Frustration and anger

This isn't dog related so you may want to skip reading it. I just feel so angry at my son. I feel like he really isn't putting in the effort he should be at college. I cant make him want it, he has to want it for himself. I just don't know how to motivate him. Does he even know what we gave up to get him to this point? We use to live in Knoxville , Tn. I loved living there. It had everything I needed. I had friends. I loved my job. I worked in the recovery room of a children's hospital. I worked days 7am-1pm. On call once a week and then every 6th weekend. Do you know how great that is for a nurse? Plus it was a challenging job where I had to constantly use my brain. I would go to work and completely immerse myself for the next 6 hours. I had friends at work, that had the same interest as me. But my son wasn't learning at school. The one thing Knoxville didnt have was a school for kids with learning disabilities. And he wasnt learning in school. He had to fill out this paper in 3rd grade and it asked if you could have one wish what would it be? He said "to be smarter". Ugh, that killed me. He wasnt stupid he just didnt learn like everyone else. SO I felt like I needed to get him somewhere that they could help him. We started searching for schools for kids with learning disabilities. I found 3 that I liked and one happened to be here is South Carolina. Then my husband tired to get a job in one of those 3 cities. We landed here. My son needed a special school. He was in the third grade and couldnt spell "the". He couldnt remember what certain letters looked like, so they were taped to his desk. Most of all he wasnt learning. At the end of first grade he still couldnt read. I went to the dreaded "m" team meeting, now called IEP meetings. You would meet with the teachers, resource teacher, school psychologist and speech therapist ect... I hated those. Its where you go and they tell you all the bad things about your kid. He cant do this and he cant do that. When I talked to them about him not being able to read they said he couldnt learn phonics, he was going to have to learn sight word reading. ( the kid who couldnt remember what letters looked like). They also told me they didnt know what else to do for him. He was in resources and receiving special help in class and I had been paying a tutor since kindergarten. I constantly carried flash cards with me and we practice when we had down time. I finally took him to the psychiatrist that specialized in learning disabilities. He tested him and told me that Lou had Auditory dyslexia. He needed a special program to learn to read. He couldnt learn to read like most kids. A is a,a,a , apple. So I bought this program called auditory discrimination in depth. It taught phonics through tactile and visual stimulation. It broke all the constant sounds in to brother pairs. Like, "t" and "d". One is noisy and one is quiet. These two sounds were called tongue tappers. They had a picture with the mouth and the tongue touching the teeth. you would go thur this little conversation with your kid talking about and feeling the sound with your tongue and teeth. Then "P" and "B", they were lip poppers. They had a picture of a puff of air coming out of a mouth. You would have the kid say the sounds with his hand in front of his mouth to feel the air. One was noisy and one was quiet. There is a whole lot more to the program. Anyway we did this program everyday, twice a day, every where we went. Vacation, Christmas friends houses,ect. Everyday no matter what. And guess what, he learned to read. It was an amazing program but it was hard for me to first learn and then teach Lou. But it worked. He is an amazing reader, even today. He loves to read. But it didnt help him learn in school. So we moved to Columbia ,South Carolina. We spent thousands of dollars on elementary school. But he was learning. By the end of the first year and knew the letters and could write completely in cursive. No more letters attached to his desk. When it was time to go to 6th grade they felt he was ready to go back to regular school. So he did. Again, he needed lot of help. Me reteaching the material when he would come home. But school wise things were going well. In high school I was able to back off some. He did need help in chemistry. After work I would come home and listen to the tape of the class lecture. And then reteach the information to him myself. Ugh, that was horrible ( for me). I didnt want to listen to a class lecture after work. But I sucked it up and did it. Because it was necessary.The last year of high school he did it all himself. I didnt get involved at all. My kid has no idea of the sacrifices I did to try to help him be successful. I just wanted him to have an education. And he is blowing it! It so depressing. I just want to shake him, "Do you know what you doing? ". So thats my rant. Im sorry, I just needed to get that off my chest. Im so frustrated!

The weekend

Miley hasn't been feeling good. It started Wednesday with vomiting at 4:20am. But by 6am she seemed better. I fed her a little scrambled eggs and went to work. My husband works at home and he said she was fine all day. I took her for our agility lesson and she was fast and worked hard. The only thing was she didn't do all that silly circling. Thursday she seemed ok. I worked all day and then had a club meeting that night. I didn't notice anything weird about her. Then Friday morning she was ok but when I got home from work she just wasn't herself. Then she vomited all her breakfast and it was undigested. Saturday morning you could tell something was still wrong. She wouldn't come near me, she kept going outside and turning in tight slow circles. I never saw her vomit. So I just gave her some chicken broth mixed with water. She drank that ok. Saturday our club was having Agility Run Thurs but I didn't take Miley. I didn't leave until about 10:30 and she seem just fine by then. Running around the yard but I felt like if I gave her any treats she might start having problems again. So I went to the run thurs without a dog. We had a pretty good turn out considering is was cloudy and cold. I took lots of pictures of the dogs running the course. Some of them turned out pretty cool. Sorry I cant post them , but their not of my dog and I didn't ask any ones permission. It looked like people had fun , so that was good. It didn't start raining until I was on my way home. It wasn't suppose to rain but it did. We have had the worst weather. Rain, rain and more rain. My yard is a mud pit. Miley is much better today . She woke up and was begging to play. So I took the dogs to the park , its a swamp is some areas. Here is the beginning of the path.



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And then I was walking a long and all of a sudden. No more path. Major flooding.
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So no path to walk on. We had to just stomp thur the woods. It was difficult getting through all the brush. Miley didnt like that at all. I finally found the path again. I was getting worried that I should have turned back. So Im on this path and my heart is pounding, my legs burning and Im breathing heavy. I think to myself, I have to be on the inner loop of the Spider women path. Its the only place that my body starts to protest. But it felt like it went on forever. I finally merged onto the truck path and knew that lead out to the main path. Thank goodness. I didn't want to be lost today. I did get some pictures of the dogs but nothing great.
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O yea and the sun came out today for about 2 hours. I was so happy. That's when I put the dogs in the car and went to the park. After our walk, I stopped at one of the grassy picnic areas to work on Miley's mat. I put two mats out and sent her to each. We only worked it a few minutes. When I went over to the mat is was covered in ants. Ugh! I don't think Miley got bit, at least she didn't act like it. You think those ants would have drowned by now with all the rain we have had.

Warming up

I thought I would go through some things I learned at the DGS seminar on warming up your dog. First of all warming up your dog actually increases their performance. If you can mimic some of the activity you will be doing on course, this will help their brain too. Its gets their brain thinking and remembering. The first part of the warm up is the elimination phase. A 5-10 minute walk which also allows them to use the bathroom. After that , the next 5-15 min move to a slight jog so your dog is trotting or to a slight gallop. By this time your dogs heart rate should have increase and there is good blood flow to the muscles. Now its time to stretch your dog. You want at the very least to stretch the major muscle groups and the toes. When you are done with this ,start mimicking the activity your dog will be doing. If you are running an agility course, your dog will be doing tight turns, then practice figure eights through your legs or over the practice jump. Remember its not just for their muscles, its for their brain too. If its not your turn to run after you have finished all this, keep your dog moving.

Lesson with Meagan

These are the set up Meagan had me work with Miley. They are from Clean Run Archives Nov. 09 http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_id=522

I don't know what was wrong with me last night , I just couldn't run a sequence. I dont think I ran one right the whole lesson. But Miley just kept working and I kept giving her treats. On the first set up I was to the right of the dog and post turned 3 to 4. I just couldn't get it right and she kept going off course to number 9. Ugh! So then I ran it with RC. I was to the left of her and after number 3 RC. But I think I was so far behind her that I couldn't cue the turn from 6 to 7. Then preceded to go off course and got lost. So I finally gave up the beginning and just worked the end. Started with 5 then thur 14. That seem to work better with a RC from 6 to 7 and 8 to 9 and then bring her around with an opposite hand cue over 9 to 10 and into the tunnel. Im not sure any of this is making sense.

The next sequence I didn't do much better. Im not sure what was wrong with me. I didn't feel tired but maybe I was. I woke up at 4:20am to Miley vomiting. So it really was a long day and I guess my brain just couldn't think anymore. I don't remember much about running this course except that she did get #9 to 10 without taking #3.

We also worked on the mat. I am now ready to start naming the mat. I can also start to use 2 mats and send her between the mats. Make sure my shoulders are facing the mat when sending her. Then start adding a jump to the mat. Have two jumps with the mat in the middle. Send her over the jump to the mat, then to the next jump , around back to the mat.

We also worked on post turns. Miley and I are terrible at this. Its just not a strong cue for Miley and she disconnects from me. Meagan said Miley feels like she isn't getting any info so then she goes off course. I need to practice decelerating coming into the post, use an opposite are cue and then accelerate out of the turn. But say I'm doing a post turn with an 180 of jumps, I need to use a word "around" and no opposite arm cue.

Miley was very calm during her lesson. Do you think its the mat work. I guess will see.

Wordless Wednesday

Sorry, more mat work

I'm really just posting this for my records. Its boring so dont feel you have to comment. (Plus its raining again) I noticed tonight if I wiggled my arms , she would break her stay. So Im slowly trying to proof that.

I just listened to this video. Lol, I sound like a manic. I didnt listen to it at home because Miley gets to excited and tries to bite the camera or the computer.

More Mat work

I took Miley back up to the field today. I took Guiness too. I was feeling guilty about never taking him anywhere. But it was a disaster. Miley was a wild women. I'm not sure if it was Guiness or that there was another person their working her dog. Or was she crazy because I came straight home from work, loaded the dogs up and went straight to the field. I also couldn't just let her run like I usually do when I first get there. So she was wild. It wasn't our finest practice. She couldnt think. So inbetween agility practice we practice the mat work. I had talked with Meagan earlier in the day about Miley crawling on the mat. She told me work not just rewarding on the mat but releasing off the mat. She also told me work separately the next 3 things: 1. drive to the mat 2. staying on the mat and 3. lying down on the mat. So this was the session after I had rewarded her coming off the mat. I also didn't use the clicker for the first time today. She did much better with the crawling thing. The reason she keeps looking to the side is that a car is coming. She was thinking about chasing the car.