Resq TailsThe trials and triumphs of rescued dogs

Well, we survived! I think I tried to cram too much into the last three days, but we managed it somehow. Thank goodness for a really patient husband!

Friday we went down to Marysvale to meet with our obedience instructor and our friend for an afternoon of training. It was so much fun! The day flew by. I didn’t even really how quickly time was getting away from us till we looked at the clock and realized it was already 5:00. I rushed back home since I had a dog coming in to board for the weekend that was supposed to arrive about 6:00. (He didn’t get here till 9:45 Grrrrr…)

Saturday my mom and had planned to go to the Lavendar Festival which is about a 2 hour drive north of here. We had a bunch of errands to run on the way and we met up with my brother and his family for lunch. The bad part was that by the time we got back down to the Lavendar Festival my mom and I were both pretty tired. Then, when we got close we see the large crowds of people at the Festival. My parents are not big on crowds, and unfortunately I’ve inherited the same feelings. It’s something that I fight with constantly because it’s really such a hinderance to trying new things and going new places. At any rate, my mom spotted all the cars and people and asked if we could just skip it. So…for all that driving and time, we looked at the lavendar fields from the road and came home. LOL Here’s a picture or two though from the car. You’d never guess from this view that on that there were crowds of people and parking lot after parking lot full of cars on the other side of the road.

Then yesterday we rented the posthole digger and my husband and dad got the rest of the postholes dug for the fourth side of the fence. Still need to hand dig the holes a bit, but they’re pretty much done. Yay! I can’t wait till it’s done.

Last night I drove back down to Parowan to do some more herding. The real bummer was that I was scheduled to be down there at 6:30 in the evening since it’s been so hot during the day. Well, I got down there and three other people and their dogs were still there waiting to run their dogs. So, we ended up just sitting around waiting for a good hour or hour and a half before we did any herding. Twist had a really good night. He was able to move the sheep through the obstacles well, and even when they broke away and headed to the other end of the field he was doing a great job of covering them and fetching them back to me. Rogue did better this time although she’s still struggling in the deeper grass. Still going to have to get a picture of her disappearing in the grass one of these times. LOL Raven had some really nice pieces and then she’d get distracted. They all seemed to have a good time though, and I was less tired when we left than when I started out, so that was good since I didn’t get home last night till almost 11:00.

Anyway, that’s the weekend in review. I’ll probably write more about the obedience lesson later on today, since it will help me to remember what I need to work on with the dogs this week.

Last night was the first night in a month or maybe longer that we’ve been to an agility class. It was a nice evening here, and the dogs were happy for the chance to go somewhere and do something since I’d been busy with other things all day.

Zoe loved the course that was set up last night, she ran it clean and fast and well…she’s just so much fun for me to run. She’s my girl! It’s so nice to be able to anticipate just what your dog is going to do and have them be able to read your signals just as well. I know it’s just something that comes with time, but I hope that someday I’ll have that with both Raven and Rogue too.

Raven was happy and fast last night, and even her teeter was a reasonable speed for her. Her weaves were beautiful! I think that they are her favorite obstacle. Rogue hit the first contact in the course, (which was the A-Frame), and was a little slow, & then I figured out…she was probably slowing down a bit to see if someone was going to show up on her course to load the targets at the bottom. Funny girl. At the dogwalk I decided that maybe I should’ve set a target out on the course before we started running, but the only thing I had was my phone in my pocket. I grabbed it as we were running and as she got to the bottom, I threw it on the ground and told her to “hit it”. Worked great! I just picked it and we did the same thing at the teeter. After that, she was having a great time, did her weave poles (all twelve), entering correctly the first time and with nice speed. What a fun night.

This week is really getting away from me quickly! It’s already Thurs. and I can’t even tell you how we got here. LOL

I’ve got a boarder coming in to stay for a couple of nights today. He should be here this afternoon. I just love this dog. He a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Punjab. He is such a laidback mellow guy! He’s definitely one of my favorite boarders! Oh, but that reminds me….I’ve got to get to town and buy a new air conditioner for the kennel this morning. It’s going to be in the 90’s again today. The boarding kennel has had it’s slowest month since I opened it in Nov. Pretty scary. I’m really wondering if I made a very wise decision when I quit my job and went into this venture.

Onto a more positive note. Tomorrow we’re supposed to meet up with our obedience trainer for some lessons. Yay! I think I’m going to get to work with at least Twist, Raven and Rogue, and possibly Zoe. It’s always so much fun, I’m really looking forward to it.

Then Sat. my mom and I were thinking of going to this Lavendar Festival in Mona, Ut. So…dork that I am, I started sorting through things that I don’t need or use anymore and listed them in the classifieds. (thought it would be a good way to clean out the barn and pay for our trip). Now it looks like we’re going to spending a good portion of the day meeting up with people that wanted to buy stuff. Hope we still have time to go to the Lavendar Festival. :-)~

Then Sunday evening, we’re going back down to Parowan for some more sheep herding. Oh, and I forgot. My husband is supposed to have Fri. off work and we were going to rent a posthole digger to finish the fourth side of a fence that has been three sided for about 4-5 years now. LOL Although, he told me last night that he may have to work and so the fence project may get put off another month. Did I mention that this week is really hectic!

Well, Rogue is doing her dogwalk with my husband loading the target at the end nicely, even when he’s standing directly facing her. So last night we moved on to the teeter and repeated the same thing. I had him stand sideways again, not looking at her while she “hit” her target. She did pretty good. She had one bailoff, but when I turned and looked at Randy, he had moved to face her straight on again. No wonder she bailed. She wasn’t quite ready for that on the second try. So…I took her back and did the sequence again with him facing sideways, and she was able to stay at the bottom of the contact without moving. Yay!

Sometimes my husband gets impatient with the whole process. It’s pretty slow I know, but I do think it’s getting better. I so appreciate him taking time after he gets home from work to come out and work with us. I don’t know what we’d do without him! K.C. our old cat has been coming out each night to oversee training too. I keep saying that I’m going to get a picture of her on the course, but I haven’t done it yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night. It’s pretty funny!

Well, it’s possible that I’ve lost my mind completely, but it’s just too early to tell yet. One of my friends that I work with in the all-breed rescue here in town has asked me to come and attempt to teach her three dogs and her three girls some basic behaviors. That would call into question my sanity already, seeing that I’ve only ever trained my own dogs up to this point, but add to that fact, all the girls are under the age of 13. I found out tonight that one of my biggest challenges would not be keeping the dogs attention and focus, it would be keeping the girls focused on the task at hand. Plus, I couldn’t reward their behavior with my treats! LOL

Fortunately, I don’t think that there are any high expectations on my friends’ part, and the kids are easily impressed by very simple skills that Rogue did for them, so maybe it will work out fine. I have to say that Rogue did really well with the girls and the new dogs. I was really proud of her. In fact, when we got ready to leave, she wanted to stay longer.

Two of the three dogs already knew how to “sit”, and they wanted to start to teach them to “stay”. I couldn’t have been happier that the dogs had been on a nice walk before I came and it was hot, so they were pretty mellow. (Big sigh of relief!) We also worked on teaching the dogs a “down” and a “go to your mat” Then we played some games to get the dogs interested in fetching.

One difficulty I ran into was trying to explain why it was important to break behaviors into small pieces when we first teach them. (Wish I could remember that lesson sometimes myself! LOL) Patience is just so hard to learn! I think that they had a good time though, since they asked me if I was coming back tomorrow night. The answer to that question is “No”. I told them it would be a few days before I could come back and to work with their dogs on the things I showed them in the meantime. We’ll see how they do, and I’ll be sure to report on how this adventure unfolds!

Well, it was a really nice day at the funmatch. The morning even started off really pretty with a beautiful sunrise.

The drive down was nice too, but I get tired when I drive by myself. We got there a little after 8:00 and got everything set up. We did agility first and Zoe did well. Here she is sitting in chair after her run…waiting for her treat and watching the dog behind her run the course. LOL She’s such a character! Raven was taking a nap after her runs.

I think that Twist had the most fun today. He didn’t do any agility, but he did some herding. They had a couple of obstacles to try to move the sheep through and Twist did really well today. The funniest thing about the herding was how tall the grass was in the pasture. I didn’t notice it much with Twist, but when Rogue got out there in the grass I nearly lost her! LOL I didn’t get any good pictures of her in the pasture, oh well, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that it was funny to watch. I’m not sure if that had an impact on her enthusiasm for working the sheep today, or if it was because it was getting late in the afternoon, or if it was because the sheep are in a new pasture than she’s worked them in before, but whatever it was, she wasn’t interested in the sheep at all today. Maybe another day. Anyway, I’m glad we’re home and we had a great time visiting with all our friends in Parowan.

Well, we’re packing up the car tonight for the funmatch tomorrow. We’ll have to leave here about 6:30 in the morning to drive to Parowan, but it should be a fun day anyway.

We’ll be doing agility for sure and they were talking about the possibility of offering some herding too, so I’m looking forward to it. Course, it’s supposed to be in the 90’s again tomorrow, so it’ll be hot, but still fun!

I’ll take the camera and see if I can get any good shots to share when we get home.

Well, tonight was a good night for training with Rogue. We worked on her doing a few obstacles ending the sequence with the dogwalk. Randy was standing at the bottom of the dogwalk to put a treat on the target after she “hit it” with her paw.

Last night was the first time that we had both had time to work with her together in more than a week and when we tried this exercise, she was having difficulty staying on at the bottom with Randy facing her directly. So…I asked him to stand sideways, in the same spot and see if that made a difference. It did! She was able to come to the bottom and stay there till I gave her a release word. Just too much pressure too quickly, but at least we figured it out. Yay!

Tonight was better than last night. She had alot more confidence and her targeting wasn’t hesitant tonight, it was firm and purposeful and she even offered to “hit it” again before we could ask. I think with a few more repetitions I can ask Randy to move to different spots and even try facing her straight on again. I know I’ve probably said it before, but I really think that the training process is so fun! I am really enjoying watching her figure out that someone being on the course can be a good thing, not something to avoid like the plague! LOL

Well, the dogs and I have been working on some new targeting skills. I, like most people have taught the dogs a “touch” skill. Until Rogue, all my younger dogs did a typical nose bump of whatever the target was. LOL Leave it to Rogue to make me do a little more thinking! What a girl!

When I asked for a “touch” with Rogue she would try to use her paws along with her nose. If she could get away with it, she’d just use her paws and no nose. So…”hit it” was born for Rogue. I decided that I differentiate the two skills for her. If the target is vertical…like on a wall, fence, baby gates, etc. I will ask her to use her nose and “touch”. If it’s horizontal, like a target on the ground or a hand held flat and horizontal, I will ask for a “hit it”. It’s been working pretty well for her.

Since Rogue prefers the “hit it” version of targeting I decided to try incorporating it into her “say hi” to new people routine. I’m having her approach the person, and having them give her their hand flat and horizontal and they ask her to “hit it”. She can give them her version of a handshake of sorts as a polite greeting and she seems more comfortable with that.

Now for the other dogs…teaching “hit it” took a bit more work. I was using a small lid on the ground to start with. Raven was convinced that if it’s a target…you should use your nose, no matter what mom says. LOL So, I figured that to get her to use her paw I would have to give her a bit more incentive to find out what was under that lid. I made sure that she saw me place a treat under the lid. If you try this, you have to make sure that you’re holding the lid down tight, or they’ll flip it over without their paw and reward a different behavior. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she wasn’t going to get to that treat easily, so she gave it a dig with her paw. That was exactly the reaction I was looking for, and she got the treat. Well, that took all of about 3 repetitions, and now Raven’s a pro at “hit it” too!

The older girls who haven’t had the same kind of training struggled a bit longer in figuring out how to get that treat from under the lid, but they’re doing great now too. Thanks to Rogue for a new targeting skill!

I haven’t updated on Rogue’s progress for a while. My husband has been stuck at work a quite a bit lately, and with me being up at my parents for the last several days, and everything else…the training routine hasn’t been as steady as I’d like.

We are still doing her mat work in the mornings, and she’s working on “Day 10? of the 15 days of Relaxation Protocols that we’re using. I’m obviously not just doing them for one day, LOL I’m waiting till I can see that she’s comfortable with staying on her mat despite whatever distractions are included in that day’s tasks, and then we move on to the next day.

In our work with her people issues we made some good progress with our friend and trainer in Salt Lake. We were up there for Penny’s commercial, and we got to fit in a lesson at the same time. Rogue worked on Obedience stuff in the building and was even able to do some nice heelwork past a nearly deflated helium balloon on the ground that moved and made noise as we walked by. (That’s pretty good for her!)

Then we went outside to the agility equipment and worked on her being able to do the obstacles with another person in close proximity. She did fantastic! Once she was familiar with the equipment, our trainer stood at the end of the dogwalk by her target lid and when she would get to the bottom, she would ask for her “hit it”. When she did it, she would put the treat on the lid and have her repeat it. I was really proud of her! It was also interesting to watch her figuring out that “Hey! the person on the course is here to load my target lid! Hmmm…” I was really hoping that I’d have more of a chance to work this exercise with my husband before now, but I just haven’t. Maybe tonight.

We also have a funmatch in Parowan this weekend, and I’m going to see if we can repeat the same kind of exercise for her down there too. I’ll post about how it goes when we get back.