Miley's in Clean Run Magazine

Miley is on page four of Clean Run Magazine the Feb. 2008 issue. She won 3rd place for J and J dog supplies photo contest. Yea!!!!

Now on another note: She is a wild women on the agility field. I was training today. I use food to help teacher a specific behavior. But I noticed today that she was running kinda slow. So later I was changing the course for the next practice and she wanted to run. So I put her through the tunnel and some jumps. She was very excited and ran very fast. So my thought is that food slows her down. But when she is excited she jumps up in the air alot and sometimes grabs my clothes. But before I even know she did anything, Ill have a hold in my sleeve. She has put holes in one jacket, a couple of shirts and now a sweatshirt. It makes me so mad. I usually don't even notice it. Then it is to late to correct it. Ive been trying to use a negative sound when she jumps up beside me and that helps. But most of the time she is just to fast. I did leave the field today when she got my sweatshirt. I don't want her to be slow by using food but I also want her to control herself. We didn't have a very good practice today. I just wasn't giving the info fast enough or the right way. I'm not sure what was wrong with me. Miley was barking on and off for an hour last night. Not the , I have to go out bark, more like I hear something. But the other dogs weren't barking. So at 2am I got up and took her out. She did use the bathroom. I didn't have her go in her crate when we came back in, so the rest of the night was quiet but it took me another hour to fall asleep.

I ran Guiness too. He is very happy to run agility. I also talked to the Rehab vet and she talked to anther ortho vet. He said he would recommend cutting the tendon completely. So that seems drastic. Im not sure what to do.

Guiness Retired

Just back from the ortho vet. Guiness has a long digital tendon that runs down the knee and lower leg that is unstable. He is not sure if he once tore it and scar tissue has formed or if it is just unstable. But there is not much he can do about it. He could go in and look for 1200.00$ but then trying to fix it would not be easy and probably wouldn't help his agility career. So I guess he will just be a dog. This makes me very sad, but I guess that is just life.

Tonight my daughter and I are going to take a Rally class together. She will work Mickey and I will work Guiness. ( He is only lame at a run.)

Practice today

We went out to the practice Field for our club today. I didn't know they were having a practice session for a class. So I decided to wait until they were done because it takes over 30 minutes to get there. But the instructors were nice and said I could come in a practice too. I was happy about that because I wanted to see how Miley would do around other dogs. She did great. They all had their dogs on leash. But I took Miley off leash. She had no problems focusing and doing what was asked of her. She didn't try to go visit the other dogs. There were cars going by and she ignored them too. Something I need to work on is calling my commands sooner. Guiness was very forgiving of this but not Miley. The other thing I need to remember is to push for speed. I tend to think to much about what I am doing and forget about pushing for speed. So I wrote myself a note. Tomorrow is Guiness's appt. with the vet. I hope that the ortho vets thinks the pop in his leg is something.

nothing new

Roxy going after the beagle next door

The beagle next door
The beagle hate Guiness

Again the weather is cold. Yesterday I worked with Miely. She hates the clicker. I guess the noise bothers her. She usually doesnt care about nosie but something about the clicker makes her back off. Im not sure I will continue using it. She also doesnt understand going over the jumps. I will set up several jumps in a row. The bars are still on the ground. And she will just run by them. But if I target, she runs over the jumps. I guess she still doesnt understand her job. So another thing to add to the list. The list is getting long.

cold and raining

It feels like weeks since we have had good weather. Its either raining or freezing cold. Its hard to make yourself go out and train in this kinda weather. I don't know how the people up North take it.
I usually walk the 2 shelties first and the chihuahuas second. But today the shelties wouldn't come to the door for their collars and leashes. But the chihuahuas did. So I took the chihuahuas first. Boy were the shelties shocked. They were ready and waiting when I got back.
I ran Miley over the dogwalk this afternoon. Its only 16 inches off the ground. I'm doing a running contact. First because I think is demotivated Guiness to stop all the time when running courses. Also I couldn't maintain them when I went to trails. So I decided to teach Miley a running contact. She has been doing well until today. Both runs she jumped the contact. I had the targets out there but without food. So I waited a while and ran them again, this time with food on the target and she was perfect. So I decided to add a clicker when she hits the bottom of the contact. I haven't used a clicker yet, so today we started learning what a clicker is. She was a little hesitant at first with the noise the clicker made, but quickly go over it.

The Begining

This is my first blog. I have been reading other peoples blogs about their dogs and some that talk about dog agility. So I decided to try a blog myself.
Guiness was in rehab last week. I picked him up on Friday. He has been doing the underwater treadmill, heated US, laser therapy, ROM and acupuncture. On Saturday when I was extending his left rear leg I felt a pop in my hand. It happened every time I extended his leg. We have been doing extension exercises on him but this time the vet wanted me to do it while he was on his back and resting between my legs. I felt the pop on Sunday and Monday too. So I made an appt. with the ortho vet for next Monday. I'm hoping it is something that will help figure out what is wrong with him. It has been frustrating not being able to figure out what is wrong. 3 ortho vets, 2 regular vets and 2 rehab vets and nothing has been found. I talked to the rehab vet tonight. And she felt the pop too when he was there last week but the message didn't get passed on to me. She thinks it is instability in his knee. So now we wait and see what the ortho vet thinks.

Training with Miley can be overwhelming. She is 8 months old and I want to do everything right. So when you think of all the things there are to work on with a puppy , and there is a lot, its overwhelming. Today we went to the park and I threw the "chuck-it" for her. She loves that. I mainly just use it for a "go on" command and to burn off energy. She gets very excited when doing agility. She runs around you in a circle and unable to focus. So we have been doing focus work. I have been trying to teach a front cross and she has picked it up easily. My problems sometimes start when I start running. She gets excited and sometimes goes wide around jumps. I just ignore it and keep running. I don't want to slow her down. I did that with Guiness , trying to make everything perfect.