Agility Practice

Last night it was waaaaay to hot to go to Popper's agility class. We have a trial this weekend, so I really hated to do it, but it was still 91 degrees a half hour before his class, and it's in an unconditioned building. So I made up for it this morning in my backyard while it was still cool!

I searched all over for simple dog agility exercises, but everything I found was either extremely basic, or required a lot more equipment than I have. So I'm posting the "mini course" that I ran with Popper. There are many, many more fun combinations you can do, and we made up probably a dozen different "courses" with just these five obstacles. However, that course map would look quite confusing. So I've drawn it up with only two different paths, the purple is easier with front crosses, the green is harder and there are some rears in there too. :) Popper and I had a blast playing with this configuration. You can do the weave poles first to practice weave exits too. Our goal was to work on tight handling and weave pole entries.

I think my favorite part is the green, 3-4-5-6, because if you're not careful you'll get insanely dizzy. :)

Rally Class Today

Roofus has been going to Rally Obedience class, with a trial last month... which didn't go too well LOL. I only entered him in two runs, and the entire atmosphere was so different for him that I had almost zero attention from him in the ring. We NQ'd both runs because I pulled out the treats to get him back.

However, I've been trying to get away from using treats ALL the time. Today I finally managed to do an entire course in class, off-leash, and only treating according to APDT rules. I almost lost Roofus a couple of times, but I think only feeding him half his breakfast this morning made him a little more willing to pay attention to me. :D

Hopefully, at the next trial in October, we'll get one Q at the very least. :)

Blossom tries rally

Okay, it's been awhile... but I was planning a wedding, and then I got married, so there was the honeymoon, and then all the post-wedding wrap-up that goes on. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. :D

Last night, I tried my 14 year-old, deaf, dalmatian-border collie mix in a Rally-o workshop. The thing about Blossom is that she's not particularly eager to please. If her goals and your goals happen to overlap, then all is well. The problem with that, is it doesn't happen very often. Add into that some fairly severe leash aggression, and you've got yourself an interesting night.

The hardest part with Blossom was getting and keeping her attention. She has never done a formal class with me, although she knows all the obedience commands. I can't verbally connect with her because she is deaf, which limits trying to get her attention to shoving food right in front of her face (and she's not a foody dog - look how skinny she is!) or leash tugs. I don't like shoving food in her face because it startles her, you can see her recoil whenever something suddenly appears in front of her.

After a few rounds of Blossom trying to wander off wherever she wanted, it dawned on me that we brought the Gentle Leader. Blossom spent a lot of her time on the Gentle Leader the first few years I had her, and that seemed like a great way to get her attention, (and keep her from barking at the other dogs) so I slipped it on. Ohhhh, we did so much better! She couldn't lunge as far in front of me, so it was a LOT easier to get her attention. She did pretty well on the last exercise, which was a little "mini" course, putting together the signs we had practiced. She still refused to "down," but I was pretty happy with her last performance.

I mean heck, not bad for an ADD, 14 year-old deaf dog that's not interested in pleasing you in the slightest!

Weird dream...

Last night I had a really strange dream...

I was playing paintball with some friends, but instead of a regular paintball field, we were playing above a huge indoor swimming pool. I don't think they make pools as large as this one was, LOL. There were metal railings everywhere to walk on, so footing was treacherous. As I progressed along, tagging more people, I would find my dogs, swimming in the big pool. First there was Roofus, who was pretty happily treading water, and then I found Popper.

The next dog was Merlin - but he was underwater and not moving. I started screaming, jumped in the water, and began to pull him out. Even as I did so, I realized, it wasn't Merlin, but some other corgi, a female, that had a tail. After she was free of the water, she started sputtering and moving around again. I found her mom, who was nearby, crying, and so happy I'd saved her dog.

And that was my dream.

And I've been hugging Merlin and watching him very carefully, as if he'll somehow wander into some water. In November. Inside my house.

Corgis are NOT strong swimmers (legs are too short!) so be sure to carefully supervise your pooch any time they are in or around water.

And no, I have no idea what my dream means.

I Can't Find Scruffy

I haven't seen Scruffy since last Thursday. I haven't see her body in the road, so I can only assume she's terrorizing somebody else now. I'm pretty sad, I was intent on catching the little beastie. :(

Not a day goes by that I don't see a dog in my neighborhood, running loose. And 9 times out of 10, it's a dog wearing a collar but NO TAGS! What's the point? In this county, it is illegal to have a dog that's not wearing a dog license. Besides that, how am I supposed to return your dog to you? It's all well and good if you have your pet microchipped, but think about it - most pet owners don't have a scanner to detect them. I certainly don't. Put your phone number at the very least on a dog tag, so I can call you to let you know I've got your pooch safe and sound in my backyard.

Merlin's being amazing with our agility training. So far, he's doing *some* work in the backyard. He'll do weave poles, and he'll teeter, and he'll do a jump or two. It's a HUGE improvement from where we were a few weeks ago, when he refused to do anything but the teeter. We even made it through a very boomy fourth of July weekend. He's doing straight-up weave poles consistently, without any problems. I started adding a jump before the poles, since that's a problem I STILL have with Popper, and he's doing marvelously. Now, how he'll perform in class is another issue entirely....