Chris Zink seminar Day one

It was a very good seminar. I learned alot about body structure and gait. I will try to recap some of the information. Just rememeber that this is what I heard and sometimes we dont hear what someone says correctly.

She talked about spaying and neurtering dogs. She recommends that you dont fix your dog until they are 14 months old. Personally she doesnt think you should fix a male dog but her females she fixes at 14 months due to the risk of mammary cancer and pyometra. I , Diana, have been struggling with spaying Miley or not. Ive been worried that she needs these hormones to keep up muscle building and strenght. I do have an appt. for Miley to be spayed on Wednesday. The deciding factor was, what if Mickey and Guiness get in a fight when Miley goes into heat. I would never forgive myself. So I asked the question at the seminar about when women have hysterectomies or go thur menapause, that they loose muslce mass and bone density ect.. She said dogs are different than people because the secret some of their hormones from their adrenal glands. So they dont have problems like that. So now I feel better about having Miley spayed. She also talked about the delay in growth plates when you fix your dog by 6 months. She feels that if you fix your dog early that they shouldnt be jumping until they are 22 months because of the delay in growth plate closure. Wow!

Next she talked about the height to weight ratios of your dog and how they effect the wear and tear injuries of your dog. You take your dogs weight and divide it by there height. Ratios:



> 3.5 Danger zone

2.0 - 3.5 Be Careful

<2.0 easy street

If you keep your dog lean you lower their ratio. Dogs with low ratios have less injuries and rehab faster. If your dog is in the danger zone then you should only show on soft ground and no full height jump training.

Next we talked about structure. Rear angulation: She talked about measuring rear angulation. She put everyone in 2 groups and each group felt all the dogs and they voted on which dog had the most rear angulation. She told us how to see rear angulation. I cant really show it to you hear but you can see it in her book called, "The Agility Advantage" I wasnt good about being able to see and feel body structure. Dogs with more rear angulation have a longer stride but are less stable in the rear. You want to look for moderation in the rear. Most dogs in the breed ring have over angulated rears. We went through video of Westminster dog show and watched the dogs gait. Many of the dogs were crabbing, this is when there rear is to the side of the front. At a trot, the back over lap the front feet, this is also crabbing. So this is bad because each side of the body is working differently.

Front: Which breeds have the straightest shoulders? Shelties. Dogs with straight fronts hold their heads up. So many people breed for straight fronts because it keeps the head up in the ring. She showed us how to evaluate fronts (shoulders). Again we were broken in two groups. One shelite was in each group. ( most of the dogs there were Golden Retrievers). So we voted again. O'course the shelties both had the straightest fronts. Many times in obedience dogs get front left leg lameness because of putting their heads up and looking at their owner. By turning this way they are putting more weight on their left front leg. Its important to have a angulated front because the front take 65% of the dogs weight. So she says if you have to pick a dog its better to take the dog with a good front and not so good rear ( if you have to pick). Dogs with good shoulders have longevity and less injuries. Common injury with straight shoulders is Medial shoulder instability. Also you dog needs to be fit, have good muscles, to hold the angles in place.

Other things: Tails are good because the help counter balance. So if something happens, like falling off the dogwalk they maybe able to counter balance with the tail and stay on. Dew claws are important and should not be removed. Dogs without dew claws tend to get carpal tunnel arthritis. When cantering, ( the gait use in agility) dogs use their dew claws to turn which stabilises the leg.

Gaits: When a dog trots and you view them from the front or back their legs should make a "V".

So we watched all the dogs trot up and down and decided if they were in a "V". Also their front legs should extend out to there nose when they trot. Miley's front legs were in a "v" but she crossed them slightly. But Chirs felt this was because she was still young and just needed to mature and build her front chest muscle. In the rear Miley was slightly cow hocked. ( which she was at 8 weeks so I figured she would be) Cow hocks help a dog lie down and get up faster and also turn faster. So in the breed ring the boarder collie is allowed to be slightly cow hocked. But that dog may not win, so many times it is bread out of them.

Dogs that are out of balance with front and rear will pace. She did the corn starched test on one dog. On the black mat, she put corn starch on the front feet and had the dog trot straight down the mat. Then she measured the back of one foot to the back of the next foot. It should be about equal with each foot measurement. It can show you if the dog is favoring a side or if the foot print is to light then they aren't putting much pressure on that foot. There was a dog that paced and she showed us how she retrains a dog not to pace but trot. She states pacing can happen from making the dog transition to slowly between gaits. Retraining the gait is also in her book and its to long for me to go through. It will take about 2 months to retrain a gait. Just a note: dogs that haven't learned to change gaits easily, will be more likely to fall off the dog walk. They usually use 3 gaits to go over the dog walk. Cantor, trot then walk down.

More tomorrow.

Miley's new coat

Mileys coat made it here in time for the seminar. It is kinda stiff and I washed it several times. I'm sure it will get softer the longer you use it. We have been lucky with the weather for a couple of days. A cold front came through but all that means it that the humidity may go down. Well Wednesday and Thursday morning it was great. No humidity and in the mid 60's. I even had to put a sweat shirt on. So because it was so cool I decided to go to the practice field. Last week I had decide not to go anymore this summer because it was just to hot and humid. Miley could only run maybe twice and then looked wiped out. The practice field is 30 miles from my house. So it just didn't seem worth it. But yesterday we went and were at the field by 7:30am.( you still have to be out early because it still hit 94 degrees that day) She ran great. We did all the obstacle's and she had such speed and focus. I'm not saying things were perfect but they were pretty good.

That evening I took the dogs to the state park. We usually walk there several times a week. But yesterday we were able to go so much farther. The trail has a lot more grades the further to go into the park. The dogs were finally tired!!!

Running contacts

I know I said that I wasn't going to do running contacts and that I was changing to a 2O/2O. But Miley couldn't change. She learned the 2O/2O but as soon as I put speed on her she would blow the contact. I tried doing a running on the a-Frame with just the hoop but she still would miss the yellow. So I put the stride regulators back on. It looks pretty good. Its still not up to full height. The dogwalk just has the hoops at the bottom.

I bought a couple of things from Smartpak. One thing I bought was a brake-fast bowl. Guiness eats so fast that by the time I get the chihuahuas bowls down , Guiness is done and barking to get out of his crate. The brake-fast bowl really works. I now get all the bowls down and Guiness finished at the same time as the chihuahuas. Miley eats very slow , so all the dogs always beat her. I also bought a cool coat for Miley. I'm going to a Chris Zink seminar this weekend and some of the stuff is outside. I measured Miley before ordering but some how I didn't measure correctly. So I had to reorder another one. It should be here Thursday.

The Chirs Zink seminar will be on structure and how it relates to different dog sports. Lameness conditioning and jumps training. She will also cover agility training, heeling, retrieving ans scent discrimination. I hope it will be good. I'm very interested in the importance of structure to performance and locomotion.

Mickey's out from under the bed!!

I took Mickey to the vet today because I just felt like his left eye just didn't seem right. There wasn't anything I could put my finger on. Plus he was still spending a lot of time under the bed. So the vet checked him and stained his eye. No scratches on the eyeball. Lots of bruising on the eyeball and around the eye. They shaved his head where the small cut was above his left eye. You cant really see it in this picture. They left him on the medication I was giving him but change the pain medication. I was giving him torbutrol, but they said that only last about 1 hour. So they gave me meloxicam. About an hour after giving it Mickey came out from under the bed and stayed out.

Weaves and the Weekend

Here is where the weaves are now. I will probably be able to get them straight up in the next few weeks. I usually practice twice a day for short periods of time. But what I have noticed is that the evening practice usually is terrible. Last night she couldn't do the weaves at all. So Ive decided to only practice in the morning but for a longer periods of time. This morning she did great. I'm not saying there weren't mistakes, mostly mine by giving a late cue. But she has more drive and is more correct in the morning. Its probably the heat that takes it out of her. So that is the plan.
On Friday I went to Savannah with my kids to see my parents. We had a great time. We went to the Savannah Theater and saw a show called, "The Beat goes on". It was fantastic. They sang and danced to music of the 60's, 70's and 80's. Some of the songs you get to sing along with and sometimes they pull an audience member into the show. Its great fun and full of happiness. So if you ever go to Savannah, I recommend this theater. They do about 4-5 different shows every year. They are all musical and there is a small band on stage. The band is very talented and some of the members sing too. The guy playing the electric guitar did the "Footloose" them song and he must have very elastic tendons and ligaments in his legs to be able to move like that.
I came back home Saturday evening and the dogs, who stayed home with my husband, were beside themselves. The had so much pent up energy. And I was lazy and didn't feel like playing and walking them. (A combination for disaster). I went out in the yard and was moving the sprinkler around when my neighbors came home and were standing in their front yard. Their front yard connects to my back yard because my house sits forward. Well Guiness went crazy barking and spinning at the fence line and Micky got caught up in all this and that turned into a dog fight. This is all my fault. I should have been paying better attention. Usually I tell Micky "danger" so he know to get away. But it was to late. At least I had the hose in my hand. So Mickey got bit on the head. He had a small cut on top of his head and below his eye was slightly swollen. I washed him up, gave him some pain mediation and antibiotics. The next morning the swelling was gone but he wouldn't come out from under the bed. He spent most of the day under the bed unless I pulled him out. He is doing better today but he still is spending more time under the bed then usual.
So new plan. Ive been feeling sorry for Guiness because of his injury and not getting to play agility and all. He came from rescue with issues and doing a lot of exercising with him was very helpful with alot of these issues. But feeling sorry for anyone is not helpful at all. Ive been letting him get away with behavior that I normally would not tolerate. So I will now have to rein him in. He will have more structured time with me and I will up his walking time. I also had put a garden fence on that side of the yard because he would circle the trees and I felt like it was hurting his leg. He seem better lately so I took the fence down. What I realized yesterday was the it was protection for the chihuahuas. They could get inside the garden fence area but the shelties could not , plus it kept Guiness farther way from the regular fence line. I put the garden fence back up yesterday.
Poor Micky. Miley keeps trying to play with him because they are best buds. But Mickey wont play. Hopefully he will be back to himself soon and I didn't traumatize him for life. I feel so guilty!

Miley gets her CGC

Miley got her CGC . It was hot as heck, especially in the building. She had no problems with any of the exercises. Not even the neutral dog greeting. The neutral dog was a big collie, I guess she didn't want to greet him. Yea, Mi!!!!

Double box drill

Here are the double box drills that I got from my lesson this week. On the far corner is a jump pinwheel. In the near corner is a pinwheel using a tunnel. Maybe I can get out to the training field where there is more room and I can set it up with more spacing.