Oregon, post 2

The next three days were spent at Daisy Peels camp.  The weather had turned cold and cloudy, so good days to go to camp. (it was in her barn )The morning was the elective you picked. You had two choices. One was clicker training chickens, the other was Functional fitness.  I picked clicker training the chickens. 

I was kind of scared to pick the chickens up. I mean look at those feet. That is scary.  She told us how to pick them up and put them back in the cages. We had to practice that several times. I got more comfortable with it but I do know I never want any chickens. LOL  Then we practice holding the measuring cup(which holds the chicken food) with a clicker attached to the handle. You had to learn to keep the cup next to your chest or behind you back and play a game. She had different color circles on the table. She would call out different colors. You had to click and touch the color target with the cup and then bring it back to your chest. Also , not spill the food. It sounds easy but it was difficult not to get behind when trying to touch the colors, bring it back to you chest and back down to touch the next color.   Then it was time for the chickens.  First you had to clicker train the chicken to peck the big round target. That was pretty easy.  Some chickens worked better than others.  And it depended on if they had already laid their egg that morning.  Once you got them targeting the target, you had to be specific and get them to hit the center dot.  Again, that was pretty easy.  Now the next game.  You could pick to either get you chicken to target a specific color square or target a specific shape.  The shape specific was harder, so I decided to try that. Everyone else did the color.  ( the color was easier and all the chickens learned it).  So you put the 4 different shapes out on the table. The first one the chicken hit, you picked up. This was the one most likely the chicken liked best.   Then you picked up all the other shapes.  First you just put  the square, that's the one my chicken like, down and rewarded the chicken pecking that one. Then you added another shape. If the chicken pecked the circle (because she was suppose to peck the square), you were to pick up the square. This was negative punishment (removing the one she was suppose to peck).  This was very hard for me to do. I figured, why not just ignore the behavior I didn't want, and reward the one I wanted. Right???  Wrong. This made the chicken think, peck the circle and then the square. Or peck anything and then the square. ugh!!!  Every time I thought my chicken  understood to only peck the square, she would make a mistake and hit the circle. Then I wouldn't pick it up, because it was only once right?  Ugh. Nope, now I confused the chicken. Ack!!!  Over the three days, we also taught the chickens to walk around a cone. Much easier, at least to me. And my partner taught her chicken to tug a rope. Very cool.  Don't worry the chickens got lots of breaks.

Then from 11:30 to 6:30 we worked our dogs.  Everyone there was really good. I think I was the worse one. LOL  There were 14 working teams.  Lots of border collies, a couple of Tervs, a Dobie, a Kelpie, a duck toller, and three 16 inch dog (one was Java), anther was a mix and I cant remember the other. There were no dogs smaller than 16 inches.   I learned a lot.  I don't watch my dog. You don't have to be fast to run your dog but you do have to cue them  in time. You have to be able to watch your dog but also see where you are going at the same time.  I need to learn to run in a straight line.  And after all the things I learn, I ran my dog the worse I ever run her at a trial this weekend. Ugh!!  0  Q's out of 9 runs.

The next day was Friday. The sun had come out again and it was a beautiful day. The people at the camp gave us a suggestion of things to go see. It was great.

Every thing there is so green.

This waterfall was stunning.

The wind coming off the falls was so powerful.

More to come later.

Oregon

We went to Oregon last week. I was on Spring break and there was a Daisy Peel camp that same week. So my husband went with me and we made a vacation of it. Probably what I should have done was took private lessons and then my husband wouldn't have spent 3 days by himself. But oh well, live and learn.
We flew out  last Saturday. It took most of the day since we  flew out of Atlanta. It took about 4 hours to drive to Atlanta and then flew for 5 hours.

(Im assuming this is Mt. Hood. I don't know what mountain was in the back ground)
So we got to the hotel at 10pm.  Sunday we woke up early and drove to the Coast. I knew Sunday was going to be the warmest day (70 degrees), so a beach day it was. We went to Cannon Beach.  This is what we first saw when driving up.

We found parking and it was a cute little beach town.

This beach was beautiful!!

 

 

 

Lots of people were taking pictures of these birds. I don't know if they were special or not but I took pictures too. LOL

This dead tree was beautiful! It was sitting on top of all these black rocks. So cool.

This beach was very quite in the morning but was filling up quickly by afternoon.  So many dogs every where. I was glad when we left. I think we walked 10 miles that day.  On the way home we stopped at a rest area. It had a trail as part of it. So we walked some more.

Everything is soooooo green. All the trees wear coats.

Everything was just beautiful. Full of color. I just kept taking pictures but it just didn't capture how wonderful it was.

The whole week we hiked, climbed over rocks and trees, ran agility.  Where did I fall and hurt myself?  At the rest stop. LOL, Yup.  I was walking and the square sidewalk pieces weren't level. The one in front was up about 2 inches and I tripped and fell.  I skinned my hands and knees. Ouch!

The hotel we stayed at was very nice. It was a block from the river.

There was a walking path that was about 2 miles long, one way. You could see Mt. Hood from the river.

The path lead around the marina.

This duck decided that the river wasn't good enough, he would rather swim in his own pool.

After contacting a couple people who's blogs I read, I got the suggestion to go  hiking at the Eagle Creek trail.  So the next day , that's where we went. That was after we walked the 4 mile path by the river.

You start out walking close to the river and slowly the river gets father and father  down .

Some parts of the trail was wide but some were narrow.

 

Some narrow parts of the path had metal wire railings to hold on to.  We didn't see many people going up the trail but coming back down, lots of people and dogs started coming. Good thing we went early. Anyway, it was kind of unnerving  when you had to pass someone on the narrow paths. I seemed to be the person  who always had to be on the outside of the path, near the edge, when passing.  All I could think of was, "What if this person is a wacko, and just pushes me off the edge?". LOL

I kept trying to take pictures of the river, so you could see how far away it had dropped down but it just doesn't really show you.

 

 

The trees here are soooo tall. Ive never seen trees this tall before.

Here was one of the first waterfalls you come across.

Its was just so pretty and green on everything.

 

 

 

 

We finally get to the lower  part of the falls.

This place was magical.  Around the corner was a huge waterfall. I took my shoes off and tried to brave through the cold water to get around the corner. Nope, I couldn't do it. The water was so cold, it was painful and I had to retreat.

 

This lady is leaning to try to get a picture of the waterfall around the corner.  It gives you perspective of how big the place is.

 

 

 

This small waterfall was behind us if forward is where the lady is standing.  This waterfall flows into the really pretty green water.

 

 

 

 

 

Then we hike back up the side of the mountain and to see the top of the waterfall that was around the corner. It was a steep hike too.

 

 

Cool!!

 

 

It was a wonderful hike.

 

 

 

On the way home, over the bridge, I took this shot.

 

 

Our Trial

Our club took pictures of anyone who is an instructor, to hang on the  club's wall. This was ours.
Next Miley. So after two rounds of antibiotics, she still has blood in her urine and she is still getting me up at night.  On Monday they did a bladder tap to get a sterile urine sample. As of yesterday the sample hadn't grown anything. They will continue to see if anything grows for 72 hours. But they said we need to start investigation other reasons for the blood and frequency of having to go to the bathroom. So Friday she will have a ultrasound of her bladder to rule out cancer and stones (that may not have been picked up on xray). Keep your fingers crossed of stones and not cancer. Update:  no  growth after 3 days of the urine culture.  They did the ultrasound. No growths in the bladder  but there is "sludge". Could be blood clots or crystals. The tried to ultrasound her kidneys. The problem was, they could only find one kidney and it was really small. Not sure how confident I am in their ability to US.  Its a pretty hard thing to learn, IMO.   Im thinking of going to a specialist to get some answers.  So they put Miley on another round of antibiotics to see if that will help calm everything down and get her to sleep through the night.

Our club had their agility this past weekend.  I keep debating if Im going to stay on the committee.  Its just a lot of work and just becomes over whelming.  To be there working from 7am to 7pm is just exhausting. By the last  day, Im just over the whole thing.  In good news I went to the "Pain Clinic" to see if they could help control my pain better.  So he switched me to the patch  of pain medication. (not like the heavy duty ones people with cancer pain need).  Anyway, its made a huge difference. No more ups and downs  of pain/no pain when taking pills.  No more achiness all over. The only negative right now is Im pretty tired.  Hopefully that will get better.

The trial went ok.  We did manage to get some Q's. We got our last Novice FAST Q for that title. We got another Ex standard Q on a pretty tough course. Two T2B Qs and I think that's it.  On Friday we were having a beautiful Standard run and she flew off the teeter. Ugh.  So we left the ring. (I stopped writing this and meant to get back to it sooner and now can remember my train of thought. LOL)

Sunday we had a beautiful T2B run.  I got both the front crosses in that I wanted.  I have to be able to get there sooner to show motion in the direction that I want to go. Im usually late so when she sees me, I haven't finished  my cross to get me moving in the correct direction.



So after a really nice T2B run, I messed up the next two.  In standard, there was a tunnel right after the dogwalk, I knew that was going to be a problem. She flew across the dogwalk, and I just wasn't quick enough. Im watching my dog run, thinking, darn she looks awesome.  LOL, and  I watch her go right into the tunnel.  Oops.  Then she had several wrong tunnel entrances for standard and jumpers.  Not sure what that is about.

Here was the jumpers course.

So many dogs when #6, 7 and then 13.  Everyone keeps telling me to run faster. Guess what, that isn't the problem. You can see in the video, that Im in front of my dog running fast.  Its takes more than that. She takes #6, the off course jump and straight into the wrong end of the tunnel. Ack.  Then at the end, after the weaves, she slips and falls. I hear her land behind me and could tell she fell. Darn it.  I worked so hard with the stupid freaking watering of the rings and it just wasn't good enough. I was just so beaten down by the whole footing of the rings. So frustrating. To work so hard to make it right and it just never was.



Tomorrow off to Oregon!!!!!