Sometimes you get lucky!

I was walking the dogs this morning. I usually walk them very early so it is still dark out. There are about 150 houses in my neighborhood that is all cul-de-sacs (sp?). We are surrounded by woods. While walking we run into bunnies everyday in peoples front yards. I think the bunnies like all the flowers. When the dogs see the bunnies they go crazy. Guiness I feel sure I could recall him back to me if he would get loose. But Miley is a different story. I work on this everyday but I haven't been able to get her to look at me or step toward me when ever she sees the bunny. The bunny has to get about 15 feet away before I get her attention again. Its a work in progress. Some how today when she saw the bunny she got away from me. I'm not sure how. Next thing I know she is chasing the bunny down the side of a house which leads to woods. I cant see her because it is pitch black. I'm thinking " I'm screwed". She will never come back and Ive just lost my dog. But as luck would have it, I called her and said "ready , ready , ready" ( agility stuff) and she came back. Not all the way ,so I could grab her collar but close enough that I could get the leash. She still wasn't looking at me, she was looking back in the bunny's direction by so what. She came back. Thank god! So sometimes you get lucky.

I chickened out

I canceled Miley appt. to be spayed. Here is the story. Sunday I went upstairs and it was hot. "Aren't you kids hot"? , "yes". I look at the thermostat it reads 81 degrees. I check the temperature is suppose to be, 76 degrees. The air conditioner isn't working. So I tell the kids to open their doors so maybe some of the cool air from downstairs will go upstairs. My daughter opens her bathroom door. Next thing you know the dogs are all eating pads out of the trash. Yuck!! Miley wont eat string cheese or french fries but she will eat a nasty pad. Who knows how much everyone ate. Then Monday morning Miley is dry heaving on our morning walk. But she ate half her breakfast so I figure that she is ok. The air conditioner guy comes and we pay a fortune but at least the air conditioner works again. I come home from work and Miley is vomiting bile out her mouth and nose. Do I use the wait and see approach? If she gets worse at night and I have to go to the emergency vet they change 100.00 just to come in the door. Or do I just go the my vet now. What if she had a pad stuck in her intestines? I choose to call the vet and they want to see her. I take her in. The feel around, she feels ok. They want to do x-rays. Ok, and I ask if they can get a low enough picture to see her long bones and make sure her growth plates are closed. I know he thought I was crazy. I told him why. x-rays looked fine just FOS ( that's a medical term meaning , full of sh--). Lots of poop in her intestine but no obstruction.. Her hips look good and growth plates are closed. They gave her two shots to stop the vomiting and some can food. Monday night she seems fine. Wednesday she seems fine but didn't poop all day. The other dogs have been pooping pads but not Miley. She is not acting sick at all so she must feel ok but Im still worried. Wednesday morning she finally poops. Yea!! But yesterday when the vet call to check on her and she hadn't pooped , I decided to cancel the spay. I didn't think is was a good idea to do a spay when your intestines is full of poop. ( hey how many times can I say poop)

Now some thoughts on the dogwalk. Ive been watching the videos I have on her running both high and low. What I notice is where she is hitting the yellow zone. On the high DW, she right above or just at the yellow zone. On the low DW, the more reps you do the higher up on the yellow she goes. So I think she needs more strength training and more reps to help build that strength. And to stop when I see her start to hit higher on the yellow.

Finally!!

Ok ,Im posting this video because it took me so long to find the software, edit the video and down load it. Because of all the effort and time it has taken me, I'm posting it. You can now see how much air she has under her when running the dog walk. When I watch other peoples running dogwalk ,their dog is very close to the board, even in slow motion. So maybe she isn't a candidate for a running dogwalk. I'm not ready to give up yet. As seen in the post below she now hits the contact with the dogwalk at 2 feet off the ground. I'm still working on the hit-it pad so maybe she will understand what I want from her.

Look how Ive grown!

running contacts

So here is video of Miley doing her running contacts with the board at 2 feet off the ground. I know she misses her entry coming back. I'm not sure why. I had run this sequence right before this video and tape it but you couldn't see the bottom of the board. But on the first session she made the entry every time. So maybe she was getting tired.

No class this weekend because the instructor was sick. So we went to the practice field and she did great. She read the pinwheel without a problem. I did front crosses and rear crosses without any problems. We practice with the hit-it board. They only negative was she didn't get right in the chute a couple of times. She went in and then turned around. We haven't done any chute practice in a while , so maybe that was it. She also wouldn't get on the teeter. I had even put the table under the end. The teeter is all metal and very light. Something about that teeter she doesn't like. I'm not sure what to do about that. The best thing was I was able to call her off chasing after cars every time except once. I think about 10 cars came by. Yea!!

stride regulators

I watch video of Miley running the dogwalk. Then I watch Barb Davis video on running contacts. I decided where to put the stride regulators. The first pass, she would hit the yellow contact. But the 2nd pass , she would jump it. So I would adjust the stride regulators and the 1st pass after the adjustment , she hit the yellow. But again, the 2nd pass she would jump it. This happened every single time. Do you think, she thinks, she is suppose to jump the yellow area? It became very funny, like a game to her. "let me figure out how I can still jump that yellow area after she has moved those bumps." So, I lowered the dog walk to about 2 feet off the ground and now she is running through the contact zone. I was thinking of teaching a hit-it plate, but guess what? I cant find a yellow mouse pad.

Running Dogwalk

Here is Miley's running contact. She is barely in the yellow and it's an AKC zone so it bigger. I wish I could put it in slow motion so you could see it better. I'm working on that. If you hit the play button on the bottom left of the video ,on and off you can see the stride better. The stride from the flat part of the dogwalk to the first part of the down ramp is a 5 foot stride. I think I'm going to use stride regulators to change her stride. I moved the hoop several different places and it hasn't changed anything.