for anything. Part of it could be that he just hasn't learned the "wait" cue yet -- Or, well, part of it could be that Secret showed her teeth if he showed interest in the bait I was using to get them to pose. Thanks for your help, Secret. This was the most successful shot I got....

I would say that Joe is more outgoing than Secret was when I got her. He is pretty fearless about most things and has a "barge right through it" attitude. Take puppy gates, for instance. lol They are merely a suggestion for Joe, and a poor one at that. I only prop gates up at doorways and don't fix them in as they are intended to be used, so it's pretty easy to pull a gate over. My three dogs are horrified at the thought of a falling gate and if one comes crashing down in front of them they dare not cross it. Joe pulls it over and jumps over it to get what he wants (ie: treat from the UPS man, to follow me to the lunch room, etc.). He respects the gates the majority of the time, it's just those moments that require some impulse control that we're working on. :o) But my point is more that I find it interesting how he is not phased at all by the noise or action of the gate crashing.

I have introduced Joe to the clicker over the last few days. His learning style is so very different from Secret's. I always said from day one that she is a "thinking" dog. She thinks things over, processes it, figures out how to do it and then she's got it. In some things (take agility, for example) I do not find this desirable because she's so serious about everything and this makes her slower -- But it's definitely beneficial for trick training and other behaviors.

Joe is a smart boy, but he's definitely more of a "do-er" than a thinker by nature. It's keeping me on my toes. It's been two years since I've gone through the beginning stages of clicker training with Secret and I swear she made me feel like a genius because it was so easy. That thinking side of her personality made clicker training very natural for her and because she was not super fast, it was fairly easy for me as well.

Joe does everything so fast that I find it hard to keep up. He is VERY excited when the clicker and food bowl come out. In the first two sessions I did nothing but load the clicker and reward him for offering sit & down (and as a by-product, self control, because he couldn't be trying to get into the food bowl if he was performing one of the behaviors). Joe is doing well with these and is transitioning them into different settings, but we are working on increasing his reaction time -- as in, please don't wait 10 seconds before you sit because you are so busy jumping onto me.

Last night I decided to test how much Joe really understands shaping with the clicker. I thought an easy way to do this would be to use the same touch light I used with Secret -- You can see that post and watch the video in my post from two years ago. I suppose it would have been helpful to video Joe's session last night for comparison, but I didn't have the camera at home.

The main struggle is that Joe is such a complete spaz around food. If I toss the treat on the floor after a click he often doesn't even see it because he is so busy sniffing around looking for a treat. Because his nose is always in hyper-drive, my clicks seemed to be rewarding the sniffing more so than targeting. I did sense improvement when I started to deliver treats directly to his mouth, but then his focus shifted to my hands and I struggled to get him back on task.

So sadly, I did not have the same accomplishment with Joe of getting him to target the touch light in one session as I did with Secret. It did make me feel like a bit of a failure, but I know that Joe just learns differently than Secret did and I have to learn how to train this type of dog. After all, have I not said that I don't want my next dog to be as serious as Secret? That means I'd better learn to teach the "do-er" type of dog. :o)

Secret has been acting like her feelings are hurt that Joe gets to do all this fun training with me, so I let her come into the bedroom to show him how it's done. We all know that dogs learn by watching, right? Secret has not seen the touch light since our original training with it, but she was all over that thing, turning it off and on, off and on. She just feeds off clicker work, so much so that I wonder if I need to start teaching more tricks to her this winter. It would be interesting to see how much faster she picks up on stuff now that she is matured. I never did actually get around to teaching her to do the handstand!

Meanwhile, I will give Joe another session with the touch light tonight to see how much progress we can make. I am training myself just as much as training him at the moment.

Joe's been doing super awesome at work! He settled right in to the whole office setting and isn't affected at all by the different sights & sounds. He loves meeting all of the new people who come in (especially our UPS man, Charlie). Joe wasn't so sure about Lexie (my parent's dog) at first -- he thinks she's a little odd, but on our walk yesterday he did start to play with her.

He has been completely trustworthy off leash and enjoys running with the other dogs on the trail. His recall is impressive, but so was Secret's at this age and heaven knows we went through a period of time where it became a struggle as she became more independent -- but right now he's about as perfect as they come. :o) I put him on leash when trains go by, but he doesn't seem to be reactive to motion (hasn't really noticed cars, either).

He pretty much came potty trained -- We're not entirely sure how that happened since he'd never been in a house prior to entering foster care, but there hasn't been a single accident yet. I keep a pretty strict "puppy schedule" and we go outside a lot, but even Secret had a few accidents to start with. Good boy, Joe.

Joe has WAY more interest in toys than Secret did at this age. WAY more. I love that about him for sure. I have to be careful not to tug much with him right now because he's teething and I can tell it hurts if something hits his teeth wrong, but he does offer it. Joe likes frisbees already and will chase/grab rollers! That's like a good year ahead of where Secret was with the disc. lol He also likes to chase tennis balls and our Holee Roller that has a Kong squeaker ball inside it. Joe also likes to chase the dogs who are chasing toys, but he's been appropriate about it thus far (unlike previous foster, Max, who would rudely use teeth...).

We started to work on stairs last night. I had to carry Joe into the basement to introduce him to the play room -- He seemed a little overwhelmed by it at first, but then he found a tennis ball and I even got him to play with a fuzzy tuggy for a bit. He figured out how to get back upstairs on his own, so we'll keep working on that whole "going down" part. That one took Secret a while to learn, too! :o)

As I type this, Joe is enjoying his first bully stick! I'd say it's a hit. Then again, anything he can chew on is a hit right now!

Trial! New Titles!

2011-12-12T12:53:00.001-08:00

Look at those pretty green ribbons! Secret finished up two more titles at our trial this weekend! The first was her O-EAC on Saturday, which means TWENTY Q's in Elite Regular already! Wow!! Then, miracle of miracles, we managed another Elite Chances Q on Sunday for her ECC title. Do you know what that means? It means the countdown to NATCH is now official. Go figure. :o)

Secret Q'd in 5/9 runs this weekend and I have to pretty much take the blame for the NQ's (except maybe in Chances on Saturday, she kind of blew me off to take a tunnel). I had major puppy brain going on and was pretty distracted, which led to some pretty pathetic handling at times. Considering that, I think the five Q's we did get are pretty remarkable. lol

Overall I was pretty happy with her speed. Her enthusiasm in the Regular rounds was great pretty much everywhere except the weaves. Round 1 on Saturday was great because it ended with the weaves -- But that meant that Round 2 started with the weaves and that is the worst set-up for her. She got past it and did the rest of the course with good speed, but the weaves were pretty pathetic. I have got to find a way to increase her drive on weave poles in a trial setting....

Amazingly enough, though, she made time by FOUR SECONDS in Elite Weavers! I have avoided entering it for quite a while because I just didn't think there would be any point. She weaved the first two sets quite nicely, but the third set was fairly slow -- Likely due to me having to pull her off a tunnel right before the last set, and any time she questions me it slows her down. I didn't look to see what the 20" dog times were, but I'm sure it would have been pretty close. That's a bonus to running Skilled, I guess, in that it does give a little extra time where we need it.

Jumpers on Saturday was really lovely! I wasn't sure what to expect since it was her fifth run of the day, but she ended up with a really good time and was only about 0.4 seconds behind Luke. Unfortunately I completely and totally failed her on Sunday with Jumpers being the first run of the day. I didn't support her lines AT ALL and she did the expected and followed where I was telling her to go. I didn't correct it because I knew immediately it was my fault, so we missed several jumps. Then out of the blue I threw a blind cross at her in the last sequence, but it turned out really well so I guess it worked. :o)

I didn't think we had a shot at the Chances course because it involved layering a jump & tunnel after the a-frame, and typically one needs a bit of momentum to get that sort of thing. Secret was a GOOD girl. She looked at the inner jump, but directed right out when I told her. It was a nice run!

She put in two nice Regular rounds at the end of the day, but I pushed her wide and more or less sent her straight into the tunnel under the a-frame on the stretch home -- no point in correcting it, so we finished on that. I managed to not screw her up in the last round, so we did get a Q there -- so just two more Q's until her NATCH points in that class. Go baby dog!

Here's Secret's video -- The boys have videos on YouTube as well if you're interested. :o) Luke and I only got one of our two needed Chances Q's for NATCH 3, so that video will have to wait a bit longer! But Kaiser got one Chances, so that video is one step closer. Yay!

Meet Joe!

2011-12-12T11:13:00.001-08:00

If there were such thing as the "perfect puppy," most certainly my new foster puppy, Joe, would fit the bill. Joe joined us Friday afternoon and he has been good as gold since the moment we met him.

I took Secret along for the ride to meet up with Joe's temporary foster mom near Rochester. Aside from it being really stinking cold outside while we were trying to make sure we covered all the info that needed to be covered, everything went very smoothly. Not having any idea how big he was, I brought Secret's wire crate to make sure he'd have plenty of room. Joe rode quietly all the way home, but I'm sure having just come out of surgery (neuter & dew claw removal) helped a little with that.

Secret was fascinated with Joe and would occasionally turn around and just watch him on the trip home. I thought they'd hit it off with no issues -- that is, until I pulled into the garage at home and all of the sudden she started to growl at him for no reason. Apparently things change when we reach our home turf!

She was fine when I got him out, though. Kaiser was the only naughty one, which was to be expected. It's easily managed by putting Kaiser in the house when Joe & Secret feel like playing, though, so it's a non-issue. He's doing much better already.

Joe is sweet as can be. He feeds off praise, loves to cuddle and just generally wants to be by people. He definitely seems food motivated (though the attention span is still pretty short) and he's been showing more interest in toys each day. That part is made difficult by Secret more or less saying, "MINE" any time he shows interest in something, but I'll start to work with him more on his own to see what interests him. This weekend was just a little crazy with getting him settled in and having a trial here in La Crosse.

Joe did pretty dang awesome at his first trial. Being raised on a farm, he has never been exposed to anything like what he experienced this weekend. He did great with all of the activity, noise (this was a LOUD trial), people, walking on a leash for the first time and having to spend so much time in a crate. He cried a bit during the briefing on Saturday when everyone left him, but after that he really didn't make much noise at all. He did start to bark at me when I gave treats to the other dogs after a run since I was doing so right next to his crate, but I started to give him pieces of chicken & cheese when he was quiet and he figured it out very quickly!

He's doing awesome with his potty training, too! Kim (who picked Joe & Mauer up from their surrendering family) said that they'd both done great with her all week and I haven't had one single accident since he came to my place. He's one smart boy, that's for sure. He's been a gem all day at the office, too.

Joe had his hind dew claws removed when he was neutered and it appears they must have been pretty major! I was very thankful that my vet (who does agility with us) offered to help me remove the bandages at the trial yesterday. I might have freaked out a bit if I would have discovered it on my own -- not to mention that he was pretty squirmy for the cutting part!

Poor Joe has a lot of staples, some pretty bad clipper burn and quite a bit of irritation. They started to bleed a bit when we removed the bandages and we worried that we'd have to re-wrap them because he was pestering them so badly. Once he got them cleaned up and the novelty wore off, though, he pretty much left them alone. He's been doing well today, so hopefully they'll heal up nice & quick. My vet recommended to go ahead and leave the staples in place for the full 10 days, though, due to the location and size.

So that's our Joe update! Let's see if we can't get this handsome fellow into a home for Christmas. :o) Or not, I really don't mind having him around. lol

Whoops! I suppose I could share his video that I made!

Balls -- Not just for chasing!

2011-12-08T07:27:00.000-08:00

If I weren't such a dreadfully lazy excuse for a human being, I would utilize our theraball/peanut do-hicky thing year round because of all of the wonderful benefits it offers to the dogs. Better core strength, limb awareness, overall strength & balance... But alas, it remains something I turn to only when we are stuck inside and unable to do "fun" stuff.

That's a really stupid viewpoint, however, because we always do seem to have fun when we do ball work! The dogs actually seem to enjoy it and it provides a surprisingly good workout for them that tends to make everyone happy for the remainder of the evening. Just check out the photographic evidence!

In case you couldn't tell, last night was the start of "basement season" for us, which mean working with the theraball! There is absolutely nothing wrong with the yard at the moment, but the dogs saw the chiropractor on Tuesday and as such there is a moratorium on crazy outdoor activities that could lead to their adjustment being completely for naught.

The dogs have always thought the matted basement is great fun! It was a crazy huge investment to make last winter and I'll admit that there were several times this summer (as I made payments to my credit card...) that I thought it was one of the stupidest ideas ever. But now that cold weather has returned, I once again see the value in having a safe indoor play area, so it was worth it!

Having not used the peanut for quite some time, I figured it might need a bit of air -- so I let the dogs come down to run around and be idiots while I inflated it a bit more (by hand, oh joy, but thankfully it really hadn't deflated much at all!). The plan was to do that and then do the usual routine of working with them individually, with treats (which I still had to cut up for Kaiser), but they surprised me and made my life super easy by offering to play on the peanut without treats! Crazy. Guess they really do like that thing.

Luke clambered up first and was happy to do his "bouncy, bouncy" routine. The ball work is hard for the big guy, so he doesn't do too much more than bouncing and weight shifting, especially after having such a long hiatus from the work. Last year he did progress to being able to sit and I was happy to get two brief sits from him in this session.

Secret found a tennis ball in the basement and I was able to incorporate this into her ball session. I did bouncing, weight shifting, sit/down/stand exercises, etc. with her and had her catch her tennis ball while on the peanut -- which was actually quite an exercise for her that required a good deal of core strength!

Even Kaiser managed to get a session in without treats, which is pretty huge for him. I more or less gave him a massage on the ball to make him happy. The little guy was able to keep the ball stable without me holding on to it even while he moved around, so he's got some pretty awesome balance. :o)

One of these days I suppose I'll start to haul some equipment down to the basement to keep working the foundation stuff and to keep us busy. First, though, I should probably make a point to clean the room -- there is dog hair EVERYWHERE. How did that accumulate over the summer? lol

Our appointment with Dr. Engel went well on Tuesday. Secret was super friendly and social when we first got there, but went through the usual, "OMG, I can't believe you are going to touch me!!" phase when Marta first started to work on her. Thankfully she gets over it fairly quickly and settles in. I find it interesting how she makes little smacking noises with her lips/mouth as Marta works on her -- She acts like it must feel good.

Not surprisingly, Secret was a mess, but not in the usual areas. Normally it is her lower lumbar area that has so many problems, but this time Dr. Engel was finding the most issues with the area of her spine over her ribs. She was also out on the left side of her neck, but that was an easy fix.

So this is why we are on restricted activity for the rest of the week. The last thing I need is for her to jump wonky at a frisbee and knock everything out of alignment before the trial this weekend, so we are taking it easy. My guess would be that we'll visit the basement again tonight when I get home from the shelter.

Tomorrow will be interesting..... Because, well.... I'm getting a foster puppy!! Border Collie Rescue of MN (where Secret came from) posted last week that they were in need of foster homes for a couple of puppies that were coming into rescue. I have had puppy fever like nobody's business for ages now, so I figured fostering might be the best way to cure it (since lord knows I can NOT have a fourth dog right now!).

So tomorrow I'm driving to Rochester to pick up Joe. He's about 15/16 weeks old and is from an unwanted litter that was born on a farm. I think I'll take Secret along for the ride so that she can get used to him a bit before we get home. She loves puppies, so I hope she takes to him and protects him from Kaiser (who sometimes loves puppies, sometimes doesn't). He's getting neutered earlier in the day tomorrow, though, so we'll have to take it easy for a few days while he recovers and settles in.

I don't expect him to be with us a terribly long time, as BCRMN seems to have pretty good luck in placing puppies -- But with the holidays, one never knows. Don't worry, I'll share pictures! :o)

Happy 2nd Gotcha Day, Secret!

2011-12-06T07:33:00.001-08:00

Today is Secret's 2nd Gotcha Day! Two years ago I drove home in freezing rain with my little surprise. Who could have ever guessed the ways she would change my life?

We had to do the obligatory "try to get the same shot as the first day picture" pose -- Secret was not digging it this morning. Oh well. She doesn't mind being picked up; in fact she rather likes pretending she still weighs 16 pounds instead of the 47 that she actually is. Picking her up two years ago was significantly easier than it was today. lol

We did get one shot where she was kind of looking at the camera, but of course it turned out blurry.

Anniversaries are great for reflecting, so of course that's what I've been doing. Last night I finally got started on reading through our blog book. I wrote so darn much when she first came home that I think I only got through March of 2010. How fun to look back at those times -- It was a period of rapid progression, tons of trick training, and only a bit of frustration regarding lack of toy drive (that started to build later in the year!). Two years later we have both changed a lot!

But one thing remains the same -- she's still one good looking dog. :o)

Since I didn't make it that far in the book last night, I had to go back and find my Gotcha Day post from last year. It makes me chuckle, because I could more or less copy & paste many parts of that and it would still be true. Her toy drive went way up in the last year, her enthusiasm for agility greatly improved and I think our relationship improved and she became more affectionate. I guess Secret just decided it was her job to teach me a lesson in patience!

There has been some buzz on the interwebz for the last week or so about an article that Linda Mecklenburg wrote about her dog, Stellar, and how he started his life as what she labeled as a "sleepy puppy." This article seemed to connect with a lot of readers and several people on Facebook started to talk about their own "sleepy puppies."

I'm always hesitant to jump on the bandwagon with these things, but I did related to much of what Linda wrote. I actually wish she would have expanded on her experiences with Stellar, though, so that those of us with similar dogs could learn more about how she pulled out the best in him. Ultimately, though, I do think that the answer to that is simply, "time," as I've been learning myself with Secret.

My "sleepy puppy" has most definitely been waking up over the past few months! She's got more drive than ever before and I'm finally starting to see glimpses of it at trials. Our experience at NADAC Champs was amazing and her last trial was her best yet. I'm very excited to see what the next year brings for us.

It's hard to believe it's only been two years since Secret joined the family. She has wormed her way into my heart and feels like she's been here forever. And I'm happy to say that Luke now seems to genuinely like Secret, something I thought would never happen when I brought her home. Time is a mystical and wonderful thing. :o)

So here's to another year filled with joy, fun, growth & learning! I imagine I'll look back on this post in a years time and marvel at how far we've come yet again.

We have a trial to look forward to this weekend! In an effort to work towards Secret's Elite Versatility Award, I decided to go ahead and enter her in Elite Weavers to see what happens. It will be her fourth run (of five) on Saturday, so hopefully she is running happy. It's been some time since I've ran Secret in Weavers and I need to see where we're at -- Plus I figured I'd run Kaiser in Touch-n-Go, so this way Secret will have my full attention to prepare for the Weavers run. I know I'm carrying my "we can't Q in this class!" baggage into Weavers with Secret and I need to let it go!!

We are headed off to see the chiropractor this afternoon. Normally Wednesday or Thursday are my preferred days to get the dogs adjusted before a trial, but Dr. Engel is out of the office so today was my only shot! Secret has been carrying a little heat in her lower back again, so I know she's due for an adjustment. She will not be happy about being on restricted activity for the rest of the week...

We are published!

2011-12-01T07:34:00.000-08:00

Wow, that was really fast! Look at what came on a FedEx truck yesterday! I was super surprised to see it already, especially considering that the USPS recently took two weeks to deliver something...

So of course I had to prepare a proper photo session for Secret to pose with her book. :o) Natural light disappears by about 4 p.m. these days, so I had to get creative since I really have a pretty sad lack of lighting in my house. I went down to the basement and found the work light that we used for painting the house when I first bought it, which should explain the odd glare you see in some photos. lol Someone on Facebook actually touched up the top photo to take the glare out for me. Wasn't that nice? I'm not very talented with Photoshop...

The book turned out really, really nice! It was really awesome to hold it in my hands and see the final product! It is WAY LONGER than it seemed it would be. I obviously knew it was 152 pages, but it's 152 pages with fairly small font. I am going to need to actually set aside some time to sit down to read it front to back. But oh... It's terribly pretty to look at. And I did go through the entire thing once just to look at the photos and it really did turn out nice.

I can't wait to do the next one!!

It was a nice night last night -- something like the upper 30's or low 40's -- and since I was home for the evening I figured I should try to get some training time in with the dogs. Unfortunately I didn't get home until about 4:15, which left very limited time for setting anything up. For that reason, it ended up being a very simplistic four-loop serpentine design that essentially went hoop, hoop, dog walk, hoop, hoop, jump, jump, jump, weave, hoop, hoop, jump, jump. Great visualization, right? :o) To make it slightly more challenging & appealing, I set all of the jumps at really wonky angles so that the dogs would have to slice them and think about where they were placing themselves a bit more.

Aside from completely not even thinking about stopping on the dog walk the first time (although she did go straight through the contact), Secret did really well with everything. Her enthusiasm was way up there (the new rubber stick was her reward) and her speed was fantastic. All jumps were set at 16" for her and she was pretty much double-striding all of her lines.

She did great with sending while I moved into position for front crosses, she nailed & held her weaves while I ran away from her and she even handled the blind crosses I threw at her. I don't typically blind anywhere other than tunnels on course, but the wonky angle of a few of my jumps lent to a blind being the best handling option, so I figured I'd try it. It worked marvelously for both Secret & Kaiser! (Luke was doing all distance handling and this didn't apply for him.) While I don't typically see a reason to use them in NADAC courses, it's nice to know we have this handling option in our tool kit.

After everyone had their turn, I did a very sad thing. In the dark, piece by piece, I moved all of the agility equipment into the garage. :o( It had to be done, for flurries are forecast for today (it's snowing lightly now) and there is a storm brewing for this weekend. It would figure! Our company Christmas party is on Saturday and we always get hit with the worst weather.

I haven't moved anything into the basement yet. All of my jumps, hoops, tunnels & weaves are still accessible and can be moved back to the yard if the weather allows, but the dog walk is in for the year (we lost the a-frame some time ago and it still needs to be painted after being repaired).

I've heard it's supposed to be a very cold & very wet winter. I hope "they" are wrong.

New Favorite Toy

2011-11-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

It's a stick! No wait, it's rubber. It's both! It's a rubber stick!!

I am starting to lose track of Secret's "favorite toys." Back when we struggled with toy drive it seemed like I was constantly on the search for something that would hit "favorite toy" status. Now it seems like everything I bring home is a hit.

I heard about these rubber stick things a while back, or rather, I believe I saw someone using one in a YouTube video. Considering that sticks were the first objects Secret viewed as a toy and would fetch, I figured this toy would be a hit with her. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't get one sooner, but such is life.

I saw one yet again in a video last week, so I went on Google and searched for "rubber stick" and landed at a site called "Baxter Boo." They were offering "Grriggles Rubber Sticks" for just $10 each and free shipping! Win! I even found a coupon code for 20% off. I got one in purple and one in blue and let me tell you, it's a winner!

They are not indestructible (like the super scary Zogoflex material used in the Hurley toy), so it's not something that I can leave out and about for her to chew on (I let her have it for five minutes last night and she already took a chunk off the end...) --- But it makes for another super fun training toy! We can tug with it and enjoy the fun way it bounces when thrown!

So that's what we did. I set up a small, simple training exercise in the yard last night. No courses because I was lazy... I decided to spare you from one of my horrible Paint drawings and instead snapped a picture of the layout.

It offered numerous opportunities to work on serpentines, threadles, wraps, push throughs, ketchkers, etc. I'm very happy with Secret's attitude and eagerness to play through these maneuvers, most of which we don't spend much time on. She's also a super sensitive dog who can sense when I don't have a clue what I'm doing, so I'm happy she kept her speed & motivation up while I blundered through with pretty much zero plan to speak of. I am so terrible at thinking on the fly and do much better when I follow a plan. But we made it through and I think we both managed to learn a few things. I was very impressed with her wraps and ability to find the back side of the jumps!

I also had the dog walk set up for Kaiser, so we did a few reps on that. I don't anticipate having any training issues this winter once the contacts go away, but it never hurts to get in a few more sessions. It was nice to see her not self-releasing this time, too. With the lack of training coming our way, I'll have to start using trials to make sure I proof her behavior and don't let the early releasing get out of hand this winter.

I have been struggling the past couple of weeks with Secret's newest pastime. It's not technically new because digging & dirt eating tends to come with every spring thaw, but I have no idea why she's started it up now. She's not a digger in the sense that many dogs are -- She digs to get fresh dirt to eat. Luke is also to blame, but he usually just goes over and eats dirt that Secret already dug up vs. contributing to the size of the holes.

Right now we have two major spots going on in the yard. I have filled these holes in NUMEROUS times and they just keep reappearing. I do wonder exactly how much dirt the dogs are ingesting since there is so rarely any dirt around to push back into the holes... The above photo is the small hole. This.... is the big one.

Naughty, naughty dogs. Stop ripping up my agility yard!!! Thankfully I have a decent sized dirt pile remaining from some landscape work we did around the house when I first moved in, but if these holes keep up the pile will be toast within a year.

I know that some of our previous digging excursions have been after the moles/voles and chipmunks, but apparently these spots just have good eating dirt. Sigh. The only reason to look forward to snow & frozen ground is so that we can break this habit again -- then they can move to eating snow, I guess.

Oh, and if you hadn't guessed it, the dog walk didn't get moved inside yet. :o) Go figure.

Shelter Pet Project!

2011-11-29T06:37:00.000-08:00

Today is a day set aside to honor our pets who were adopted from a shelter or rescue organization! The Shelter Pet Project is trying to spread the word about what GREAT companions these animals make and I am with them 100%!

There are many reasons people opt not to rescue -- They think that rescue dogs come with "baggage." They find it depressing to visit shelters. They "only want puppies" (guess what, both Luke & Secret were adopted as puppies -- puppies end up in rescue, too!). They don't think their breed is available through rescue. Some people just don't really even realize it's an option!

There are SO MANY great dogs available from your local shelters and rescue groups -- and the vast majority of them end up there through no fault of their own. We recently had a young female cattle dog come into our shelter as a stray. She is an AMAZING dog. Someone has obviously spent time working with her and she has a very bright future ahead of her. By not considering a shelter pet, someone would totally miss out on a super awesome dog like Abby.

Border Collie Rescue of MN (where Secret was adopted) recently listed some really nice prospects that were surrendered from an unwanted litter. We are closing in on the two-year anniversary of Secret's adoption and boy am I hankering for a puppy right now. These two make it hard to resist! http://bcrofmn.org/dogs/available/a-kybcpups.php I am partial to the one with more white, personally. Sounds like they will both make great performance prospects!! Alas, I think I have my hands full at the moment so they will have to find a great home with someone else.

So if you or anyone else you know is looking for an addition to your family, don't hesitate to check out shelters & rescue groups! Keep shelters in mind for pets other than cats & dogs as well. We regularly have numerous small critters available such as hamsters, mice, gerbils, rabbits, guinea pigs & birds! We've even had snakes, turtles & ferrets, so the possibilities are endless. Support your local shelter!

Turkey Day Training

2011-11-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry, Secret. Thanksgiving is hosted by my aunt & uncle each year, which means you don't get to go along and there are no leftovers for me to bring home to share with you. Bummer, I know. I'm sure you would have loved the sweet potatoes and the chocolate pecan pie. I know I did! :o)

Thanksgiving day was absolutely lovely. I worked at the shelter in the morning and my parents were nice enough to go pick up the dogs and take them to their house so that I wouldn't have to rush home for anything. The puppers always enjoy a field trip to Grandma & Grandpa's house, I know.

We got home around 3:30 or so and it was 50-some degrees and sunny outside. I felt like a bloated tick from gorging on sweet potatoes (forget turkey & pie, I seriously think sweet potatoes are the bomb), but I knew I just couldn't let the day pass without doing SOMETHING agility related with the dogs. As we all know, we are going on borrowed time with the nice weather here. It could literally snow at any moment (okay, not really -- the weather guessers have promised we are still good for a bit).

Even so, I was so unmotivated to... well, even move at that point. lol So I sat down and dug through my messy pile of courses to try to find something inspiring. I stumbled upon this Masters Jumpers course that I printed out from Bud Houston's blog ages ago. I thought it looked like a lot of fun and offered interesting challenges -- I couldn't tell you why I have failed to do anything with it until now!

I replaced the 7-9 sequence with a set of 12 weave poles. Numbers 10, 11, 3, 4, 14 & 15 were hoops because I was feeling lazy and felt like getting a minimal number of jumps off my deck (where I am storing everything IN CASE it snows).

It was an interesting, fun & educational course. Secret did really great!

For the opening sequence I played around with running with her and sending her laterally to number three while I got in place to front cross at four. This was successful, as was leading out to number four and calling her through.

I anticipated more of an issue with the serpentine sequence, but all three dogs managed to get through it without sucking into the tunnel. I stayed between four & five and then rear crossed the jump into the weave poles. It could be that this sequence would cause more problems if using jumps vs. hoops, as I can see the momentum of the jump landing them right in the tunnel if you aren't careful. With the hoops I was able to create a far more shallow line since there is no worry of knocking a bar at number four.

Secret's weaves were super, so yay for that! I still plan on having her see the chiro before the next trial just to make sure everything is hunky dory. There was a goodly amount of distance between the weave poles and the number 10 hoop, so I left Secret in the poles to get into place to support 10 -- If I didn't, it was very easy for her to cut in early on me.

I expected there to be more of a tunnel sucking force between 12 & 13 and was surprised to have Secret spin back at me in this section. Lesson learned, support the obstacles! It's hard when you are waddling from a full belly, though. Thankfully she was able to find the hoops at the top on her own while I waited between 16 & 17.

The end proved trickier than I thought. Wrapping the hoop at 18 was not an issue at all (again, a different challenge with a jump!), but the last obstacle was proving to be nearly impossible if I stayed on the left side of the tunnel. I just couldn't beat her to the end for a push, so instead I had to do a front cross at the wrap to end up on the right, which would naturally pull her to the last obstacle. I would have totally failed this challenge at a trial because it took a while for the light bulb to click on for this epiphany.

But you know what's super cool? I brought Secret back out for a second go-round because we still had a little bit of light left -- The jumps were all still down at 8" (all four of them...), but she was actually FASTER in her second outing than her first! Yahoo for not shutting down on session two, baby dog. I just ran her through in once and since she ran it clean we stopped there and I just played with her for a bit with her bumper.

The rest of the holiday weekend was pretty boring for the dogs. My parents let them out for me Friday & Saturday, which involved play dates with Lexi. Bethany took care of them yesterday, so hopefully that means Rascal came over to visit. It is quite dark by the time I get home from the shelter, so all we are able to do is play frisbee or ball by porch light -- although I'm pretty positive the dogs don't mind this at all!

I have to move the dog walk into the garage soon. I keep putting it off, but I know I have to get it done before we get dumped on with a foot of snow. I'm hoping to work the dogs tonight, so we'll see. Maybe Wednesday. I'll just keep procrastinating until there is actually snow in the forecast, I'm sure. :o) It's almost December and we are still running agility outside! Yay!

Running!

2011-11-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

Somebody I subscribe to on YouTube posted a video the other day that was a really cool compilation of clips of the dog running. Lots of slow-mo and other interesting stuff (like the dog jumping for the ball and totally missing it, lol). The video actually kept my attention for almost four minutes, so it was obviously fairly entertaining. Plus the dog was really wicked fast, which never hurts.

So I thought, "I want to see my dogs run in slow mo!" Okay, this would be awesome if I:

A) Had a high definition camera

and

B) Had a human to hold said camera

What I do have is an aged video camera and a lawn chair upon which to set it. Yeah. Not so awesome. But darn it, I made a video anyhow.

Blog = Book?

2011-11-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Wow. This is just really cool!

I was reading through my blogroll the other day and was taken aback when Nicki at Borderblog mentioned that she prints her blog into book form each year for her grandmother (what a neat idea!). I had never heard of such a thing before and she was kind enough to tell me where she does it (you have to download the BookSmart software from Blurb.com).

I always figured that this blog was the ultimate reference to the time Secret & I have spent together, but even I have to admit it is sometimes tedious to try to go back and read things chronologically. To have it in book form at my fingertips just seemed like a really awesome idea.

So I did it! I spent HOURS on the silly thing, but I think it will be worth it. It didn't help that I went through and did the entire thing once and let the BookSmart software put everything together for me. I had to rearrange the photos and fix a few things, but I wasn't able to get the posts to flow together nicely and the spacing was very wonky. It was 150 pages and in my rush to get it done I uploaded it for ordering. Before I actually ordered it, Nicki made a comment about taking stuff out and doing some other editing to make it shorter, so I decided to scrap the first copy and see what I could do if I put it together manually, page by page.

Um, yeah.... I ended up with a 152 page book, but I am tickled with how it turned out. I used a different photo layout on all the pages and it really seems to flow nicely. I can't wait to get it -- some time in the beginning of December, I opted for the cheapest shipping. Plus I found a coupon code online to save 20%! So my monstrosity of a book was something like $52. Merry Christmas to me.

I lumped year one (adoption day to the end of December 2010) into the first book. I figure I'll do a new one at the end of this year for "Volume 2." :o) Imagine, some day I'll be reading about my book IN my book. lol Totally random... I expect Volume 2 is going to be longer, though...

So if anyone else thinks this is a great idea, just head on over to blurb and get started. It's a fun little project and a really neat keepsake! I'll have to take a picture of Secret with "her book" when it arrives.

We haven't done any training lately, so no real updates there. Just lots of frisbee and chuck-it! Secret thinks it's pretty great.

Thanksgiving is just two days away, but I'll be working all four days of the holiday weekend at the shelter. The dogs will probably revolt by Saturday.

Secret disagrees

2011-11-18T07:40:00.000-08:00

Secret disagrees with my last post about winter. Secret thinks winter rocks. We might not have snow on the ground just yet (YAY), but my failure to bring in the outdoor water bucket has resulted in great toys provided by Mother Nature. It's like an ice frisbee or something!

Once the snow does arrive (take your time, please!), then I have to start watching Luke. He eats it in massive amounts, resulting in having to pee every 1.5-2 hours. Yeah, that's fun!!

What is winter good for?

2011-11-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

Cuddles. That is ALL winter is good for in my book. I hate snow, I hate cold, I hate ice, I hate having about 30 minutes of daylight in which to do anything productive, I hate shoveling, I hate scraping windows and I hate frozen fingers & toes. But I love puppy cuddles. :o)

Something about the cold weather makes all of my dogs more cuddly. Oh who am I kidding, they are just body heat leaches, that's all. I don't care, I'll still take it.

Look! I trained last night! Despite being completely wiped out from a head cold and having my brain leak from my nose like a faucet, I managed to actually set equipment in the yard in an actual pattern of sorts. The entire set-up was for Luke's benefit, so that we could work on more bonus line skills -- Namely, the things we -- strike that, I -- failed at on Saturday. Namely, driving away from me at both the weaves and the line of jumps coming out of a curve. He rocked, of course. It's always easier at home.

And Kaiser ran his dog walk beautifully with no tunnel! Wheee! Just thought that was worth mentioning. ;o) Now why won't the little turd do that at a trial...

Goals for Secret were basically just to run happy & fast and to work on driving forward without me. Because I more or less just didn't feel like setting bars, she got to run everything at 8" last night. The Woolie Tug was our reward toy for the night.

I really couldn't have been happier with our training session. I expected her to be a bit deflated since my own energy was so pathetic, but she decided to go on without me and have a grand old time.

High points included being able to send out to the jumps on the right while staying behind that first jump. I also stayed well behind the exit of the dog walk to send out to the hoops and recall into the weaves (only once being blown off on the turn to take the top jump, but only because she was flying, so who can be upset about that?). I really haven't done much, if any, call into the weaves work with her, so I was happy that she had no issues finding her entry that way.

And finally, she was SPEEDY in the weaves! I wish I could peg down what makes her speedy one night and slow the next. Perhaps she's still just feeling great from her chiro adjustment and she's just slow when something is out of alignment. Whatever the case, it was nice to see. I worked on proofing by wiggling and dragging her Woolie in front of her as she weaved. This really got her going and only made her pop once, so good baby dog.

I kept our session pretty short and brought out her frisbee as a final reward and to help to wear her out a bit more before going in the house for the night.

Still no snow in the forecast.... So I'm keeping the equipment out a bit longer. Looks like we are good through Thanksgiving at least. I'm hoping for a snowless December, personally. :o)

The Streak Continues

2011-11-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

Happy Secret was back this weekend! Yay!! In our solo day of trialing on Saturday, Secret managed another perfect day, running 5/5. But wait, you say -- Isn't she in Elite Chances now? Why yes! Yes she is! :o) I was dumbfounded that she managed to get another Elite Chances Q! Yay baby dog!

I can't help but believe that the trip to the chiropractor on Wednesday played a large part in the return of Happy Secret. I feel so bad for her when we go in and find out that she's completely out of whack. And following all the activity, weaving & jumping required of her at Champs, it's not out of the question to believe she was messed up by the time the trial the following weekend rolled around. So yes, I think we'll have to keep up with the pre-trial adjustment schedule. Yay... Another thing to budget in to trial costs. Oh well, been there/done that with Luke. We'll figure it out.

I really limited the activity for all the dogs in the days before the trial. I figured it couldn't hurt, and as I'd hoped, Secret came out just raring to go in the first round of Regular. Even her weaves weren't half bad, although she still wasn't driving through them and thus had some double-stepping action. Oh well, we'll continue to address that. The rest of the course was really nice, though.

Considering she started the last trial in a similar fashion, I wasn't about to take anything for granted. I'd be lying if I said I didn't worry that she'd come out and crash in round 2 again, especially since there were only four dogs between Luke and her and she typically needs a bit more prep time to get "up" before her runs.

But no worries, she was still a happy girl in round two! She was nicely forward throughout the run and even turned on the speed in the home stretch to double-stride the last line. Whee! Go Secret!

I finally manged to not run the wrong course in Touch-n-Go, so we got our first Elite Q there at last. Luke doesn't run TNG anymore, so I had plenty of time to spend with Secret prior to that run. Unfortunately we got to the line and then got held up for quite a bit of tunnel fluffing. Secret + Wait = Shut down. All things considered she still had a nice round, but I felt like I was back to pulling her around that course a bit more again. She was well under time, though (like 10 seconds), so no worries.

Chances wasn't a wickedly difficult course, but it did require keeping the dog out for two separate sends while layering. Secret came out of the tunnel at a trot and I thought, "Oh crap, there that goes," because I didn't figure I could keep her out without impulsion. Once she figured out where I wanted her to go (through a hoop and into the next tunnel) she sped up again -- And then again looked at me questioningly when she came out. Again the light bulb turned on for her and she finished the course very well. That was some big distance for the baby dog, so I'm very proud of her! To think, only one Q away from her Elite Chances title already! Oh man, we have to get on the rest of those Versatility Q's. lol

Jumpers was the last run of the day. Unfortunately for us the bar setter was sitting RIGHT NEXT to where I needed to line Secret up for the first jump. And it was a man. Oh, that's nice. I briefly thought of asking him to move, but I figured she needs to get over it (after all, she's done great with the judge issues!). So the Jumpers run wasn't as speedy as I would hope, but she got over her issues and seemed to speed up a bit as we went along.

Oh! I just figured out YPS for that run and it was 5.53, so I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought. lol

Thanks to a wonderful group of friends, I managed to get every run recorded at this trial! Yay! Here is Secret's video:

I had high hopes for Kaiser because we went to open agility at FDC on Wednesday and he had really, really lovely dog walks over & over again. Sigh. We're still struggling at trials (and to be honest, there were more issues than just the dog walk!). BUT -- he got Chances, so I don't really care about the rest! Ha! Finally a Chances course without a dog walk.... I swear the last six times (at least!) that we've ran Chances it has had a dog walk and it was starting to get pretty demotivating. Now we just need seven more courses without dog walks to finish his NATCH. :o)

Kaiser also finished his O-WV-E title. He loves Weavers, but I've been keeping him out of it because he's so far behind in his TNG points. Secret won the Q raffle at the last trial, though, and I figured Kaiser was the only one capable of running six classes, so he got to run Weavers. At least it gave him his second Q of the day!

And finally, Luke. We have just really clicked as a team lately and we're having loads of fun together. I ran with him in the first round of Regular because I didn't think that the "out tunnel" under the dog walk was going to be doable for us (amongst the other challenges!). I did go for the bonus line in Round 2 but started poorly and caused a spin almost right away. You only get bonuses if your dog completes the course entirely in flow so we lost it there, but I kept going for the practice. I wasn't able to keep him driving through the weaves this time and he popped right away, so I opted to step in to save the run at that point (since it didn't have any faults yet). I handled the last half of the course from half-way up the ring.

We're on a roll with the Chances Q's again and Luke handily got this course (although that a-frame contact was kind of naughty....). Just two more until his NATCH 3, so I'm hoping we can finish it off at the next La Crosse trial, we shall see!

I went for the bonus line again in Jumpers. It was a very doable course. The only challenge I really saw was going to be driving him up and away from me for the last part of the course. My timing caused a dropped bar just prior to that, though, then he dropped another bar and spun back at me before going on to finish the course. But hey, two bars and a spin? I'll take that! Some day, some day....

Next trial is December 10 & 11. The snow is gone again and I haven't brought in the equipment yet, so I figure I should still try to get some training in before that happens!

Dear Winter: Go Away

2011-11-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

If memory serves correctly, winter does not officially begin until December 21. So what's with all this white crap on the ground (and on my dog walk....)? Blah.

I suppose I'll have to concede and move everything into the garage sooner or later. Because I'm so stubborn (who, me?) I tend to let everything sit outside and get snowed on about three times before I get around to putting it away for the year. The year before last, however, we got a big ice storm and my jumps ended up getting frozen in place for the entire winter! Because of that, I made sure to get everything moved inside earlier last year. Plus I have my matted basement now, so I can just start to move stuff down there before it gets stuck outside.

We didn't get hit too badly. With temperatures going between 35-40 all day, nothing was really sticking. Snowfall totals were hard to determine since so much was melting as soon as it hit. My yard ended up with a frozen crust more than anything. I was pretty thankful as we drove to the chiro appointment yesterday, though, because as we got up onto the ridge it was a different picture. Holy heck, they got nailed! Easily a good 5" of snow in spots and everything was covered. People were out with snow blowers already, even. I'd have been pretty miserable if it were that bad at my house.... I'm just not ready for winter yet.

Secret's chiropractor visit went well! What is this, her third visit to Dr. Engel now? Even Dr. Engel remarked that she seems so much calmer & happier in the clinic than at her initial visit. She was all wiggly and vocal when she recognized one of the technicians as we walked in the door. When we got into the room she more or less settled and plopped on the floor to wait.

Perhaps she just realizes that our visits to this clinic make her feel better. She was still unsure when the tech went to put her into position so I helped with that, but there was really no resistance when Dr. Engel started to work on her.

As usual, Secret was a mess in her middle/lower back. She also had a couple of ribs out of place, which I don't think has been an issue for her previously. It is always amazing to see the change in her as Dr. Engel works up her spine. By the end of the appointment (which really doesn't take long at all) the flinching is completely gone.

I felt a bit of heat in her back as I was massaging her this morning, so I iced it for a bit. I should probably do that a few more times before this weekend, I suppose. Poor Secret, I think she's just going to be one of those dogs who is going to always need maintenance in this department.

With all the maintenance struggles that come with big dogs in sporting events (agility/disc/etc.), it certainly does make my desire to have a Papillon as my next agility dog even more appealing. :o)
Just a little doggy porn there.... ;o) I want his babies! I talked to Roger about it at the last trial (Roger was judge, he owns Primo) and it sounds like it could actually be a possibility.... It just comes down to timing. As in, I can't really have four dogs right now. Oh well. Some day!

Primo is a Moso son -- Moso has sired more Champion Papillons than any dog in history, so it would be pretty awesome to have a part of that.

She loves it/She loves it not

2011-11-08T07:45:00.000-08:00

Secret continues to be as fickle as the Wisconsin weather. Honestly this is not news to me and I should know better by now, but I still have a tendency to ask for too much at times. Secret's definition of "too much" is nowhere near the boys' opinion on this subject, which is why I feel I continue to struggle with accepting this....

On Friday I rifled through a few of my latest issues of Clean Run to pick out a Backyard Dogs exercise. I was so busy with "Champs training" in the later part of summer that I completely let these fall by the wayside. Which is a shame, considering that soon I'll be back to being forced to just look at them each month and go, "Oh, that's nice, maybe we can set that up in the spring when all the stupid SNOW is gone."

I enjoy many of the Backyard Dog drills because they push me out of my comfort zone (ie: NADAC) and make me actually work on handling exercises that I don't set on my own. And since I haven't attended classes in a coon's age, it's nice to have someone else create my "lesson plan."

I always start with the first exercises and build up from there, as they always tend to increase in difficulty. The first exercise or two tend to be good warm-ups.

On Friday I set the course and then memorized the first three drills. My brain is not capable of retaining any more than that -- And to be honest, that was freaking hard!

Secret did very well with exercises 1 & 2. The 270 from 2-3 was very demotivating for her in the third exercise, so it looks like we could use work on that sort of thing. We also have pretty much no collection cue to speak of because she would shoot exceptionally wide after 7 each time. But she was a happy girl and enjoyed our session -- all working for the Wooly Tug.

After working all three dogs through the first three exercises, I somehow managed to memorize the next three.

Was my mistake using the same toy for the second session? Or was my mistake trying to do a second session at all with Secret? Whatever the case, she was just BLAH on take two. After the first lackluster attempt at 16", I conceded and put all the jumps down to 8", figuring it was more about working the handling anyhow. This helped, in that she was at least willing to lope through the motions with me, but it was still pretty sad.

It very much reminded me of what happened at the last trial, where she came out all gang-busters for the first run and then just plopped after that. I know that she is not a fan of drilling or excessively long training sessions, but the girl has to get used to the fact that sometimes we need to keep our working caps on for longer than one run.

I'm fairly certain the only reason I'm letting this get to me is because we have five runs at the trial this Saturday. After that happened on Friday I was kind of like, "Oh crap," but whatever -- We'll see what happens. Girl needs some work ethic. That doesn't involve a frisbee.

I pulled the above Chances course off the Going the Distance blog the other day. I thought it looked like fun and it didn't have an a-frame, so bonus for me (my "repaired" a-frame is in my garage waiting to be painted, which more than likely isn't going to happen until spring now!).

I figured last night was my only opportunity to actually do any training this week. I'm at the shelter tonight and since it is now dark at 5 p.m. (SOB) we can't do anything when I get home. Wednesday I am schlepping Secret & Luke to the chiropractor (so maybe that will help Secret feel more like playing) and then taking Kaiser to some run throughs at FDC to hopefully get the little turd to make the connection that he needs to run that dog walk like he does the one at home. In an attempt to have Secret as loony as possible on Saturday, I figure I'll impose a limited activity rule on her between the VSM appointment and the trial, which means Thursday & Friday should be loads of fun....

This was a nice course to play with. As always, I was lacking a tunnel so I did my best to approximate the final challenge by placing two hoops next to the finish tunnel. I know most dogs are going to choose a tunnel over hoops, so I made it as challenging as possible by having the hoops touching the tunnel bags. It still was likely easier than the original test, though, because nobody ever even looked at the hoops last night.

It was a good exercise for Secret since she had to be somewhat independent in her weaves. I stayed back further than required to test her on this. The first time she came out of the weaves and turned back at me without going to the jump -- Kind of like, "Hey, I did it, give me my reward."

After that she was pretty much a rock star. She ran the course clean several times, only once going from 8 to 10 and skipping jump 9 because I didn't support her line at all. She handled the Elite distance line with ease, so her comfort level with working away from me continues to increase at an alarming rate! In an effort to push both of us, I expanded on the original line and attempted to handle everything in the second half from to the left of jump 7. She had no problem with this, so I called it good and let her "nom-nom" on a Kong Squeaker ball while I changed the jump heights for Kaiser.

It is worth mentioning that Secret creamed the boys on this course. Both Kaiser and Luke (???) had issues with the flip out to the tunnel from 10 to 11. Say what?? That's like one of the easiest switches ever. Turns out I was late with my timing, but since when do they need to know that information two obstacles in advance? lol

Nobody got pushed for a second session last night because of the aforementioned darkness that crept upon us by 5:00. Lexie was over for a few hours and I figured since she turned a year old in September, it was time to actually start to get a bit more serious with her training. I moved her "up" to 4" jumps (from hoops), which I find amusing since this will likely be her competition jump height. She has such wee little legs, but they run so fast! She can be a spoiled pain in the rear at times (my parents have like no boundaries for her) but she is a fast & driven little stinker who seems to enjoy working. I like that attitude!

We knew the day was coming, but I was hoping it wouldn't be for a few more weeks. There is $n*w in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow. Anywhere from 1"-6" -- I love ambiguous weather forecasts. I don't anticipate it will stick and thus I haven't bothered to take in my dog walk yet, but I'm still grumbling. I would just like it to be done by the time I have to do all my driving tomorrow -- I'm crazy enough to be driving all the way to Viroqua for the chiro appointment and then all the way to La Crosse for Kaiser's run-through --- I most certainly don't care to put on that many miles driving in the first snowfall of the year....

Stupid snow.

Choo-Choo!

2011-11-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, confession time. I am a really bad dog mom. I let Secret do something that is probably kind of naughty. I let her -- Nay, I encourage her -- to chase trains.

She started this little habit a few months ago. You may recall that Secret is actually afraid of trains that are standing still (because this means they might start to move and make scary clanging & banging noises). But trains that are moving at full speed? Oh yes, these are quite fun. Amtrak trains are the best ever.

Like I said, I know this is wrong and judging by the fact that she now chases them a good quarter mile instead of a few hundred yards, I may have let it get out of hand. But something about her determined look that tells me she thinks she can beat a train going 50 mph just brings a smile to my face. And she tries, oh yes she tries very hard. Who knew she could go so fast?

The pictures illustrate the scenario. Trains come up alongside us on the trail and she races them down the trail, separated by a good 70 yards or so of ditch. So you see, it's not as though she is in any peril or whatnot, but it's still an obsessive behavior -- Granted, her only one, which is pretty good for a border collie. :o)

Oddly enough, we are only interested in trains traveling the same direction as us. If they are going the opposite way we just stand and stare at them with transfixed wonderment.

Yes, she's an odd one. Thankfully she always comes running back with a giant smile on her face ("Did you see how fast I ran? I almost beat that one!") and I figure that extra half mile on top of the usual walk does her good. lol She was just a squirrely girl today! I think someone is enjoying the cooler fall weather.

Regardless of the lovely temperatures that would be completely perfect for all types of training, I find myself falling into the usual rut that comes with dwindling daylight each year. With limited time, I tend to look for what can be set the fastest and I completely lose all creativity and enthusiasm in coming up with training exercises or courses.

This is not the worst thing in the world coming off a huge event like Champs. I'm quite sure we all need a bit of a break and we put in quite a bit of effort leading up to everything. But living where I do and having such limited training opportunities in the winter months, I can't help but feel like the clock is ticking and that I should be cramming as much training as possible into these few remaining weeks.

Late last week I did some work with driving ahead independently through the weaves using the Chuck-it. Secret was not really into this. I'm fairly certain she would benefit greatly from a trip to the chiro, so I have to get that done soon. Maybe we'd just played with the Chuck-it too many days in a row, though, because she was a much happier camper when I traded it out for the Jolly Ball. Granted, by that point I was just focusing on speed through the weaves and had completely abandoned the distance/send component, so who knows which was more of a contributing factor.

Last night I was working Kaiser's dog walk and decided to go ahead and set something up for the other two using that. The lack of sunlight has sapped my brain dry and I ended up setting an exercise that was more or less identical to the one I posted last week, only without a tunnel and using the dog walk as the forward send.

While remarkably similar to the previous exercise, it actually offered us new challenges that were good for us. Secret can always use more work on driving to the end of the dog walk, especially while I am working from a distance.

She may have been driving a little too much, as a few times she didn't really feel the need to stop. Several times she did stop nicely, though, and still was able to send out to the far hoops after. Secret is becoming a layering queen and responded very well to the "back" cue -- and with no tunnel this time, I think she did great.

Fearing that I was falling onto using the balls and whatnot as a crutch in distance work, I decided to pull out the Woolie Dog tug for everything last night. This has the added benefit (?) of being able to be stuffed down the back of my pants (lol), allowing me to have my hands and cue without the distraction of waving a toy in her face. I'm always happy when I get awesome speed & enthusiasm without a visible toy, too, so overall I think she did grand.

So now that we are fast & happy again, I need to decide how many classes to enter Secret in at the next NADAC trial next weekend. We are only doing one day, so I am tempted to go for five this time. I think six is still pushing it for her at this point. The fifth class is calling my name because we still don't have a single Elite Touch-n-Go Q -- and it's not Secret's fault at all, since every time we've ran the class I manage to run the wrong course. lol

We still need to finish our Elite Weavers title as well, but I'm not going to get too hot & bothered about that until she shows me our first Elite Chances Q wasn't a total fluke. Secret has ran Elite Weavers twice now, both times competing in the 20+ Proficient class. She made time the first time but was what, like two seconds over on the next attempt? Now that she's running in Skilled under 16" time I don't anticipate an issue, but with her the weave speed really depends on the day. Hence why I just haven't bothered to enter that class until we get that figured out.

I may be a lazy sod lately about our agility training, but we are on a roll with the frisbee. I really wish I had the time to pursue more disc dog stuff. Secret really enjoys it and I think she'd find those competitions a lot of fun. Granted, we still don't play with more than one disc at a time... We should really work on that.

Bonus Lines

2011-10-26T11:00:00.001-07:00

The main reason I am attracted to NADAC agility is because I enjoy distance work. I was pining for a border collie long before I attended NADAC Championships in 2009, but seeing "Super Stakes" for the first time in person really made me long to have a dog that would be capable of doing the "big distance." The vast majority of the dogs succeeding in Super Stakes seem to be border collies, so it seemed obvious that this was the way to go to achieve this long term goal.

As we all know, dogs have minds of their own and I completely shelved this idea as Secret progressed in her training. Building her motivation and drive has been a long journey and she more or less seems to prefer close handling (she LOVES front crosses).

Over the last couple of months I have noticed her growing comfortable with an increasing level of distance. I suppose I worked a bit more on these skills because I knew they would be required at Champs. Perhaps her overall level of confidence is just increasing to a point where she doesn't need me right by her anymore. Maybe none of my dogs want me anywhere near them for some reason (I shower, I really do!). ;o)

Anyhow, I'm very happy with Secret's continued growth in her distance training, especially since I more or less wrote that skill off for her. I didn't think she'd ever in a million years be a NATCH dog, but I'm starting to change my opinion on that.
While Luke is most definitely not a border collie, he HAS turned out to be quite the distance dog. After our super inspiring bonus line attempts at the trial this past weekend, I decided that maybe it was time to actually start to train some specific skills needed to be successful (instead of just setting normal exercises and doing them from further away).

I set the above quickie exercise in the yard last night. While simple, it covers quite a wide variety of skills such as the straight on send forward, layering, turning away and pushing out against the dog's path (maybe it's still a switch, but it doesn't feel like it...).

With Luke I handled everything from behind the first hoop -- It was traditional NADAC spacing, so the tunnel/back hoop were 60' to 80' up the yard from me. It was an educational session. As I learned at the trial, I really need to teach a "back" cue. In this case it's used when they come out of the tunnel and take the hoop straight ahead of them, then come through the pinwheel and back up to the rightmost tunnel entrance. To me it just doesn't feel like a "switch," but maybe that is the proper term to use? Honestly, I never tried it. I made the decision to start teaching "back" to all of the dogs.

I didn't have super high expectations for Secret, especially following her less than enthusiastic showing this weekend. I decided to just make it a play session with the Chuck-it and see what happened. I figured she's more apt to run like a loon for the Chuck-it than if I were to try and use a tug toy or something.

She really surprised me. I started out with straight on sends into the tunnel and threw her ball as she came out. I began by doing a lead out to the third hoop and she quickly progressed to me standing back by the first hoop. I'm sure it was largely pattern training, but it's a good step for her and she was shooting down the line like a little (okay, a tall) bullet.

It wasn't that hard to progress to getting the out hoop after the tunnel, as she would just come shooting straight out of the tunnel looking for her ball. It took a couple of attempts to get her to take the turn out of the tunnel to the bottom hoop in the pinwheel, but once she got it we had an easy "switch" to the top hoop and back into the tunnel.

I mixed it up a lot to vary the pattern and Secret did pretty awesome. I also started using the "back" command with her to send her back up to the tunnel and she seemed to catch on quickly. In general, baby dog gave me some pretty impressive distance last night.

Maybe she'll be a bonus line dog one day after all. Who knows. But I think we both had lots of fun with our little drill last night --- So as long as I'm working Luke on these things, I figure she may as well benefit as well. If nothing else, these types of drills are good for her speed work, too. She goes ga-ga when she sees the Chuck-it.

Burnt Out?

2011-10-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

Despite the results you see in the pictures, I think Secret is incredibly burnt out on agility right now. I haven't done a lick of training since we got home from Champs in hope of keeping them as fresh as possible for the trial this weekend, but Secret just was not feeling it. At all.

The baby dog had some really fantastic moments, but overall I just felt like I was pulling & dragging her through the courses all weekend. Her first round on Saturday was not bad, but it went downhill from there. Jumpers was her fourth and final class of the day and I ended up withdrawing her halfway through the course because I felt like I was pleading with her to get her to move. That is not fun for either of us.

I did find a sore/scratch on her hind foot when I was shaving her feet on Friday. I don't think it's in an area that would possibly interfere with anything and she's not moving off, but who knows.

Thankfully she came out with quite a bit more energy Sunday morning. Secret ran a lovely Jumpers course at 5.47 yps, which is pretty good for her. Next up was Elite Chances -- Yes, Elite. Can you believe it? She finished her Open Chances title on Saturday and I figured why not go for it -- You can NQ just as easily in Open as Elite. ;o)

I didn't have high hopes because the course involved the dog walk at a distance as well as sending out to a jump after. It also had a switch to a tunnel at a good distance, but Secret is pretty good at those. She totally nailed the course. Woot! I just hope she doesn't pass Kaiser in points....

She also Q'd the last two rounds of Regular for a perfect day -- The first round of Regular wasn't too bad (it's on the video), but the second round was very sluggish in the mid-section with the weaves. She walked through the weaves again and nothing I did could get her to move faster. Once out of the weaves she was better and she ended well. I was surprised to see she actually made big dog (20") time on that run, so that made me feel a little better, I guess.

It could be that she would benefit from another trip to the chiropractor as well. I plan to schlep everyone back down there before the next trial.

Secret's video -- Just four of her eight runs got recorded:

Then we have Luke!! Awesome, awesome Luke. He needed just one more Weavers Q to finish his second Versatility NATCH and he banged it out in fine fashion. It was a short course -- just 15 obstacles, and we tend to struggle with time on the shorter courses. We actually ran this course at Lindstrom in August and he was 0.24 seconds over time. Granted, it was during the upswing of his allergy season and he was feeling like crap that day, so I knew we could do better. I pushed and really went for it and he delivered -- He nailed his entries and held on to the poles and really made some nice tight turns. We ended up 2 seconds under time! On a 15 obstacle Weavers course that is really good for us. This is Luke's last V-NATCH -- No more Weavers for the big guy. He tries so hard and I know it's hard on his body.

Here's Luke's V-NATCH 2 video:

Luke also put in some super fantastic bonus line attempts this weekend! With encouragement from judge Roger Coor, I ended up going for four lines -- three on Sunday, which means that I asked poor Luke for distance in every one of his runs that day. Usually that sort of thing fries his brain a bit, but the last run ended up being the best one yet with just 15 faults. Sadly, I didn't the last two (Regular) runs on video -- But both of his jumpers runs were caught. The run on Saturday was fantastic, but I pushed too soon for a turn and he skirted around that jump, but otherwise ran a great course. Sunday morning was a bit trickier course and we were a bit more discombobulated, but we got through it with me staying behind the line.

Bonus box from Round 1 Sunday:

Bonus line from Round 2 Sunday -- Requires the dog to weave away and send to a jump, and he did it! He knocked a bar at #4 and then touched the a-frame coming out of the 14 tunnel before redirecting back out to the jump. I said, "Back" -- He doesn't know "back," I should have said, "out jump."

So Luke's only Q's for the weekend were Chances (both days!) and Weavers, but I could not be more proud of him. Distance work is addicting!

Poor Kaiser -- He was in the same boat as Secret in that I really think he needed more time off after Champs. I haven't even touched his dog walk since we got home and that might be why we were so off on that this weekend. The closest he really came with his striding was in Touch-n-Go on Saturday, but then he ran right off the side of the dog walk. Oh well.

He had good moments, too. He gave me some super awesome distance in both Chances runs -- His run on Sunday was clean minus the dog walk contact. His Jumpers run on Sunday was AWESOME -- Super speedy (5.6 yps, so faster than Secret!) and I was almost in bonus line land with the distance I gave him. He didn't seem to want me anywhere near him on Saturday, so I thought I'd try to make him happy. It worked! Unfortunately it was his only Q of the weekend, but it was a lovely run.

We have three weeks until the next NADAC trial in La Crosse and it looks like I'll only be doing one day. I don't remember just asking off the shelter for Saturday that weekend, but maybe I was feeling guilty for taking so much time off lately.... And that's our only trial in November, which kind of stinks, but then again I'm broke so it's probably okay. ;o) OH! And Secret won the Q raffle on Saturday, so we get a free day of entries!! Yay!!!

Champs Videos!! Lots of 'em

2011-10-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

I have been editing video until my eyes bleed today. For real. For that reason, I think I'll avoid too much mindless rambling. Not much has happened in the last day, anyhow -- We left the hotel around 10:00 a.m. and got home at 4:00 p.m., so not a bad drive at all! The dogs rode well in the car, but Secret INSISTED on playing ball as soon as we got home (before unpacking anything, mind you!). Then she found the squeaky toys that I failed to give them at the hotel and general mayhem ensued the rest of the evening. lol

I love watching Secret's video. She was just an awesome baby dog. Yes, you can tell she's a baby dog, but what else would you expect for a two year old? I'm so proud of her.

Kaiser, oh Kaiser. You're a fun little turd.

Luke is just a rock star. 'Nuff said.

Team could not have been more fun!

And there you have it -- That's all, folks! It has been fun to share my Champs journey with everyone. I hope we can do it again some time. :o)

Trial this weekend. I e-mailed FDC to add a class to everyone's runs each day. I only signed them up for three runs per day in case Champs totally fried them, but I think we can handle four!

The End :o(

2011-10-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

The sad face in the title of this post is meant to express my sadness at 2011 NADAC Championships coming to an end, not a reflection of how I feel about the event. I can't even begin to express how much more AWESOME this year was than my experience in 2009. The reasons are multiple, having to do a great deal with weather (way better this time!), the footing (unimaginably better here!), great friends (we had a HUGE "local" group here and it was so, so, so fun) and more than likely, I'm just a better handler than I was back then.

So here I am at the hotel reflecting on the last four days. What an amazing four days they have been. My dogs are AMAZING. They impressed me in ways I didn't even know were possible. I've had a chance to watch the 3 Pines video once through and I can't begin to tell you how impressed I am with my dogs.

Secret. Wow, baby dog! I thought she felt faster down here, but I didn't realize just how fantastic she was moving until I saw it on video. She was hauling! I can't wait to share it here on the blog for everyone. I'm so proud of her. Did she have baby dog moments? Of course, but she always recovered and she tried her very hardest in each and every round. Wow. Seven rounds of awesomeness.

She put in a stellar effort in Round 7 this morning. The course was -- get this -- The finals round from last year!!! Yes, the one I set in my yard a couple of weeks ago. I loved the course and I was stoked.

Secret did just great. She came blazing out of the first turn out of the tunnel like she was on fire! I was concerned about the weaves since she had some issues yesterday, but she nailed them and kept good speed throughout. I thought surely she had another placing run going and then I left her just a little too much to get into place for a front cross on the final sequence. This caused her to come to the side of the jump -- I quickly hustled and told her, "Back" -- Why, I do not know because I haven't trained her for that, but she figured it out and it didn't waste too much time. We finished fast & clean. Unfortunately in the end she was JUST out of the ribbons in 9th place. Had we avoided that bobble it would have been another good placement.

Oh well, the baby dog is still super amazing. Just look how she stacked up in that field of extraordinarily amazing dogs with years of experience beyond her few months of trialing. Words cannot express how proud I am of Secret. She really gave it her all. I believe in a few years she is going to be something pretty special (not that she isn't already!).

Then we have Kaiser. Poor, poor Kaiser. Round 6 last night just destroyed us in the standings. Apparently when you are super fast you can get away with blowing two rounds, but not three. His 30 faults dropped him from the cusp of the finals all the way down to 8th place with not a prayer of recovering. He actually got dead last in that class, which hopefully made the people who said something to me about him being a 12" dog (in with the small dogs) feel better.

I figured we'd just go for it in the last round, have fun and try to get ourselves another pretty blue ribbon. We tried, we really did. The first part of Kaiser's run was just gorgeous. I got him to take the turn out of the tunnel by staying *way* back and then he cruised through the next section. I made the fatal error of standing still as he came out of the next tunnel that required a hard turn -- and as a result he decided the correct thing to do was to keep going straight into the off course tunnel. I should have been running away to get into position for the front cross like I did with the other two, but I was chickening out and opting for "safe" handling and a rear cross.

The good news is that he got his dog walk!! So what is that -- Did he get 5 out of 7 dog walks this week? OMG, how awesome is that?? We are so sticking with the running contacts. Between that and jumping 8" in Skilled, I believe I have found what makes my little man truly happy. He was so, so, so fast this week. My god he is a fun dog to run. He may be quirky, but he has come so far and he only continues to get better.

Even with the off course he managed to pull out 7th place in Round 7. He had the second fastest time, although without the error he would have easily been first place.

We don't mind 7th place, though. Seventh place gets a pretty purple ribbon.

Not only that, but our team run KICKED BUTT today. Oh wow was that ever a ton of fun. I wasn't sure about the third round of Team, as they always play a game named, "Batters Up" and I am not exactly what one would call coordinated.

In short, the game is played like this: Person 1 bats a ball through a large hole in a plywood wall. You get three attempts and if you don't make it you get 20 faults. When you get it (or hit your three tries) Person 1 runs a short course of tunnels with their dog. When Person 1 leashes their dog, Person 2 is released to run the course. Then Person 2 leashes their dog and hands it over, then has to throw a ball to Person 3 on the other side of the hole. Person 3 must catch the ball (otherwise you keep throwing, again for three tries) and once they do, they get their dog and run the course. Time runs until everyone is done.

Robyn got the ball through the hole on the FIRST try! That is not terribly common in this game. lol I managed to not throw like a moron and Chrissy managed to catch it, so we had a really good time. We ended up placing THIRD in Batters Up!

Unfortunately it wasn't enough to get us into the overall Team placements -- They give out three. They didn't post an overall standings yet, but we must have been close, even with our mid-standings placement yesterday. Oh well, it was more fun than I imagined it could be and I think the dogs enjoyed it as well. I would totally do Team again!

Luke would agree! We may as well start there with him since we're on the subject. I believe I explained yesterday that we lost one of our team mates and gained a replacement, so we were out of the overall standings. That wasn't going to stop our team from going for it.

I was NOT going to do the batting portion until it was explained that we were allowed to put our dogs on a down stay with the leash off while we did the batting portion. IF you have a dog that will hold a down stay while you are batting balls all over the place, this could be a HUGE advantage since some people could waste upwards of 5 seconds just going to their dog and getting the leash off.

Because Luke was the only dog on the team capable of doing this (or so I hoped, at least...), it was decided that I would give it a try. I hadn't practiced the batting part AT ALL (since it wasn't my job on Kaiser's team), but I got a chance to give it a few whacks outside before our run and that went fairly well.

Luke, bless him, didn't move a muscle! Even when I hit the first two balls off into Timbuktu. The balls we had were different than the practice balls and I sucked! By some miracle the third ball went through the hole, so I whipped around, dropped the bat and told Luke to run. I tell ya, it really did save a lot of time to have the leash off. Although it took Linda & Lynn a couple of tries to get the catch, our dogs were awesomely fast on the course. I hoped for a placement because they really did do great. And guess what?!

Ha!! They got first place! That is AWESOME. So while we couldn't have a shot at the overall, at least we did our job to upset the standings. lol

I somehow failed to upload any more of Luke's photos from today, and Blogger is a giant pain in the butt on my Netbook, so words will have to suffice.

When the results from Round 6 last night were posted, I was ecstatic to see that Luke placed 6th!! He was actually only 0.01 seconds away from 5th. Crazy, I couldn't believe he'd done so well in such a great, competitive class. With his crazy consistency, it got me wondering where he was in the standings. I had kind of been keeping tabs on Kaiser, but I hate to admit that Luke wasn't even on my radar for Finals. So after seeing that he placed again, I sat down this morning and did the math for his entire class. Much to my surprise, Luke was in 9th place with the top 7 going into the finals. I didn't feel too much pressure, though, as there were almost 20 points between him and 7th. Two people would have to do pretty poorly for him to move up.

Well gosh darn it, we got close. Luke put in an AMAZING run in Round 7. I pushed him hard and boy did he respond. I heard one rub as he turned over the jump before the dog walk, but it was a gorgeous run. I was so proud of him after that run, and the whole arena erupted in cheering. I knew it was good -- but I had no idea it would net him.....

THIRD PLACE!!

The giant 78 pound, 26"+ Lab/Shepherd managed to get THIRD PLACE in his class of border collies and whatnots. :o) He is awesome. Not only that, but get this. Final standings? Luke moved up to 8th place overall (out of 27) and was only SEVEN points out of being in the finals. Seven points. One error, more or less. Wow. Just wow. I am so proud of him. Six clean rounds, three placements. We have come a long way since 2009!

Not only that, but yesterday was the two year anniversary of when he was diagnosed with Addison's Disease -- just two weeks after returning from Champs. I am proud that he is such a good ambassador for what A-dogs can do.

So that's that. I'm tired, the dogs are tired, but I am just happy beyond words. It has been an amazing week and I couldn't have asked them for any more (well, maybe just one more clean round from Kaiser, lol). I wish I could say, "I can't wait to do this again next year," but it sounds like Champs 2012 will be located way out yonder west. Since I can't justify that trip, I shall wait until it comes closer to home again. Just imagine what a couple more years of experience will do for us!

I wouldn't mind at all if they had it back here in Springfield. It has been one fantastic week.

Day... Umm.... 3?

2011-10-15T19:18:00.001-07:00

The days tend to blur together here at Champs. Even worse is trying to discuss any course that we've ran over the last three days. If someone brings it up, it requires a massive amount of brain power to try to recollect the course they are speaking of -- and that is brain power we don't have to spare at the moment. ;o) It's pretty bad when I can't even recall which of my dogs placed in which rounds...

The super fantabulous action photos on the blog today are courtesy of my friend, Jen! She lives down by St. Louis and drove up to see us this morning. We met for lunch on my way home from Champs in 2009, so it was nice that she was able to actually see the dogs in action this time. It was her first time seeing it in person -- And hey, if you are going to experience agility, what could be better than viewing it on a National level? She seemed to enjoy it, she got to see pretty good runs by all three of my dogs and she got great photos! Score! :o)

I'll recap Secret's day first since it IS her blog. She woke up with a bee in her bonnet this morning. She was racing laps around the hotel room and trying to get the boys to play with her, which I brought to a quick end because Luke is incapable of playing without barking.... I'm not doing any extra activity/exercise with the dogs to keep them as fresh as possible and I think Secret is starting to boil over.

It seemed to be a good thing for round 5 this morning. She started out really, really fast! It was a weavers focused course with three short sets of weaves and one set of 12. The set of 6 that you took twice had a fault line on both sides, but the only way you could really get faulted was if your dog missed the entry, as the line was so close it was almost impossible to fix without the dog crossing it.

Secret was flying along putting in another stellar round, until we got to the set of 12. I know it was my fault -- I pulled my shoulders a mili-second too early to get the turn into a hoop and she pulled out at pole 10. Darn it, I knew that was it for us in terms of placements for that class. What I didn't expect was for her to momentarily forget how to weave. She entered on the wrong side twice and then backweaved towards me, earning 10 faults. She ended up in 29th place for that round (*note, she was 22nd in Round 4 last night).

Round 6 tonight was considered the "speed round," although I'm not sure why because it had some fairly technical moments. It was a long straight line diagonally across the arena to the weaves (facing into the wall), to the dog walk where you had to send out to a jump over the line, call them back to a tricky serpentine and then send them back out over the line to a jump and then through a tunnel under the dog walk. The ending was a staggered serpentine to the a-frame and out. Twenty obstacles total.

I was behind when Secret hit the weaves, but not by much. She pulled to the right of them and I had to reset her. She was weaving slowly and around pole 10 got a glassy look in her eye and she veered left. I knew there was no point in resetting them again, so in the interest of not stressing her and keeping the baby happy, we just went on. She ran the rest of the course flawlessly, including that tricky distance sequence. While she isn't consistently scoring terribly high, I am SO impressed with the fabulous parts of each run, that she is nailing all of the distance challenges and that she's managed to keep it together and have fun for six rounds!!

Should we go to Kaiser next? I suppose we can start with results from that FABULOUS Round 4 last night. :o) It turns out I had nothing to worry about -- Kaiser came in 1st place by a full FIVE SECONDS. Holy cow!! Little dude was haulin'.

I figured the Weavers round this morning would appeal to him. He does love weaving, after all, and the dog walk was right at the end with a straight shot out through a hoop & a tunnel. We had one close off course when turning away from the finish tunnel to the set of 12 weaves, but we recovered quickly. I was ahead of Kaiser when he entered the dog walk and I just ran hard for the finish. His dog walk was GORGEOUS. Just text book! I made sure to mark it with a huge, "YES, GOOD BOY" and then ran right out to give him treats. What a good, good boy.

Results of that run? Oh yes, another first place!!! :o) This time by only about a second, though.

I wish it weren't so, but my wacky little northern breed was back again for Round 6 tonight. It doesn't surprise me terribly, though, because this course had about every one of his stressors. He's not so good with long straight lines with me falling way behind. His distance skills are all lateral to me, not in front of me. The weaves went into the wall, so he had nothing in front of him that he was driving to -- So he came out of the poles slower than normal and didn't have a whole lot of get up and go for the dog walk.

I was behind and sent him on -- I think he got called on it, but who knows. I was more worried about getting him to turn off a jump in a pinwheel, as the correct course was a 180 into the serpentine. We got that, good boy! But the next part required him to cross over my feet and that is never a good thing in his book. It violates his space bubble rules. I do believe we incurred a back jumping fault there. He did the next part of the distance challenge flawlessly, but then I once again had to do a rear cross in tight quarters, which was in the space bubble. He went around that jump and did another back jump. We ran out super fast with a gorgeous a-frame, but we wasted a LOT of time on that run and incurred 30 faults most likely.

So what does this mean? Well, tonight I finally sat down and did the math. Previously I was kind of going by, "Hey, he has two first places, how could he not make the finals?" Well, when you bomb three out of the six classes.... Long story short, after round five he was 0.24 points out of fourth place, and four dogs go into the finals for our group. Our only hope is that the two dogs closest to us (6th place was 6 points behind) also bombed this round. I didn't watch and I have no idea. In addition, of course, we have to pretty much kick ass tomorrow morning -- I'm hoping it's a more Kaiser-friendly course.

Since Champs is won via an accumulative score, not a winner-take-all format, we don't have a hope of winning overall -- But my goal was to get one dog into finals, so I guess we'll see how things pan out tomorrow morning.

And now for Luke's update. I have to say, I am so proud of Luke. He has now put in five clean runs out of six. That is AMAZING. Sadly, I knew that his speed was not going to be on par with the rest of his competitive class, much as it was in 2009 when he was jumping 20+. Regardless, he is staying consistent, running well and just doing an overall superb job.

His run this morning was FLAWLESS. I find it interesting that he performed so well on a weavers focused round since that class has been our nemesis in NADAC ever since we moved to Elite. With Luke one Q from his second V-NATCH, though, I think perhaps we can say we've conquered that demon. And even further proof:

CHECK IT OUT. The old man got 7th place in Round 5 this morning!!!! Isn't that the most awesome news ever? I honestly felt more proud of that ribbon than I did of Kaiser's first place in that round. With Kaiser it's almost a given that he'll place well if he manages to run clean, but poor Luke can run his heart out and still place behind a dog with faults in his division, simply because his size prohibits him from running as fast as them. But look at that, he proved that big dogs can hold their own -- and with 36 weave poles, no less!

He was just as awesome in Round 6 tonight, but I don't know that it will be enough to place. I really collected him at the weave entrance because the sun was shining straight into the first three poles. I didn't want him to miss it from being blinded, so I figured a slower entry was safer. He nailed the rest of the course, so we'll see. I have no idea how successful the rest of the class was. Maybe we'll be surprised, who knows.

Not too much to write home about for Team today. I knew I would have trouble getting Kaiser to turn off a tunnel and I was right. CeCe also went off course, so despite being really fast, our team had 20 faults and ended up in 17th place today. The good news is that it sounds like we have a really good shot at Best Team Outfit!!

Luke's team had a replacement dog, as Zeus had to pull out due to a muscle strain. This means that we are out of the running for final placements, but we can still run for individual placements in each round. Luke was phenomenal with really sweet, nice turns. He loves the short team runs!! Our second dog, Dax, incurred the same fault that many dogs did with that off course tunnel. So we had a decent time, but 10 faults which put us in 5th place. Unfortunately the Vet Team division only ribbons out to fourth, so we just missed out. Oh well, it was fun!

One more day.....

I LOVE MY DOGS!!!!!

2011-10-14T18:51:00.001-07:00

I think this picture sums up how we are all feeling right now. Wow, I am so tired -- well, at the moment I'm rip-roaring wide awake -- But a couple of hours ago I was so exhausted that I felt physically ill. Amazing what a good run will do for that, but more about that later!

We had a good, good, GOOD day at day two of NADAC Champs!

Secret ran first, but not until dog 70-something so it was a bit of a wait. Baby girl came out raring to go and just had so much fun. It was a 20 obstacle course that was fairly standard. We had to do the a-frame twice and there was a dog walk/tunnel discrimination (dw being the correct option). The distance challenge was a fairly simple pinwheel configuration following the first a-frame.

I had no option of fitting in a front cross on the serpentine in the first sequence, but Secret drove really well with the rear cross. I kept good distance to call her back to the jump after the tunnel and then rear crossed her to send through the pinwheel. She nailed it! Then back over the a-frame and around to the dog walk discrimination. I kind of held my breath -- I have a tendency to over handle these (as I did with BOTH boys...), but she got it! I fit in a front cross after the next jump, as we then had a really tight slice into the weaves. She *nailed* it and her weaves were pretty speedy. It was a really nice run. Really nice.

With as competitive and FAST as the 16" class is, I thought she'd be around 12th. Her clean run last night was 20th place, after all. Well guess what.

THIRD PLACE!!!! Secret got THIRD PLACE in the most competitive class at Championships!!! I am completely beside myself and so very proud of her. Wow, just wow. She got a ribbon!

Her second round today (round 4) was pretty nice, but I handled a tricky serpentine sequence like a doufus. I almost caused her to back jump towards me, but I saved it. Then she recoiled at the weaves -- they had just raked them before our run (they held us up, that's never fun) and who KNOWS what went through her mind. I quickly reset her and she weaved fine. She ripped through the final sequence with nice speed, but I'm pretty sure my errors will keep us out of the ribbons for that round. We'll find out in the morning!

Luke is doing well. He got 13th place in Round 2 yesterday and moved up to 12th overall. We had zero faults and ended up 15th in Round 3 this morning -- As I mentioned, I way over handled the dog walk discrimination and he cut in and came to me. We wasted a good deal of time fixing that. Otherwise it was a lovely run.

Luke ran on a Vet Team between the two Regular rounds. The Team course was the first ten obstacles of the course we just ran, only with hoops replacing the jumps. Luke did his job and put in a beautiful run, but unfortunately one member of our team (the dog, I should clarify) seems to not be doing well -- His handler thinks strained muscle or something of the sort. At any rate, it looks like our team is at the bottom of the Vet standings. Oh well.

Luke had a lovely Round 4 this evening. If he got called on his a-frame it was completely my fault because I released him early. We'll see in the morning, I guess!

And now.... Kaiser. Oh Kaiser. He has a fan club down here and let me tell you it's pretty fun. He's getting noticed, and thankfully it is in a good way!

Kaiser did get called on his dog walk in round two last night, which placed him 9th in the class (just out of the ribbons). He slipped to fourth place overall. He didn't run his first round until after noon today and he was just good old classic Kaiser. lol He had fun, but he was all over the place. He had two off courses, missed the dog walk and took three times to enter the weaves correctly. So he got 30 faults and not a very good time, landing him in 13th place that round.

But Team! WOW, Team was so fun! I am teamed up with two junior handlers with really awesome (and fast) dogs. I knew we'd have fun and that if things went well, we would have a shot at placing -- And that's saying a lot considering we are in a field of 32 or some odd teams in the standard division. All three dogs blew it away. And guess what!

Yes, we got FOURTH PLACE! It is worth mentioning that the three teams that placed above us are comprised of super fast large dogs (border collies, etc.). I am totally stoked with our Team placement. Not only that, but our outfits got a lot of attention -- So I am crossing my fingers for a "best dressed team" award! :o)

Poor Kaiser had to sit around forever again before running his last round of the day. I will say, though, thank heavens we ended up having an earlier day today. It was 7-ish before we got near Kaiser's turn. He was completely crashed in our stall (as was I...) and I worried about getting him to wake up for his run.

Silly me.... The second I grabbed his agility leash he was ready to go. When he saw me get the cheese, he was on fire. He was throwing tricks at me left and right to get my attention. He was doing spins at lightning speed. Oh yes, the boy was high.

The dog walk was the third obstacle on course with two hoops before it. The chutes at Champs do not allow for slingshot starts like I usually do at trials to get ahead, so I begged and pleaded with him to PLEASE stay. And he did! I mean, I didn't do a huge lead out, but any little bit helps. Then I just told him, "GO, GO, GO!" as he crossed the dog walk and he gave me a *gorgeous* running dog walk. I was concerned about him running straight through an off course tunnel so I called pretty hard and took a couple of steps back to get him to turn -- and he did! Then there was a tricky serpentine sequence that I had to handle from waaaaaay in the back since I was so far away. Normally Kaiser will give me one switch at a distance and that's it -- but OMG, he did it! And it was tight & fast! He came flying out of the tunnel and I sent him into the next one, then I pushed a bit hard to keep him over the line, as when I told him "out tunnel" (under the dog walk) he started to go around the outside of the tunnel. We fixed it quickly and then he blasted into the weaves. He hit them so hard that he got hung up on the second or third pole, but he hung on and got through them. Then up the a-frame, another hard turn right into the tunnel, a 180 jump sequence back through a tunnel under the a-frame and out the finish tunnel!

It was THE MOST AMAZING RUN OF MY LIFE. It was like driving a Ferrari. We just clicked. It was so beautiful. I went to the 3 Pines area to watch it before leaving for the night and it was just as pretty as it felt. I don't want to jinx myself, but Kaiser has consistently been the fastest dog of the class, but has been bumped back because of faults. There were NO FAULTS in this run, so is it too much for me to hope for 1st place? Oh wow, who could have ever imagined?? I can't wait for results to be posted.

I was just floating after that run. I almost cried I was so happy & proud of my little man. I had so many people compliment me on the run as we were leaving. Oh wow, I'm just on cloud 9.

It should do a lot to help Kaiser's overall standings. I'm really hoping we can hold on to a spot in the finals. It would totally make my entire year.

So now it's 9:30 and I do believe we will go to bed early tonight!! That is, if I can sleep. :o)

Day One: In the Bag

2011-10-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

It is 10:17 as I start this post and I am back in my hotel! That is the good news! The bad news for those still running is that it's 10:17 and they aren't done yet. ;o) Really, though, it shouldn't be much longer. I hear on Facebook that the Stakes classes are running. I feel bad for not staying to cheer them on the second round, but holy heck, we were totally beat!

Day one is in the bag and I have to say it was a very good day. Obviously this is Secret's blog, but Kaiser gets honorable mention today because HE ROCKS. His first round was *gorgeous*. Round one was a FORTY OBSTACLE course that was Hoopers focused. The only jump on course was the start jump, which didn't event count. It also had one performance each of the contacts & weaves.

Overall I really enjoyed the course. It had great flow and wasn't tricky to remember -- for a forty obstacle course, at least. The hang up was the distance at a discrimination to be taken not once, but twice -- including a two hoop sequence following it. The first time we had to go up the a-frame (not so terribly hard for most teams) do a 180 through the hoops and back through the tunnel under the frame. The second time was the opposite and holy heck was that out tunnel a challenge for the majority of teams. Not a single one of my three got it, if that tells you anything.

Kaiser went up the a-frame and came back through the tunnel. I opted to cross the line to help him into the tunnel, figuring if I didn't he would likely go up the frame again and waste time. I was able to redirect Luke to the tunnel without crossing the line. I crossed the line for Secret, but even in doing that it took quite a while to actually get her in the tunnel... She was certain the a-frame was the way to go!!

So anyhow, Kaiser had a blazing fast and beautiful run. He EVEN GOT HIS A-FRAME at the end of the course and had a lovely, lovely drive to the finish. No surprise there, he's great at blowing me off and running in a straight line. lol

Secret was my second dog, a good 100+ dogs later. She was pretty overwhelmed when we were waiting in line. I was bummed to see her tail touching her belly button -- She hasn't been that ooged out around agility for some time. Thankfully she got much better once we got into the separated waiting areas and it was quieter.

She started really well! I rear crossed a tight turn into a tunnel and wasn't in place to support the hoop after it, so she cut in there. Did we have to restart our weaves? I don't think so (I think I'm thinking of Luke). She got the "up frame" at a distance, but she cut in without taking the hoop so I had to cross the line there. She cut in on another hoop before a sharp turn to the tunnel -- my fault for assuming she would go and trying to leave her to get into place. The tunnel/a-frame ordeal followed. Oh my, it took what felt like forever to get her in that tunnel. Then she shot through a tunnel/hoop sequence so fast that I wasn't able to get her to turn in time, so she got an off course hoop before going to the dog walk.

Long story short, she ended up with 50 faults and a time of 90 point something. It's all written down in my stall -- She was like 32nd place, so not great, but it's a super competitive class. Luke ended up 17th in his division -- He only had the 10 faults from the discrimination, but we had to reset the weaves and then he cut in on the dog walk when I called too hard, wasting time there as well.

It took six hours to get through round one, not counting the Stakes classes. We expected round two to be shorter and it was -- 20 obstacles. This round was Tunnelers focused, used all the obstacles, but only had two jumps. Honestly, I have to say I don't mind the heavy hoop influence today. We'll see if it keeps up over the next few days.

Kaiser had another smoking run -- I think he got his dog walk again (a friend confirmed it), but I was too far behind to see (dog walk was second -- no start line = way behind, lol). He went rip roaring through the next sequence so fast that I wasn't able to get him to turn away in time, so he took an extra jump. The rest of his course was super awesome. His weaves were so lovely. I have no idea how they pick it, but I think it would be awesome for the little guy to get the Judges Choice award for best weaver. :o) Considering the course was so short, I'm not sure if his speed will save him on this fault. We'll see tomorrow.

Secret was GREAT!! She was way more relaxed going into the ring this time and she had FUN! (Not that she didn't have fun the first time, lol) Her run was perfectly clean going into the weaves at the end when all of the sudden she got distracted (poop?) and paused, then skipped past a pole. We reset quickly and finished well. I have no idea of her time.

Luke was pretty awesome as well. The big guy had a lovely clean run with no faults or bobbles. The 16" Vet division is pretty competitive, so we'll see how he stacks up in the morning when results are posted.

So there you have it! Day one = Awesome :o)

We Are Here!

2011-10-12T18:38:00.000-07:00

Check it out! I actually managed to fit everything we would need for five days PLUS the dogs into the back of my Vue! I wasn't sure it would be possible, but I made it work. The bungees that I picked up last night on my last minute shopping trip no doubt helped, as it allowed me to stuff quite a bit more behind the crate without worrying about it plopping over on top of the dogs in transit.

They were a little cozy back there, but they seemed okay with the arrangement. They changed positions a few times, but there was room for all!

The hard part is going to be getting everything back in there for the trip home....

We had an uneventful drive if you don't count the torrential rain we experienced for about 1/3 of it. We left home EARLIER than planned -- I had a goal of noon at the latest and we pulled out of the driveway just after 11:00. Granted, we then had to drive a half hour out of the way because I had failed to go to the bank, so in all we were on the way by 11:30.

We stopped in Lancaster, WI at 1:30 for a potty/coffee stop. Then we made it to Galesburg, IL for our next stop around 4:30 or so. Our stops were brief and the dogs were quite well behaved. I was shocked that Secret actually went potty on the first stop! Not so surprised that she didn't on the second. I swear she holds it all day...

We got to the fairgrounds at 6:00. I managed to find barn 14 and a coveted parking spot in the unloading area. The stalls are... Less than desired, but they will work. Thank goodness I have the giant floor mat to cover the grossness, but it doesn't do much for the giant crater in the center of the stall. I think we could build a swimming pool in it -- if the stall weren't so small. I'm thankful I decided to splurge and get a stall of my own, as it would be pretty cramped quarters. It's a nice space for my three, though. Secret settled right in while I finished hauling stuff in.

Since they seemed fine in the stall, I left them to go check out some of the EGC action that was finishing up in the big ring. I can't wait to see how it's set up tomorrow -- It's a very nice, big space and the footing looks great!

We found our hotel around 8:00. We're staying at a Red Roof (no dog fee!) and it's actually quite lovely! There is a huge grassy lot not that far away that the dogs can run around in. I think we'll be happy here the next several days. :o)

So that's that -- We are here, it is starting. I will try to update how things go each day. Tomorrow we start with the briefing at 8:00 a.m. Kaiser is something like dog 21 tomorrow, Secret doesn't run until like 120 or something like that. No Team tomorrow, so I'm hoping we get done at a decent time. Sharon was guessing 8:00 p.m., but we all know how that goes... Regardless, I don't see it going past midnight with this format as it did in 2009. Hope I don't have to eat my words!

Off to bed!!

Jitters??

2011-10-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

A friend at the shelter asked me on Saturday if I was nervous yet. I confidently answered that no, I wasn't. Typically I don't really experience nerves until right before the start of a run or event.

Well, apparently now is "right before." lol

Uhhh.... Yeah. Truthfully, though, I think the majority of the somersaults my stomach is experiencing at the moment is more related to the items on my list of things that needs to be done before we leave. Nothing like putting everything off until the very last minute -- Although many things really can't be done in advance.

Important things like an oil change are being taken care of this afternoon, the preparing of the massive quantities of treats has began (pictured above -- Two packages of chicken are cooked, shredded and sitting in the freezer), and my trial binder is complete. Things on my list that might be considered a bit more trivial would be "paint nails purple" and "dye Kaiser's tail." Although since that last part is now expected of me, I'm not sure how trivial it is. lol

I have now reached the stage where I am terrified of injuring one of the dogs. As such, they were lucky they even got to play fetch this weekend. I had good intentions of taking them for a run one evening, but it was a busy weekend at the shelter and I was wiped out. Considering we are having another gorgeous 80 degree day, I believe I'll shoot for taking them to the river after the oil change.

Speaking of weather (kind of), I finally looked at the forecast for Springfield. They look more or less to be experiencing similar weather to ours, with a similar cool down coming this weekend. But still, I'm glad I didn't go overboard buying cold weather wear in purple because it's supposed to be mid-60's to 70 each day. Lovely weather for agility if you ask me! Maybe my purple sweatshirt will come in handy as a pillow. :o)

Last Practice!!

2011-10-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

Last night was our last practice night before Champs! No activity tonight because everyone saw the chiro this morning, I'm working at the shelter all weekend (and now it's almost dark when I get home, sadness) and then have way too much to do Monday & Tuesday.... So yes, last night was it for us!

Because of this, I thought it might be a good idea to set a course. I planned to go through my course book and just find a "normal" Regular NADAC course to run through -- but then I came home to find this:

*SOB* So much for limping it through the rest of the season. Upon seeing the picture posted on Facebook, my dad responded with, "We can fix that." Uhhhh.... My dad is pretty amazing, but I don't know about that. I told him he'd have to look at it. We'll see. But regardless, there was no way I could use it last night. That left me all, "Hmmm..." about my training plans for the evening.

I scratched my head a bit, thought about what things I wanted to work on and then just started to wander around the yard with obstacles. I knew we absolutely needed a discrimination, and with only one contact it was a given. I needed a tunnel at the dismount of the dog walk for Kaiser, so that placed itself as well. I wanted an opportunity to practice rear crossing the weaves, figured it wouldn't hurt to throw a wrap at a hoop in there somewhere (since many of us are expecting to see this at Champs this year!) and of course a few changes of direction. This is what I came up with!

Yes, the spacing is off and I'm a pretty horrible artist, but it was actually a very nice course to run! Not nearly as boring as what I usually come up with. :o)

The start of the course with the big loop around the outside was fairly Champs like. I was able to layer the inside jump & hoop with all dogs to allow me to take a shorter path and be ready to push out for the discrimination. I really tried to stay back and work on doing the discrimination at a distance and it worked well.

I handled the next part in several ways. I worked on rear crossing the weaves (Secret rocked!) and wrapping left at the hoop as well as running ahead and doing a push with a wrap to the right. Really, both ways worked. In this situation I think the push/wrap right might have been faster because it presented a straight line through the next two jumps.

I did try a front cross between 12 & 13, but overall I liked rear crossing between 13 & 14 better. Staying outside the pinwheel and doing a front cross on the back side of 17 seemed quite a bit faster than pivoting on the inside and rear crossing at 18 -- Plus doing a rear cross puts you behind for the upcoming "up" discrimination.

Secret was pretty awesome through everything -- AND for the record, she held her contacts until released. Yes, I actually maintained criteria. :o) Might not hurt to try to find time for one more "deposit" session this weekend.

As I mentioned at the top of the post, we made another trip to the chiropractor in Viroqua this morning. All three dogs came in this time. While it certainly is a handful, everyone remarked at how well behaved they are together. That's always nice to hear. Everyone was very relaxed and well behaved today.

Secret was up first, mostly because she was mugging everyone this morning and seemed to want attention. She was a good girl, didn't put up too much of a fight about getting into position and more or less relaxed pretty quickly. She kind of zones out in my hands while Dr. Engel works on her.

Secret was still pretty flinchy through her mid-back, so Dr. Engel spent a bit of time getting that all worked back into place. Everything else was pretty good and Dr. Engel was impressed with her elasticity in the hind end. By the end of her session the flinching was gone and Secret was a happy camper. It does look like she will be a dog that needs continuous maintenance going forward. Perhaps monthly, but we'll see.

Next on my list of "Things to do to prepare for departure" is to go buy our 20 pounds of chicken... (Okay, maybe a *slight* exaggeration, but not much, lol) Who wants to help me cook and shred it? Anyone? Anyone? No? Well then, you can get started cutting two pounds of cheese into cubes. :o)

Money in the Bank

2011-10-06T07:42:00.000-07:00

That's what we did last night. We put a great big (long overdue!) deposit into the contact bank. I have gone a very long time taking advantage of Secret's super awesome foundation training, failing to admit that if you don't go back and revisit those foundations, they eventually start to fade away.

So, we went right back to square one. Using food, we did the good 'ol "jump on from the side and drive as quickly as possible into position." Secret thought it was about the most fun thing in the world -- Shaping! Tricks! Food! All of her favorite things in life. :o)

We moved on to doing the whole dog walk and tried to focus on getting into the end position faster. You know how she is with food, though; not the fastest dog on the planet. But still, she was happy, eager & having fun -- So in all, I consider it a good, successful session.

Why didn't we do the full a-frame?

This happened during our last coursework night. :o( That side of the a-frame has started to look bad the last couple of months (warping/separating), but I think it was Luke who finally punched a hole through the wood.

When it happened I thought should be able to limp it through the rest of this year -- If I set the course so that they go up that side, it should be safe enough. But I put it back up on my mover and last night I noticed it is warping & separating significantly more. Major sadness. I should probably just put it back on the ground so it doesn't get any worse.

I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any. Otherwise, I started looking around on the internet for my options. I found this web site that has a pretty reasonably price aluminum frame. I'm contemplating buying that this fall, storing it in the garage for the winter and then hoping my dad would like to do a "craft project" with me in the spring. That would help to separate the investment, at least. I'd have to order rubber for it in the spring; that way we could just attach the plywood and slap on rubber. Easy peasy, yes? I hope so.

But on the subject of this post, if anyone has some spare money sitting in the bank, I'd be happy to help you out there. ;o) The timing just sucks. With equipment that lives outside all the time, I suppose I should have thought more strongly about aluminum from the start.

Hopefully I can get my dog walk through another year so that I don't have to make two big investments....

Prior to doing our contact reinforcement session, all the dogs worked through the big arc. Our setup last night was three hoops leading into a 15' tunnel at the top of the yard followed by three more hoops. It was a 50 yard sprint more or less.

Secret really hauls ass on the last half the arc, but she is slower on the first half. I hoped having the tunnel at the top would help suck her, but alas I just don't think she's super motivated by tunnels -- Not because tunnels aren't fun, but I think she has a bit of a disconnect when she can't see me. We worked a bit on making driving away from me super fun and overall it was a good session. Any time the jolly ball is involved, Secret has fun.

All this is, of course, because in a mere single solitary week we will be running at NADAC Championships. :o) Run orders were posted last night and it just makes it ever so much more real & exciting. We're getting close! I'm quite tickled with the run order, as I somehow ended up in line with friends with every dog. How awesome is that??

I have so much to do before leaving. I haven't really given a thought to packing yet, as I'm more consumed with everything that needs to done prior to that.... Today's project was stall signs, as you'll see above! SO much more to do.

A weekend... At Home??

2011-10-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

It's a shocker, I know. I took off from the shelter this weekend because we were supposed to go to the Zumbro Falls NADAC trial. As you know, I opted to skip that trial to rest up (and save $$) for Champs, wanting to go in on the high note of our last (highly successful) trial.

This resulted in spending two whole days at home with no plans. I totally fail at having weekends. It's been so long since I've had one that I kind of just implode and become a hermit. Ah well, hermit weekends aren't that bad. The dogs would tend to disagree, though. They were thoroughly disgusted with me on Saturday. Eventually they just make their own fun -- This was one of their tamer indoor play sessions this weekend. Makes me wonder what they do when I'm gone all day at the shelter....

I was thankfully a far more productive human being on Sunday. In addition to four loads of laundry, cleaning (don't worry, I didn't go overboard) and grocery shopping, I actually managed to work the dogs! I figured I'd be a failure as a human being if I let the whole weekend pass by without taking advantage of the beautiful weather -- It would have been a lovely weekend to trial outdoors in Zumbro Falls, that's for sure.

I feel like I brought out this course a week early, but I set the Finals round from 2010 NADAC Championships. Oh yes, the Finals. :o) It is my goal to get at least one dog into the finals -- It might be a lofty goal, but gosh darn it there you have it. Anyhow, this is the course:

It was a wee bit of a squeeze in my yard, but we managed. The start hoop was simply about a foot away from the fence, that's all. :o) And the 8-9 hoop sequence ran directly next to the deck, which Kaiser didn't really care for (Mr. Space Bubble-n-all), but Secret didn't give a rip. In my course, the number 12 tunnel was replaced with two hoops to simulate the entrance & exit to the tunnel -- I figured if I had to omit a tunnel, that was a better option than #4/14. And lest you think it dampens the tunnel sucking effect one might see in the original course, Kaiser & Luke were fully capable of blowing off my turn signal and running through the off course hoop. ;o)

But Secret? Secret says, "I got this, no worries!"

I played with a few different handling options, such as rear crossing into tunnel #4 vs. a front cross between 3 & 4. That didn't make much of a difference to Secret. In a moment of brilliantly stupid handling I found myself behind her in the line going to the tunnel under the a-frame. Not that I would ever recommend it, but I started to cross behind her and gave her the verbal "tunnel" command -- and she took it! I suppose it's nice to know if we get in a pinch that we have options... After that I handled the turn from 4 to 5 from much further back and took off running as soon as she came out of the tunnel.

I was quite impressed with her switch turn from 13 to 14. She apparently thinks switching into tunnels is super fun because she would really dig in and push through that turn. I handled the closing sequence with a rear cross from 17 to 18 which, leading into the dog walk, was also apparently highly motivating to Secret. Nice to see that the front cross queen is having more fun with rear crosses these days.

It should come as no surprise to me that Secret's stopped contacts were officially *gone* in this session. I've been asking for it. We ended our first session with a couple of stopped contacts with the toy reward. I skipped doing any course work with Secret on her second turn and opted to instead put some deposits in the contact bank with food rewards. It's been quite a while since we've done any of that -- Secret thought it was pretty awesome.

In addition, I asked for some dog walks with HUGE distance. She is so used to me babysitting her end performance, so I wanted to focus on getting some distance. She did great, even when I ran laterally halfway across the yard -- AND she sent out to the jump after the dog walk, even! That's pretty good for the velcro baby dog.

I figure we have one more night of course work prior to Champs. I haven't decided what course we will do -- The remainder of the 2010 Champs courses are quite tunnel-heavy and I don't feel I can do them justice replacing them with hoops, but I might try. It might not hurt to plan one more discrimination session into our training schedule as well. Tick-tock, it's getting close!!

Chiro-tastic!

2011-09-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

This morning Secret had her first appointment with our new chiropractor. You may recall that she visited our previous VSM-accreditted veterinarian just once, a bit over a year ago. I'm happy to say that this visit was much better for all involved!

After leaving the previous chiropractor for various reasons (namely, I was very disappointed with our last couple of appointments), none of my dogs have had any VSM (veterinary spinal manipulation) work done for getting close to a year. I knew of two options within driving distance -- One in Viroqua and one over in Winona, MN. A friend of mine actually works at the Winona clinic, so it was nice to have a personal reference -- Although she told me he wasn't so good with nervous dogs, so I worried about that with Secret & Kaiser.

I couldn't find anyone who had ever been to our other option -- Rising Sun Animal Wellness Center. All I knew was second-hand information that "the vet was a hippy." lol Seriously, I need to stop listening to people. Besides, what is wrong with hippies? We like to let our hair down and be free and all that jazz.

So I tested the waters with Luke & Kaiser last Friday. I was very happy with the results, so this week was Secret's turn. She paired up with Luke -- It never hurts to have a calm buddy to show you the ropes.

Secret got to go into the office last week to meet the staff and check out the place. I find it helpful to have her familiar with something before the "scary stuff" starts. She fixated on the cat in the waiting room a bit this morning, but was otherwise pretty calm & cool (ie: no tail tucked up to her belly button).

She was a good girl on the scale -- but holy heck, she was 49.7 lbs. Sheesh, girl. But look, still under 50. :o)

We let Secret chill while we did Luke's adjustment first. Dr. Marta was going to start on Secret, but I figured it would be best to let her settle in like we did with Kaiser last week. Secret was super curious about everything at first, but then she just plopped down and watched everything.

When it was her turn she was suddenly, "Wait, what??" She got very nervous and very tense. Dr. Marta works from behind with the dog standing and her assistant supporting the dog under the midsection. I hold the head. Secret was very worried to start, but she did ease up and start to relax as we went along.

She was one messed up baby dog. I explained to Dr. Marta how her back has always been so tense, but I figured it was more of a muscular issue. Ends up she's just a chiropractic mess. Secret didn't seem to have much going on in the pelvic area, but once the doctor hit mid-back there was a ton of work to be done. Her ribs were displaced and the vertebrae were very out of alignment. Dr. Marta did so much of an adjustment that she actually recommended icing for a couple of days.

I was concerned about what Secret would do when Dr. Marta got up to her head/neck, but this woman just takes charge and doesn't fuss about anything. :o) Just what Secret needs! Secret did squirt back when Dr. Marta was adjusting her neck to the left. She acted fairly traumatized and jumped onto the table next to me. I got her down with treats and we were able to finish without any problems. I was ever so thankful that Secret didn't snap or otherwise make any threats whatsoever, as after our last experience I expected her to be pretty bad. I was ready to put a muzzle on her straightaway, actually. I'm glad we didn't.

Secret forgave Dr. Marta and her assistant quickly when treats were offered, then she proceeded to go comatose on the floor while we discussed everything. Seriously, she had the dopiest look on her face. I'll assume it's because she felt so much better!

All three dogs will get one more adjustment next Friday, and then it will be off to Springfield! I'm very curious to see what sort of effect this has on Secret. I feel bad for not getting her in sooner, but who could have known she'd be such a mess? Maybe this will unlock some new gears in her. :o)

TWO WEEKS!!

2011-09-29T08:15:00.001-07:00

Holy buckets! In just two weeks time, we will be running at NADAC Championships 2011! The good news is that I'm feeling really, really excited -- Not really, really nervous or really, really worried. In 2009 I was dealing with some off & on lameness issues with Luke, so this is a nice feeling. Cross your fingers that it stays that way. Time to start wrapping the crew in bubble wrap and doing more running than playing (since that seems to be when we get hurt!).

Since the big event is a mere two weeks away, I figured It was time to suck it up and set another practice course to prepare us for the challenges we will encounter. Due to the location of the dog walk after the latest mowing, Round 2 from 2010 won the draw! And look, it's not even a cruddy hand-drawn replica of the course. Nope, this one was scored off someone's blog a while ago. It's a little off by NADAC standards, but it set well by flow, which is what I went by. I opened with a curved line of hoops and ended with a hoop, but otherwise set the course as pictured.

I am super-duper pleased with Secret's session last night. In watching the videos, my biggest concern was always that line leading away from the weave poles. It appears much further/more drastic in video than it does on paper, which is what led me to focus on handling the weaves while layering the two jumps to the side. I figured if Secret could handle that then we were gravy.

And she did! She totally did! And her weaves were speedy, even!

I also worked to handle the a-frame from behind the number 15 jump, as I know we will be forced to handle our contacts from a distance at some point or another at Champs. Secret did really well and I'm very happy with the overall distance she was giving me in this session.

That is not to say we didn't have a few hiccups. Too much lateral distance at the start caused her to want to turn in to jump 14 after the second hoop if I was behind her. I will have to use lead-outs at Champs if we encounter such a set-up. Hopefully the more "private" setting of the huge arena will allow her to stress less about that, because I really don't see getting through many of the courses without a lead-out there.

We also struggled with layering the ending, as she defaulted to wanting to come into me after the tunnel. Getting the hoop after the tunnel wasn't too difficult, but the number 6 jump was just too tempting to her and I never actually did get the 18 jump without being above number 6.

Secret's contacts were lovely last night, but I really need to watch myself with this early release business. She isn't missing any contacts, but she isn't stopping, either. I know I'm not going to ask for a single stop at Champs, so do I keep letting it slide? Or is now the time to put money in the bank for a stop, to ensure that leaping doesn't start when we get to Springfield? I think I know the answer to that.... I can be such a speed junkie.

Negativity

2011-09-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

Because I have nothing worthwhile to write about, I'm going to get on a soap box today.

All photos belong to Alan Pet Portrait Art -- He got some nice shots of Secret from our trial! I love the reach she is showing over many of the jumps.

I continue to be surprised by the number of negative handlers I see at agility trials. Granted, I will say that they are outnumbered by positive & good-natured handlers, but the very nature of their negativity seems to make them stand out above the rest.

Maybe I notice it more because I used to be one of those handlers. I was very hard on Luke at times in the beginning. Looking back it is obvious to see that my frustrations stemmed from my own shortcomings as a trainer. I would get SO MAD at him for missing his contacts. Run after run would NQ because of his dog walk contact. Or he would tunnel suck instead of going up the contact. I maintained that he took off course obstacles because he was just being naughty.

Or.... It could be that I had not trained him properly to successfully negotiate those tasks.

I think it's easier for people with "hard" dogs to fall into this habit. You could hit one of these dogs over the head with a hammer and they will just bark at you and wait for you to give them another cue. Bless these dogs for trying so hard. But I still feel bad for them when I see them trying so hard and getting yelled at, especially when the mistake was obviously due to a miscue from the handler.

I was forced to check my attitude at the door with Kaiser. Both he & Secret are what I would label as "soft" dogs and do not respond well to correction. This has made me more thoughtful with my training style, teaching me to be more creative in my set-up to allow them to succeed & learn at the same time.

Time has also been a good teacher. I have learned my strengths & weaknesses as a trainer and know that 99.9% of the time it is not the dog's fault. When something goes wrong at a trial, I first look to myself and wonder what I could have done differently. THANK GOODNESS for video. :o) I often wonder if some of the more negative handlers would open their eyes a bit if they had the benefit of watching each of their runs.

I think a lot changed for me when I almost lost Luke in 2009, too. While I have experienced the very sad loss of many of my friend's agility dogs, I have been very fortunate to have not yet gone through that myself. When Luke crashed in October of 2009 and was subsequently diagnosed with Addison's Disease, it was one of the worst weeks of my life (not far behind losing my horse the year before). I hate that death or near-death experiences are what it takes to really cherish our loved ones, but it is what it is.

When you compare it to not having them in our lives anymore, that NQ run really is pretty insignificant.

We more or less skipped our Wednesday training session last night. It was windy & crappy outside, so I didn't feel like setting up a course. I did set up the contacts for Kaiser, though, so that ended up being Secret's activity of the evening as well.

Kaiser was consistently faster than he's ever been at the last trial, and I got to wondering if it's because I have been doing nothing but running contact work with him for the last month. Every time he sees equipment, he's running as fast as he can -- and it appears to have translated to more than just the dog walk.

It got me thinking and I'm wondering if I spent the next month more or less focusing on long sweeping lines with Secret (ala the fun old arc of jumps or hoops), if that would lead to overall increase of speed on the course. It's something to ponder.

Bring it on!

2011-09-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

Secret had another fantastic trial weekend! We love trials at Family Dog Center -- Because not only do we get to play agility for three days in a row, but we get to sleep in our own bed at night. :o)

Secret ran 8/10 over the three days and earned her Elite Jumpers & Tunnelers titles! Her NQ's were completely my fault. I hate that. In Touch-n-Go Friday night I ran the wrong course. Sigh. Kaiser had just had a really wide turn on the last part of the course and apparently that was stuck in my head, so I made sure to cue really early for the turn. Like, REALLY early since it wasn't supposed to come until later in the course. Oh well.

I also asked for way too much lateral distance on the dog walk in Chances on Sunday, causing Secret to miss her very first contact! She popped right off the side to come into me (and the jump that was layered between us). There was no justifiable reason for me to be THAT far away from her, other than that I was trying to be in a better position for the next part of the course. I think I just got too cocky and left her alone. Bad handler.

More HUGE positives to take away from this trial! Secret is showing speed more consistently on a variety of courses. I noticed in the video that there were even several instances where she FINALLY jumped with her hind legs extended vs. tucked in and collected underneath her. For many dogs that's no big deal, but for Secret it's pretty big. She's finally starting to let loose and run on course!

Her stride is so deceptively long. I watched to see how many times she double-strides between obstacles and it was surprisingly more than I thought there would be. She can do it with little effort, it seems, when she opens up. When Luke double-strides it seems like there is more reach, but Secret's stride is so long that she seems to almost lope through it. So gosh darn it, if it's so easy why don't you do it more? ;o)

Secret's Tunnelers run on Friday was 5.8 yps this time, so she didn't quite hit 6, but almost. :o) And really, it was a very "non-Secret-friendly" course because I didn't have one single cross on the entire course. Talk about un-motivating for her. Again with the deceptive speed, though, because I thought she felt so slow on that run.

She also had a 5.5 yps Jumpers run on Sunday morning. I have to admit that I haven't really been keeping good track of her yps, but I think that's got to be about her highest in Jumpers. She had 5.2 on Saturday with it being the last class of the day.

Speaking of last class, she was definitely starting to drag by the end of the day on Sunday. It always shows in her weaves, but she was able to keep up fairly well for the rest of the Regular courses at the end of the day. I definitely think I made the right decision to keep her limited to four runs per day.

I've decided that this will be our last trial before Champs. Originally I was going to head over to Zumbro Falls on October 1 -- I love that trial and like to support a smaller club, but I really want to go into Champs on a high note. I am terrified to go and have a bad day -- Not just with Secret, but with all three dogs. So we are going to stay home, rest, visit the chiro and have fun for the next few weeks. I think we're as ready as we're going to be!

The boys had a great weekend, too! Luke also ran 8/10, got both of his Weavers and both of his Chances! That means that he's now just one Weavers Q from his second V-NATCH, which is what makes it hard to skip the next trial. Oh well, we'll get it when we get back from Champs! He's also just five Chances Q's away from his third NATCH already. Hard to believe, but he's just been on a roll lately.

Kaiser was FAST this weekend. He got three dog walks -- two decent ones, one was a gift (but in Chances, thank you judge!!!). He had some stutter-stepping issues that I believe are related to confidence (he knocked a bar and it freaks him out), but we are going to the chiro this week to get it checked out just in case. I want everyone as good as they can be, physically, when we head down to IL!

Training Night -- With Video!

2011-09-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

You know how I said a couple of weeks ago that it was going to be my goal to train no more than twice a week to avoid over training? Well, that goal is alive and well -- Considering that I've only been training about once a week lately. lol It's good for the dogs, though. I think it keeps them fresh & happy.

Wednesday being a "non-shelter night," I scheduled it as my training night of the week and decided to set up the Chances course from our last trial. I stole the Open copy, as someone else had already grabbed Elite. The Elite line ran down below hoop 2/8 and pretty much straight down from the outer edge of 3.

Secret did really well -- when her handler didn't screw up. I have to take the blame for pretty much every error she made, but thankfully I got my act together and we ended on a really nice run! I pretty much annotated everything in the video, so I won't bother driveling on too much about it here. For the record, this is our ENTIRE training session. The only editing I did was some chute fluffing. Secret does so much better with these short sessions and she looked bummed when I put her back in the house last night (which is good!).

You might wonder why Kaiser didn't get featured at all (since Luke gets his cameo at the end) -- Well, I didn't make Kaiser run this course last night. I debated it, but I had worked his running dog walk prior to Secret & Luke's training sessions and it went so well that I decided to not push him anymore. Again, less is more....

I'm super thrilled with his progress last night! Since Breanna asked about it yesterday, I decided to go ahead and make a new video. His first session with the tunnel target went so well (and following a series of 100% hits in other sessions), so I decided to take it away and try a second session without the tunnel. The next obstacle is the hoop that's in the Chances course. His first hit was very high and with no hind leg separation, but I rewarded him to keep him happy. After that he blew me away. Yay, I have hope for him yet! :o)

Here's his video:

Trial this weekend! Secret is running in Tunnelers & Touch-n-Go Friday night, then the "core classes" of Regular, Chances & Jumpers on Saturday & Sunday. Hoping to get video this time!

Woolie Dog!

2011-09-13T07:57:00.000-07:00

We had a special surprise in the mail when we arrived home last night! Oh yes indeedy, our special PINK Woolie Dog felted wool tuggy had arrived! Have you ever seen such joy in a dog's face as above? Secret was a happy, happy girl!

We put it to the test right away and Secret thought it was grand! She tugged to her little heart's content and the Woolie Dog tug held up to her abuse. :o) As advertised, it's definitely nice & soft on the hands, and I'm impressed with how durable it appears to be.

The price is right on these babies, too. So because I feel they are a good product, I figured I'd give them a plug on the blog today. :o) If you want your very own Woolie Dog tug toy, I encourage you to visit their Facebook page or their Etsy Store. I'm probably the only person on the planet who had never shopped on Etsy prior to last week, but I found it very easy to use. I ordered my (PINK!) tuggy on Friday and it arrived on Monday. How awesome is that? For anyone who is wondering, Secret's tuggy is size Medium. I tossed around getting her a Large since she's gone through so many tuggies, but I decided to start with medium and see how it lasted.

After having our fun with the new toy, I loaded everyone up and went down to the river last night. It was 88 degrees and likely one of the last truly warm days we will experience this year, so I figured we should take advantage of it. I didn't realize how long it had been since we'd gone swimming until I realized all of our water toys were still in the bag that I took to the dock diving event at the State Fair. Goodness sake, that was the beginning of August. Sorry guys, didn't realize it had been that long! I suppose the fact that the weather in August was fairly delightful lead to me doing more agility training and less swimming.

Secret very much enjoyed her swimming time. We had our little beach all to ourselves up to the very end when we had a visitor that came hiking through and stopped to chat. Secret managed to continue with her playtime without being too distraught and distracted (our new "friend" got one wary growl from Secret and then she got over it). We got in a good 45 minutes of swim time, yet when we got home Secret & Kaiser still felt the need to do zoomies around the yard. Dogs.... Where do they get their energy?

Discriminate this, baby!

2011-09-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

Secret is totally rocking her discriminations lately! She's handling them with much more confidence and a lot less stress. I'm doing my best to try to cut the umbilical cord and trust her more, thereby babysitting less. I think she appreciates it.

I totally and completely fail for forgetting to take a picture of our course from last night. :o( Without a course picture, I feel like any descriptors I use about our training will be kind of lost, but oh well. I'll still try. Maybe I can edit a picture in tomorrow? Does it let me do that? Guess I'll find out!

I waffled between setting up the Chances course or the Regular course from our last trial. I ultimately settled on the Regular course because I figured we needed to work on longer courses and because we had plenty of time (due to it not being a shelter night). The course fit very nicely in my yard and was a fairly exact replica from the trial, minus using two hoops to replace the tricky tunnel that sucked Secret off course in Round 1 (granted, that was MY error due to not cuing in time).

I really enjoyed this course, both at the trial and running it at home. It provided a nice variety of challenges, including multiple discriminations. It was also a good length with plenty of running. My version had 23 obstacles, since I required the extra hoop in place of the tunnel. That actually created an interesting challenge -- While it took away the "tunnel suck" factor, it also meant having to handle a bit differently as you couldn't take for granted the tunnel getting them from point A to point B.

Secret completely nailed the first run. I am not totally thrilled with my handling of it as I really struggled with trusting her on the "out tunnel" discrimination. My preference would be to trust my dog, send her and hustle for a blind cross at the tunnel exit, but I hesitated too long and had to do a rear cross on the flat (I'm not a fan) following the next jump. Secret handled it well, though, and stayed happy & fast through the sequence. That was the area where I'd sent her off course at the trial, so I was happy that we improved upon that. It was my same hesitation that caused the error at the trial, though, so I'm not happy about THAT.

The rest of the course ran quite lovely and she had some lovely sends (because try as I might, I just couldn't get there!). She nailed her weaves at the end and we had a giant party and played tuggy probably 5x as long as it took us to run the course. lol And hey, bonus -- The running must be starting to pay off because I didn't feel nearly the need to die as I have in previous weeks. ;o)

Part of me wondered if I should quit there. Hmm. Maybe, but the part of me that thinks actually training my dog is beneficial won out. I decided to run the course in the opposite direction. I tried to send a bit too far a couple of times, resulting in Secret coming back into me (this would likely be a result of me being more winded on this run and thus not getting to where I needed to be), and I got too far behind her as I attempted to get the "out tunnel" under the a-frame, which resulted in her going up instead of out. Other than that (all for which I blame myself), it was great and she was a happy girl.

After this we did spend a short bit of time reminding ourselves of contact criteria. All of my early releasing is starting to take its toll, as Secret was self-releasing (ie: not even stopping) on pretty much every contact. I didn't correct her on this during the course because I was more concerned about keeping everything happy, but she took the reminder in stride and happily nailed her bottoms a few times and we called it quits for the night. I do realize it's a slippery slope to go down when you let them get away with not maintaining criteria, so I should probably be better about that at our next trial. That said, having that early release will surely make sends in Chances far easier.... Bah, I'm such a waffler.

Secret blew out another tuggy last night (evidence above -- Kaiser was not the culprit!). Recently a facebook friend posted about Woolie Dog, a company that makes wool tug toys that can withstand hardcore tugging and are more durable than, say, these fleece toys that I have. Seeing as Secret has been such a tugger lately, I'm thinking it wouldn't hurt to give one of them a try. Which reminds me, I wonder what the heck ever happened to her wool Ringzee....?

Happy Labor Day!

2011-09-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

I am doing super awesome at my commitment to not over train leading into Champs. So awesome, in fact, that we have done nothing since I last posted. I was feeling slightly guilty about this, so I put a tunnel out for our Chuck-it play on Sunday and sent Secret through a couple of hoops and the tunnel on the way to her ball. Holy speed-building exercise, Batman! I should try running a course with a Chuck-it one of these days...

Oh, I guess I ran her over the dog walk a few times that day, too -- So maybe that counts as training. She wouldn't know, she was just in Chuck-it mode. Considering that her brain more or less falls out of her head, I'm impressed that she (mostly) maintained her criteria. Seeing her completely run through her contact before stopping tempts me to want to try running contacts, but why mess with a good thing? We like our 2o/2o, even if I do tend to early release more often than not these days. :o)

I celebrated Labor Day by working at the shelter. But the good news is that it was only half a day, which left the rest of the day to play! Or to mow the lawn..... I moved the dog walk to the top of the yard, so now I have to see if I have a copy of the Champs round with it in that location. I was also thinking I should set up that Chances course that got the best of us at the last trial (including the tunnel that couldn't have possibly been any closer to the dog walk).

One of these days we'll get back to work. But honestly, I'm pretty sure Secret doesn't mind it one bit. She thinks playing frisbee every day would probably be the best way to practice for Champs. :oP

Sorry for the completely random and pointless post -- I just think she's cute. Still waiting for a modeling gig to come along so that she can start to pay her way. lol

I still need to enter our trial that's coming up. I figure I'll keep the days short & sweet for Secret, so she's going to run 2 of the games classes Friday night, then just the four core classes each day. No reason to burn her out now.

Less IS more

2011-09-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

I may be a slow learner sometimes, but I am learning! I've always known that less is more where Secret is concerned, but I often get greedy and push too hard/too much. She can be so very brilliant at times and it's an awesome feeling when we have that connection. At times it can be hard to back off from that high.

But I'm getting there. We hadn't done a lick of agility since the trial on Saturday. We've had some gorgeous weather that would have been great for some agility practice, but instead we've filled our time with walking/running and playing in the yard. I decided taking several days off would be good for all of us.

A fellow blogger posted some Chances courses that were used at the trial in Iowa over the weekend. I thought they looked fun and totally doable, so I printed them out and took them home to set up last night.

I brought home maps for both the Open line:

And the Elite line:

Knowing, of course, that I still only have two tunnels, my course ended with the hoop. I also left all jumps at 8" for all dogs, which no doubt never hurts to increase the "fun factor" for Secret, as it requires less "work" for her. lol I often think I have the laziest border collie on the planet...

I have to admit I was concerned when I first brought her out. She was kind like, "Meh, toy." I warmed her up with a few single obstacles (hoop/weaves/tunnel) and she wasn't behaving in a particularly inspired fashion.

Luckily the light came on in her eyes when I set her up at the start of the course. I tried not to pay too much attention to the "line" the first time through. Secret did go way wide on the turn to the tunnel and I had to step in to assist, but good heavens was she a happy girl and she zipped right through the finish.

After playing with her & the Wubba for a bit, I set her up for a second try, this time making a point to observe the Open level line. I used an early/quick release on the a-frame to keep her moving ahead of me and she nailed it, including a much better turn into the tunnel. Happy dance, good girl!

Quite honestly, I debated ending her session right there. I warned myself of the perils of being greedy. So maybe I haven't come as far as I thought, because I did decide to try it one more time.

I decided to go for the Elite line with her this time, figuring I could easily step in for the save if I needed it. But wouldn't you know, she didn't need me to help her at all! Granted, some of this could have been pattern training by now, but she drove eagerly ahead of me and really showed no hesitation at all. I threw a big party for her and we played with the Wubba for a bit before I took her back in the house to give the boys their turn.

I figured there was no point in messing with her any more after that, so instead of working more agility with her on her "second turn," we just played frisbee. Happy day for Secret!

Heading into Champs, my game plan is to train twice per week. We'll see if I maintain that goal as it gets closer and I start to feel more pressure. lol It's made a little easier by the fact that I'm really working to improve my own fitness right now, so training sessions are being replaced by runs -- Which the dogs love!

Six weeks to go!

Trial Update - ACTS in Lindstrom, MN

2011-08-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Look at that! Someone was RUNNING at our trial this weekend! :o) Many, many thanks to our friend Robyn for taking some awesome pictures at our trial up in Lindstrom. I didn't get any video at this trial, so having some great snapshots takes away the sting of Secret's very first trial with zero video footage. It was a small trial and none of my normal videographers were in attendance, so I decided to deal with it and not bug anyone. I'm a little bummed, especially since Secret's first two runs were so nice.

It was not our most successful day, coming home with only one Q out of four runs. Unfortunately, I have to take the blame for two of the NQ's and I hate it when it is COMPLETELY my fault.

The first round of Elite Regular was eating up a lot of teams. There's no seemingly good explanation, other than that the course went through a similar path three times and several of us managed to get lost. Sadly, I screwed up both Luke & Secret (in different spots...). Secret was moving at a really good clip and my complete lack of cues sent her straight into an off course tunnel. I did a quick, "Crap..." to myself, but I made sure not to dampen Secret's enthusiasm and just kept running to the next obstacle -- So we ended up with 30 faults for that run (off course & missed jump).

Round 2 seemed to flow a little better and I managed to stay on course this time. It was a tricky course with multiple discrimination tests, so I was very happy to see Secret keep her happy attitude and not start to worry or stress over anything. The weaves were the second obstacle on the course and she was quite a bit slower through them than in the first round -- She always seems to weave faster when they are at the end of the course for some reason. I left her more than usual in the weaves at this trial and am happy that this didn't seem to effect her. It was a really nice bobble-free run that earned us a Q and 2nd place.

These Regular courses were really good Champs preparation. They were "only" 22 obstacles, but they spanned quite a bit of yardage (I didn't write it down) and required most handlers to move more than usual. I made it through the courses okay but will be glad to have more time between dogs at Champs!! The run order was in my favor, with Secret going first (which is good, because I feel I need the most energy with her), then Luke (who gives me more distance so I can take more of a break), and finally Kaiser (who really didn't have a very good day, likely due to a muscle spasm in his leg I found later).

Chances was up next. Both of my boys got stuck in Elite at the tunnel/dog walk discrimination. The tunnel was practically sitting on top of the dog walk plank, it was SO CLOSE. It was a very hard discrimination to get, so after sending Secret out through the hoops (distance with a switch) I called too hard to get the "up walk" from her. She listened to my come command and.... came to me. Darn it. I over-handled yet again! I set her up to try it again and she got it, good girl! And she even finished up the run with an "out tunnel" next to the a-frame from behind the line -- YAY!! No hesitation whatsoever, so it looks like the "out" is starting to stick with her!

Jumpers wasn't so awesome. The day was just dragging on and Secret had been in her crate most of the afternoon (as I didn't enter her in Touch-n-Go or Weavers at this trial). It was around 4 p.m. before we ran Jumpers and she was getting tired. Add to that, she ended up being the first dog to run in the class (due to me having to space out my dogs at a small trial), so I essentially had to walk the course, grab my dog and run. Secret doesn't do well with that routine. She's much happier if she gets to sit and bark at me and do tricks before going into the ring. Oh well, sometimes we don't get that chance!

The other issue, I'm sure, is that I left her and jogged off to get a bit of a lead out. Hind sight being what it is, I probably should have just ran with her and did the rear cross. I actually ended up losing her briefly with the push that I used, as she paused at the end of the ring to look at some folks at the results table. I got her back again only to lose her on a front cross (granted, it was poorly placed, but she loves front crosses!) when she stopped at the end of the ring to whine & wiggle at a female border collie she had seen earlier in her crate and wanted to play with. This was totally unexpected, but I suppose wanting to play with a new/strange dog is better than behaving aggressively. It was a dog we are going to Champs with, so maybe we'll have to see if Rain wants to play while we are there. :o)

Long story short, Secret ended up 2 seconds over time. It would have been her EJC-S title, but oh well, we'll get it next time.

We have many positives to take away from this trial, despite the single Q. Secret did not get much settling time at all before her first run, as we arrived around 8:20 a.m. and she was the 2nd dog on the line at 9:00 a.m. She ran fast & happy from the start, so this is great!! We didn't have ANY moments of stopping to search for horse poop in the dirt arena, which is another huge plus (especially considering Champs is running on a dirt ring that has surely had horses in it). Due to part of the arena being ripped off in a storm, crating was in horse stalls this time, which was great practice for Champs. Secret did really well in this environment and seemed to enjoy the more private setting.

The long days at Champs are going to be hard on Secret for sure. It will be difficult since I'm running the Team events, but I'm going to have to try to get the dogs back to the hotel for a rest between rounds 1 & 2 each day. I think it will help Secret to have more of a fresh attitude for the second round if she hasn't been sitting in the stall all day. I also think it will help if I'm able to spend more time with them, though. At this trial I decided to work pretty much whenever I wasn't running (great vouchers!!), so they were left to themselves all day and I know they don't rest quite as well.

Our next trial is back in La Crosse on September 16-18 --- Yup, another 3-dayer. I haven't decided yet how many runs I'll have Secret do per day. I'm going to make a point not to over train this time leading into the trial... Less is more, that's for sure.

PINK!!

2011-08-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

Gosh darn it, if there was ONE reason I fought through my fears and hesitations about getting a girl dog (ie: see last post), it was so that I could finally dress her up in PINK without getting a lot of crap about it. Poor Kaiser had to suffer a bit with my pink obsession, as I got him a fuchsia agility leash. In my defense, it looks really good on him. :o)

I like pink. Pretty much everything I've gotten for Secret has been some various shade of pinkness. I guess I will rephrase my comment from the last post to make a concession that perhaps I will always have to have one female dog in the house on whom I can satisfy my obsession with this silly girly color.

Last night I stopped at Walgreens on my way home because after doing some research online I discovered that they sell spray-on hair color year round! I thought it was only a Halloween item, but I guess not. I went to find this particular product to test out on Kaiser. The results are below!

Finally! It's really purple, not some shade of pink! Not that there is anything wrong with his tail being pink, but it won't make sense if I show up to NADAC Champs with pink tails. lol

That said, right next to the can of "Panther Purple" spray was.... LYNX PINK. Come on, like I could really pass it up??? Not a chance!! So before I even did Kaiser's tail, I decided to test the pink out on Secret. Awwww yeah.

Our trial this weekend is "tie dye" themed. I plan to wear my PINK tie dye shirt from the shelter. Now I think I may just pink Secret up and perhaps even do my own tips. Tee hee!! No, I did not just turn 32 years old.....

Speaking of the trial, I think I'm going to bag out on any last minute training sessions tonight. I don't know, maybe I'll cave and set something up. After that Monday night fiasco, however, I'm inclined to just let her sit and get all excited about agility instead of burning her out. Plus I will admit that there is a part of me that is scared that we'd have another crappy session and then I'd be worried about her not wanting to play at the trial. I'd rather go in fresh & happy... She doesn't need to learn anything new or brush up on anything for the weekend anyhow. Unlike Kaiser, I don't expect her contacts to go "POOF" into thin air. lol