OK it’s official. 

Here is a picture of my new puppy. Her litter name was Ethel but I’m going to change that.

Right now I have 2 possibilities.

1. Forever Young Call name: Fiona
2. Hot Legs Call name: Roxie

The theme for a name is Rod Stewart songs. Since half the springer population is named Maggie, that name is out. I’d like to find something creative for agility but look at that face. And the long ears. Isn’t she the cutest ?

I know, all puppies are cute, but really, I think she is the cutest. (at least after HAKU).  Sorry CS,  Princess Z isn’t really a puppy any more.

We will be going to our first puppy class on Wednesday night and I am going to need to call her something other than puppy.
 
                                                

What's your Verdict?

Haku doesn't seem to be having any issues since his dental work. He can pick up some balls, but smooth ones, like Orbee balls are a no go. He can gum everything to death, pretty much. He seems to be feeling great and he's action packed.

So a few training things with the Bert, I was looking at the Sue Ailsby training levels as a good test to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything important with the puppy (thanks bordergirlsmom !). So first, Haku doesn't really have a recall. I mean, not a real recall - you know, the kind where you call them and you're pretty such they'll come.  Kind of important, so I've been trying to get some remedial recall work done.

One thing I've never done with him was recalls between two people. Heidi kindly agreed to help me with this last night after class. Right off the bat, he liked her treats better than mine ... so he was like, "I acknowledge your recall, but I think I'll stay here where the treats are more to my liking." Heh. So then I brought out a toy which he found more interesting and he went back and forth a few times between us ... then decided he had this game down and would randomly run back and forth, waiting for good stuff. Why wait for a recall? Just arrive and see who's got something good. Yeah, I didn't really teach my puppy a recall. We'll keep working on that.

The other behaviors from the levels that I've never trained are targeting and a stand. Not really behaviors I ever use, but it's fun to have a reason to train random tricks I'll never really use! I don't ever use much targeting, if I want my dogs to go target something, it's easy enough to teach them to target THE OBJECT rather than messing about with intermediate targets. This might be different if I had a lot of need to train different behaviors than I do - but for my dogs, in our every day life, I have never used a target. I have trained targets with just about every dog at some point as a trick type thing, but I don't use them. So Haku got to learn to target a plate and a stick with his nose. We also tried some with hand targeting, but it was funny to see while he immediately started interacting with the other targets, he just did not get the hand target. Mostly because he thought I was cueing him for something else, I think. So I didn't spend much time with it. I did not have the same issues that I did with London, Haku did not just spend the entire time trying to play with, tug or fetch the targets - Haku got the point. Mission accomplished.

Then there was the stand, which does actually have a useful application for measurements in agility. I don't think Haku necessarily understands the position at this point, but he quickly grasped the concept of 'whatever position you're in when I tell you to 'wait', stay like that until released'. We've proofed it a little, then took it on the road today and he seems to grasp the concept.

Speaking of which, took both London and Haku out for a walk today, it was so easy it was ridiculous. No problems at all with leash manners and Haku seemed more confident having London along. London is a rock, that's for sure, nothing startles that dog. Giant pink elephants could go flying by and he wouldn't even bat an eye. Had a lovely time, the border collies together just crack me up. Border collies aren't like real dogs, that's for sure. Out with London, Haku's recall was 100%, even trying to make it 'hard'. Haku's recall was better than 'Two Time London', that's for sure.


"I hear you call me, but I want you to think about this. Wouldn't you much rather come out and play with me instead?"

Haku is almost 5 months old - he needs to go meet some sheep and see what he thinks of them! So far, London is good for stalking anyway.
 

Okay, yeah - technically we're trespassing. If only the border collies knew, they'd be appalled - border collies like rules


More troublemaking border collies in the cemetery (if only they knew ...)


Who doesn't enjoy a big white head? I mean, on a dog.


The Toothless Wonder

 
London is a LOT faster than Haku - but Haku is at least brave enough to try to keep up these days!


London is good at smiling for the camera ... Haku always looks like one of those serious anime characters

Someone thought a compass, whistle combo would be a cool xmas gift....they were right!

There is mud everywhere. EVERYWHERE. And of course the place I decided to take the dogs today ended up being an endless sea of mud. Panic always stays surprisingly clean, although he did get in on the mud action a little.


Toby prides himself on getting as dirty as possible no matter where we are.



Thank you, Toby.



He's like, yeah I'm awesome.



(Of course I wasn't driving and taking pictures at the same time! Uhhum...)

I always find it funny how there is such a large percentage of the population that has complaining as a recreational hobby. So many people really do love it, and the internet is such a FABULOUS forum to get people to LISTEN to them, which I think is where it all comes from. Complaining gives them attention, ironically more attention than saying something nice. Complain and the whole world complains with you.

Lots of complaints about the invitational this year. Don't get me wrong, I think I would be really crabby too had I been invited to showcase a breed for AKC and ended up in such crappy conditions. The invitational is a weird event, and certainly it's a promotional item for the AKC, more than nationals and the like. One would think that it would be a very 'professional' event. So expectations weren't met, the rain was unexpected for that area of the country and the situation was miserable.

So who do you hear complaining about it? Yes, the occasional person that was actually there - but mostly just people that weren't even there. They just want to complain because ... they want to feel self righteous? The question being, what did they hope to CHANGE by endlessly bitching on and on about how 'dogs got wet!' The AKC already apologized and assured that the event will be indoors for the next 6 years. That doesn't stop people from going on and on. And on.

Of course, naturally I think of it as karma. After Fenwick got invited to the invitational (I still find this funny) and people threw a gigantic snit and took their toys away, I've had a much more negative view on the things people will do to go to this event. Haven't run Fenwick since last ... June? I really miss running my boy, still very sad. Still, big congratulations to all the Northwest crew from representing so well, we have the best dogs and people up in this corner of the world. I don't think THEY complained too much about the rain. I mean, we've got practice being wet up here.

Also been reading complaint about complaint about the new UKI agility organization (UKI or UKA?). I'm excited to see if it catches on as I think it has something to offer. It's sort of like USDAA, but with the annoying bits taken out and the courses are, theoretically, more international in flavor. As we really don't have an organization that offers challenges like they have overseas, it's exciting to think we might have a new venue that offers them! So, without having even run it, so much of the response to the concept of the new venue has been, wait for it, COMPLAINING. The one that really makes me giggle is, "I don't want to run my dog on international courses!" Okay, that's fine ... so no one else should be allowed to? Somehow there is this overwhelming urge that if YOU aren't interested in doing something therefore no one ELSE should be interested either. Then there are the people that didn't even LOOK at the new organization webpage, "No one needs another agility organization, this is just stupid."

Can I see this new venue replacing USDAA? Yes, it's possible, especially in our area. It would be a lot easier to put on UKI trials, and there are so few USDAA up here already. Still has the games, multiple classes and competitive atmosphere that I think people look for with USDAA, but the jump heights are MUCH nicer for the little dogs (a HUGE resource that USDAA has never tapped into), and they take care of just about everything with putting on a trial for you it seems like. Now, is UKI my agility dream? Naw. It's got the same drawbacks as USDAA, I dislike the games and long days. But if the courses were more fun, that would make it a hell of a lot more interesting to go to trials. AKC is nice because, at least sometimes, I LIKE just running twice a day. I don't need to run ten thousand times. I like not spending 12 hours at a dark, cold or hot, wet or dusty trial site. Call me crazy. I don't like getting up at 4am to get to the trial for 6:30 check-ins. I don't like then staying until 6-8pm at night. I LIKE agility, I don't want to convert to its religion or anything.

Does anyone see the irony of me complaining about people complaining? So what do I hope to achieve by MY complaining? Maybe that someone, somewhere that was going to write something negative for no other reason than to say, "me too!" decided maybe to go eat a Christmas cookie instead. Maybe the world is a slightly more pleasant place as a tiny bit of useless negativity is not released into the world. And then is negated by my post.

I'm on vacation by the way. Kick ass.

The last two days were both really long! Stamp, Fleet and I worked on the tv show, The Good Wife on Tuesday, and didn't wrap until midnight. I slept a fair amount in my parked car waiting to shoot, but it was still a bit tiring. Yesterday I was up early and headed for K9, so today is the first opportunity I've had to sit down at the computer, update the blog, and think.

Tuesday before heading out to shoot (it was a fairly late call time) I did some dog walk work with the dogs in the apartment. I brought in the travel plank I had in the car because I thought a shorter board would enable Toggle to get more speed going before and after the board in the relatively small confines of the apartment. I was having a delay problem with the Manners Minder remote, it doesn't go off the instant I hit it anymore, it goes off a fraction of a second later, so I ended up using a clicker to mark the exact moment I was reinforcing and the MM to reinforce. Toggle did pretty well on the travel plank, she only had one real leap.



I did some travel plank work with Fleet and Boing! too -





I also decided to try Toggle on a 20 second down stay with Boing! doing a down stay next to her. It took four tries, Toggle's never been asked to stay that long before, but we finally got it. Then I realized that I the video camera was not on record, it was on standby, so I made them do it one more time so that I could video. I think they look cute together.



Yesterday at K9 I worked on weave entries and contacts with Boing! Here weave entries were good, she's getting the hang of them. I only did two AF contacts. Dawn had pointed out that if Boing! was going to hit high, it was almost always the first or second AF, so I figured, why bother doing the others ?

Here's the weave footage -



Here's the AF footage. Interestingly, watching it live, both Dawn and I thought the first one was good, and in a way it was good, but apparently Boing! and only put one front foot all the way down in the yellow. It's not that she hit above the yellow with the other three feet, it's that she didn't hit with them at all. I think this is actually a good thing because it seems to mean that she was really thinking about having to touch the yellow, and stuck her foot out to touch it. The second AF was more traditional, and all four feet were well in the yellow.



Instead of doing full dog walks, I set one dog walk ramp on the 8" table and worked on that with all three dogs. Boing! did pretty well -



This is higher than I've ever had it for Toggle, but I thought I'd try and see what she gave me. I figured if we got less than 70% I'd lower it. I only did 11 reps (I thought I'd done 10, but mis-counted) and she had an 82% success rate. Interestingly, the two bad ones were not jumps, she just went off the side and continued striding on the ground as though she were on the board. I don't know if that was coordination and she didn't want to fall off so she ran off, or whether it was just sloppy. In any event, I didn't reward those. Now that she's pretty consistently running rather than jumping, I think I should tighten the criteria, only reward for lower hits, but I'm not sure whether or not I want to do this as long as she is striding nicely and going through the yellow with at least two feet, usually more.



Other than that I didn't do much work with Toggle, I was tired from the night before. I did do a little table work and a little teeter work -



Nothing new and exciting there, but she's definitely coming along.

Interesting thing, I noticed that the previous Toggle teeter video I posted was getting a lot of hits, many more than other videos posted the same day. Someone had also posted a question to me -

>>Do you worry you'll have a problem teaching her to climb on only at the end later? Since you've taught her to jump on via the side?<<

to which I replied -

>>I haven't had this be a problem with other dogs taught this way, but of course anything can happen, and there's a firs time for everything! However, since today she started offering to run across the entire board by herself, before I even started teaching her that, I don't think she'll have a problem. I guess i'll have to wait and see ;-) <<

I didn't hear anything else from this person, but I figured that somehow she was the reason that the video was getting a lot of hits. Yesterday I heard through the grapevine that the video became a topic of conversation on some clicker training list, and people were discussing the pros and cons of teaching the teeter this way (I gather they were mostly discussing the cons, but since I didn't read it, I don't know for sure). I post the videos publicly so I'm fine with people posting them elsewhere, questioning them, etc. but what I found interesting was that apparently no one on the list thought to inquire about how my adult trained dogs look on the teeter to get an idea of whether or not I might know what I was doing. This always baffles me, when people don't bother looking into what kind of success or lack thereof someone has before dissecting whether what someone is doing will work. There are a few things in agility that my dogs uniformly do well, and one of those things is the teeter. I've had some fly-offs called, but mostly my dogs have really fast teeters, and I like speed, I'm willing to take the occasional fly-off, but I would go crazy with a dog who ran to the tipping point and waited. That's just me, some people are more comfortable with a more deliberate performance.

Here are a couple of shots of Toggle practicing dentistry skills on Fleet

Tully at the Invitational, picture here

What a very odd day. Started off going to court to sit a harassment case. Listened to opening arguments (I swear both lawyers could be 18!), then the first witness the harassee. She didn't even finish when the judge stops the trial, calls the lawyers forward, dismisses us, brings us back in and says they settled. So, expecting to be there all day ended up only being there about an hour. Back to school, booted the sub (nicely) and got back to work. Pretty average day, had to give an ultimatum to a sped kid, had fun with Chemistry kids involving stamp pens, graded papers, people shocked I was there, happy to see me, though. Got all caught up on grading, all prep for tomorrow, head out the door to let dogs run in field a bit, gather their food and go to class. Somehow Zorro managed to grab something downright rotten/nasty on the field and swallow it. Less than an hour later, after feeding them all, he gets violently ill in the car, shits, vomit the entire thing. Right before we got to Lee's Camp. He was having some serious stomach cramps, very pathetic to listen to him cry and stand there with his head down. I left his shit on bed by the side of the road, it was so gross. In fact, I committed the sin of littering a couple times, as I got to the top of Rt. 6, and had to clean vomit out of his crate, I left the napkins at Roger's Camp. At that point, it's 6:15 pm, and the class starts at 6:45 pm. Fuck it, I do the right thing and take them all home. He's corralled in the expen with wee wee pads, a towel and a pepto on board. Unlike last time, he wants to eat and drink, and he's back to his happy self, so I think he'll be fine. I just don't know what to do with this dog sometimes. He's going to kill himself. It's too bad that dogs don't really get cause and effect, in terms of "if I eat this bad thing, I will get sick", it would certainly make my life a whole lot easier.

I really did have fun, despite the rather horrific conditions. Other people are far more pissed off about the conditions than I am. I do think they should have realized the potential for trouble, the rain was forecast before the event, but I don't think that failing to do so was deliberate scorning of agility, I think they just weren't thinking. I am a little irritated about the email that went out today, titled "Massage from Michael Canalizo, Director of AKC Event Management". Which made me think we might get a massage, but it turned out to be just a message. I was very disappointed. I do think that it would be appropriate for something to be done to make up to us in some small way for what we went through. It really wasn't right. Putting the event outside in a tent also meant that Animal Planet wouldn't tape it, so this year's event will not be televised. We were definitely downgraded this year.

Some people really liked the sod, I guess. I'm not one of them. It did run better than I expected, but I still saw some large fast dogs face-planting on it, and some handlers going down. I slipped on it the one time myself, costing me a clean run. I do like the mats, which I know some people aren't fond of, but I find the level surface to make my job easier, and my dogs run on them just fine.

Still, I can't be other than happy, because we finally had an Invitational in which I didn't choke. We could have done a bit better, true, but it wasn't because I was choking, it was because Tully was more enthusiastic about running than I've ever seen her. I don't really know what is going on with her. At 8 years old, she has suddenly gone from liking agility okay, to really loving the sport. I don't know what has caused this, I don't know if it will continue, but I guess I'm just going to go with it while it lasts. She is certainly fun to run when she's like this! Hope we don't lose it during our puppy-baking layoff.

Tully also got to provide some nice Staffifying to a lovely British couple on Saturday evening, they appeared to work for British Airways. They saw Tully while waiting for the elevator at the Westin, called her right over for pets, and told me about their Staff at home... the woman showed me a picture of him on her phone. They told me they thought the American Staffs were bigger, I said that they were, but Tully isn't American.

The other international lovefest was me with the international judge for the Invitational, though that lovefest was from afar. He was, to my taste, a very good looking man! I thought he looked attractive in the photo on the AKC website, but seeing him in person, I didn't think the photo did him justice. I was concerned this would be a distraction for me when running (he judged 16" dogs twice), but managed to keep my mind on the job. Theresa Calter had a great idea for me, she suggested that since I'd qualified with him judging, I should take Tully & the ribbon and ask if we could get a picture together. Then I could post it on Facebook, and say "this is my new international boyfriend!"

It was a great idea, but since he's about a foot & a half taller than me, and weighs about the same (well, he might weigh less), I thought the photo would be pretty ridiculous. Plus I just didn't want to wander around the soggy tent with my dog, ribbon, & camera, until I found the man unoccupied. So, I didn't do it. I didn't even try talking to him when I saw him walking through the Westin lobby, since I fear I would have just gibbered. Good thing he's in Europe, if he was a US judge I might be tempted to travel a bit too much for some trials.

I was glad to be done, anyway, when we finally got there, though Sunday was much warmer and drier, I felt I'd had enough Invitational for this year. Ready for the Tesslet adventure, and whatever comes next. I admit that I really would like to take Tully to the Invitational just one more time, since I believe she might finally be able to run up to her potential. But we shall see.

I learned French in elementary school, and continued through high school and a semester into college. My earliest recollections about learning the language was learning the alphabet, learning to count, and learning the words for common objects and actions. I remember conjugating innumerable regular and irregular verbs and memorizing the gender of a gazillion nouns. 15 years after my last French class I went to France for the first time and spent 2 weeks in Paris. I did all right, though 15 years is a lot of time to forget things.

In preparation for our trip to Austria this fall, I got a set of "Learn German" CD's from Amazon and set about learning "useful phrases in German." When we got to Austria I realized what a waste this had been. If I learned anything, it was fairly useless because I would parrot the CD and the german speaker would respond. Unfortunately they would not necessarily (ever) respond in exactly the way the CD had the conversation go. So, then, I was back to smiling my best idiot tourist smile and asking if they, please, spoke English. Which they all did, but that's not really the moral of the story.

I have been a GD handler since I learned there was such a thing as a handling system. I've spent countless hours and dollars learning "the rules" and I actually know them quite well. This summer I had a run with Athena that rocked my world. I was quite content (this after going to the LM camp in May) and self satisified that Greg's system was all I would ever need. On this run, though, the GD system, which I believe I executed correctly, did not give Athena the information she needed. The way the course ran, I had to run forward with her at a panel jump. I had no tools to understand how to give her more information than moving to my next positional cue. As a result she went wide at the panel and had to execute a lead change in the air over the triple that she really was not expecting. Athena was a naturally gifted jumper. The dog did not take bars. I think it bothered her to touch them actually. In the photos you can see just how bad the crash was. She is swimming through the triple.

That one incident made me realize something was missing. The conversation I was having with Athena required that I speak to her in correctly inflected sentences. There was an obstruction that did not allow me to speak to her out of the phrase book and lacking an understanding of the language, I was at a loss.

To be fair, at that moment in time I don't even think I saw the trouble coming on course. I was so deeply invested in applying phrases out of the book (rules) that I failed to see what I was actually saying to her. Not much of a conversation if I'm spending more time thinking about the phrase book than what I'm communicating.

Since then I feel like I've been on a new path. I sometimes recognize phrases out of that phrasebook as I start over and learn the language from the alphabet up, but once you really get a feel for a new language you realize people quite rarely actually say "Hello, my name is ______."

Special thanks to D.P. for being my new language tutor!

Edit: I should give credit to the Awesome Paws forum for the idea of language as a metaphor for handling. Not sure who started talking about words instead of sentances but it is not my original idea.

Puppy has been rearing to go since he got back from the vet yesterday. He wants to chew on EVERYTHING, and he doesn't understand why I won't tug with him. He's playing mouthy with Poco, he's just one hardcore little puppy. The amusing part is that he can't even pick up a ball anymore. I'm assuming it's because he has no TEETH rather than any soreness issues. He tries and tries, it just falls right out. So, yeah, I laugh. Good thing Haku has a sense of humor.


Grr - fierce puppy! Have I ever mentioned how insanely long Haku's whiskers are?


Haku says bring on the ACTION


Okay, I don't know if I'll get it on film, but Haku's left ear has started doing the 'Curl' when he puts his ears back as well (the ears curl in towards the middle of his head rather than fold back). So when he puts his ears back these days he looks like he has little 'devil horns'. He's really not evil though.

Started Meri on LM jumping last night. I love how dogs try to problem solve! Meri isn't sure she can make it over the 8 inch jump yet, so sometimes she thinks it easier to go around.

Of course, the problem is that I am laughing about this, so she might think of it as a reward.

Love my little girl!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLQm-EzyN-o

This is a old video, but I'm never on youtube anymore and I just didn't got around to uploading it. :) I just realized that I could enter Quiz in 12" preferred lol. That would be quite fun and amusing for me. ;) You can't run Quiz and stay serious; she's such a little nut.

I think that she was 13 months in this video. She really isn't running her a-frame "correctly". Hey, Quizzy does things her way. She likes to surprise me. ;) At least she's never been called on her a-frame.

We'll end up doing 10 USDAA trials this year.
1 less than a mile
3 about 50 miles one way
2 50-100 miles one way
4 over 200 miles one way

I think we did two two day CPE trials and a couple where we only went on Saturday.

We need more USDAA closer to home:)

Wow, what a stressful day. We won't even talk about the hour and a half drive it took me to get in to Portland to pick up Haku. OMG people, it's just RAIN - you know, the same thing we had a few months ago. Really though, it's still so worth it to go up to North Portland, I really trust them with my dogs - especially my baby puppy.

I find anatomy fascinating, I love looking at x-rays and skeletons as well as doing things like stripping the meat off turkeys and seeing how all the muscles connect and work with the bones. Just a little known fact about Heather, I LOVE bones and the inner workings of things. A little creepy ... maybe. Still interesting though.

I got to see Haku's adult canines where they're waiting to come out on the x-rays - they're HUGE! So while obviously abscessing baby teeth is bad, it IS good in the long run, as it's obvious that his bottom canines are narrow and and I wouldn't have know otherwise. The good news being that we should hopefully be able to fix them as they're growing in so he won't have any bite issues. It's also possible they'll fix themselves, but now I know there is a possible issue that we might have to take care of.

So they're about ready to come in, and when they do he can go back and get 'fitted' for the right size ball for his bite, which I find really funny. Poor guy has like no teeth at the moment, I guess it looks like he lost like TONS of teeth in the last 48 hours, he's barely got anything left! The new teeth are ready to come in though, I got to see them on the x-rays. They've very cute. ;-) Good news, his top canines look GREAT, so hey.

Haku is happy to be home, super cuddly ... and wants to chew on everything. What's up with that? No picture of him today, he just looks too pitiful. He's also acting pretty paranoid that if I leave his sight someone is going to come pull all his teeth out. Poor thing.

Haku yesterday: