Talking sheep and dogs

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"Hey there is that weird lady who runs around yelling strange words to her dogs. Oh and she brought a new dog with her, he looks nice and calm. Uh oh, here comes that crazy merle colored dog, rrrrRRRRRR..."




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"RRRUUUUNNNN!!!!"




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"Miley , where's your ball?"





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"What ball?"




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"I got it!"



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Practice course jww

I took this course off of "Dog training, Dogs and life" blog. I set it up the best I could. I first ran it with a rear cross after #4. Several times she missed #5 and if she did get it then she took the wrong tunnel entrance. I practice just #4-6 and we seem to get it but when I added it all together, we had the same problems. Then I ran Guiness through it too. Then we rested because I needed a break. It was a lot of running.




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So after sitting a while I had an and idea. What if I front crossed after #3. I tried it and it worked great. For the first time I was able to think differently and fix my problem before driving home. Usually I'm on my way home before I can think of how fix the problem. WhooHoo , what a break through for me. I was so excited. Maybe I'm on my way to running courses correctly.
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After that I decided to just run a couple of dogwalks and a-frames. The dogwalk looked good. The a-fame she was slow on the down side. When I got home and reviewed the video she is skipping with her right back leg down the frame. The same problem leg.

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I don't think she is injured because I haven't seen any skipping at all on any of our walks and we walk a lot. I watch her like a hawk. I'm not really sure what to think of it or how to fix it.

This and that

This week Miley was really slow going over the a-frame in my lesson with Meagan. So I decided to video tape her doing a few a-frames today. She is slow going on the down side but I think she is just trying to make sure she stops herself. Tomorrow, if I can get out to the field, I'll video tape her on that a-frame.


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Then we practice some tunnel discrimination's. She did really well. I didn't post all the video. There was a few times where she thought she knew which jumps to take after the tunnel and didn't take any cue from me. I had to finally go in, almost to the tunnel to get her attention. But after that it was pretty good. I have this problem where Im sure my dog is going to do what I want and I take me eye off her. Every time,she goes off course.
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This morning I took the dogs to the park for a walk. It was a very unpleasant morning. Cold and damp. Its been raining a lot. The good new was we didn't see any people or bikes.

But look at the ant hill.


The contrast of the yellow and green at the park was beautiful but I just couldn't seem to catch it on film. I didn't bring my good camera because I didn't really think I would take any pictures. The yellow was so intense, I kept looking up to see if the sun was out, but is wasn't. To bad it didn't show in the photo.

Tables

So this table thing is really getting to me. For your dog to always get on the table everywhere but at a trial is very frustrating. I went through my papers to see how many trials Ive been to without a table performance. In Sept. she had 5 open stand runs, didn't get on the table on any of them. Then in Oct. she had 4 open standard runs. She did get on the table but usually first by passed it and I had to call her back. But she did get on. What was the difference? The only thing was before the one trial there was a b-match and she was rewarded in the ring when she got on the table. So then Nov., 4 more standard run without getting on the table. Maybe I need to take her some different training facilities and practice it there to. Hmmmmm.

Close-ups

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Lessons and other things

Here is the course that Meagan set up tonight. Its from memory to the best of my ability. I don't know why I cant remember to bring my notebook with me. What is up with that. The lesson went really quickly and I couldn't believe it was over. I felt like we hadn't done anything but I knew we had. So I'm not sure why I felt that way. Miley wasn't tired at all. And she wouldn't come to me at the end. She hasn't done that in months. I finally had to use my emergency word to get her to come to me. That word is "back". This word makes her crazy because I use it to train Guiness. And every time I say it, she come tearing over barking at me. ( jealous?) . It worked like a charm tonight. Then when I took her out to the car,she wouldn't get near the car no matter how hard I pulled on the leash. I had to go get her and put her in the car. She was not a happy camper. It could be that it poured rain all day , so she didn't get any outside time today. Maybe I need an extra 1/2 hour lesson at the end of a shared lesson. Who knows.
So anyway, the above course is what we worked on. I shared my lesson with a very nice border collie. That dog looked great tonight. I'm not sure how we looked tonight. Miley was slow going over the a-frame several times. The a-frame has big chunky square slats on it. For bigger dogs their feet can hit the slat and the board at the same time. But for smaller dogs, it has to hit right on top of the slat or before the slat. So I think she doesn't like her toes to hit the slates. It probably doesn't help that I have no slats on my a-frame at home and its rubberized. I think it should be required that all a-frames be rubberized and the slat should have to be rubber or not on the a-frame at all. It really has amazed me how different a-frames slats can be from one trail to the next. Ok , Ill quit talking about that.

On to the lesson. First we did #1-12. So we did well until #9. She got on the table and I went to the left side of #9. I wanted to do a call to heel and then push over the jump and front cross #10 before the a-frame. Meagan said that wasn't a very good line for the dog. It would be better to be on the right of #9 then rear cross 10. That was my plan at first but I thought it would push her wide and she would take jump #20 . So I did it the way Meagan said and it worked perfect.

Then we did 12-20. I had planned to do a front cross after the poles and then rear cross # 14. So this time I talked to Meagan first. She said that tight of a rear cross would pull her to tight and she wouldn't go out to # 15. So I rear cross after #14 and that worked great. I wonder how long it takes for you to learn how to walk a course correctly.

Next, the ferret. Yesterday the sick ferret wasn't doing well. I went to give her the medication and she was completely unresponsive. She did have a gag reflex but that was it. I worked with her for 10 minutes putting honey on her gums and tongue ( when I could get her mouth open) but nothing helped. I put her back in her crate and went to work. I called my husband a couple of times and he said she still wasn't moving. But by mid-morning she started to move around again. This morning she was back to herself again. My husband is calling her Lazarus ( from the bible).

Things we train

Some how I rewarded "wait" so much that Miley is now not releasing with the release cue of "ok". Oh boy. I guess I need to find balance. The other thing Ive accidentally trained is when I say this nonsense word of "Ut" when she makes a mistake, she thinks it means down. I guess because if she broke her down or move into a sit from a down when I didn't ask for that , I would say "ut" and she would fix her mistake. So now "ut" means down. Oops. Tonight I'm going for a lesson with Meagan. We will see what she does there with the release cue. I just hope the weather isn't to bad. We are suppose to have lots of rain and wind.

The good news is I finished the H1N1 shot clinic at my school yesterday. I didn't realize how much stress I was feeling about all that until I left yesterday and was all done. The clinic went great without any problems. All the kids did great.