Here are the beach pictures

Long Day

Yesterday was a long day. We got up at 4am and were on the road by 5am. We got to the trial at 7am. The site was very tiny. There was no real place to exercise your dog or really walk them. My husband was waiting with Miley to get measured and I went to the car. When I came back this lady was talking kinda mean to him. When they sent out the final conformation,it had the measuring on Saturday and Sunday wasnt until 12 noon. And if we had read it, we would have know that. It really wasnt a big deal but I went and got the final conformation that I had printed out. It said, "There will be check in and measuring each morning..." . So I didnt finish reading the sentence. If I had finished reading I would have read "and then again at noon on Saturday and Sunday". So she told us they werent measuring this morning and we didnt need to be there until 12noon. Hmmm. Thats not really the way the sentence read. (that they weren't measuring until noon) What ever. So since we had so much time to kill, we drove to the beach. I took lots of pictures. It looks so sunny and warm. It wasnt. It was 36 degrees out. ( Well, I upgraded my photobucket acct. to capture high resolution photos and now blogger wont accept them. Im tired of trying to figure out what is wrong. )

We got back to the trial at 11am. I had to work the Grand Prix group. I think the Grand Prix looked easier than the steeplechase. Isnt that always the way it looks.LoL
We did get measured before speedjumping/steeplechase.

They dogs I watched run were all pulling in between #6 and #7. I wanted to make sure that she didnt do that but I kept my arm out to long and made her completely miss #7. I was able to get her back but not before she took #7 the wrong way. Then came the #13 tunnel. I pulled her off the entrance. Ugh! Then it took another pass throught the tunnel to get her back. She had awesome weaves. She did self release herself on the a-frame . (that would come back to bite me). All and all I felt like I handled her much better than last weekend.

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Right after that we had starters jumpers. The judge changed the course a little becasue she didnt like it.


After #9 she went left when I went right. Im not sure why. Ive watched the video and still do see why. But since she didnt grab and obstcale we were still ok. We did manage a "Q". I think my husband was more excieted then me. Dont get me wrong, I was very happy but I should be able to handle a starters course.

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Oops, I said "here, here, here".

Last was gamblers. I had a good plan and I timed myself several times with a stop watch.


Well, she was faster than what I timed and I wasnt able to think fast on me feet and it went down hill from there.LoL I had planned to here the buzzer for the gamble the jump after the tire. You can see what happens after that
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All in all I think I handled here better than last week. So I hope to improve on that. Also she jumped the a-frame contact so will have to work on that.
we finished around 6pm and Miley was tried. Even when we got back home,she was still tired. Also by the end it was very cold. I had two pair of pants on and was still cold. ( there maybe lots of missed spelled words becuase I cant get blogger to spell check).

Training tip #5

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In this month's Clean Run there are several good articles. One I didn't read when I first received the magazine because I don't run NADAC and didnt think it applied to me. The name of the article is "10 Tips for Training for NADAC Success". It really didn't have anything to do with NADAC like I thought. Training tip "#5 Train the dog to believe in what you do". The author states, "Before you worry about what the dog is doing, worry about what you are doing. Well don't worry exactly; just train yourself to handle or give cues deliberately. I don't think a dog can even begin to develop a consistent response to your cues until he can recognize them; so your deliberate behavior has to come first." Seems like such an appropriate time for me to read this. LoL Toward the end of the article it states:"-it's not so important which handling system you follow but that the signals/cues you do use are done deliberately. This means you have taught yourself control and awareness of the cues you give, and you have trained the dog to expect to get pertinent information from you. When he is looking for information from you and it makes sense to him, he can "believe" and develop a refined response." I reviewed my video's from this past weekend in slow motion. And Morganne was right, except she was too kind. I didn't give any rear cross arm cue at all. How unfair to my dog, no wonder she didn't know where to go. She probably thought , "who is this crazy lady running me? Whats wrong with her, does she expect me to guess where we are going?" No rewards for me. LoL I'm not sure why I ran like that. I also watch video from the trial before that and I did the same thing in the jumpers run. Hmmm. Maybe its nerves. I dont feel all that nervous, just a tad. But when Im nervous I tend not to talk, so no verbal cues, and I guess I dont give rear arm cues either. I will definitely be very conscientious of that this weekend. I also just watched my dog go off course instead of reacting. Something else to work on.
So this weekend I entered on Saturday only, in USDAA. It was suppose to be a two ring show. My Gamble run would be the first class of the day. Which worked out well since I have to be there early to be measured. Im not sure what happened but they changed the location of the show and its now only one ring. I still have to be there early for measurement but all my runs are toward the end of the running order. Plus I have to run Speedjumping first. Ugh! I thought I would get a chance to get comfortable with a gamble run first. I guess not. Hopefully Miley wont be to over the top with the first run from such a long wait.

Wordless Wednesday

New goals

I never want to handle my dog again the way I did this weekend. My timing was horrible. We were off course, missing jumps and when she did take the correct jump she would drive out wide. All this shows me she didnt know where she was going. So my new goal is to try and learn so see my dog's commitment point so I know how soon I need to cue. How am I going to do this? Im not sure. I hope to work with Meagan this week and see if she can help me. I plan to slow down my videos and see when I should have given the cue. Then practice that section and put a marker on the ground so I have a visual on when to cue her.
Next, I signed up at the last minute for a USDAA trial this weekend. I only entered Saturday and just starter gamblers, jumpers and speedjumping. I wanted to do some easy courses to try and get my confidence back up. Im not sure the speedjumping will be easy but its suppose to be based on novice courses. So we'll see.
I helped teach the beginning agility class again. We now meet on Mondays instead of Thursdays. We had everyone demonstrate there dog getting on the plank. I think only one dog out of 12 could just jump on the plank without body motion cues. Most people were heeling their dog onto the plank. So we talked about not moving at all and letting thier dog figure it out and reward by putting the treat on the plank. We worked on start line stays and "walk, trot, run" stuff. Then came targets. I know a lot of people hate targets but its the only way I know how to train beginning agility stuff. I used targets to train my dog to go over the jump in beginning. It gave her drive and focus. So anyway, "T" and I have a different way of training targets. He feels the targets should be clear in the beginning. But I disagree. My dog has never been able to see a clear target in the grass and was pretty much useless for me. Im not sure what to do about this.
So I talked to the class about how I used targets and then tried a demonstration with a target. Now I haven't used a target with Miley in a very long time. Leave it to kids and dogs to make you look bad. LoL So I tried to demonstrate that if I didnt show her a cookie on the target, she shouldn't stop there looking for it. Boy did that back fire. LOl. I took off sorta running and Miley stopped at the target and she wouldn't move. Then went into a down. Lol I think I may have reinforced the down on the mat to much. She thinks everything is a mat target. Before class I was working her around a jump stanchion that was used for obedience jumps. It has a wide white base at the bottom. Miley kept downing on that too. LoL

A photo is worth a thousand words

This photo pretty much says it all for my cueing this weekend.


http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/Orderpage.aspx?pi=1FMG004X0M0056&po=56&pc=71

Lost Confidence

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This morning started out great. I didn't have to be at the trial until after 9am so I had time to take Miley for a walk. I got some great sunrise pictures. Well, at least I think they are great. Then I was able to play chuck-it with Miley in the backyard to burn off some energy. We showed up to the trail and was sunny and warm. I think it hit 70 degrees today. I was feeling pretty good and then I went to walk the excellent jumpers course.



OMG, I thought, I cant do this. This is just to hard for us. I think after yesterday, I just didn't have it in my to do another crappy run. I kept trying to get my mind in a better place but I just was overwhelmed by this course. All I saw was off course everywhere. It looks spread out but walking it , it was very tight. Ugh!
My plan was to lead out pass #2 and do a come to heel and then rear cross her over #3. ( everyone I saw just lead out just pass #1 and post turned) Then bring her around #5-6 with a post turn and back up and pull her in toward me so that I could rear cross #8 so she didn't go off course.( most people did a front cross here) Well, the lead out worked and the rear cross worked, even the post turn with a back up worked. Whoohoo and then she didnt read the rear cross before #8 and flew off course over that #17 jump. Crap. We did manage to get back on course. She pulled out of the poles at the tenth pole and missed jump #17. I dont have any video because the person I asked forgot to film it. That's ok, I really didnt need to see that again. On the 3 hour drive home I thought to myself , why didnt I just walk an easier course for her and I so we could be successful? No, human nature is to follow the rules. Lol She did have a rock solid start line on this run. She didnt move a muscle. Also , no circling so thats a step in the right direction.

Next was out open standard run. No confusion there, like yesterday.

We still didnt do the table. She ran great. The only problem was that chute to the weaves. Wow, she just blasted passed the weaves. I guess I should have said "weave" while she was in the chute. She just couldnt collect to get into the weaves. I didnt put her back in because I didnt want to stress her. I front crossed after the weaves and put her into the tunnel. We did manage to get all the correct tunnel entrances all weekend. And again, no circling when things went wrong.
This was a tough day for lots of people. This one couple, who run 5 dogs, didnt "Q
" at all today. She told me they haven't had a day like this in 2 years. WoW. I heard someone else talking when I was walking JWW. She said only one large dog "Q"ed in the excellent standard run.

Thanks to everyone for the kind and supportive comments. It really means a lot to me.
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Out of Sync

Miley and I just had our signals crossed today. Im not sure what the deal was. I gave her the "Rescue Remedy" that the animal communicator recommended. Do you think that had anything to do with it? Does anyone use that stuff. I started it 2 days before the trial. Anyway, our first run was excellent Fast. It was a tough distance challenge for me. I thought I could sling shot her out to the jump but she didn't take it. So I brought her over a few more jumps and tried it again and she did the first two jump and was suppose to turn over the last jump in the distance challenge but my cross was late and she went off course.



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Next was Open Standard. I new there was no "Q" for us because I wasnt going to do the table. I wasnt sure if the table being where is was might be a problem. But it wasnt. We did well until after the teeter the she misread the rear cross and went off course grabbing lost of obstacles several times. Maybe she thought we were doing fast again and she was trying to get the most points.


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Im not sure why she kept misreading those rear crosses, weird.

Last was exc Jww. What a tough course. I walked it multiple times and really felt like I had it down pat as what I was going to do. But right before my run I was drawing a blank but then got it back again .


Im not sure why she didnt take jump number 3 and then I just started winging it after that he got all messed up. We finally go back together and finished nicely.
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Hopefully tomorrow we will do better. Hey at least she got all the correct tunnel entrances. Do you think Ill ever get the hang of this? I sure hope so.

My mat is ok

Last night I took Miley to the beginning agility class that Im helping to teach. At the end of class there were multiple travel planks ( for 2o/2o practice) set up in an "L" format. I put the mat in the corner of the "L" set up. We ran going "touch" , "ok", then "touch" "ok" and continued running the different planks. Then I sent her to the mat. No problem, she got right on and into a down. WhooHoo, I didnt wreck her mat.
Last night we reviewed what shaping was. We had also sent the group an article on shaping so they could understand what it was. Then we did a demonstration of "T"'s dog getting all 4 feet into the box using shaping. Wow, what a great job "T" and his dog did. The dog first was getting clicked for just looking at the box. Then putting his head in the box, then one foot, then two and then 4. The dog progressed very quickly. Within several minutes the dog had it. It couldn't have gone better especially within such a distracting environment. I think everyone there was impressed.

Im going to Savannah this weekend for a trial. My parents live very close to the trail area, so that is great. And its suppose to be warm! Lets hope they are right. My goal is to keep my dog on course and if we go off course to make her think she was right and not let her get into circling mode.

One funny thing. Miley has been breaking her stay at home. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Right before I was going to say , "ok" she would break. This morning I figured it out. As soon as she sees my mouth start to move, even before the word comes out, she is breaking. So I started proofing that this morning. Smart little bugger.

Ugh!

This is what I did today after work. This was all filmed right in a row even though the daylight looks different.

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Hmmmm

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( I decided to post another snow picture. No snow here)


So, its freezing outside. Well at least to me it is. Its like 45 degreesoutside but the wind is whipping around making it miserable. I decided to work with Miley in the house. Im going through some Linda M stuff. I decided to try and see where Miley is in all this work. I felt pretty confident that she would do well. I wanted to practice the 4 turns on the flat. LoL, she couldn't do it. I was shocked. First when we started, I couldn't get her to just line up at my side without her going in a crouch and rocketing out past me. We were in the living room, where was she blasting to? Silly dog. I had to put us in a x-pen to get her not to blast pass me and run around the coffee table. Once in the x-pen she kept swinging wide with her back end to face me. Ugh! So I moved closer to the side of the x-pen so she had to stay in the heel position and couldn't swing her butt out. We worked this for a couple of minutes. Then I did go outside just to see what else she couldn't do. ( I know, way to be positive but you should know me by now) . But the 6 call to heel over the jump, she nailed them. No problems there. WhooHoo! So what do you think that says? I don't know, but Ill continue to work on the 4 turns on the flat. I also put her over the a-frame a few times. We had to go back and fix that too. She self release when I threw the toy. But after a few times over, she was back on track.

Today's lesson

I took a lesson with Meagan today. These exercises are from this months Clean Run called "Skill of the Month" by Karen Holik.
I ran the dark circles. It was beautiful. Even Meagan said it was beautiful, except for the fact that I did a serpentine through #3-5 instead of the treadle which is how it was written. LoL Oops. Then I tried it as a treadle. I couldn't do it. So I need to remember to use my outside arm to pull her through and run backwards. It was difficult and I have some practice to do.

This is the same set up just different numbering. I think Meagan made this one out of her head because I couldnt find it. Once again I ran it beautiful except I left out #4 and #5 . Oops again. Once I added all the numbers in I had problems getting Miley's head coming out of the tunnel ( sorry the #5 is suppose to be on the other tunnel entrance). I needed to step back and get her head coming out of the tunnel. We also worked on not setting her up straight in front of the tunnel. Say there was another jump straight pass #2( above course). Setting your dog up this way, you will be able to make it pass #2 faster to cue your dog.

When I first walked this course (below) I was planning on post turning #4-5 and then rear crosses #6, then use an opposite arm cue to bring her in after #8 to get #9. But then I started thinking she might take an off course into the tunnel after #4, so I need a stronger turning cue. So I decided to front cross #4-5 and then, the opposite arm cue for #8 didn't seem right. So I decided to front cross #8-9. When we ran everything worked beautiful. She almost took the off course tunnel after #4, but I called her and she looked and came over jump #5. WhooHoo!!! The rest she ran great. Then Meagan wanted me to run it with rears. So I reared #4-5 and she read it nicely. I rear crossed in front of #6, this pushed her out when coming over #8 to the off course #11. So Meagan said I needed to rear cross after #6 (like below), then push her path a little wide after coming over #7. After that you will pull her in. This wideness will bring her back at a diagonal over #8 and it will be a straight path to #9, and #10. And of course it worked like a charm.

More snow pictures

LoL, the snow is already gone. It was fun while it lasted. We went to the park to hike. The water is back down so we were able to stay mostly on the paths except where there was to much mud.

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I really liked this picture. To bad Guiness wasnt looking.

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Snow Pictures

We got 5 inches of snow. We havent had snow in 6 years. So be prepared for lots of pictures because it might be another 6 years before we see it again.
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At first Roxy wouldnt come off the deck. She just stood there shaking.


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Then she realized I had treats. Flying Chihuahua!


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This is what Miley thinks of all my picture taking. My husband said that's her way of giving me the finger. LoL

Before the snow

School closed one hour early today because snow was coming. I was able to get home and get some practice in.

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Then the snow started. Its was getting dark, so I didnt get any great pictures. Im hoping for some great pictures tomorrow.

A teacher, I am not

Hey look, here is another video of our mat work. I only got a very short video, lucky you, because my camera didnt have my card in it. LoL

You know whats weird. I keep having this same bad dream. Its about me not getting the judges for our agility trial. Everyone shows up , and I dont have any judges. You can guess what happens after that. Im not sure why I keep dreaming that. We have judges for the trial. And I dont even handle that aspect of the trial. Im just the chairperson over the trial. I guess its just worry in general.

Today I helped teach a class that is suppose to help get people ready for beginning agility. Tonight we worked on the plank (for the 2o/2o), nose touches, flat work of front crosses and ball work. I was trying to explain shaping of getting all 4 feet on the plank. Im not sure if I was doing a good job because they just kept looking at me. They didnt know what shaping was, so I tried to explain it. Maybe I can find a good article on shaping. Im also planning on giving them an article on teaching a 2o/2o with the plank. I tried to tell them this is suppose to be happy, fun. I told them that they want their dog to be so excited when they bring out the plank. That the dog is thinking, "OMG, she's got the plank" and they jump right on with all four feet, "I did it, where's my treat". I didnt want them to use their body language to get their dog on the plank or off the plank. I sure hope I explained things right.

Practice

( This is my self design of "World by the tail" sequence just so you get this gist of what Im saying. These are the same set-up as I posted last week from the clean run files)



I ran this set up in my yard. It took me a few times to get #6-8. I never could get the back side of the jump #11. I will have to teach that because nothing I did made her take that side of the jump. LoL
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Then I worked some weave pole entrances. I was still having trouble with that one set up from a couple of weeks ago of the 180 into to weave poles. She didnt have any trouble in my yard but thats probably because of the small space and she really cant open up. I tried pushing for speed but that made her drop the bar on the 180. If I have the energy I take her to the baseball field and try to set up there.

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Ive been reading "The Other End of The Leash". Its very interesting. I had to laugh when she talks about, you will never be more exciting that a squirrel. LoL How many times have we read that we have to be the most exciting thing to our dog. But she does talk about how to call your dog off when that's happening. Another interesting thing is words we use to speed animals up or slow them down. She did studies with words and animals. She found that short fast words or sounds ( clicks, hand clapping) speed animals up. Long slow, low sounds or words slow the animal down. Which in horses they use "Whoa" to slow a horse. So when Im trying to get Miley's head coming out of a tunnel and Im saying "Mi, Mi, Mi", Im really cueing her to speed up. Which is probably why Meagan tells me to say,"Miley", just a tad slow and and little low sounding. LoL, Now I get it Meagan.

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.