Ferrets, Feet and Footwork

I took the ferrets back to the vet this morning. Its funny , Wednesday I thought the one ferret wasn't going to make it. She just laid in the cage and wouldn't come out. I gave her a little peanut butter but she still didn't perk up. I took her out and she just laid there. I figured this was it. The next morning I went to check on them. I lifted the blanket they sleep under and they both looked up at me. "What, turn the light out". They both looked find. I covered them up. Last night the seemed find. Both came out of the cage and ran around. The one who kept falling over was walking fine. Weird. Anyway the other vet checked them. They ran a blood sugar on the falling over one. Her blood sugar was 25. normal is 60-125 ( I think). So she was pretty low. They said she has insulinoma. So she has to take prednisone everyday. I take her back in a week to see if her blood sugar is better. The other ferret, they think because of the hair loss, has an adrenal tumor. If its on the left,it can be surgically removed. If its on the right , they can only remove a part of it because it wraps around the vena cava and they cant remove it or you die. They didn't feel any tumors but that's what they think. And it only cost 350.00 to have surgery to see which side its on and remove it. Hmmm. I don't think we will be doing surgery. Will just have to let her live as long as she can like this and go from there. The insulinoma ferret can live from 3 months to 3 more years. They just don't know. But at least I didn't put them to sleep.
Next subject is feet. I just cant find a pair of sneaker that don't hurt my legs or feet. I was wearing Adidas trail runner supernova 5, but they don't make them anymore. Ive been buying them different places. ( I guess until they cant be found) I ordered them from a site I found them on, and they are killing my feet. I ordered the same size but they are just not right on my left foot. Maybe they only have defective ones left now. So Ive been looking for another shoe. Ive tried Nike, Brooks, Muinzo, Keen, Asics to name a few. I'm so over this and just don't know what to do. I really need a new pair of shoes. The treads are warn off my old shoes. I guess I will just keep trying.
Footwork. I work Miley a little today. We did that set up that the Agility Nerd had on his site where you work front crosses, rear crosses and serpts. Miley did really well. Then we work on tunnel entrances. Just jump to the tunnel. She did well today. Will see if that holds up. Instead of saying "in", I'm using "here". I try not to use "here" on course because I find if I'm nervous, I will say "here" and not mean to. Or use it in the wrong place. ( Just a note. On my jumpers run where Miley "Qed" and got her title. You hear someone yelling "here", that was the girl in the other ring). Also when I run at a trial, I tend to be really quiet ( again a nerve thing) so I try not to rely on verbals but in this case I'm going to have to do something.

I posted the new header. That's more realistic of my dogs. Why is Guiness's tongue hanging to the side. Because a bicycle had recently come by and Guiness was going crazy. Stephanie was embarrassed by the dog acting crazy. You know, kids never embarrass you, only dogs.

Fall Walk

I took the dogs for a 4 mile hike at the park. It was kind a cloudy until we were almost back. So the fall foliage didn't turn out as nice as it was seen with the eye.





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I thought the holes in this tree made of an interesting picture.



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This tree I just think is cool.

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I like the blackness of the trees in this picture.

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I wish this picture turned out better. They look like they arent happy. They are probably thinking, "How many times do we have to do this?". Lol

I didnt mean to sound so negitive in my last post about Miley's lesson. She looked really good on lots of things. She had great contacts, teeter ,table and until the Master course weave poles.

Class

I finally made it to a class last night. I really need to go more consistently but I just don't know how to do that and get up for work the next day. I took today off. So instead of getting up at 4:50am like I usually do. I didn't get up until 6:15. I just couldn't sleep any longer even though I was hoping to sleep in until 7am. O'well.

I wanted to go to both the novice/open class and the Master's class and Meagan said it was ok to come to both. I left my house with plenty of time to get there a little early so I have time to warm Miley up. But there were 2 huge wrecks on the highway. The first wreck was on the opposite site side and I stupidly thought, "I'm glad I'm not on that side". Guess what, not even a mile and I was in bumper to bumper traffic on my side from another wreck. Ugh! 20minutes and I hadn't gone anywhere. I was finally able to get off the highway and went around. So a trip that should have taken me 1 1/2 hours took 2 hours and 15 min. I was 30 min late for class. Crap. I need as much class time as possible to learn. O'well, I tried my best.

The novice class set up was similar to the course I posted above. I really cant remember what the difference was in the run. The course posted is the master's course. Its from memory and I'm sure the distances and stuff aren't correct. I just wanted to give you an idea of the flow of the course. Both classes I had similar problems. Trying to get the correct tunnel entrance. I just couldn't do it on the #9 to #10. I tried doing a false turn and then shooting her in but I kept releasing her to soon which sent to the off course entrance. Ugh!

I also couldn't figure out how to handle #14-16. Meagan had to show me how to handle it. I wouldn't have figured that out on my own. Which comes to my next problem. This week I couldn't run the sequences that I set up from clean run. I know it was because I couldn't figure out how to run them. So how do you fix that? How do you learn how to run the course. Some things are easy but there are times when it isn't so straight forward.

So #14-15 was handled as a serpentine. You stayed on the 14 side of the jump and pulled your dog back over 15 and then ran them over you feet and flipped them into the tunnel. It worked great. Our last problem of the night was the weaves. You thought I was going to say table huh? First time to the table she was running so fast , she almost slid off but was able to catch herself. WhooHoo! Anyway, the weaves. In the novice class she got the weaves no problem and it was the same, table to the weaves. But in the Master's class she couldn't get it. She kept getting in the second pole. I'm wondering if it had to due with the fact that it was dark. There are lights on the field but its still pretty dark. But after she missed the weave pole entry a couple of times she started that stress behavior of running around the ring and not coming to me. Ugh! So Meagan had me send her over a jump, then reward and stop.

Just a note. We didn't run the whole course at one time with both classes. She broke them down and we worked on small sections. Then at the end of class you ran the whole course.

Choices

The ferrets haven't been doing to well. The one has been loosing its hair. She doesn't look horrible but its noticeable. The other ferret is having problems walking. Sometimes she seems ok then other times she just falls over on her back end. One of them hasn't been going to the bathroom in the litter box. They are almost 6 yr.old. I'm not sure how long ferrets live. When I look it up, some sites say 6 years and some say 10 yrs. I took them to the vet today. The vet thinks there is something neurological going on with one ferrett and the other one she is pretty sure she feels an adrenal tumor. They want to do blood work on the falling over ferret, but it was 200.00. That's a lot of money to spend on a ferret. I'm not sure what to do. If it were my dogs, no problem. I would do it. But a ferret? I just don't know and I think my husband would kill me. The ferret with the adrenal tumor would need surgery. So the vet wants me to bring them back on Saturday to have the other vet ,that has more experience with ferret, see them. If he agrees with the first vet, I may just put them to sleep. Its a hard decision. Ugh!

More Practice

I took Miley out to the field this morning to practice. The sheep were in the area where you park your car. We didn't park in there because they also have a billy goat. Those things are crazy. They will jump on your car and eat it. It also sounded like it was spitting at us.

I decided to do the set-up in this months Clean Run. Its near the back of the magazine and called "Shorties". It had all my problem areas. Weaves, table and tunnel discrimination's. Can you see where this is going? I guess I shouldn't have tired to conquer all the problem areas at the same time. Needless to say we had problems. I couldn't get the correct tunnel entrance most of the time. I couldn't run the sequence the way they said to. It just didn't work. So then I started running it the way I wanted to. We did better, still couldn't get the correct tunnel entrance. I really have to be able to drive to the entrance but sometimes you just cant get there. I think I'm going to teach "in" and "out". In being the the tunnel entrance closest to me, and of course "out" being the entrance furthest away from me. So we practice a little of that. Our weaves were terrible. We couldn't get an entrance if it was on side. Ugh! On the way home my husband asked what I had done different since the trial. Hmmmm. It wasn't what I was doing different versus what I haven't done. I haven't practice any weave pole entries. Last we practice distance work. We work on the tunnel to the teeter again. I need at least one step in the direction to get her to the teeter.

This afternoon we practice just weave pole entrances. WhooHoo, success.

Bugs and Ears

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Look at this praying mantis. Weird huh? Ive only seen them in green. Do you know what this bug was doing? Weave poles. Lol

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I tried grooming the dogs ears. When my husband notices they need to be clipped it must be really bad. They turned out ok. I wish I could a better job. I kinda think Guiness turned out better than Miley's. And I did his first.

Its raining again. I did run Miley through a couple of sequences before the rain started. We worked on some distance challenges. Since the Fast class seems to like tunnel to teeter stuff that's what we worked on. What I realized is I need to be really down the line when she is coming out of the tunnel to show her the line to the teeter. Waiting for her coming out of the tunnel just pulls her toward me. I know you are probably laughing because I should already know this. But sometimes it takes me a while. Lol

Good news. I finally got my AKC height card. My last measurement was in May but I had never received my card. Well I finally got around to sending the AKC an email asking what I needed to do. Apparently the jump height registration papers were coded wrong so it was never sent. They fixed and I received my card yesterday. Yea!

Yesterday

Yesterday was my son's 19th birthday. After work I drove up to his college and had dinner with him. He seemed kinda sad. I think as you get older and realize birthdays just aren't as exciting as when you are younger can be a hard thing to accept. We went to dinner and he was very quiet. He kept apologizing and saying he just didn't know what to talk about. He told me not to bring his birthday presents because he want to wait until he got home this weekend to open them. He was regretting that decision. After dinner we decided to drive around and see if we could find a bookstore. He loves the bookstore and will spend hours there. Just down the street we found a mall. It looked really little but most malls have book stores. Well success. He sat in the bookstore for about an hour reading. I finally told him that I needed to start driving back home. I bought 2 of the books he really liked. When I dropped him off at his door, he jumped out of the car and ran into the dorm. I guess he was really excited to start reading those books. But it made me happy because he now seemed happy. I posted the picture above because its one of my favorites. He loved Batman. So when he was 3yr. old I made this costume. Its just a baseball cap turned backwards. I put makeup on his face. I had bought a pair of black sweats and some black and yellow felt. I cut out the batman symbol and sewed it on. The cape was just some material I cut out , no sewing. He was so happy when he saw himself in the mirror. "I'm batman".