Ok Sara, I accept the food challenge

Please ignore my messy house. I told my daughter to keep the camera low but sometimes it came up. Please all trainers that know me look away. ( sorry its so grainy, I couldn't load it any other way)

Freestyle class

Tonight I took Guiness to his freestyle class. I missed the last class because it was on the same day as the agility trial. Its always a fun class to go to. Stress free. Not that other dog classes are stressful but this just seems so relaxing. Basically you are just teaching your dog tricks. Guiness loves food alot , so he works very hard and learns quickly. Tonight we worked on getting the dog to follow behind you. You walk with your hands behind your back and the dog is suppose to walk with you but stay right behind you. Guiness had a hard time with this, so we will need to practice. We also worked on having the dog go through your legs to a chair that had a treat on it and then he has to back up between your legs again. The treat brings them through the first time and then you can squeeze your legs together and the dog will back out. Remember to add verbal cues to all tricks. Like "through" and "back". In freestyle you have to divide the ring into 4 quadrants and you must cover 75% of the ring. Its also a good idea to to label the corners of the ring, 1,2 ,3,4 and create in your mind your pattern. Like 2341. You will start in corner 2 and go to corner 3 , then 4 and then 1. This helps keep you oriented in case you get disoriented while doing your dance. Also you don't have to go all the way into the corner and your not to get to close to the fencing. You can get penalized for using the fencing to keep you dog going straight even if you didn't mean to. Also no part of the dog can go pass the fencing , so if they are to close and the tail hair goes through , your out. We also practice making our dog stay in place while we walk and skip around them and move your arms in all different ways. Its a fun, goofy class. Then we all had to make up a dance to the same music. It was fun. We are not great but its fun and if your dog or you mess up, you just add something else. Hey , kinda like gamblers. Ha!! Some people have taught their dogs some cool moves, I wish I had video so I could remember exactly what they did. I did remember to bring Guiness's crate. Now he doesn't bark when other dogs are taking their turn or the teacher is talking. Yea!

Miley is feeling better

This was how Miley was this morning. Shocking! She never sleeps with any of the dogs and never has slept on my lap. From the time she gets up, its go, go , go. Not this morning. Very scary.
This is her this afternoon. She played a little while. So that is a good sign. Yea!!

Miley is sick

Miley has been sick since last night. Really the last 3 evenings she hasn't seemed like herself. Usually she runs around and wants you to throw balls and toys. But lately she has laid down the the couch in the evening, she never does this. And she laid down next to me to pet her. She never ever does that. First I thought it was the treats I gave her. But the next night the same thing. So then I thought it was the other treats. Both of these were treats neighbors gave me. I wouldn't buy these myself because I usually buy higher quality treats. But the next night the same thing. I did change her dog food. I put her on a higher protein content dog food. Going from 24% protein to 27% protein. About 3 days ago was when I was no longer mixing the old dog food with the new dog food and she now gets 100 % new dog food. Maybe it the higher protein content that's bothering her. Last night she had 3 bouts of diarrhea. So I gave her an Imodium. About 30 minutes later she vomited a large amount of undigested dog food. I didn't see the imoduim capsule in the food. About 1 hour later she vomited another large amount of undigested dog food. That was about midnight and I put her in her kennel. She slept all night and didn't have any problems. But this morning she just isn't herself. She wont lay down. She stands there and her eyes start to close, then her back end starts to fall over which wakes her up again. She isn't playing. I did get her to urinate about 9:30am. I gave her some Reglan about 8am thinking she was nausea . She ate a tablespoon of old dog food with water. She has kept that down. She not drinking so I mixed some chicken broth with water and she did drink that. I thought she was feeling better but now she is looking sick again. Not wanting to lie down and looking sad. I'm debating on whether to take her to the emergency vet or not.

The weather man was wrong

Today I watched the news. The weather lady said it was going to be sunny and 60 degrees today. Tonight rain would start and it would rain all day tomorrow. We guess what? It was cloudy and rainy all day. I think it might have gotten to 50 degrees. It wouldn't have been so bad if you weren't expecting a sunny, nice day. Well we took the dogs to the park for a walk. It was more like misting at the time. You wouldn't believe how many cars were parked in the lot. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't a nice day at all and here are all these people. O'well what can you do. I wanted to go to the spider women trial through a short cut so that we could walk the inner loop that is marked "very difficult". It goes on about .75 of a mile. we did walk it. As we were walking I told my husband that is didn't seem that different from the rest of the path. But it was all up hill. It kept going and going. I was definitely feeling it by the time we reached the top. Then it flattened out and went down hill. After getting on the main part of the spider women trail again , a whole group of people are coming toward us with their dogs. Are their dogs on leashes like the park signs state? No of course not. That's for other people. I think there were 5 or 6 dogs. Two really big dogs and some smaller dogs. The dogs start running toward us. The women says, " They are friendly that's why they are off leash". I had picked Miley up and was holding her. I don't care if your dog is friendly or not. The rule says they are to be on leash. I'm sure they knew I wasn't happy. In my opinion any dog will bite in the right situation. I worked at a children's hospital. I took care of multiple kids that had to go to surgery after being bitten by a dog. All types of dogs. Poodles, beagles, boxers, boarder collies ect....... Like I said any dog will bite in the right situation. When I was at the trial, twice I saw dogs attack each other waiting for their turn to run. It scared the crap out of me. At least they were on leash and the owners could pull them apart. I made sure when I walked Miley that she was very close to me and didn't get near other dogs. Well , sorry about the rant. Back to the park, We got off the path and I tried to jump this little gully trying to get away from these people and their dogs. When I jumped, I didn't know one of the little dogs was coming with me. And I landed right on its leg when we both leaped the gully. I felt bad but I didn't say anything because I was mad. The poor dog. I cant believe I didn't break its leg. It seemed fine and finally went back to its owners after they repeatedly called it. Poor dog.
The picture above is from another day but I thought it was cute and wanted to post it.

Miley Practice

So Ive been trying to decided if I should jump Miley at 16 inches in USDAA. She measured 13 3/4 at the last trial which means she jumps 16 for Championship. I could just do performance and keep her at 12. In AKC she will be allowed to jump 12. I don't want to over stress her body by jumping 16 but after watching her today and looking over the tapes, she seemed ok. The bars were at 16 except maybe one. I have also been obsessing over her weave poles. Mostly entries. Ive been trying to work around the clock and its boring and she goes slow. She never goes slow. I went to bed last night and the last thing I remember thinking about were weave poles and it was the first thing I thought of this morning. Ugh!! I'm contemplating doing 2 x 2 weaves. But I don't want to confuse her. It looks like you can get great entries but maybe that's only if your a great trainer. I talked to Kathy at Agility Adventures( see her blog on my blog roll), and she said its a great way to teach weaves. She is going to go back to reteach her other dogs with this method. Any opinions? ( o'yea, Its raining again)

Hope this isnt how 2009 is going to be

Today we took the dogs for a 4 mile walk in the woods. Came home and my husband started to watch the football games. Put a pizza in the oven. Took the pizza out and placed it on top of the oven. We each had a couple of slices. Next thing we hear is a pan hitting the floor. I turn around and Guiness is running out through the doggie door with half a pizza in his mouth. I don't know how he got it through the doggie door in one piece. It looked huge compared to his head. Luckily it fell apart outside and my husband got half of it back (not to eat). Man, I hope is doesnt upset his stomach. My husband said , "If he can jump that high to get a pizza off the top of the stove, he can jump the poles outside." ( you know, run agility and burn off excess energy. ) My daughter said, " Did you see how happy Guiness was?". HA!!!

HAPPINESS IS 4 SLEEPING DOGS